So, as a peace offering, I’m giving away some of my secret stash of embedded YouTube video URL hacks. These are the codes that I use when I’m styling out someone’s website that has Youtube content on it.

Start A video automatically on page load

Want your visitors to see your video right away? You can easily get your video to start automatically when the page loads up by simply adding this code to your  embed code:

&autoplay=1

Turn Off Video Title Display

If you want to turn that annoying title box off on embedded videos,  simply use  this code:

&showinfo=0

Turn Search Off

If you want to turn off the search feature on embedded videos, just use this quick little code.

&showsearch=0

Turning Looping On or Off

How about getting that video to play again and again? For whatever reason you may have for looping a video (Say, for some music), you can easily accomplish this with this little bit of code:

&loop=1 or   (Turns Looping On)

&loop=0  (Turns Looping Off)

Menu Color

Everyone knows YouTube comes with a blah colored menu bar by default. But, with a little tinkering you can make that menu bar match the colors of your site. Don’t know how to do HTML colors? Well W3C Schools.com has a quick little explanation of what they are and some examples that you can take a look at. Also on the next page of their site, they also have a bunch more.  So, go find your colors, and enter it into your embed code! Also, this is pretty important: Color 1 is the primary border color and Color 2 is the video control background color.

&color1=FFFFF  (Make sure you replace the FFFFFF with your own HTML color code)

&color2=FFFFFF

Important note: There is no # (hash) before the Hex value of the colors as you would use in regular HTML or CSS coding for this.

Border Color

Want a pretty border surrounding your video? Thats easy enough! Just use this little code here:

&border=1

By the way, how do you set the color of the border? Well, they’re set by the color1 and color2 settings like the one above. The idea is that the border will match your menu colors.

Remove Related Videos

This code is my #1 most used bit of code that I hack YouTube URLS with more than any other. And the reason is pretty simple. When you watch a YouTube video to the end, you usually see a bunch of related videos that YouTube seems to think you want to see.  Some may be from the same person who’s video you just watched, while others may be somewhat related by topic of the title of the video.  If you’re embedding your own videos from YouTube onto your site, theres a good chance you really dont want those related videos showing. So turn em off like this!

&rel=0

Get To The Good Part

Lets say you have a video of you and a few other people at a speaking conference. And you don’t want to subject your viewers to the 45 minutes of boring people before you on stage? Well, just skip them!  Get to the good stuff! Add this bit of code to your URL and get there right away.

&#t=45m37s (Make sure you replace the time before the m and s with your own times!)

Enable HD video playback

If you upload a video in HD, you can actually force YouTube to play your videos in all its HD glory! Add this code to your URL and let people get a nice HD quality video.

&=hd=1

Disable keyboard controls

Did you know that YouTube allows you to control videos with your keyboard? I personally rarely use the controls, but if theres any reason you want to turn off the keyboard controls completely, you can easily do that with this little bit of code at the end of the address.

&disablekb=1

Here is the embed code for the video below.  Notice that I don’t have the autoplay function on, because I figured with the video on the bottom of the page, it would be pretty creepy hearing the music and what not and not have a clue what was going on.

Before I go any further, you may notice that I use “&” as opposed to “&” above. They are interchangeable in your YouTube URL.  Ive included both in the example to show that.

So a quick breakdown:

http://www.youtube.com/v/nj3hLSP1vFo?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0&color1=F761380&color2=FFFFFF&showsearch=0&rel=0&showinfo=0&border=1

http://www.youtube.com/v/nj3hLSP1vFo This is the actual YouTube URL (its always http://www.youtube.com/v/VIDEO_ID)

&rel=0
&color1=F76138
&color2=FFFFFF
&showsearch=0
&rel=0
&showinfo=0
&border=1

<object width=”480″ height=”385″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/nj3hLSP1vFo?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0&amp;color1=F76138&amp;color2=FFFFFF&showsearch=0&rel=0&showinfo=0&border=1“></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/nj3hLSP1vFo?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US&amp;rel=0&amp;color1=F76138&amp;color2=FFFFFF&showsearch=0&rel=0&showinfo=0&border=1” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”480″ height=”385″></embed></object>

And there you have it! Questions, comments, hate mail. Leave em in the box below!

