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Sky Q tips and tricks: how to get the most from your set-top box
Researched and written by Nicholas Fearn There's no denying that the way we consume media has changed dramatically over the past few years. With the rise of streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime, entertainment is increasingly on-demand, allowing you to access your favourite movies and TV shows whenever you want. As a result, it's easy to view traditional broadcasters as outdated. However, Sky changed that mindset with the Q set-top box. It lets you record more of your favourite shows, stream offline content via an app, access a library full of on-demand media and watch shows on several devices. Vying to be the ultimate home entertainment device, Q gives you an easy, flexible way to enjoy a wide variety of TV shows, movies, music and sports. However, it's packed full with features that can be pretty overwhelming if you're a just getting started. In this guide, we provide you with a host of great tips and tricks to help you get the most out of the device. Using the Touch remote To make flicking through shows easier and quicker, Sky has kitted out Q with its very own touch remote. Like the new Apple TV, it sports a touchpad for navigating the box's menus. The remote acts in a similar way to a games console D-pad: you can swipe left, right, up and down to go through channels and options. But there's also a quick-scroll feature to help you find things faster and with ease. Just swipe and hold, and it'll begin to scroll for you. To select an item with the remote, you simply press the touchpad, and there's also a dismiss option (which looks a bit like an arrow) so you can cancel shows at any time.Turning on the Q is a case of pressing the power button quickly, although you can program it to control your actual TV's power too. For that, simply long press the same button. Voice search Going through countless menus and channels to find the TV show or movie you're looking for can be extremely frustrating, but Q has you covered with its voice search feature. Now, you can tell Q what you want to watch, and it should be able to do the rest. To access this feature, press the search button located on the side of the remote. While holding it down, say what show you want to access, and it'll begin the search. You can look for almost any TV show or movie, and generally speaking, the feature just works. Saving disk space If you're constantly downloading and recording shows on the box, it's easy for it to become clogged up and slow down. By default, shows download in HD, and that can take up memory. To maximise Q's disk space, you can tweak your settings to make content download in SD quality. While the quality won't be as good, you'll save lots of memory and be able to store even more shows. To do that, you need to go into the 'settings' menu, click on 'preferences' and switch the download format to SD. Setting parental controls When it comes to using Sky Q as a family entertainment device, you may want to set up parental controls to ensure that your children only have access to age-appropriate shows. Go into the 'Settings' menu, and find the 'Parental' section. You'll find a few different options in there. Depending on the age of your kids, you can create a pin to stop them from accessing adult content that's played before 8pm. This will also prevent them from making purchases in the Sky Store. There's a setting to block adult content altogether too. Using Sky Sports split screens Bit of a footy or F1 fan? Then you're going to like the Sky Sports split-screen feature, which is now available to Sky Q subscribers. This lets you watch matches, results and replays side-to-side. Depending whether or not you have a Sky Q 1TB or 2TB box, you can get this feature up and running by clicking the red button on your remote and opening the Sky Sports app. Fluid viewing with live TV Fluid Viewing is one of Sky Q's leading features. Using it, you can resume a show in a different room on one of Sky's Mini boxes or mobile device. Although it only works with recorded shows, it's still a really useful feature. To get it to work, you need to record a show by clicking red button twice. Switching to the previous channel With the Q, Sky introduced a number of changes. The option to select the previous channel is one of them. Before, you'd just press the left arrow button on the old remote, but that's not the case anymore. Now you need to press the right one, or swipe right if you have the touch remote. Undeleting content There's nothing more annoying than deleting something by mistake. Luckily, you can get retrieve old content by heading into 'Recordings' and clicking on 'Deleted'. In here, you should see all the shows you've previously removed. Just press 'undelete', and it'll move back into your recordings list. Finding your lost remote The Sky Q remote is an powerful piece of kit, and while it can do loads of amazing things, that's not to say you won't misplace it like any other bit of tech. If this happens, press the 'Q' button on your box, and the remote will beep for 30 seconds. You should then be able to prize it out from between the sofa cushions. Prevent automatic downloads As is the case with most streaming platforms, when you finish watching a TV episode, the next one will play or download automatically. Obviously, this can take up memory, and it may happen when you're only dipping in and out of a particular series. To avoid this, you can turn off 'auto downloading' by going into 'Settings' and selecting 'Setup & Preferences'.
