Walker News » Flash

How To Find Adobe Flash Player Version Installed On Computer?

Walker — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 15:02:03 +0000

Now, one can easily find or check Adobe Flash Player version in right-click context menu, if you’re not sure what version of Flash player is running on your computer.

After installing the latest Flash Player 10.2.152.26, right click on a YouTube video (any Flash video will do) and it will show Adobe Flash Player version number in detail (major and minor version number):

Previous Flash player, for example v10.1 or earlier, doesn’t display full version number, i.e. only the major version number is shown.

To find out if you have installed or using the latest Flash player, just right click a Flash video and click the version number, then it will lead you to this URL:

http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/

where you can confirm the Flash player installed on your computer is up to date or outdated, by comparing the published Flash player version number on various platforms.

Play This Little Piano Flash Game

Walker — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 06:29:18 +0000

I stumbled upon this little flash game at here. A piano can play nice rhythms if you are good in music :-)

Although I neither a pianist nor I play a piano in my life so far, there is no problem for me to start playing this flash game in no time. Guess what, there are “music notes” of few popular Chinese songs written on the site I found :-)

Therefore, you should able to play this flash-based piano easily as I do. For your convenient, I just duplicate two of them here.

To test it out, use your computer mouse (not that animal called mouse) to click the flash piano once. Then, start to press computer keyboard with reference to that alphabet-based “song book” (below).

Music notes for this flash piano :

In some cases, you might have to turn off the Chinese input, if the flash piano not making any tune.

If you create a new tune with this flash piano, please leave me a comment of the “music note” for sharing :-)

痴心绝对

OPQQQRQPPOPPSP ONOOOQQOOMNNQN
MLMMMRRQSO MLMMMRROOMP
OOPQQQRQPPOPPSP ONOOOQQOOMNNQN
MLMMRRQSO MLMMMRROOONO

Classical Wedding Song

HKKK HLJK HKNNMLKJKL
HKKK HLJK HKMOMKILMK
NMLII JKLL NMLII JKLL
HKKK HLJK HKMOMKILMK

Besides using computer keyboard, you can also click on the flash piano keyboard. The layout should much like the piano toy made for children, I think.

Similar to the Touch Piano from Nokia HK, this little flash piano (about 230KB) is compatible with touchscreen-based Nokia 5800 XpressMusic too (by touching the little piano keyboard to “make” it dance :-)

[ The origin of this flash game is believed developed by 100CN, a Beijing-based software development company. ]

New YouTube Player Interface To View HD Video Clip

Walker — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:47:33 +0000

As the high definition technology become ubiquitous, many people are addictive to HD-ready videos, simply because of clarity is attractive.

Therefore, YouTube started to host and stream high definition video to accommodate demanding multimedia trend of earlier 21st century.

Song long as you’ve uploaded a HD-ready video clip, YouTube offers visitors a choice to watch it in normal quality or high definition mode.

The default playback mode is of course the normal quality, as not everyone in this world connects to Internet with broadband package.

I have few screencasts posted to WalkerNewsDotNet Channel @ YouTube. Some of them are available in high definition format.

So, if you’re not too sure about what I was trying to show in all those “silent” screencasts, please try to play it in HD mode, by clicking the HQ button that appears on the YouTube player interface (if it’s a HD-ready screencast):

The HQ button turns into red colour when the video is playing at HD mode.

How To Copy YouTube Video or FLV File From Google Chrome Cache Folder?

Walker — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 14:59:14 +0000

If you’ve read my earlier post about the defensive Google Chrome cache folder (or from the splog/copycat), you should have known that Google Chrome doesn’t keeps all caches (temporarily Internet file) in the explicit cache folder.

I’ve been trying playback Flash videos hosted at YouTube and some less famous video hosting sites, and found that the FLV files are not kept in the Google Chrome master cache folder. Indeed, Google Chrome cache those large Flash video in the Windows temp folder of my user account.
And to be frank, I’m testing this with Google Chrome v0.2.149.30 on Windows Vista SP1. If you’re using other version than what I’ve tested, please be kind to share what you’ve found?

