YouTube Video Editor is still available via a URL.

Recently I uploaded video to YouTube but after decided I wanted to trim the beginning of the video. Uploading the video took a while and I knew I could trim the video and then upload the video again, but I wondered if I could use YouTube's video editor instead. 

I'd not used YouTube's video editor before so I went looking for the video edit option and there wasn't one. A bit of searching on the internet revealed the YouTube video editor appears to have been removed in 2017. That's a pity I thought. Now don't ask me why, but I wondered if the video editor still existed and worked, but just not shown in the menus.

As it turned out the YouTube video editor still lives. You just have to access the video editor using a URL. The format of the URL is as followings.

https://studio.youtube.com/video/your video ID/editor

You can find "your video ID" in the video details or as part of the shareable link. In my case the video ID was gsTZzvCP2NA and the resulting URL was the following. The video is a real time drive from Kingsbury to Templestowe. I felt the initial section through the back streets wasn't needed.

https://studio.youtube.com/video/gsTZzvCP2NA/editor

The final video is located at https://youtu.be/gsTZzvCP2NA.

Once I had learnt what I need to use the editor through trial and error (each editor has their quirks), I trimmed the video and saved. I don't know how long it took for the trimmed video to be processed, but it was some time. Once the video was processed viewers of the video would now see the trimmed version of the video.

Knowing the URL for the video editor is still available certainly saved some data by not having to upload the video again.

Kelvin Eldridge

Real-time drive videos

Backspace in Microsoft Outlook appeared to delete files from inbox.

Ever had something that happened in your computer that freaked you out? We've all been there. Today was one of those moments.

I was looking for a contacts email address so I did a search of their name for messages in the inbox. I must have clicked on one of the messages. Thinking I was still in the search field I pressed the backspace key a number of times to change the search criteria. You know, you tap a key fast because who backspaces slowly. But just as I was hitting the backspace I noticed a number of message in my inbox disappeared. What the heck just happened I thought. How will I ever find those emails.

I checked the trash folder but there was nothing there that looked like something I'd keep in the inbox., just trash. Now I couldn't help feel who in the world would make the backspace key delete mail items. REALLY!!!!

As it turns out it wasn't as bad as I thought, actually it could be considered a feature. The backspace key sends the mail items to the Archive folder. So there all the mail items were sitting in the Archive folder.

I don't use the Archive folder as I store messages I want to keep in folders I've created. However using the backspace key on mail items I'm not 100% sure I want to delete, may be a good way to send the files to Archive as a temporary location for me to later delete. In any case I had accidentally stimbled on a feature of Microsoft Outlook that I never knew existed. I'm sure others will probably do the same and freak out when they think they've deleted their mail items. Now at least you'll know to check the Archive folder.

Kelvin Eldridge

www.OnlineConnections.com.au

VentraIP refer a friend offer.

When I sign on to VentraIP I keep seeing the offer to refer and friend and earn a $50 MasterCard gift card. My link is the following.

https://getonline.vip/6gL1IjAX

For me to get the $50 gift card someone has to use the link and purchase a domain name and hosting. But the question is, what's in it for the person I refer. There's no additional advantage for them. Many referral systems offer both the referrer and the referee a benefit, but VentraIP doesn't.

To me whether a person uses the link or not is up to them. I have no problem with referring people to VentraIP as I have many domains with them and their pricing is reasonable. I did have a hosting service with them and found it quite good, however in the end I merged all my sites to my main hosting company. There really wans't any any advantage of having a second hosting service. The second hosting service cost money whereas merging them back to my main hosting service meant I'd save that money.

One thing I did like about VentraIP is since they've based in Australia and hosting was in Australia, performance was better in Australia. For me I've found for me own reasons hosting in America is better for me. The one shortcoming I did find was when using PHP includes I couldn't use two levels of redirection but my current hosting company did allow that feature. Two levels of redirection helps me maintain my code.  That might not be required for many people but it is for me. Other than that I found VentraIP's hosting service to be reasonable value and a good service. Their support was also good.

Why I'm mentioning the refer offer is this could enable someone who wants to set up a domain and hosting for themselves, to help offset the cost of their own services by referring others. As long as people refer and are transparent with what's in it for them and do it for the right reasons (not just in the own interest) then I'm OK with referring. If a service works for you and you're happy with it, why not tell others. If there's something in it for you and you let the other person know, you've been transparent and then the other person has all the information they need to make a better decision.

