Today marks six years since the launch of YouTube. The video site has already thanked its users on the official YouTube blog and the post is worth reading for the jaw-dropping stats about the site’s traffic. Our personal favorite was that more than 48 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute!

To celebrate YouTube’s 6th birthday, here are our 6 favorite YouTube tips from the OnSoftware archives:

How to download videos from YouTube - It’s a classic question posed by millions of users. Here’s how it’s done.

Link to a specific time in YouTube videos – A great tip for sharing just a certain part of a video with someone.

Drag and drop videos onto YouTube – Add videos to YouTube just by dragging them onto the page.

Stop autoplay in YouTube – Autoplay can be one of the most annoying things about YouTube. Find out how to turn it off!

Edit videos in YouTube – Find out how to make slick productions with YouTube’s own video editor.

Play YouTube karaoke – Discover how to turn YouTube into your own personal karaoke machine with the help of a simple Greasemonkey script!

You've probably had a few PowerPoint photo slideshows in your email already. They seem to be a popular topic for messages coming from friends and relatives with too much spare time on their hands. But have you ever tried creating one? It's easier than you think, and it might actually be a good way to share pictures - just don't abuse the slideshows with cute kitty images!

1. Open up PowerPoint, click the Insert tab and then the Photo Album button. Select New Photo Album to open the Photo Album settings menu.

2. In this new window, click the File/Disk button to select the photos you want to use in your slideshow. Remember you can select multiple files simultaneously by holding the Ctrl key while selecting them with your mouse.

Here at Softonic we use logos a lot, for many different purposes: program listings, images for blog posts, or even the central image in our homepage. The logo is usually the best way to represent a program in all those cases – which means I get to work with them almost on a daily basis.

Obtaining a program logo can be quite easy. Sometimes the developers offer high-resolution PNG versions on their website, which work great everywhere. For popular programs, it’s easy to find logos in Google Images. But most of the time you have to use the program’s icon, and this is where an icon extractor comes in handy.

The app I use to extract icons from programs is Icon Explorer. It’s quick, easy to use and doesn’t require installation. All you need is browse the built-in file manager to find the executable file or system library you want to extract the icon from, and click on the icon displayed on the interface’s central area. Icon Explorer will show all the available sizes and resolutions on the panel to the right.

To download any of those icons, simply right click on the appropriate size and select the target format: ICO or BMP. In the case of BMP you can also select the background color. Of course, saving a program’s icon in BMP means you can work on it later on using any other graphic editor.

Icon Explorer is simple, easy to use and does what it says on the tin. If you ever need to extract icons from executable files or DLL libraries, this is the tool you need.

Facebook’s mission is to “give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.” This all sounds very worthy and far out, but on the flipside the social network can also be a tool for causing a nuisance and generally upsetting the cosmic order of things.

There are plenty of ways to become a menace on Facebook if you’re that way inclined. Here’s a guide to what to avoid doing on the network (or, alternatively, to do them if you’re feeling bored and destructive).

1. Quit with the tags!

Facebook allows you to tag (label) people who appear in your photos, regardless of whether they want to be identified in it or not. But it’s not recommended to tag your friends at random.

The person who uploaded this picture to Facebook has tagged his friends as characters from the Mr Men books. This is a big no-no and is in effect spamming people’s message boards with a silly picture that they probably don’t want to be associated with.

Worse still are those programs that tag your friends as random objects, such as Friends Tagger. If someone tagged me in one of these I would immediately sever all ties with them.

2. Can you keep a secret?

The Facebook wall is a fun way to keep up with your friends, but it’s easy to forget that it’s not confidential. Common sense states that you should send a private message for anything with confidential information, phone numbers, passwords or gossip.

The space shuttle Endeavor took off this morning on its final mission. If you want to follow the progress of its historic trip then go check out NASA’s cosmic Google Earth plug-in.

Real-Time Space Shuttle in Google Earth uses live data from Mission Control to plot the current location of Endeavor in relation to the Earth. You’ll see the trajectory of the craft marked as a yellow line, and you’ll also be able to track all kinds of mission events such as solid rocket booster separation, main engine cut-off and external tank separation.

Other information displayed by the Real-Time Space Shuttle plug-in includes speed milestones, altitude milestones and landing events. You can choose to auto-follow the Endeavor or switch to manual controls to explore the path of the shuttle yourself.

To access this great space travel tool, simply download the live groundtrack file then open it in Google Earth.

If you don't like the recent interface update to Twitter for Mac, although the Mac App Store won't let you get an old version, you can still download the original Tweetie for Mac.

