Using a one-two combo, you can get your quick rips of mp3s (in good quality).

Step 1)  www.goear.com

The site http://www.goear.com/ will search out nearly any song (I tried with the obscure, but awesome, Canadian band The Rural Alberta Advantage here: http://www.goear.com/search.php?q=the+rural+alberta+advantage).  This search will find a song and then offer you a web-player and play the song.  The next step is to copy the link from the listening page, and paste it into step 2.

Step 2) dowint.net

Paste the audio listen link into http://dowint.net/ (take a second to copy the song name, so you can replace the random text that the filename has by default) and save that bad larry to your computer using the right-click -> save link feature of your browser.

Note that dowint.net can also rip media from youtube.com, dailymotion.com and metacafe.com, but goear.com seems to have the best quality audio, so far.  Side-note: if you listen to the song first, before placing the link in downint.net, it grabs it from your local cache, so you can grab the mp3 almostinstantly.

Happy Ripping

Here are two decent web services that you can use to rip the audio out of any Youtube video, and save it as an .mp3

Vixy.net

I found the first one, Vixy [ http://vixy.net/ ], over a year ago.  Generally it helped me when I wanted to grab a rare, b-side or unpublished song.  It seems these days it’s easier to find live than recorded work on Youtube, but this tool works like a charm.  They offer a Mac and Windows client to do the same from your own computer, but I always found the expiration dates annoying, and tend to prefer the web interface these days.  On the plus side, you can also rip the video if you want, in various formats.  Our second link is audio only.

Listentoyoutube.com

My girlfriend turned me on to this site: http://www.listentoyoutube.com/ which rips the audio at blazing speeds, and downloads nearly instantly.  I’d be curious to find out what they are doing so differently from Vixy to speed up the service.  If you just want a quick .mp3 of a song (or any video for that matter) you saw on Youtube, input the url at this site, and it will be done nearly instantly.

(By the way, I’m trying my 3rd post using WordPress post-by-email, it seems they don’t let my free account auto-include images by attaching them to the emails)

http://scratch.mit.edu/

I haven’t had a chance to fool around with this little toy, but apparently the boys over at MIT have set up an elementary programming environment for youngsters interested in programming.

The creators believe that programming theory will become more important than it already is today in terms of the IT world and the way it has shaped human thought on a grander scale. Consequently, they have published this tool, resource, toy or whatever else you want to call it. Personally, I feel that I learned more by digging through old Apple manuals and to find out how to write applesoft basic script on my old IIgs, but where the times once forced hacks to remain hunched hunch over dust and mold laden manuals for hours to coax dark secrets about the mysteries of the IC, the current times openly encourage the spread of knowledge. Frankly, I would have been all over this site at 12 years old. Besides, all that manual reading might explain my distaste for everything Mac today.

I sent the link to my sister to share with my nephew. Since they are yet non-geeks, I will be sure to post if they have any feedback on ease of use.

This Facebook application allows you to create a video with a custom message. Bob Dylan displays your message on signs he flips away like a lazy David Letterman. You can post your custom message to any profile and the recipient can send a message back in their own custom video.

Similar to the stunt available at icetruck.tv where you get to create a custom video to send to your friends which appears to imply they are the next victim of a serial killer on the loose.

Review from a Facebook Application review site:

http://facereviews.com/2007/09/21/bob-dylan-on-facebook/

Vixy.net is the first very easy solution for Youtube (and other video sites) to file conversion.

While I suffered a few errors while uploading directly from a Youtube URL during my tests, when it worked, it worked great.

Probably my favorite feature is the Youtube stream to mp3 file. I’ve often found that when I cannot find a particular audio track anywhere else on the web, it appears in a Youtube video. With this site, you can rip the audio and ouput mp3.

http://vixy.net/

I haven’t had time to try this site extensively, but at my first view, it seems like a great free language tutorial site.

They have lessons mapped from different languages, so you can learn Spanish or Japanese, from the perspective of knowing English. Alternately, you might try to learn English from Spanish.

http://www.trymango.com/login.php

Updated (Dec 19, 2007) – http://www.mangolanguages.com/

Notes as of the update: I happen to be taking Spanish lessons at the moment and I shared this site with my instructor. It actually complimented the lesson well, and we found that the lesson was clear, compelling and accurate. The only downside was the sites preference for the Spanish of Spain. This is not inherently bad, only in this case I am trying to learn Latin American Spanish. Great Site!!