YouTube is one of the most innovative and amazing websites in the history of the internet & the number 3 ranked global site (according to Alexa Rankings). Create your own channels, share/upload and tag your videos. Thanks to the help of other tools, you can add additional features such to download, convert, optimize and add videos to your iPod, phone, PSP, etc. Below you’ll find an extensive list of tools and tips to help enhance your YouTube experience.
1. Get around international video restrictions.
 2008 summer's Olympics was a good lesson in the necessity of working around networks' and video providers' often ridiculous restrictions based on location and timing. On YouTube, there's often a simple work-around, as explained by the Google Operating System blog. Most YouTube links look like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEOID
You'll find a string of characters where VIDEOID is. Copy that string, and paste it like so:
http://www.youtube.com/v/VIDEOID
You'll get a copy of the video meant for embedding, one that doesn't care as much about where you're watching from.
2. Paste together YouTube clips, no editor necessary.
Even without iMovie or another paid-for editor, you can use the ridiculously vast realm of YouTube videos to patch together funny/poignant/clever projects. Free tools like Yahoo's JumpCut can take in the FLV and other format video clips you downloaded using the other tools in this list. Want to patch together your own clip-sing-along in the style of BarackRoll? Creator Hugh Atkin says he used Google's political video search tool to find all the relevant words and copy them. Now it's just a matter of finding the time to pull it off...
3. Sort all your YouTube links in Gmail with Xoopit.
 If your inbox is anything like ours, you get a regular stream of YouTube links from friends, relatives, friends-of-friends, friends-of-relatives-of-friends ... and you only occasionally click through. Gmail add-on Xoopit lets you sort and run through all those links, playing them right from within Gmail. It's an easy way to avoid hurting that avid linker's feelings the next time they ask you if you saw that hilarious Amy Winehouse parody.
4. Make videos easy to download.
 If you want to stash a YouTube clip away for editing or watching without the net, you've definitely got options. Internet Explorer users might appreciate YouTube Mate , which grabs FLV files for you. The Better YouTube Firefox extension, crafted by our own site editor, adds a simple "Download this video" link to any YouTube page, and the All-In-One Video Bookmarklet is a nice cross-browser conversion tool. If you're away from your own setup, Vixy.net and Viddownloader are your go-to sites for downloading clips. As for watching FLV files, we like and use the cross-platform VLC player.
5. Watch YouTube on TV.
 Many web videos are perfect for quick desktop scanning, but YouTube also contains entire series and longer clips—especially those with higher resolutions available—that make for great couch fare. If you've got a classic Xbox or a Windows Media Center hooked up to the tube, you can flip your Xbox into a YouTube-friendly media center, or add YouTube capabilities to that Microsoft-built box with free plug-in Yougle. Now you can force your already-sitting friends to catch up on Chad Vader and all your other I-swear-it's-funny-just-watch memes.
6. Turn YouTube searches into vidcast feeds.
 YouTube offers up a few RSS feeds of videos—"Recently Featured," "Top Favorites Today," and the like—but not for individual searches, the kind you'd make if you were keeping up with The Guild or keeping on top of the latest Xbox 360 hacks. YouTube Podcaster, a free service from vixy.net (who also provide a nifty converter you'll see below), makes YouTube videos as easy to grab and watch as podcasts. Enter in your search URL, copy the iTunes link, and you'll get an on-demand feed of videos that meet your criteria. You'll want to be specific, but skipping the comments and stream loading time are your rewards.
7. Download audio from videos.
There are a lot of great live performances lurking around YouTube, many of which have never seen the light of day in the recorded audio realm. To jump those jams into your playlist, use a web-based converter like youtube to mp3, or follow the step by step guide offered by youtubetoipod.org to recording and converting YouTube videos into MP3. It may take a few more steps, but Matt's guide will still work, while many web-based hacks end up on the pile of dead-end links.
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