How to make a Fluid app for Facebook to protect your online privacy
Ad Age reports that Facebook is going to try to use more of your browser history for tracking purposes and for ads. They will not honor the "Do Not Track" settings in the browser for reasons that boil down to "We don't want to and no one else is." As John Gruber put it, 'Google does it' is not exactly a badge of honor, privacy-wise. More and more, the entire advertising industry is turning into a threat to privacy. Advertising should be about attention, not privacy." Companies like Facebook and Google are going to continue to look for ways to "customize" your ad experience by trying to learn more and more about you. Neither company has shown a great deal of respect for user's privacy in the past, so it continues to be up to you, the user, to defend your privacy if you want to use their services. There is an easy way to avoid this (well, two, if you count "Don't use Facebook"): log out of Facebook whenever you aren't using it. Except that I am increasingly suspicious that (for many sites, not just Facebook) "logging out" doesn't actually mean "logging out" unless you also go into your browser settings and delete everything that is left behind by that site. Also, if you use security measures like two-factor authentication, logging back into sites like Facebook can become annoying when all you really want to do is check to see who has tagged you in some picture. Fortunately, there is another way: create a special web browser used specifically (and exclusively) for Facebook. That can easily be accomplished using Fluid. Second, tell your Mac to use that browser for any links to Facebook. That can be easily accomplished using Choosy. Fluid Fluid is a free app, but there are advanced features (specifically: separate cookies from Safari) which we will need for this, so you will have to pay a US$5 registration fee. That is a small price to pay for more control over your privacy. To create a Facebook browser, launch Fluid.app and then tell it to use https://www.facebook.com for the URL. You can give it whatever name you'd like, but I kept it simple and went with "Facebook." Fluid.app will use the regular Facebook icon, but if you'd like something a bit different, you can check Google for some other options. Basically, any square image will work, ideally at least 512x512 pixels. Once you press "Create" Fluid.app will make a "Facebook.app" in your /Applications/ folder. Launch it, and select the "Whitelist Preferences" as shown in the image here. The first two entries for Facebook.com should already be in there, so all you need to do is add the *fb.me* entry by clicking the plus-sign near the bottom left of the window. Once you have done that, click "Show All" (top left) and choose the "Security Preferences" as shown in the next image. The crucial item here is "Cookie Storage: Separate from Safari" (which will only be visible if you have paid your $5 Fluid registration). I also chose to uncheck the box next to "Enable Plugins" because I don't need or want Flash running on Facebook. If you are one of those people who plays Facebook games, you will not want to disable plugins. Now that you have those settings in place, quit your Facebook app (which is required after changing the cookie settings anyway). Brief Aside: "What about Chrome SSBs?" There have been various solutions posted for making Google Chrome based Single Site Browsers, but these all tend to break. Also, they are not officially supported by anyone, and I have no assurance that they are actually using separate cookie stores in a manner that will keep your information separate. Maybe they do, but I'm happy with Fluid. Also, I can't say that I have any real trust that Google's browser does anything beneficial to the user when it comes to privacy. In fact, I use Google Chrome as essentially a SSB for Google-owned sites for two reasons: 1) I assume that Google sites will perform best in Google's own browser, 2) I keep the rest of my browsing habits out of Google's reach by staying always logged out of Google services when I use Safari or other browsers. Choosy Choosy watches for links that you click on your Mac and then sends them to whichever browser you prefer. If you have used Mail.app rules, Choosy works about the same way, except for browsers. Like Mail.app rules, if a link doesn't match any rules, Choosy will just hand it off to whatever browser you tell it to use by default, just as an email that doesn't match any rules will land in your default Inbox. For example, I usually use Safari, but any time I click on a link which uses Google, I send it to Google Chrome. If I click on a link from Tweetbot, it always goes to a special Fluid.app browser that I have made specifically for Twitter links, which is very similar to the Fluid.app I described for Facebook, except I call it "t.co" and have the User Agent set to "iPad". Choosy ($12, free demo available) is installed as a preference panel, which means that you'll need to launch System Preferences to access it. From Choosy's "General" tab, be sure that the following boxes are selected: Enable Choosy for links Start Choosy helper at login The other two are optional. If the button to the right of those options says "Start helper," click it so that it says "Stop helper" (that way you will know its helper app is running). When you are done, it should look like this: Next, go into the "Advanced" preferences and create a new rule by clicking the Plus (+) icon near the bottom left corner. Again, you can title it anything you want, but I stuck with "Facebook" just to keep things simple. Under "Choosy should use this rule when" be sure to change "All" to "Any" and then add six rules using the "Web address" "begins with" options: http://www.facebook.com https://www.facebook.com http://facebook.com https://facebook.com http://fb.me https://fb.me Choosy also has an option to do the same with "matches this regular expression," which could probably do the same thing in fewer lines, but this is simple and clear, so I prefer it. Under "When this rule is used Choosy should" select the option for "Always use this browser..." and then select the Facebook.app that you made earlier. When you are done it should look like this: Safari Even if you don't use Safari, you should launch it and make sure that Choosy is set as the default browser. Go to Safari's "General" settings and set it to Choosy, as shown in this image: If you don't see Choosy as an option, you may have to log out and log back in again. Potential Downsides The only potential downside that I am aware of is that you won't be able to use Facebook "Like" buttons on other websites, or have any other Facebook customizations on other sites. To me this is a feature. Generally I try to avoid Facebook whenever possible, so anything that keeps Facebook from getting its grimy little paws over the rest of my web browsing is fine with me. Also, I have noticed that OS X sometimes likes to set Safari back as the default browser, and so I have to go in periodically (once every few months) and set it back to Choosy. I'm not sure why that is, and it doesn't happen often. Last but not least, unfortunately, you can't use Safari extensions with Fluid apps, which is a shame because there are some nice ones out there for de-crappifying Facebook's UI.