Kelvin Eldridge

www.OnlineConnections.com.au

Dear Vodafone customer: Congratulations. You are one of 100 users we have selected......

A couple of times recently an unusual page has popped up in my browser (using Microsoft Edge) with the following message.

Dear Vodafone customer:

Congratulations. You are one of 100 users we have selected as a part of our reward program. You can win the Samsung S10, iPhone XS or iPad Pro.

I thought it was interesting because I do use Vodafone.

Of course this is a scam. You should ignore these.

The fact that I am a Vodafone user is easy to determine via my IP address.

The first time I got one I didn't quite see where it came from. The second time I clicked on the back button which took me back to the Oxford Dictionary's site www.lexico.com. I've used this site many, many times, so there's nothing suspect about the site. The problem is the site uses Google's AdSense advertising and I'd be fairly sure a malicious ad has crept through. The means potentially any site that uses advertising (and that's probably hundreds of millions) could be carrying nasties.

If something pops up unexpectedly when using your browser don't trust it. Close the tab and move on.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au

IP address 207.241.232.233 scanning website.

I noticed the IP address 207.241.232.233 was scanning my site and generating a considerable number of hits. I decided to check if I could out out more about who was behind the IP address.

It turns out this robot was the scanner for the Internet Archive. Over the years I found the Internet Archive to be quite useful, in particular the waybackmachine. Whilst the hits I saw were links to external sites and fairly pointless, I'm happy to accept the hits as I'm sure the Internet Archive helps many, many people.

Kelvin Eldridge

South Australia speed camera locations and red light camera locations now live.

Some time ago I developed an interest in red light cameras and speed cameras. This started because the yellow light timing was set incorrectly on a number of red light speed cameras around Melbourne. I took a video of the timing when it was wrong and the timing after the lights were fixed. These videos are available on my YouTube channel.

One thing led to another and I combined code from a site I'd developed, with red light speed camera location and fine information and www.SpeedCameraLocations.com.au was born. The site has been running for a number of years and I'm pleased when I see people using the site to help them understand their fine with a range of information including satellite view, street view and often a dashcam video.

I'd recently extended the site to cover New South Wales and now I've extended the site to cover South Australia and Adelaide. For the South Australia red light locations and speed camera locations I still need to collate the number and value of fines, but I felt even without this information, the location information can be very useful and thus the South Australian section of www.SpeedCameraLocations.com.au/sa/ is now live.

I hope others find this information useful.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.SpeedCameraLocations.com.au/sa/

IP address 136.243.212.93 scanning website.

I noticed in my logs today a lot of activity from the IP address 136.243.212.93. A check of the internet just gave me reports of spam but I couldn't help feel I should dig a little deeper.

First I checked the IP address 136.243.212.93. This IP address is based in Germany.

Next I checked my website logs to find the User Agent String. A bot scanner will let you know more about itself by providing information in the User Agent String. The User Agent String is also used in browser software to let a site know the browser the person is using. If the User Agent String is faked or disguised it may or may not be malicious. A reason you may disguise the user agent string is if you write a bot to collect information but the site only allows browsers. For example you may wish to automate a process that accesses web pages but the site stops you unless you provide a browser User Agent String. Depending on your point of view you're still doing something the site doesn't want you to do so it could be considered inappropriate.

In this case my logs for the IP address showed the following User Agent String.

serpstatbot/1.0 (advanced backlink tracking bot; curl/7.58.0; http://serpstatbot.com/; abuse@serpstatbot.com)

Whilst I may not be entirely pleased my site's being scanned, at least this bot lets me know everything I need to know, including where I can find out more information about the bot and it's purpose.

At this point I can make a decision as to do nothing, block the bot using an entry in the robots.txt file, or block the IP address. In this case I decided that I could reduce unproductive traffic by blocking the IP address. I could have just as easily done nothing and let the bot scan my site/s. A considerable percentage of web traffic really is just automated bots and this is just another one.

It should also be kept in mind that companies often use scanners to get their information into site logs. Then when people check out where the traffic is coming from they've advertised their company to another person as relatively low cost. The one's I'm concerned about are the IP addresses that if you want to directly end up being malicious and could damage your computer. It's a good idea not to visit unknown IP addresses without using a tool to check the address out first.

Kelvin Eldridge
IT support.
www.OnlineConnections.com.au