Play YouTube Videos in Slow (or Fast) Motion

The YouTube video player lets you easily change* the playback speed of videos. You can watch a YouTube video in slow motion and see the frames in more detail or, if the video is boring, you can switch to fast motion mode and skim through the video by doubling the playback speed.

You can play YouTube videos in slow motion or speed them up

[*] If you do not see the option to adjust the playback speed in your YouTube player, you are probably using the default Flash based video player. Go to youtube.com/html5 and opt into the HTML5 YouTube player.

Watch YouTube in Slow-Motion or Fast-Motion

If the option to control the playback speed is still not available in YouTube for a particular video, or if you wish to have finer control over the speed, you can always use the good old VLC Player to watch any video on YouTube (or Vimeo) in either slow motion or fast motion.

Here’s how.

Launch the VLC player and choose File -> Open Stream. Now paste the full URL of any YouTube video in the URL box and click the Open button. The video will begin to stream on your desktop inside the VLC player.

Now go to the VLC Menu bar, choose Playback and here you’ll se an option to adjust the playback speed of that video.

The VLC Advantage over YouTube

Unlike the YouTube player where you can only change the speed by a factor or .25x, .5x, 1.5x or 2x, VLC Player offers finer control. You can drag the slide to choose any speed between .25x to 4x of the original speed.

Related tip: Watch YouTube Playlists with VLC

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This story, Play YouTube Videos in Slow (or Fast) Motion, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 11/02/2014 under YouTube, Internet

4 Ways To Make Smart Use Of Technology And Power Up Your Willpower

Digital willpower is an idea that crops up from time to time and it describes our current tech-saturated culture rather well. We all have enough motivation to want to do things but not enough motivation to actually do them. As a result, we turn to technology to bridge the gap of that motivational purgatory. In the past, we’ve covered inspirational YouTube videos, motivational TED Talks, and encouraging websites to give you that much-needed kick in the butt. How else can technology help you to sharpen your resolve? Where can you get some of this digital willpower for yourself? Keep reading...

Read the full article: 4 Ways To Make Smart Use Of Technology And Power Up Your Willpower

A Traveler’s Tales: How To Save Money On Your Next Trip With AirBnB

Travel is one of the most rewarding things you can do. It opens your eyes to the world around you, and allows you to experience new things. It’s something I find incredibly rewarding, and I’m always eager to cut costs, and where better to look than travel accommodation? Hotels are expensive. Ludicrously so. You don’t get a lot for your money with basic necessities like breakfast, coffee, and WiFi often being optional (and pricey) extras. So, what does the budget traveler do? Until recently, the answer to that question was a loud and resounding ‘no’, unless you fancied pitching a...

Read the full article: A Traveler’s Tales: How To Save Money On Your Next Trip With AirBnB

How to Password Protect a Google Form

When you create a form using Google Forms, the form is public by default meaning it can be filled out by anyone on the Internet as long as they know the web URL of that form. If you are a Google Apps user, you can put the form behind a login screen such that only members of your domain /organization can access and fill out that form but this feature is not available to other users who have regular Google accounts.

Now there can be a scenario where you may want to password-protect your Google Forms and restrict access to certain users who have been provided the password. This feature is obviously not available in Google Forms but we can use a simple workaround that will prevent users from entering data into that form if they do not know the password.

This Google Form is password protected

Create a Password Protected Form

Before we get into the implementation details, let’s go on a test drive. Open this Google Form and you’ll notice that it has a password field. You’ll have to enter the correct password* to see the actual form else it won’t let you move past the first screen.

[*] The form’s password is www.labnol.org (case sensitive, no spaces please)

What we have done here is split the actual form into two pages. The first page of the form has the password input field and only when the user enters the correct password are they taken to the second page that contains the actual form. Here’s a step by step guide:

1. Go to the Google Forms editor and add a text field. Call it “Password” and make it a required question as shown in the illustration below.


2. Expand the Data Validation section and choose Regular Expression -> Matches from the dropdown.


3. In the input field enter the password that you would like the user to enter and enclose this string between ^$. For instance, if you are setting the form password as HelloWorld, enter ^HelloWorld$ in the validation input field.


4. Next click the Inert menu and choose Page Break. This is the second page where you can add your regular form fields. Save the form.

Password Protect your public Google Forms

We are essentially using regular expressions to validate user input in the Google Form and proceed only if it matches a custom value.

The validation happens in the client’s browser and therefore this approach is more of a workaround and not a bullet-proof solution. Anyone with fair understanding of HTML can figure out the form’s password by either looking at the HTML source of the form or through Chrome Dev Tools.

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This story, How to Password Protect a Google Form, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 11/02/2014 under Google Forms, Internet

Nokia Android, XP Help, Gates AMA, Netflix Cards [Tech News Digest]

Today in Tech News Digest, Nokia looks set to reveal an Android handset, Microsoft really wants Windows XP to die, Bill Gates reveals all in a Reddit AMA, Mark Zuckerberg is a surprisingly generous philanthropist, Justin.tv becomes Twitch Interactive, Bing has the Oscars covered, and Netflix is good at promotions. Nokia Goes Android All these ppl saying ‘Nokia should make an Android phone, it’ll be amazing’… You’re gonna rush out and buy it… Right?? — Matthew Ashworth (@Macca_Chief) February 10, 2014 There have been rumors for a long time that Nokia is developing a handset based on the Android operating...

Read the full article: Nokia Android, XP Help, Gates AMA, Netflix Cards [Tech News Digest]