Youtube, time-wastering site of the decade (Facebook aside), is stuffed to the gills with vital, important and amazing video clips, not to mention a billion huh huh videos taken by 13-year-olds on their dodgy phone camera.

However, for those lost, lonely times where you need to view say Spiderpig (*) whilst away from the cyberhighway it is not entirely intuitive as to how to download it for offline use in a non-flash format there is a chance your computer, PDA or mobile might be able to repetitively play until your colleagues kill you.

Solution o'clock! Vixy.net is a website that does exactly this. Give it the address of a 'tube file (or indeed any .flv file), select your output format and a downloadable file is ready for you in seconds.

You can pick a conversion to AVI, MOV, MP4, 3GP and, if you just want the audio track, MP3 (ringtones anyone?). This covers the most common devices; Windows, Mac, iPods, PSP and mobile phones. Very simple.

Bonus notes: Similar services exist (kudos to Lifehacker commenters)- vconvert.net which does .wmv files instead of .avi (but for some reason the Poor-laptop won't play them at present) and Zamzar which does all Vixy.net does and much much more regarding fileconversion between innumerable file-types. It is a bit less fast and user-friendly though, requiring you to enter your email address and receive a link in order to get your files.

Previously-mentioned Media Convert could also be handy, but doesn't appear to have a direct youtube conversion facility.

(*) As promised: