Deftly download digital videos

Wish you could just download those excellent videos you find on the Internet?  Well, you can.

No video downloading tool works in every instance, so it's good to have a variety of arrows in your digital downloading quiver.  Here are a few:

Websites that help you download video

To use these, just cut and paste the URL of your video and go to the site.  You can always bookmark the site in your toolbar to access them quickly.

• KeepVid only seems to work reliably on Firefox.  KeepVid gives you an easy way to drag a button bookmark to your browser's toolbar, too.

• Zamzar.com will also download a video for you -- it sends you a link via email, but Zamzar only converts videos up to 100 MB.   (Zamzar also converts all sorts of other files, too -- PDFs to Word, for example.)

Tools you can add to your browser to download video

There are also some Firefox + Chrome extensions / add-ons that you can add to your browser (you can do this on your own - they don't require administrator authentication):

• Firefox: In Firefox, go to Tools > Add-Ons and search for Video Download Helper. Install that -- and once you restart Firefox, whenever you're on a site with video, a little icon in your status bar with three colored globes will become animated. Flash Video Downloader is another Firefox add-on that works.

• Chrome: In Chrome, click on the Settings icon -- a wrench or three parallel horizontal lines on the far right of the status bar, then choose Tools > Extensions. You can add FVD Video Downloader.