That day, I decided I wanted to be a guitar player, the best guitar player on the face of the earth.

I practiced for about 2 months with a cheap guitar, grew my nails and my hair and started hanging out with musicians. Didn’t help much. I’m officially one of the worst guitar players ever.

A month ago, I saw a beautiful guitar at the pawn shop, and  bought it on the spur of the moment – I don’t regret it. Maybe I’m not gonna be the next Jimi Hendrix or Captain Beefheart , but I love playing and that’s all that matters.

If you also want to learn how to play the guitar, take a look at LickLibrary studio on 5min, where you can find professional step-by-step guitar lessons,like this one:

Who knows? you might be the next Hendrix.

“Say Mo, what do you recommend, Xbox Premium or Elite?”

I kept my tone down, but I was pissed as hell:

“I was in the middle of a very important meeting, man,” I said dryly.

“It’s really important, a friend of mine is now with me at the store and he’s not sure what to buy.”

“Take the Premium,” I said, and hung up abruptly.

The next morning, a knock on the door, and a delivery guy carrying an XBOX 360, premium edition, with a note that reads, Just because I love you.

Pure hatred, I tell you – apparently, he never forgave me for the fact  that our father probably loved me more…

Now, I’m am a zombie. My days dedicated to work, and my nights to the infested wastelands of Washington D.C. , or “The Capital Wasteland” . I have no social life, my girlfriend left me, and my dog nearly died due to starvation.

On the bright side, I have discovered the amazing gamer guides by G4TV, from Fallout 3 tourist guide

As for my brother? I’m buying him a Wii.

Holiday season is madness, I’ll be the first to admit it, but as a great man once said, “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.” For me and others like me, Fine Living’s 5min Studio is a step-by-step guide to the fine art of fine living, entertaining and hosting, a method in the madness if you will  – from hosting parties to making delicious cocktails, it contains all the handy information one needs in order to become a regular Martha Stewart.  Rejoice!

TV360 is full of people who are living the dream, my dream, they are real doctors, white coats and all that jazz, but instead of walking around with a cane and emotionally abuse their co-workers and patients, they answer questions like “how to remove warts” or talks about the health benefits of drinking coffee in a well behaved and informative way. Now where’s the fun in that?

But then again, when you’re handling issues like bipolar disorder and depression perhaps you’ll prefer the good doctors from TV360 over Dr. House.

Just sayin’.

You’d get to work in the morning by blinking, and earn some precious  moments of sleep every day. By simply saying the word “lunch” it will pop up and appear in front of you. Oh yeah, step aside Mary Poppins, Jeannie, and the Bewitched Samantha, you won’t need a 3 minute song sequence just to organize and clean the house. Call me crazy, or lazy, but I get most excited about technology when it makes my life easier, even in the smallest ways;  like being able to do in one click what used to take me 3.

Yes, twittering 5min videos with our shiny new player is now super simple: all you do is press the Twitter button that’s on the player.  No copy, no paste and no waste of time.  The difficult part is to decide what to do with all that free time you’ll suddenly have. Personally I’ll probably watch another video and daydream of magical powers and futuristic helpful robots.

Learn how to build your very own robot in this ultra cool IndyMogul video:

Watch more DIY videos on 5min.com

For weeks now we’ve been working at full capacity to bring you the latest version of 5min’s Smart Player – the third major release of our flagship distributable player – now sleeker, noticeably lighter, faster and above all – more customizable than ever before, making it the ideal white-label player solution for your site.

During this time and since the release of the player’s previous version, we’ve been making every effort to listen to you, our Content Partners, Distribution Partners and the 5min community itself in order to bring you the best possible player to suit your needs across every online outlet – the result is a new and improved Smart Player, armed with new customization, content delivery and monetization options for an enhanced viewing experience alongside more control over the player’s overall look and functionality.

The same all-in-one player, now with more customization options than ever before, to ensure seamless integration on your site, on your blog or any of your web pages. With such a smart, simple way to add 5min’s quality how-to video content to your site, you can now define your player, tweak and skin it, and create a custom-made video section for your site or blog – all in minutes and with a lightweight snipper of code. One of our goals was and remains to make relevant distribution of quality how-to’s a cinch – whether via the embeddable default Smart Player, through our VideoSeed product range, or our dynamic video widgets Now, with a new player in tow, we’ve also made it easier for you – publishers, bloggers, site owners and content creators – to gain maximum control over the latest Smart Player and make it totally your own.

