04 June 2016

How to Embed a Muted YouTube Video Player in your Website


It is easy to embed YouTube videos in your website. You grab the default IFRAME embed code, paste it anywhere inside your web page and you’re done. YouTube offers basic customization – you can modify the player dimensions or hide the YouTube branding – but if you would like to exercise more control over the  behavior of the embedded player, YouTube Player API is the way to go.

This tutorial explains how you can embed a YouTube video that will automatically play when the web page is loaded but with muted audio.

For instance, a products website may use short screencasts to highlight features and these videos will autoplay when the page is loaded. The volume is however set to 0 and the user can manually click to un-mute the video. Similarly, if you are using YouTube video backgrounds, it makes more sense to embed muted videos that run in a loop.

Mute the Embedded YouTube Player

See the demo page to get an idea of what we are trying to do here. The page loads, the video plays but with the audio slide is all the way down.

This is easy. Go the YouTube video page and note down the ID of the video from the URL. For instance, if the YouTube video link is http://youtube.com/watch?v=xyz-123, the video id is xyz-123. Once you have the ID, all you have to do is replace YOUR_VIDEO_ID in the following code with that string.

<div id="muteYouTubeVideoPlayer"></div>

<script async src="https://www.youtube.com/iframe_api"></script>
<script>
 function onYouTubeIframeAPIReady() {
  var player;
  player = new YT.Player('muteYouTubeVideoPlayer', {
    videoId: 'YOUR_VIDEO_ID', // YouTube Video ID
    width: 560,               // Player width (in px)
    height: 316,              // Player height (in px)
    playerVars: {
      autoplay: 1,        // Auto-play the video on load
      controls: 1,        // Show pause/play buttons in player
      showinfo: 0,        // Hide the video title
      modestbranding: 1,  // Hide the Youtube Logo
      loop: 1,            // Run the video in a loop
      fs: 0,              // Hide the full screen button
      cc_load_policty: 0, // Hide closed captions
      iv_load_policy: 3,  // Hide the Video Annotations
      autohide: 0         // Hide video controls when playing
    },
    events: {
      onReady: function(e) {
        e.target.mute();
      }
    }
  });
 }

 // Written by @labnol 
</script>

Next place the edited code in your web page and the embedded video would automatically play but muted.

You can further customize the player by modifying the various player variables as commented in the code. For instance, if you set loop as 1, the video will play in a loop. Set fs to 1 to show the fullscreen button inside the video player. Internally, the player is embedded using the YouTube IFRAME API. When the page is loaded, the onReady event runs that mutes the video.

youtube-mute-video-embed.png

The embedded YouTube video will autoplay, but muted.


The story, How to Embed a Muted YouTube Video Player in your Website, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 04/06/2016 under Embed, YouTube, Internet.

03 June 2016

The 10 Important URLs That Every Google User Should Know


What does Google know about the places you’ve visited recently? What are your interests as determined by Google? Where does Google keep a list of every word that you’ve ever typed in the search box? Where can you get a list of Google ads that were of interest to you?

Important Google URLs

The 10 Important Google Links

Google stores everything privately and here are the 10 important links (URLs) that will unlock everything Google knows about you. They are hidden somewhere deep inside your Google Account dashboard and they may reveal interesting details about you that are otherwise only known to Google. Let’s dive in.

1. Google stores a list of usernames and passwords that you have typed in Google Chrome or Android for logging into various websites. They even have a website too where you can view all these passwords in plain text.

passwords.google.com

2. Google creates a profile of yourself based on the sites you visit, guessing your age, gender and interests and then use this data to serve you more relevant ads. Use this URL to know how Google sees you on the web.

http://ift.tt/18DDZYU

3. You can easily export all your data out of the Google ecosystem. You can download your Google Photos, contacts, Gmail messages and even your YouTube videos. Head over the the Takeout page to grab the download links.

http://ift.tt/nvNKto

4. If you ever find your content appearing on another website, you can raise a DMCA complaint with Google against that site to get the content removed. Google has a simple wizard to help you claim content and the tool can also be used to remove websites from Google search results that are scraping your content.

http://ift.tt/1PkWie3

5. Your Android phone or the Google Maps app on your iPhone is silently reporting your location and velocity (are you moving and if yes, how fast are you moving) back to Google servers. You can find the entire location history on the Google Maps website and you also have the option to export this data as KML files that can be viewed inside Google Earth or even Google Drive.

http://ift.tt/1SCbUZl

6. Create a new Google Account using your existing email address. The regular sign-up process uses your @gmail.com address as your Google account username but with this special URL, you can use any other email address as your username.

http://ift.tt/1gXTlNq

7. Google and YouTube record every search term that you’ve ever typed or spoken into their search boxes. They keep a log of every Google ad that you have clicked on various websites, every YouTube video you’ve watched and, if you are a Google Now user, you can also see a log of all your audio search queries. OK Google.

