You want to listen to a song, but you don't want to pay for the money to iTune (coz Apple is too rich already), or some other paid song downloading website.
But then you scare of the virus you might catch on your computer using torrent search website (it is true, 1/2 of them could be virus/malware/Trojan/etc).
You want to use Thunder (迅雷), but it is in Chinese only (got people translate for that, but it is just too Chinese :P) and also the website that provide Thunder links are almost all in Chinese.
You might also already tried eMule (or whatever Mule), but then some of the time the file you looking for is not there anymore (too old or too rare) or too few people share it (takes you months to download a mp3, by that time you might have forgotten it already) or the file is a porn video but named the same name of the mp3 you wanted (that's true, I tried to download Baby Einstein video for my baby, but the video turn out to be a porn, luckily I checked before show to my baby :P)
And then you turn to Imeem, you can listen to endless songs there, and most of the time the quality is quite good. One problem, you want to put this song into your ipod/iphone/whatever phone or keep in your computer so that you can listen to it whenever you want. There are some websites that help you to download it from Imeem, but Imeem keep on improving what...... Sometime back I found out that you can search the flv file in your browser cache, the trick is it is to look for file named .gif. It will works for sometime, but recently when I checked the cache for FireFox, the .gif is not in there for anyhow, so Imeem did keep on improving, heheheh.
Okay, so I tried to record it on the fly, but the cheapskate sound card/driver only allow record from microphone (HUH?). So google around found that the RIAA people bully everyone so that we can't record music on computer. Unless you get a SoundBlaster, there is not way to get it working. I can use wired the phone output to the microphone input, but I bet the quality still sucks!
Oh wait, I found one software to get it around, Virtual Audio Cable. This one can route the output of computer back to input virtually, basically is make the computer to works like you have a cable connect from phone output to microphone input. But but but (huh?) you need to pay for it la...... You get free trial, but you have to pay for full working version. Aiya...... Also it works for sound only, no video.
Then I found this one: PIAFCTM.
This powerful software monitors whatever traffic go through the network port on your computer (oh... it can be use for spying people lo......). So no matter how smart the Imeem people la, they still have to transfer the file to your computer before the song can be play on your computer. So this PIAFCTM can save all the files to your preferred directory. And yes, of course you can apply filter to save .flv/.mp3/etc etc files only, otherwise you get all the junks, including data by MSN/skype/whatever IM. I have tried it for Imeem (get the .gif file, with a few Meg of size), YouTube (get the .flv/mp4), both of them works!
For .gif from Imeem, rename it to .flv and then convert it using flv -> mp3 software. I like SUPER the most, coz it is free and handle almost all the audio/video format. The only thing the SUPER website I don't like is you have to click and click and click to get to the download page (it still worth it, since it is free!), heheheh. As for the .flv from YouTube, SUPER also can handle it.
I only use PIAFCTM at YouTube only if keepvid.com does not works. Keepvid still is the primary method to save the video from YouTube, but recently a lot of attempt failed.... I like to watch YouTube when I am free, but I don't always have internet access (also the 3G/data plan in my country still burn the wallet, not a hole only :P).
update Dec15, 2009: I just found out that this PIAFCTM also can monitor the traffic through USB ports as I was synchronizing calendar and email between laptop and pocket PC. Cool!
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