Tweetie was the forerunner to the official Twitter app until Twitter made it the official client so its very similar although obviously lacks some of the newer features in Twitter. An added bonus of using Tweetie is that it also supports several different URL shortening services including bit.ly, TinyURL, is.gd, tr.im and DiggBar.

So if you're not a big fan of Twitter for Mac's big new look, all is not lost. Download Tweetie instead!

Facebook Chat is a pretty basic instant messaging tool. Nevertheless, it makes for a functional and practical way to chat with your buddies on the social network.

Like any self-respecting IM client, Facebook Chat has a bunch of smileys (often known as emoticons) that allow you to show your mood or just brighten up dull conversations. Here’s a guide to all the known Facebook Chat emoticons but do let us know if you discover more :=)

Icon	Meaning	Characters	Icon	Meaning	Characters
	Happy	:-) :) :] =)		Pucker up	:3
	Very happy	:-D :D =D		Angel	O:) O:-)
	Sad	:-( :( :[ =(		Devil	3:) 3:-)
	Crying	:'(		Glasses	8-) 8) B-)
	Confused	o.O O.o		Heart	<3
	Stick out tongue	:-P :P :-p :p		Oriental eyes	^_^
	Surprised	:-O :O :-o :o		Kiss	:-* :*
	Angry	>:( >:-(		Sunglasses	8-| 8| B-|
	Unsure	:/ :-/ :\ :-\		Robot	:|]
	Wink	;-) ;)		Penguin	<(")
	Horrible	>:O >:-O >:o		Shark	(^^^)
	Relaxed	-_-		Putnam	:putnam:
	Pacman	:v		42	:42:

As you can see, many of these are pretty standard emoticons for a chat client. However, there are a few that seem to come way out of left field. In case you're wondering the strange face belongs to Chris Putnam, a former Facebook developer. And the number 42? Well, that, of course, is the definitive answer to the ultimate question of life, the Universe, and everything.

Get more Facebook emoticons

Facemoods adds dozens of animated emoticons to Facebook Chat. To use it, you must make sure that you and the person you're speaking to are running Facebook in Firefox.

Another way to spice up your Facebook smilies is to create your own emoticons using ASCII art, or by cutting and pasting the most famous creations from ASCII art collections such as this one. Be careful with including anything too large because it will lose detail when viewed in the small Facebook Chat window. Small faces and symbols like the ones here are perfect, though:

Faces: ๏̯͡๏ ٩(●̮̮̃•̃)۶ ٩(-̮̮̃-̃)۶ ٩(͡๏̯͡๏)۶ ٩(-̮̮̃•̃)۶ ٩(×̯×)۶ (●̮̮̃•̃) (•̪●) ಠ_ಠ ಥ_ಥ

Symbols: ☮ ♩♪♫♬ ☎ ★ ☯ ☀ ☻☺☹ ♨ ♥ ☁ ☂ ♀ ♂ ☝☞☟

Do you know any more Facebook emoticons? Got any cool ASCII art to share with us? Then let us know :P

[Via: OnSoftware Germany]

If you don't like targeted adverts, or the idea that some websites will use your browsing habits for marketing profiles, it is possible to stop them. Here are the best add-ons for Firefox that make sure websites can't track your internet activities:

TACO

TACO (Targeted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out) prevents over 100 different online advertising networks - including Google, Yahoo and Microsoft - from displaying highly targeted advertisements using the detailed information on your web surfing habits. TACO works by placing 'opt-out' cookies into Firefox which prevent the services from targeting you with ads. Although its a pretty drastic tool - TACO will clear-out all of your existing cookies except the 100 it places in Firefox meaning you'll lose a lot of your stored passwords, filled-in-forms etc - its very effective at stopping you becoming a victim of targeted advertising.

BetterPrivacy

BetterPrivacy is a Firefox add-on that deletes a relatively new type of tracking cookie known as local shared objects (LSOs). This type of cookie, known as 'super cookies' are particularly harmful because they store a huge amount of information and, crucially, can't be deleted like a normal cookie. BetterPrivacy finds the folder on your hard disk where the LSOs are stored and when you finish a session, deletes any it finds there. Again, it deleted everything in your LSO folder - including saved passwords etc that you'd rather keep - but you can preserve certain LSOs on a safelist.

If you're one of the many converts to the Google Chrome browser on Mac, then you can now stay ahead of the very latest developments with Google Chrome Canary which has just been released for OS X. Google Chrome Canary is effectively the Alpha version of Google's browser and is the testing ground for most of the features that eventually appear in the Google Chrome Stable, Google Chrome Beta and Google Chrome Developer versions.