history.google.com (Google searches)
http://ift.tt/1wzUUvL (Voice searches)
http://youtube.com/feed/history
(YouTube searches and watched videos)

8. You need to login to your Gmail account at least once every 9 months else Google may terminate your account according to their program policies. This can be an issue if you have multiple Gmail accounts so as a workaround, you can setup your main Gmail account as the trusted contact for your secondary accounts. Thus Google will keep sending you reminders every few months to login to your other accounts.

http://ift.tt/1IQNzfI

9. Worried that someone else is using your Google account or it could be hacked? Open the activity report to see a log of every device that has recently connected into your Google account. You’ll also get to know the I.P. Addresses and the approximate geographic location. Unfortunately, you can’t remotely log out of a Google session.

http://ift.tt/1JrCT60

10. Can’t locate your mobile phone? You can use the Google Device Manager to find your phone provided it is switched on and connected to the Internet. You can ring the device, see the location or even erase the phone content remotely. You can even find the IMEI Number of the lost phone from your Google Account.

http://ift.tt/16Xavbs

Also see: Secret URLs for Google Drive & Google Docs


The story, The 10 Important URLs That Every Google User Should Know, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 03/06/2016 under Google, Internet.

01 June 2016

Find Who has Access to your Google Drive Files and Folders


The files and folders in your Google Drive are private by default until you decide to share them. You can share your documents with specific people or you can make them public and anyone on the Internet can view the shared files. Google Apps users have the option to share files and folders within the organization while restricting access to anyone outside the domain.

You can not only control who has access to your Google Drive files but can also assign the level of access they have on the shared files. You can set the access permissions to either view (read only) or edit (read & write). For instance, if you are to send a large file, you can upload the file to Google Drive and share it in view-mode with the recipient.

Who Can View or Edit your Drive Files?

You may have a number of documents, spreadsheets and other files in your Google Drive that are accessible to other users. These users could be your contacts, someone within your Google Apps domain or some of the shared files could be public meaning they are available to anyone on the web who have the link (URL) to the file.

Would you like to know which files and folders in your Google Drive are shared with other users and what kind of access permissions they have on your files? Google Drive, unfortunately, doesn’t offer an easy option for you to figure out who you are sharing the files with either inside or outside your organization.

Meet Permissions Auditor for Google Drive, a new Google add-on that scans your entire Drive and then generates a comprehensive report revealing who has access to your shared files and what kind of permission they have on the files. If you have been collaborating with people for some time, the Drive Auditor is probably is the easiest way to find out what you’ve shared in Google Drive and sanitize it.

Here’s a sample audit report.

Google Drive - File Privacy Report

Google Drive – File Permissions Report

Getting started is easy. First, install the Google Drive Auditor add-on and authorize it. Internally, this is a Google Script that runs inside your Google Account, reads the files found in Google Drive and writes their access details in the spreadsheet. Not a single byte of data every leaves your Google Account.

Watch the video tutorial (download) for a more detailed guide.

After the Drive Audit add-on is installed, go to the Add-ons menu inside the Google Spreadsheet, choose Drive Permissions Auditor and select Start Audit. It will open a sidebar where you need to specify a query and all matching files that match the query will be analyzed by the add-on.

Some sample Google Drive Search queries include:

  • “me” in owners and trashed = false (all files owned by except those in trash)
  • modifiedTime > ‘2016-01-01T12:00:00’ (file modified since Jan 2016 UTC)
  • mimeType = ‘application/vnd.google-apps.spreadsheet’ (scan the access permissions of only Google Spreadsheets in my Google Drive)

Once the audit is complete, the report will reveal detailed information of every file including:

  • When was a file created and last modified
  • What is the file size and MIME type (file extension)
  • Who is the owner of the file
  • Who has edit, view and comment permissions on the file
  • Where is the file located in Google Drive

You can click the File Name in the spreadsheet to directly open the corresponding file in Google Drive. Also, you can use the find function or even filters in Google Spreadsheets to display specific files that match a certain criteria. For instance, if you wish to know about all files that are public, you can apply a filter on the Access column in the spreadsheet.

The Drive Permissions Auditor add-on works for both Gmail and Google Apps accounts. If you are a domain administrator, you can install the Drive Audit add-on for all users in your domain through the Google Apps Marketplace.

The add-on is free and lets you audit up to 200 files in your Google Drive. If you have more files, please upgrade to the premium edition and analyze every single file and folder in your Google Drive.

Bonus tip: Did you know that you can set an auto-expiry date for your shared links in Google Drive. The shared link will automatically stop working after a certain date or time set by you.


The story, Find Who has Access to your Google Drive Files and Folders, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 01/06/2016 under Google Apps, Google Drive, Privacy, Internet.