These are a few of my favorite things - 2013 Edition
As 2013 comes to an end, here are a list of my favorite Mac apps that I used over the past year. Now there are a few important things to remember: you'll notice that many of these are not "new" apps because, well, I don't care when the apps were made nearly as much as I care if they're good and I find them useful. Instead, this is a list of the apps that I used or enjoyed the most in 2013, and expect to keep using in the future. All prices listed are in US Dollars, rounded off to the nearest whole dollar (because we all know that 99¢ is just a marketing way of saying $1, right?). If there is no price listed, then the app/utility is free, although most gratefully accept donations. Favorite New App of 2013 Bartender ($15) is the app I never knew I wanted until it existed, and now I never want to use a Mac without it installed. Bartender lets you hide apps on your menu bar, as well as organize the ones you want to remain visible. You can even use it to hide built-in OS X menu bar icons such as Notification Center and Spotlight. I even use Bartender on my Dell UltraSharp 29" Ultrawide monitor which is essentially one monitor as wide as two monitors. Favorite App of 2013 Keyboard Maestro ($36) is my favorite "non-new" app of 2013. Version 6 came out in 2013 and the app is continually improved. The more I learn about Keyboard Maestro, the more I'm impressed with it. I have written about it a lot and posted several macros on Github. I've even done some one-on-one consulting and training. Even after all that, I'm still learning new tricks that it can do. (Peter Lewis, Keyboard Maestro's developer, commented that he's still impressed to see what users come up with to do with his own app!) Keyboard Maestro's cost may seem high in a world where software is often reduced to "fart-app pricing" but it does the work of several apps. It can launch applications, move and click the mouse, execute scripts, insert (static or dynamic/variable) text, manipulate windows, control menus, create/move/copy/rename/delete/trash files, control iTunes, capture images, control iTunes, send notifications, and more. Keyboard Maestro comes with a 30-day trial which is enough time to overcome the initial learning curve and start making it work for you. The developer is very responsive to questions and support requests, and there many others using Keyboard Maestro too, so you're likely to find more tips in the year ahead if you read their sites too. More Automation on the Mac Keyboard Maestro is only the tip of the automation iceberg. TextExpander ($35) and Hazel ($28) both continued to be essential tools in 2013. In case you're not familiar with them: TextExpander inserts text (or images, or runs scripts) on demand when you type a shortcut, and Hazel automatically responds to changes in files and folders. TextExpander is great if you find yourself needing to re-type the same thing over and over. I use it to insert frequently referred-to links, create templates for shell scripts or MultiMarkdown documents, and mail signatures. You can even "nest" snippets within other snippets. A Mac without TextExpander feels broken. Hazel can do so many things I don't know where to start, but here's one set of recipes I use more than any other. All of these are actions taken on files added to my ~/Downloads/ folder: If there is a new archived file (.zip, .tar.gz, etc) then unarchive it and store the original file in ~/Downloads/Archives/ (in case I want to copy it to another Mac). If a new .app file is found, move it to /Applications/ and replace any older version If a new text file is found (.txt, .md, .mmd, etc) is found, move it to ~/Dropbox/txt/ If another kind of document (.pdf, .docx, etc) is found, move it to ~/Dropbox/Documents/ If an image is found, move it to ~/Dropbox/Photos/ (where another Hazel rule then sorts them by date) There are lots of other possibilities, those are just a few to get you started. Hazel is one of those tools that works in the background doing tedious things so you don't have to. It will even keep your Trash from getting taking up space with old files or oversized files. Read more at TUAW All Hazel articles All TextExpander articles Most Taken-For-Granted App I Couldn't Live Without Dropbox. Good lord, I don't even want to think about using a Mac without Dropbox. Unless you have been literally living in a cave, you must have heard about Dropbox by now, right? If so, here's a summary: it's a magic folder which syncs to all of your computers (Mac, Windows, even Linux) which you can access on your iOS devices, and even on their website (unlike iCloud documents). It is supported by tons of iOS devices which use it for document sharing and more. You get 2 GB for free, and up to 500 GB for $500/year. All accounts come with 30 days of versioning so you can go back