Now dont get me wrong, there are some good things to come from CAPTCHA. Take for instance the ReCAPTCHA project. We have all seen these. There are two words in the CAPTCHA box. One is a word the computer program knows and uses that to verify your entry. The other one, it doesn’t know. Its a scan from a book or a magazine and its using you to identify what that word is as its digitizing this media. It then takes your entry and compiles it with everyone else’s entries as it puts the book back together as a digital document.  (You can use your imagination for the shenanigans that can happen from this.)

However, CAPTCHA cant save your website from spammers!

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Im F’n nuts at this point. CAPTCHA is used for the very purpose of blocking spam on websites. But hear me out.

Spammers have gotten really smart. They are now using the one thing that is more popular on the internet than videos of cute kittens to break the CAPTCHA code. And that thing is: PORN.  *GASP!* You already knew that.

Its really simple. When a spammer gets a CAPTCHA image, it simply takes the image and passes it to a partner porn site. That partner site then tells the person waiting for their goodies to show up that they need to  ”solve this CAPTCHA to prove you’re a real person and we will show you the video” or whatever. Of course, the person, who is clueless about what is really going on, goes “yeah sure, show me the money!!” and types in whatever it is they see. This answer is then passed back to the original spammer site, which then enters it into your CAPTCHA field and PRESTO! you’ve been spammed!

So, the real question becomes: What can we do to block spammers?
And the real answer is:  Not very much. Here are a few suggestions:

• Use a comment moderation plugin such as Disqus which comes with some spam protection.
• Install Akismet to also help battle spam on your site’s comments.
• Moderate the amount of links in a comment by changing the amount of links in a post.
• Set up a spam Words filter in WordPress and add common spam words to it.

To moderate the amount of links in your comments:

Go to Setting >> Discussion and in the section which says “Hold a comment in the queue if it contains ___  Links.”  Default is 2, you can change it to 1.  Do not set this to zero or leave the field blank. It will send every comment to moderation. This is bad!

To Add Spam Word Filters:

Go to Settings >>Discussion >>  Comment Moderation and copy and paste in the words that you see  on the WordPress Spam Word List. Keep in mind that when you add words, they need to be on a single line with a single line break after them, and no spaces in between the words. When a comment contains any of the spam list words, (either in the comment content, user name, URI (the address link), user e-mail, or IP address) WordPress will hold it in the moderation queue. Do not include a blank line. Every single comment will be moderated if you do. Again, this is bad.

You could do things like blocking a set of internet IP addresses, but you run the risk of blocking out legitimate website viewers. And thats bad, you got good stuff to share.

Besides, some of the computers posting spam to your website, may not even realize they are doing this.  Viruses, Trojans and other nasty programs can turn an unsuspecting computer into whats known as a botnet. Basically, your computer becomes part of a whole network of computers that do things like send spam emails, post spam or whatever else the operator wants your computer to do. (And yes, I realize there are “good” botnets, like folding@home which uses people’s computers to help do medical research.)

So where does this leave us? My best suggestion is the best offense is a good defense. Theres a lot of easy things that you can do to keep your site relatively spam free. Keep your anti spam plugins up to date, keep an eye out for those Viagra comments, and don’t just count on CAPTCHA from saving your site. See? That wasn’t so hard, now was it?

Questions? Suggestions? Overseas Viagra buying websites? Leave em in the comments.

First off, there is some confusion between the terms “free” and “Royalty Free”. So, to clear things up, “Royalty Free” photos are photos that you don’t need to pay the photographer a royalty (or licensing fee) each time you use the image in a project.

So without further ado, the list…

Stock.XCHNG

Stock.XCHNG is a great website for free Royalty Free photos. With over 30,000 contributing photographers, there is a varied selection of photos to choose from. One thing to keep in mind is that not all photos on Stock.XCHANG is Royalty Free. Make sure you check the licensing on each submission before using it.  Many times, all it requires to get usage rights is writing the artist and asking permission to use their photo.  Not a hard thing, and if you ask really nicely, and send them a link to your work, theres a good chance you could build a relationship with a talented artist.