Over the next couple of weeks, we will be rolling out with the new player across our Partner websites, so keep your eyes open and let us know what you think of the changes we’ve made.

So, what’s new? Below are some of the highlights of the new 5min Smart Player:

More Display Options to Choose From:
The latest version of 5min’s flagship player is now more customizable than ever before, allowing full customization on a per-publisher level — you get total control over the display of your player, from color scheme to branding to sizing, so that you can create a player which suits your website’s needs to a tee. Publishers can also choose which Related Videos are featured within the player and how.

Lighter, Faster Player Behavior:
Now more than 3 times faster in behavior and response, 5min’s latest Smart Player is built with ActionScript 3, designed for high-level functionality and lighter, faster performance — with an initial weight of under 100K, the Smart Player has never been so impressively lightweight and sleek. 5min’s new Smart Player is event-driven, providing a higher performance rate and fine-tuned capabilities alongside a wider variety of customization options, skins, and display preferences. From shorter to loading times to record-time response, the Smart Player has never been faster to use.

Different Ratio Options:
Designed for ideal viewing in either 4:3 or 16:9 format — choose your ratio display settings according to your needs.

Better Branding & Personalization:
More possibilities than ever for content creators and publishers – now you can add a watermark logo to accompany your content in the video area itself, benefit from better branding and even opt for a permanent branded banner addition to appear right below the player.

Streamlined Ad Unit Placement:
The new Smart Player is available for use in all sizes provided via 5min’s VideoSeed range, and supplies an optimal placement of 300 x 250 ad units on your site.

Smart Ad Management:
The new Smart Player incorporates a 3rd party integrated platform for management of video ad inventory — all ads can be easily and accurately managed through this new component, providing up-to-date in-house reporting for your content and monetization of such. All player options may display all ad types and are compatible with a companion banner, for a maximum number of ad views.

Distribution Made Simple:
With the latest Smart Player, it is now more simple than ever to share videos – one click within the video player to embed, send to a friend or share through any one of social networks and web services supported.

In addition to the new and improved Smart Player, you’ll probably notice some exciting changes on our watchpage:

- We’ve made the move to a 16:9/widescreen display as default.
- Easier, more intuitive navigation — now you can easily browse your favorite categories directly from the new watchpage.
- Discovery, made simple – now more than ever it’s simple to find more of the great content you’re after, with the new watchpage tabs.

Stay tuned for the many more great and exciting changes we plan on unveiling in the coming months – we’d love to hear your comments!

MobileMe is a subscription-based collection of online services and software from Apple, the latest generational upgrade to Apple’s veteran iTools. MobileMe’s focus is – of course – the Apple junkies who simply have to sync their respective Geek Gear: their Mac, their iPhone and iPod Touch. MobileMe allows you to get it together, and keep it together, allowing your email, contacts, and calendar stay the same wherever you check them, no matter what device you use, as well as keep it all in sync across multiple devices. You can also set up your MobileMe account to use a personal domain name, so that the URL to any iWeb ’08 (or later) website that you publish to MobileMe is easy to remember. You can also choose to change the “CNAME record” on your registrar’s site, as described here.

With this handy video from Understand Your Mac, we’ll learn how to set your domain up with MobileMe as well as how to edit the cName in GoDaddy (other domain name providers are likely to be similar, but not exactly the same):

Got life-changing tips for Mac users? Advice for the iPhone-toting over-achiever? Tricks to turn the iPod Touch into our faithful little lapdog? We’d love to hear all about it – drop us a line, and your awesome how-to’s may be featured right here on our blog!

Adding a video to your favorite wikiHow articles can add terrific value for other readers looking to get their how-to groove on, and can often times improve the article and help in providing a visual explanation for an idea or project. Personally, I find this to be particularly true when it comes to Origami – while the written steps I usually see in paper-craft guides or magazines are great, being a little clumsy I usually need someone to walk me through the steps of an elaborate fold.