to previous versions of documents. Other Dropbox articles to check out: Get an extra 1 GB of Dropbox storage by syncing it to Mailbox Keep Dropbox.app up-to-date when the magic fails Finding Dropbox 'conflicted copy' files automatically All Dropbox articles on TUAW This Is Getting Really Long, I'm Going to Have to Summarize a Few of These: Sorry for the bulleted list. These are great apps, but they are either better-known or more easily explained (I hope!). This was the year I switched to Alfred ($0 for most features, $28 for "Powerpack" extensions, or a little over $50 for lifetime updates) from LaunchBar ($35). LaunchBar is still a great app, I just wanted to be able to use some of the workflow features in Alfred. Alfred, LaunchBar, and Keyboard Maestro all have clipboard functionality built-in, but if you want an app just for saving multiple clipboards, get Flycut. Even has Dropbox sync. MailMate ($50) definitely deserves its own review, and I suspect I'll be using it even more in 2014, but 2013 saw me start to move away from Gmail, especially Gmail.com which was redesigned but did not get better. If you use email, you owe it to yourself to checkout MailMate. OmniDiskSweeper ($0) remains my go-to app for finding out what is using all of my hard drive space. I'm still using version 1 of Skitch ($0) whenever I need to quickly take a screenshot then annotate and/or share it. Skitch version 2 has gotten better since its initial atrocious release but "saving" a Skitch in version 2 goes to Evernote instead of just staying locally, and I have no desire, need, or interest in saving Skitch to Evernote. Soulver ($12) is the first 'calculator' that I have really enjoyed using. I've never been great at math, I can't do a lot of calculations in my head. Using a regular calculator always left me frustrated, and half the time I wasn't sure that I had done the calculations properly. With Soulver, I understand regular real-life math a lot better than I ever have. That isn't to say that it doesn't have a lot of powerful options which are useful to people who are good at math. It does. But if you've never struggled with math, you can't understand what it means to have something like this. The word "empowering" has been overused to the extreme, but here it fits, at least for me. I bought the separate iPad and iPhone versions without hesitation or complaint, but I am glad to see that Soulver for iOS is now a universal app (currently on sale for $2). Need to turn a bunch of CDs or audio files into an audiobook? Audiobook Builder ($5). It will not only 'chapterize' it for you, it will also let you easily add cover art using any image file. Want to make sure your Mac doesn't turn itself off for a certain amount of time? Try Caffeine. GIF Brewery ($5) easily takes a video clip and turns it into a GIF. Use your Mac's keyboard for any iOS device (or any other Bluetooth capable device, including another Mac) using Type2Phone ($5). Growl ($4) still does a few tricks that OS X's notifications don't. Use PCKeyboardHack and KeyRemap4MacBook to make a hyper key. If you want to edit, create, or learn about launchd, get LaunchControl ($10, free unlimited demo). Hugely useful. Need to cut up an audio file, maybe to make an iPhone ringtone, or maybe just to trim it for some other reason? Fission - Fast & Lossless Audio Editing. I still haven't learned git but thanks to GitHub for Mac I've been able to fake my way along. If you use a calendar, get Fantastical ($10) for quick "natural language" entry menu bar access, and get BusyCal ($50, 30-day trial) for a better Mac calendar. Print from iOS to your Mac with Printopia ($20). You can save the file as a PDFs (or JPG or PNG if that's what the file was originally), or send them to any printer connected to your Mac. Default Folder X ($35, 30-day trial) lets you quickly jump to favorite folders, or assign specific folders as the 'default' for certain apps. This is another one of those tools that: a) feels like it should be built-in to OS X, b) when I use a Mac without this installed, it feels broken. Trying to monitor your Mac's bandwidth usage and prevent apps from covertly connecting to the Internet? Little Snitch ($35) is the tattletale little brother than those apps wish had never been born. SlimBatteryMonitor is a better battery monitor that OS X's own; MagiCal lets you easily create a menu bar clock that shows the time and/or date exactly as you want it; FreeSpace Tab shows available hard drive space in the menu bar; and I've stopped using all three in favor of iStat Menus ($16, 14-day trial) which also knocked OS X's Activity Monitor off my Dock. Of course I use VLC for most of my video-watching, including Blu-Ray discs thanks to MakeMKV ($0 for some features, $50 for Blu-Ray features, although they are free during beta see here for more info which is also what I use for