MorgueFile

MorgueFile is a public archive of photos that are released into the public domain. There are a ton of great photos available here, contributed by talented photographers. All Royalty Free for you to use.

EveryStockPhoto

EveryStockPhoto is one of my favorite sites to use. It allows you to search a number of different photo archives such as MorgueFile, NASA, Flickr, Wikimedia Commons and four others. One of the nice features is a light box which lets you categorize and save your photo searches into sets for later access.  Definitely one of my most used sites for photos.

OpenPhoto

Openphoto is a nice, simple site that allows easy and quick searching of photos using category tags. One of the features that I like about OpenPhoto is the “Similar Photos” function that displays other photos that are similar to the one you are currently looking at.

FreeRange

And finally FreeRange, which has a clean and helpful site layout that I like. I love the Newest Photos feature at the top of the main page which shows the 100 newest photos. In addition, theres the Most Popular Photos where you can see what the most popular photos currently are on the site. Besides being great for giving me inspiration off of a random photo for art sake, I also love to see what the current popular photos are, giving me an idea as to what the web is doing, image wise.

But, I have a secret weapon. Actually I have a bunch of them. And theyre powered by some awesome people I call my friends.

The other night I sent a couple of tweets over to my friend Nicky aka @Tumbledesign that said:

dude! I have the major butterflies/scared shitless/holy crap Im gonna fail hardcore paralysis. I just gotta code my shopping card and go.

but Im so scared shitless right now to do it. I know.. I got issues. I gotta burn the ships like Sarah says.

And I get the most awesome response I think I’ve ever gotten on Twitter.

@TumbleDesign: Scared is good, it means you’re doing something you give a damn about!

And that has probably been one of the most reassuring things Ive read in the last week that has helped me get things together. Cause honestly, there was a moment when I thought “I must be out of my freakin’ mind. Its not going to be perfect. People are going to think I’m insane. Blah blah blah blah.”

This brings me to secret weapon #2!

Burning my ships. This is written by the absolutely amazing Ms. Sarah Robinson on her blog Escaping-mediocrity.com

I read this back in December 2009, and for some reason, it just stuck with me in the back of my head. Probably because I know how much that I want this to work out.

I’m still really nervous about this whole thing. But I do know a couple of things:

There is no way I am going to fail because I care too much about this, and about the people who I build websites for.

And, so far, Ive launched the site, and no one has been standing in my yard with pitch forks and torches. So I guess I’m going to be alright.

Disclosure:  Sarah is also client of mine. I work on her websites. This is in addition to her kicking me in the head when I need it.

Photo by Felix Nine

So, it was a pretty great relief that I read this article this morning on Entrepreneur.com. Author Ivan Misner pretty much gets it spot on about how to be more memorable at these events, how to be less like a douche bag sales schlep and more of someone I’d want to do business with in the future. Heres one of the things he says:

When meeting someone for the first time, focus on the potential relationship you might form. As hard as it may be to suppress your business reflexes, at this stage you cannot make it your goal to sell your services or promote your company. You’re there to get to know a new person. A friend of mine told me something his dad always said: “You don’t have to sell to friends.” That’s especially good advice when interacting with new contacts.

I’d probably want to add to this that not only do you not need to sell to your friends, but your friends will tend to seek you out if they have a need for your services. I personally prefer to patronize businesses that I know and have a rapport with. I would rather see my money go to someone that I know, that knows who I am, and makes me feel good knowing that my money is in good hands.

What are your tips for getting more out of networking events? Share them below!

Via 3 Ways to Get More Business at Networking Events [Entrepreneur.com]

Photo by Shashi Bellamkonda [blog.networksolutions.com]

In 1976 a man guided a voyaging canoe 2,300 miles from Hawaii to Tahiti using no modern navigation equipment. It was the first voyage in over 600 years to be navigated without instruments on an ancestral Polynesian sea route. The successful navigation sparked pride in the Hawaiian and Polynesian culture and started a renaissance of voyaging, canoe building, and non-instrument navigation that has continued to grow, spreading across Polynesia going even into the far reaches of Aotearoa (New Zealand) and Rapanui (Easter Island).