How to copy YouTube video or Flash video from Google Chrome cache folder?

Now, knowing that the large YouTube video or Flash video files are cached in Windows temp folder, do you able to directly copy them to other places for “safe-keeping” – either for offline playback or share with your mom and dad who only know how to operate their classic video player and TV set?

Answer: You can copy them BUT NOT with a direct method or the Windows default copy function/command!

Google Chrome cache files technique is defensive!

Why it’s defensive? Let me explain in points form:

You can’t close page (Tab window or Chrome browser) that contains the video you’ve playback completely. If you do, Google Chrome automatically delete the cached FLV video files in Windows temp folder, immediately.
While the page is open, the Windows default copy command or Windows Explorer function can’t copy the cached Flash videos – it’ll failed with a “File In Use” error message, saying that “The action can’t be completed because the file is open in another program. Close the file and try again!”

But, you can’t close the Google Chrome or have the cached video deleted automatically, as soon as you close the browser!

So, you’ve to download an open source program called HoboCopy to copy the Google Chrome cache files that are opened (and thus disallow the default Windows copy function/command to function properly)!

For example, I’ve used HoboCopy to duplicate/copy that 72.27 MB flash video cached by Google Chrome in Window temp folder to E: drive:

C:\Users\Walker\AppData\Local>hobocopy Temp\ E:\FLV-Backup\ fla7049.tmp
HoboCopy (c) 2006 Wangdera Corporation. hobocopy@wangdera.com

Starting a full copy from C:\Users\Walker\AppData\Local\Temp\ to E:\FLV-Backup\
Copied directory
Backup successfully completed.
Backup started at 2008-09-18 00:10:43, completed at 2008-09-18 00:11:09.
1 files (72.27 MB, 1 directories) copied, 45 files skipped

If you’re using Windows Vista, make sure you’re using an elevated Command Prompt window (i.e. Command Prompt process with real Administrator privilege) to run the Hobocopy command.

If you find this troublesome or difficult, then just try to Google some freeware or the simple YouTube Downloader of my friend. But, what about other video files hosted on other video hosting sites?

YouTube Downloader: Download YouTube Video For My Mom!

Walker — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 10:45:45 +0000

UPDATE: This post is outdated. Please use this alternate trick for reference.

Steve Chen and Chad Hurley created the most wanted video clip hosting site for sharing video collection easier on the Net, that’s YouTube!

YouTuber, the users of YouTube (I call it), like it very much. The reasons are simple: it’s free; it’s really easy to share and really fun to interact with community about the posted video clip collections!

So, active commenter (I am) prefer watching YouTube video clips online than having the videos playback at local hard disk.

However, there is another camp of people (me too), who occasionally would like to download YouTube videos and save them to mobile hard disk or the latest 8GB USB thumb drive.

The reasons? Well, as for me, those are for my mom and dad who are too old and reluctant to learn something about computer! You might want to download them for safekeeping, backup, playback on media server at home, saving the metered broadband usage at home, etc.

OK. For whatever reasons, how could you direct download YouTube video clips (or from any other video hosting sites)?

1) Native way – retrieve video clips from a Web browser cache folder

This native method works for most video hosting sites, as long as you know where is the web browser cache folder that used to temporarily keeping web page contents (including picture, MIDI, MP3, FLV, SWF, etc).

Firefox cache folder:

Type the following Firefox URI in the Address bar, press ENTER, and look for the Cache Directory: path of Disk Cache Device:

about:cache

Vista-IE7 cache folder:

By default installation, you could find the IE7 super-hidden cache folder in Windows Vista at this folder path:

%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Low\Content.ie5

Note: You might need to enable “view hidden files/folders” option in Windows to locate all sub-folders or the browser cache folder itself.

For example, you could find YouTube video clips that finish playback in web browser leaving the cached video files with file name similar to get_video, get_video[1], get_video[2], etc.

