ChrisDevBox

Earlier post: http://www.chrisdevbox.com/blog/2008/06/09/youtube-video-downloader/

This is a simple and easy tutorial on how to retrieve (in real-time) all your videos from break.com and put them on your website using JavaScript.

In real-time meaning a call to break.com’s WEB API will be made every time you reload the page.

Now, this is not a feature they have exposed to the public yet, but it is there in case you are nerdy enough to figure it out. So this is really a good ol’ innocent hack

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Cookies are great, I eat them all the time, however, this article is about a different type of cookie. Browser /HTTP cookies. The big question is: Are HTTP cookies good or bad. I keep getting this question from non-techy people and some techy people “think” they know the answer… (Including me! jk)

I don’t have the right answer, but I’ll clarify things for you, and then you can make your own judgement whether cookies are good or bad.

Is really how you used them. In the hands of a sloppy programmer HTTP cookies can be VERY bad, but if you are a good and detailed-oriented programmer, cookies are going to be VERY good (sometimes!)

“The term “cookie” is derived from “magic cookie,” a well-known concept in UNIX computing which inspired both the idea and the name of HTTP cookies”. - Wikipedia In a nutshell, cookies are text files stored in your computer containing data that’s typically set by a server.

In order to truly understand cookies you also need to understand HTTP packets and a little bit of how the internet works. I’ll cover a little bit of everything here.

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This is a cool little utility I created after getting more than a few requests from friends and family asking me: How can I download the YouTube FLV video, so I can use it in my “school” project… (Notice the quotes around school?).  Anyway, what you do with the video is up to you, just don’t do anything illegal like starting your own YouTube video site using videos from YouTube!  Here is the link to the download utility

http://www.chrisdevbox.com/tools/get_youtube_video_download.php

Enjoy, and leave a comment if you like it!

I ran into this little security hole when I got an email (SPAM *wink*) from JibJab asking me to use their Sendables service.  I started to create one, but then I realized that I had to pay for it, so I stopped!

well being the hacker that I am I looked into circumventing their technology, so that I could use their “preview” version and host it some place else and it worked!!! (SORRY JIBJAB I really love your product, I just felt a little greedy today… plus 10 bucks for 100 credits come one man)

JibJab if you are reading here is how you can reproduce:

1. Go to the sendables page http://www.jibjab.com/sendables/
2. Select your favorte sendable, upload photos, save.
3. Click on the preview button / Link
4. Right click on the page and select view source
5. Click CTRL+F and search for .swf
6. Locate a string that looks liek this: %2Fsendables%2Fapi%2Fpreview%2FIxLyhHno2XoHrM4xbre6q4C5.xml
7. Insert that string into the ##HERE## area below

<embed src=”http://llnw.jibjab.com/content/player.swf” width=”450″ height=”395″ flashVars=”content_url=http%3A//www.jibjab.com##HERE##” wmode=”transparent” pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash”> </embed>

So using the string above it should looke like this

<embed src=”http://llnw.jibjab.com/content/player.swf” width=”450″ height=”395″ flashVars=”content_url=http%3A//www.jibjab.com%2Fsendables%2Fapi%2Fpreview%2FIxLyhHno2XoHrM4xbre6q4C5.xmlwmode=”transparent” pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash”> </embed>

And to prove to you that I’m not lying here is a quick sample!

http://www.chrisdevbox.com/hacks/jib-jab-hack/

When you are done with that please check out what I did last night….