ripping Blu-Ray and DVDs, almost exclusively via Batch Rip Actions for Automator which are capital-A Awesome if you are ripping lots of DVD/Blu-Ray discs. When I'm done I clean everything up using Name Mangler to get the filenames right and then I can watch my collection in the Plex Media Server. Last but not least I use Mountain ($2) to mount and unmount drives from the menu bar, Flashmount (see previous coverage) to quickly mount DMGs. and DiskWarrior ($100) to check and repair my disks. (By the way, DiskWarrior might be the most expensive piece of software on this list, but it's worth every penny. Get it to help fix little problems before they become big problems.) Looking Ahead Wow. That's a lot of great software. Here are a few apps that I'm keeping an eye on because I suspect they will be on next year's list: Shortcat (currently $16 during beta, planned $24 after): "Keep your hands on the keyboard and boost your productivity! Shortcat is a keyboard tool for Mac OS X that lets you "click" buttons and control your apps with a few keystrokes. Think of it as Spotlight for the user interface." let.ter ($4): "The tiny Markdown powered app just for writing emails." I've been using a send-only email app for 2.5 years now, but I like what I see so far in Letter. Recently released and still lacking some essential features such as multiple account support (which is planned for the nearish future), but I bet this eventually replaces what I've been using. Vellum is the new app that I'm most excited about. Anyone who has tried to make ebooks knows that it's a pain because each device has its own... "quirks." Serenity Caldwell likens making ebooks today to making websites in the late '90s when web standards didn't really exist or weren't implemented by the companies that made web browsers. Vellum bills itself as the tool to help you overcome the madness by letting you import a .docx file and export properly formatted books for iBooks, Kindle, and Nook. This is the next app on my "to test" list and I can't wait.
A reasonable response to Java security problems (Updated)
Update: According to The Mac Observer, Apple has acted proactively to block the Java browser plug-in on Mac machines with OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard or higher. If you are running an earlier version of OS X, then you should disable Java as noted below. Update 2: In a remarkably speedy turnaround, Oracle has released a patched Java VM (release 11, listed as b21 internally) that closes this particular hole. Users who need Java installed are urged to update ASAP. You may have to update manually; Mike Rose reports that the auto-update feature on his machine ended up crashing the Java control panel. A Java security flaw has been reported by CERT (the Computer Emergency Readiness Team). TheNextWeb has a good write-up of the background of the exploit's discovery. Here's the bad news: there is no "fix" for the bug yet. Here's the worse news: it is believed that malicious sites on the web are already aware of this security hole, and are trying to exploit it. Is your Mac at risk? Maybe. It is possible that your Mac does not even have Java installed. Apple stopped including Java by default with Lion. However, if you have run into any websites or software that needs Java, it may have prompted you to install it. So what should you do? Well, here are some options: Stop using the Internet and go live in a yurt. Disable Java Uninstall Java Ignore it and hope that everything will be OK. Hopefully you guessed that options 1 & 4 are the "Not Good" options, so that leaves us with two choices: Disable or Uninstall? Here's my suggestion: if you are on Mac OS X 10.7 or 10.8 (Lion or Mountain Lion) have Java installed and you're not just one of those people who goes around installing things willy-nilly, my guess is that you have (or had) some software program that relies on Java. If you uninstall it, something might break and you might not be able to figure out why. However, if you disable Java in whichever browser(s) you use regularly, you can continue to use your web browser without worrying about this exploit. If you find a website that uses Java, you can turn it on, do what you need to do, and then turn it off again. Safari Users: you can easily disable Java by going to Safari's Preferences, then choose the Security tab, and uncheck the appropriate box: Google Chrome users need to go to chrome://plugins Firefox users: Go to the "Tools" menu, then "Add-ons" (or ⌘ + Shift + A) and choose the "Plugins" tab. Then click the 'disable' button next to Java Applet Plug-in. "But I need Java for these sites I use every day!" OK, so that's the reasonable response that I think will work for most people, but if you happen to be one of the people who needs to use Java every day for a specific set of websites all is not lost. In fact, there's a