Save all these cached file to another folder and rename them with a flash video file extension (i.e. FLV, e.g. get_video to be renamed as video1.flv) and you’re ready to play the YouTube video offline or convert them to other video format as you like.

For more detail, you may refer to Where Is IE7 Cache Folder, Retrieve Flash Movie In IE7 Cache Folder Of Windows Vista, How to save flash video from Firefox cache folder.

2) Techie way – retrieve the hidden YouTube video direct download link

This method is only applicable to YouTube video and it’s working at this time of writing.

It’s not really user-friendly but it’s good enough for those who wonder how YouTube Downloader extracts the YouTube video direct download link.

For the detail of this method, please refer to YouTube Video Direct Download Link

3) Easier way – retrieve the YouTube video download link with YouTube Downloader

There are many YouTube downloader freeware that you could easily find one or two from Google search.

If you’re not serious about downloading YouTube video (to be frank, watching YouTube video online is more fun because of the interactive features), I’ve my friend developed this simple one-click YouTube downloader.

Enter YouTube video URL here and click Submit button
And click your YouTube Video direct download link at here

Strictly speaking, it’s not a perfect downloader. For example, sometime it’s not working without hard forcing web browser to refresh (i.e. pressing CTRL+F5 hotkey). And, it doesn’t download the video. Indeed, it merely presents the YouTube video direct download link that described in previous method.

World Time Clock: How Many Time Zones Are Used In USA Or Russia?

Walker — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 18:38:36 +0000

As some proverbs said, “Time is as precious as gold, but you can’t buy the time with gold!”. Thus, date and time is not a small matter, whether to a businessman, a computer system, a physician, an athlete, a politician…

So, take some time and humble minds to learn about time-related topics again.

For those who are serious, I would like to recommend you the best-seller titled “A brief history of time”, written by the great physicists Stephen Hawking.

Without going too far, let us learn some basic knowledge about time zone :-p

While most of the countries referring single time zone for respective nations, they are some countries using multiple time zones, simply because the territory of their nation spanning a wide geographical areas.

Such “big” countries are like USA, Russia and Australia. Although territory of China spanning over multiple time zones as well, the China government practice to standardize all of the states in one single time zone (i.e. GMT+8).

If it’s too hard for you to visualize the world clock on the world map, you may refer to this simple Shockwave Flash gadget provided by ClockLink.com:

You could click here to generate a World Clock map for to embed in your blog too.

Extract URL To Direct Download YouTube Video

Walker — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 01:27:07 +0000

UPDATE: This feature/article is no longer valid. Please check out this alternate trick for reference.

Almost one month ago, I posted a wonderful trick to extract the direct download links of (any) YouTube video. Have you found it useful?

The answer is yes and no. (There is always two end, where a solution couldn’t satisfy all people needs)! For sure, users who are only prefer mouse-click will not buy that idea – that’s why you will find YouTube downloader freeware or Firefox add-on.

Now, here is another choice to get the direct download link of your favorite YouTube video!

The YouTube Video Extractor, is a simple ‘web application’ created by one of my talented programmer friend, outputs a link to directly download the flash video that embedded in a YouTube page URL.

How to use YouTube Video Extractor

It’s very simple to use, just ‘copy-paste-click’! The detail could be in four steps, but I’m sure it’s as easy as one step! Here we go:

1. Copy the URL of any YouTube video pages that showing the flash video,
2. Paste the copied URL on the text box provided below,
3. Click the Submit button to generate the YouTube Video direct download link!

Enter YouTube video URL here and click Submit button
And click your YouTube Video direct download link at here

In some cases, the YouTube Video Extractor might not able to retrieve the direct download link. This could be a result of ‘bug’ or simply because you’ve gave it a wrong URLs (only YouTube video page URL and not any other URLs).

If you find a bug, please leave me comment via the comment form below. Enjoy watching and (downloading) your YouTube video!