howto

In the past, we've done Newbie's Guides for certain services, but we wanted to switch things up and really dig into a product's advanced features.

Video-sharing site YouTube is the perfect service to start with because it's massively popular and incredibly simple to use, but also has a few powerful features that are tucked away. This guide is to help you learn how to use some of these advanced features and to serve as a simple reference page.

For the sake of simplicity, we're only covering searching, viewing, and sharing. We've skipped uploading since it's pretty straightforward and made simple with the service's recently launched multifile uploader. We're also not including any third-party downloading tools because that is against YouTube's terms of use and is already an official first-party feature on some content.

Using YouTube's search tool: YouTube's search engine works a lot like Google's. In fact, it uses the same search operators to let you tweak your results. Here are some worth remembering the next time you're looking for a video:

• Limit to words in the title. Putting "allintitle:" in front of your search keeps YouTube's results limited to those videos with the matching words in the title. This is great if you want to keep it from searching through descriptions or tags. Not so useful if the video you're looking for has a misspelled or misleading title.

• Exclude a term. Add a "-" then the word you want to exclude will keep it out of the results. So if you're searching for explosions but don't want to see videos with diet Coke or Mentos, you'd type in "Explosion -diet -coke -mentos." Be sure to add the "-" in front of every word you don't want.

• Play the wildcard. If you're too lazy to type a word, or think that YouTube will figure out the words you're leaving out, you can just put in an asterisk in place of that word. In practice, this means that searching for something like "Fallout: Broken Steel" you could just type "Fallout * Steel" and have it guess the word in the middle.

If you can't remember these off the top of your head you can find them in YouTube's advanced search box, which shows up as an option in the results of any completed search. It's also worth going there if you want to filter how long the videos in the results should be. This is a great way to find long-form content that's 20 minutes or more.

Search and browse with your eyes. If titles and thumbnails are not enough, you can explore additional, related video clusters by using YouTube's warp feature. This is a feature that can still be found on some videos, but YouTube has since relegated it to its TestTube section. That doesn't mean you can't use it on any old video though. Simply inserting "warp.swf" in the URL instead of the word "watch" will send you into full-screen "warp speed" mode. To read more about how to use this feature check out our coverage of it.

Third-party search tools There are a handful of third-party YouTube search engines and tools that add a little bit of utility on top of YouTube's search. Here are some of our favorites:… Read more

Online gaming network Cellufun plans to unveil a new mobile game on Monday called MadeOff, which allows players to create their own Ponzi scheme.

The game's name is a play on Bernie Madoff, the recently convicted mastermind behind the biggest known Ponzi scheme in history. Madoff had more than 4,800 clients who invested money in his investment firm, expecting high returns. Instead of investing that cash into real securities, Madoff allegedly pilfered billions of dollars from clients before he was arrested in 2008.

Gamers playing MadeOff will engage in the same basic activity. You can choose to be … Read more

I'm now the proud owner of a BlackBerry Bold.

For a while, I was trying to decide if I wanted to ditch my iPhone 3G for the Bold. After some research and hands-on time with Research In Motion's beauty, I decided that it was in my best interest to escape from Apple's grips.

But there was a problem: the BlackBerry Bold is expensive. If you're not eligible for a two-year upgrade, the Bold will set you back $550 at the AT&T store. If you're new to AT&T or eligible for the upgrade price, you pay $399.99.

I didn't want to spend that much on a mobile phone that replaced another expensive gadget. Plus, I wasn't eligible for an upgrade. So I decided to head down to the AT&T store to talk with a representative to figure it all out. And much to my surprise, he and I determined that I would end up paying just $30 for the Bold.

Here's how it worked:… Read more

We're kicking off a new series of How-To videos here at CNET that focuses on practical instruction for everyday technology. This is stuff that's a little too fundamental to be on an existing segment such as Insider Secrets, but requires more explanation than a Quick Tip. For my part, I thought I'd knock out a few tutorials on some basic and intermediate aspects of Apple's ubiquitous iTunes jukebox software.