On Sunday, July 11th, the world lost an amazing individual.  His name was Mau Piailug. He came from a small island in the Pacific called Satawal in the state of Yap. This island in Micronesia has a population of about 600 people.  He was a master navigator, a beacon of pride for Pacific Islanders around the world, and a visionary beyond his years.

What makes Mau incredible is not that he came from a small island, but that he was a master and teacher of the original Cloud computing.  This isnt what youre thinking. Theres no server farm involved. Theres no FTPs, databases or any kind of technology at all. Not even a compass. Seriously. He did it by looking at clouds in the sky. He knew that if certain clouds were going one way and certain other clouds were going another way, then the weather would be a certain way.  He knew the changing of tides by feel, the locations of stars- almost by magic (Nainoa Thompson tells the story of how Mau was able to find the Southern Cross behind him without looking) and was a wealth of knowledge in all things regarding ocean navigation.

What makes him even more incredible is this:  He used a type of  ”Cloud Storage” for his data.  No, really. You’ll see what I mean:

Mau had something that was irreplaceable. Something with so much value, that there is no money in the world for it. This something is 3,000 years worth of tradition . He shared his information with people by teaching, first Nainoa Thompson of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, about ancient Polynesian navigation techniques.  From there Nainoa and Mau taught dozens of other navigators.  This allowed him to replicate his data, as best he could, creating “backups” of his knowledge. He said at the time, that he did it because the people of his island were becoming Westernized. That the children didn’t want to learn the old ways. And that he hoped that one day his people would come to those he taught and learn from them.

Imagine that, organic data storage and retrieval.

Thats truly amazing, considering he could barely speak english, had to go through cultural barriers, plus everything else, just to pass his information on to future generations.  And on top of that, it wasnt just a matter of clicking a few buttons and boom! done. It took him years and years and years to do this. But he ensured the longevity of his data, for many years.

Truly an amazing visionary.

You can find out more information about “Papa” Mau Piailug at the Polynesian Voyaging Society’s website. The article by Nainoa Thompson is truly amazing.

http://pvs.kcc.hawaii.edu/2007voyage/2007micronesiamau.html

So, on with the show.

A few days ago, I came across a site called WebEcoist.com that featured a Forest in a Box.  I know what youre thinking:  How did they fit the whole forest in there? Is it a pile of wood in a shipping container? Is this something we can market to the Beaver community? How would they pay for it? And what does it look like?

I can easily answer the last question with a few photos (courtesy of Webecoist.com)

Now you may notice that the trees all look eerily similar. They use magical smoke and mirrors (ok, the article says just regular mirrors) placed in a special way to reflect the one tree all over the place. And to prove that I’m really not making this up, heres what it looks like from the outside.

So take a look at the article here for more information about how this was done. And who to beg to get one of these installed outside your office building. Imagine getting away to the forest on your lunch break!

And as always, leave some feedback in the comments.

Now, Im also a web surfing addict. I can sit in front my computer all day long and look at cool new websites. I know this cause I have actually done it many, many, many times.

So, a few days ago, I came across this website called paper.li.  And what it does is.. well, let me let them tell you what it does:

paper.li organizes links shared on Twitter into an easy to read newspaper-style format. Newspapers can be created for any Twitter user, list or #tag.

When I saw that, I figured, “eh, another Twitter mash up page site. Ok, I’ll give it a try.” And lo and behold, it actually took my Twitter feed and made something pretty damn cool.  Ok, it was seriously cool. Like Snowmen in December cool.

I’m personally impressed with how it recognizes some links are sports related and puts them in a sports section, business stuff in the business section, photos in a photo area, etc.

As you can see in the above screen capture, It even takes video links, makes a cool little media section and lets you play your videos right on the paper.li page. Now, if my local paper actually did something like this, they would be a serious contender for coolness (and actually have some real news for once)

Heres a screen capture showing the Arts & Entertainment section (which it seems my feed gets a lot of links about) And a really cool little Photo area. I love this cause it makes looking at all the photos that end up in my stream really easy to see.

So, give it a whirl, try it out, and tell me what you think,  or, if you know of any similar websites that do , leave some link love in the comments below!