If you're a bit confused by the increasing number of builds of Chrome, here is a brief lowdown...

The stable build is the latest official version of Chrome. The Chrome beta build is is slightly newer than the stable version of Chrome and is intended for testing by everyone. The developer build is intended for users with software testing or programing experience and finally the Canary build is the least tested of them all and automatically created from the parent Chromium project.

The good news is, when you install Google Chrome Canary, it won't overwrite any other version of Chrome you've got installed, so you can test it to your heart's content while running your regular Chrome browser. However, since it's completely untested and designed for those that want to help Google develop the next version of Chrome, you'll find it very unstable and unreliable at times. Oh, and be warned that it will send anonymous usage stats back to Google for development purposes.

No matter how much Macs have changed over the years, one thing has remained constant - the startup sound. It's not a feature that's just for fun though - the sound indicates that all initial startup tests on your Mac's internal components have been successful. That said, it can be inconvenient or even embarrassing if you switch on your Mac in a quiet public area, such as a library or classroom. Fortunately, there are a few simple solutions:

Your PC is slow. Really slow. You've used CCleaner to get rid of the garbage, you've lightened the load by uninstalling bloatware with Revo, you've checked inside, outside, upside down and backwards for a virus, and you still have time to make a coffee by the time it takes your computer to start up. Is it time to reformat your hard drives?

Luckily for you, reformatting your computer is really simple. Go to My Computer, find the offending hard drive (in all likelihood, C:) and right click. You'll see Format... under the context menu options, and find all the information you need when you click.

What takes a little more effort, however, is preparing for the reformat. As it will erase absolutely everything on the disk, if you don't make the right preparations, you could find yourself with a faster computer, but absolutely nothing to do on it. Follow the steps laid out in our list first to make reformatting your hard drive as easy and safe as possible!

Last month I explained how to remotely control a Blackberry phone from a PC. As a follow-up, I’ll show you how to do the same on Android device.

There are a few ways you can control your Android from a computer. Perhaps the most simple is via an application called droid VNC Server, which you can get for free from the Android Market. The app uses a virtual network connection to allow you to access your device and control it using a VNC viewer. Note, however, that your Android phone needs to be rooted for this to work!

Are there times when you just wish all your desktop icons would disappear? Of course, using Windows would be tricky without them but once you have more than a dozen or so desktop icons your screen gets cluttered.

Thankfully there is a way to temporarily hide desktop icons to give you a cleaner screen. What’s more, it’s very easy to do!

Hide icons in Windows XP

In XP, you need to right-click on any space on your desktop. Select Arrange Icons By, then uncheck the option that says Show Desktop Icons. To display the icons again, just repeat the same procedure.

Hide icons in Windows 7

The procedure for hiding icons is very similar in Windows 7. Right-click on the desktop and choose View, then go to Show desktop icons to uncheck it. Again, you repeat the same process to turn the icons back on.

Related programs

DeskSweeper: Allows you to show or hide icons even more easily, placing an icon in the Windows system tray that lets you toggle desktop icons on and off.

DeskDuster: This program actually lets you schedule icons to hide themselves after a given period of PC inactivity. This way, you can ensure that your computer looks clean, even when you’re not there!

Picture the situation: you've just watched a really long YouTube video with a really funny bit right at the end. You'd like to send it to your friends, but don't want to make them watch the whole thing just for the sake of the final gag. Is there anyway you can share only the last few seconds of that video.

Luckily the answer is yes - and it's probably easier than you expect. All you need to do is search for the video you want to share on YouTube, and start watching it. As soon as you arrive to the scene you'd like to share, pause the playback.

Right click anywhere on the video and select the Copy video URL at current time option in the context menu. This will copy a special URL to your clipboard that makes the video start playing exactly at that time. You can then copy that URL anywhere: email message IM client, Twitter, Facebook and so on.

Some time ago we explained another quick trick to set a specific starting point for YouTube videos, but this one's definitely much easier. Enjoy!

You might want to split an MP3 file for lots of reasons. Maybe you want to break up a podcast into bite-sized pieces, or make separate tracks from a digitized vinyl record or DJ mix. I did this on a Mac, but it works just the same in Windows.

Using the free open source app Audacity, this is really easy. Here's how to cut your MP3 files:

1: Install Audacity, open it then drag your MP3 file onto the interface. Loading will take a few seconds.

2: I have a podcast loaded up, and want to split it into two parts. Click on the file around where you think your first break will be. Listen, and when you've found the right point click the Stop button. Now click on the point where the marker has stopped, and drag back to the start of the track.