In the following video and slideshow tutorial, I'll show you around the iTunes standard playlist feature (saving Genius and Smart playlists for another time). I know … Read more

Earlier this week, I showed you how to take apart your iMac and replace your hard drive. But I ended that with a promise to tell you the rest of the story. Here it is:

After I installed the new hard drive (a 500GB 3.5-inch internal Seagate hard drive costing $99), to replace the computer's nonfunctioning drive, I put my iMac back together and fired it up. I popped my Leopard install disc into the DVD slot, formatted the new hard drive, and installed the operating system. Within about 30 minutes, my iMac was back to life. I was ready to determine what happened to my old drive.

First, I bought a hard drive enclosure to convert my internal disk to an external hard drive. I bought an Antec enclosure for about $70 at Best Buy. It's a simple black box that connects to your computer via USB. It wasn't the most expensive enclosure on the shelf, but it did the trick.

After placing my internal hard drive in the enclosure, I plugged it into my iMac via USB. I waited (and waited and waited) for the hard drive to pop up in Finder. Eventually, it did. Unfortunately, only my Windows partition was accessible. My OS X files were gone.… Read more

If you were following me on Twitter last week, you probably know of the disaster that hit me hard Tuesday night: my 24-inch aluminum iMac, sporting a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 320GB hard drive, failed.

I quickly determined that it was a hard-drive failure. I tried running Disk Utility off my Leopard install disc to repair it. Unfortunately, it didn't work. I then tried repairing the invalid sibling link and invalid node structures. Once again, I failed.

Remembering that I also failed to pay for AppleCare, I decided that I needed to find a way to salvage my hard drive. So I tried connecting my iMac to my MacBook through a FireWire cable to get the contents off of it. That didn't work.

At this point, it seemed that I was out of options. I determined that it definitely was my hard drive that failed on me, so I could still use my iMac with a new hard drive, but there was one catch: removing the hard drive and replacing it would be extremely difficult, since unlike most other computers, opening the case with a few screws and popping out the hard drive was impossible with my iMac.

Believe it or not, that 24-inch aluminum iMac has only one screw on it, and it only gives you access to the RAM. To access the hard drive, I had no other option but to crack open my beautiful 24-inch iMac with the aid of suction cups. And I decided to share my experience with you.

Here's my step-by-step guide on how to crack open your iMac and replace your hard drive. (Disclaimer: Neither I, nor CNET, nor any of its affiliates is liable for any damage that might occur to your computer by following these steps. Follow them at your own risk.)… Read more

There's no lack of music instruction online. Sites like iVideoSongs and Internet-connected applications such as Garage Band, can tailor music instruction right down to the specific genre, song, and instrument of your choice. The trouble is, they don't actually show you how to make a great recording.

If you're more interested in how to use side-chain audio compression in Logic, than how to how to play "Stairway to Heaven," WinkSound.com is worth a look. The site design is a little rough, but the video tutorials are helpful and clearly organized into relevant topics (Garage … Read more

Last week, BleepingComputer.com reported on how to remove a new variant of an old scareware. This new nasty, known most commonly as Antivirus2010 or Anti-Virus-1, points you to spoofed versions of Download.com, ZDNet, PCMag.com, and other software sites, demanding that you download their program to clean your computer. Of course, it does nothing of the sort, merely perpetuating the infection.

However, the manner and methods Anti-Virus-1 uses to get you there are extremely clever. The infection part of the malware does whatever it's been designed to do, so you can see that you've been infected … Read more

Installing a car stereo can be a scary thing, but with a little preparation and patience it doesn't have to be difficult at all. In this photo slide show, we show you how to handle what is usually the first, and most basic, upgrade to a car's audio system: installing a new receiver.

While the details of car stereo installation may vary from vehicle to vehicle and between different receiver models, the basics are typically the same. Most installs only require simple hand tools, with the only special items necessary being a wire stripper.

For purposes of this … Read more