Embedding videos on wikiHow is quick and quite easy – when browsing or penning a wikiHow article, look on the left hand side navigation bar of any article. Under “Editing Tools” click on “Embed Video”, and refine your search to help locate an appropriate match from the 5min library. For a detailed step-by-step explanation of the process, please read this handy guide pieced together by the awesome folks at wikiHow. Below, you can see an example of a 5min video embedded in a wikiHow article, How to Make White Chocolate Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies:

If you’re a big wikiHow fan like us, or just hang out and contribute as a part of the wikiHow community, be sure to stop by and say hello! We’d be more than happy to help you find the right 5min videos for your wikiHow articles.

However, in recent months I have been indulging in this dark and guilty pleasure, head-banging shamelessly to Slayer as I have not done since high school. While one can argue as to the depth and/or moral context of most of the more traditional common themes found in popular metal lyrics, no one can quite argue with such an onslaught of sound. The music still blows my ‘effin mind, true – but I reckon that due to my progressing age, that air of defiance against authority is gone, along with some questionable wardrobe choices. Nonetheless, when browsing the Hype Machine for new tunes to feed the Pod, I was delighted to find this adorable little tale of elementary school rebellion inspired by Twisted Sister. Rock on, you little devils!

Ok, budding guitarists – wanna cross over to the dark side with some tasty metal tunes? First, get into gear and master that perfect metal tone with this comprehensive video tutorial from LickLibrary. The next step is to get familiar with the awesome guitar goods and gear that make metal into the musical beast that it is:

1. Practice Metal Riffs and Riffing Techniques:
In this guitar video tutorial, LickLibrary contributor Andy James demonstrates how to practice some metal riffing techniques.

2. Learn How to Use Palm Muting Techniques:

In this beginner-level tutorial from iVideosongs, instructor Danny Grady demonstrates how to perfect right-hand palm muting on simple chords and right hand patterns.

3. Nail Some Killer Rock and Metal Runs:

Learn how to play killer rock and metal runs on guitar with this video tutorial from LickLibrary.

4. Go Neo-Classical with Yngwie Malmsteen

Sure, it may have taken you a while to pronounce his name, but Yngwie is a bona-fide guitar god. Sit back, guitar in hand, and learn some neo-classical rock licks inspired by Yngwie Malmsteen’s unmistakable sound.

5. Master Melodic Rock Guitar Licks and Shred Away:

Somewhere back in 11th grade, one of my dearest friends decided to lock himself in his room armed with his two Gibsons, some canned goods, and a Steve Vai guitar boot camp DVD, only to emerge three days later, sleep-deprived but totally driven. Thanks to 5min, you can now get your own dose of Vai, and learn how to play melodic rock guitar licks.

1) Shay’s Pick: Something – The Beatles

Shay’s choice is the classic and premium , a song  of which Frank Sinatra once said: “I believe George Harrison’s hauntingly beautiful song is one of the greatest love songs ever written, and it never even says I Love You.”

2) Na’ama’s Pick: Sunday – Sonic Youth

Beautifully disturbing video aside (proving that child actors never grow up quite right and that Thurston Moore has the best hair in the music world), this has always been my favorite love song. In a genre full of clichés, this song stands out in its simplicity.  You know it’s true love when you find someone that makes you feel like Sunday never ends, or screams “aaaassssss yooooou wishhhhhhhh” while rolling down a mountain…but that one’s for a different V-Day list.

3) Roxana’s Pick: Where Do I Begin – Andy Williams

Many love songs make me wanna cry, dance, or sing like neighbors don’t exist. But only one makes me think that “love means never having to say you’re sorry”.

4) Ealeal’s Pick: Crazy – Patsy Cline

When he wasn’t busy hanging out with Kris Kristofferson, golfing or lighting up, Willie Nelson managed to write what would turn out to be possibly one of the best love ballads ever – Crazy. Catapulted to fame and golden country legacy by a mesmerizing recording by Patsy Cline released in 1961, Crazy is the literal love song equivalent of a kick to the groin – because honestly, who hasn’t been driven this far into a heart-wrenching stretch of temporary insanity, laced with pints of Ben & Jerry’s and self pity? *sniff*

5) Moshe’s Pick – My Heart Will Go On – Celine Dion

I know it’s cheesy, but on my second not-so-official date with a girl named Alma we rented Titanic and I wept like a baby.
Alma and I are celebrating our second anniversary, and I love her more than anything in this world. I can’t even imagine living without her. Alma , will you marry me?