very easy solution called Fluid.app. This one might seem a little nerdy, but once you set it up, it's quite easy. We've mentioned Fluid.app on TUAW in the past and it's one of my favorite tools. With Fluid.app you can make a "standalone" web browser with its own set of preferences, including Java. You can find these settings in your Fluid.app browser under 'Settings': But wait! he said in his best made-for-TV voice There's more! Fluid.app will also let you say exactly which websites (domains, URLs, etc) that you want to use with that browser. Go to the "Whitelist" preferences and enter the domains, like this: Now that the rule that I have will allow me to visit any URL that includes www.google.com. You can add more sites using the + at the bottom of the window. Add all of your known and trusted sites which use Java. If you come across a link to a different site, it will automatically send you over to your regular browser (where you have disabled Java). Using this system you can have the security of having Java disabled, but still have the convenience of being able to use it on sites that you trust.
List of alleged Windows Phones reveals Nokia Dogphone, Fluid and P4301, working titles we hope
It looks like Nokia has been playing the blindfolded dictionary game again. Well, that's if the image we see above is correct. It's purportedly a table containing names of upcoming Windows Phone 8 devices, found by a curious wallpaper designer. The names listed for Nokia include "Fluid," "Dogphone," and the previously seen "Phi." One slightly less superlative name -- Nokia P4301 -- caught the attention of PhoneArena, who mused that P might be for PureView? An interesting, if not optimistic leap. There are two other items in the table that might pique interest: a Samsung SGH-1687 and a Juggernaught Alpha. There's little else to get excited about specification-wise, bar different versions of Windows Phone, however. That said, no one as yet has mentioned the elephant in the room -- what about that "Virtual" model in the works from Microsoft?
Protect yourself from being tracked by Google, Facebook, and others
There have been a lot of stories lately about websites trying all sorts of things to keep track of people and invade their privacy. First it was Facebook, and now Google. I protect myself from Facebook tracking me by using a Fluid browser for Facebook. Because I paid the US$5 to register the app, I can use separate cookies from Safari. Here's how I setup Facebook in Fluid. This is how I created the app: Once the app is created, launch it, and separate the cookies from Safari: And then set it so that any link off of Facebook will open in another browser (note: this is the default, you don't have to change anything to get it to do this): Fluid for Google I do a similar thing for Google, but it's actually more restrictive: no JavaScript and no cookies allowed: No JavaScript means no Google instant, which I loathe, no little popup telling you they are changing their privacy policy. The whitelist settings only let the browser bring me to Google sites, so any results I click on will open in my regular browser. I've been trying to get Google to open results in a new window for years and they always forget that setting. You can also change the User Agent which is sent to Google, which can change the format of the results. For example, maybe you prefer the iPad (oh, I mean "tablet") format. You can get that by telling the Fluid app to report itself as an iPad: Don't want a separate browser? How about a fast logout? Maybe you don't want a separate browser, but want to make sure that Google isn't associating your searches with your Google login. Well, assuming that Google hasn't found another way to track you even when you aren't logged in, you can make a bookmark shortcut to make sure that you are always logged out before you do a Google search. Just bookmark this link https://accounts.google.com/Logout?hl=en&continue=http://www.google.com/ and click it whenever you want to do a Google search. Or drag this link to your bookmarks bar: Safe Google Search "But if I'm always logging out of Google, won't I have to keep logging in to check my Gmail?" Logging out of Google is easy, but if you want to use Google services like Gmail or Google Voice, you'll probably want to be logged in. There are a couple of ways to work around that. Option 1: Use a different browser for Google - If you usually use Safari for your regular browsing, use Google Chrome for Gmail, Google Voice, etc. Option 2: Use Fluid or Mailplane for Gmail - I've been a Mailplane user since its days in beta, and it's my favorite way to use Gmail. Of course you could also use a Fluid browser instead. Option 3: Use an app instead - This may be too obvious to even suggest, but there are good alternatives for using Google's services in a web browser. You can use Mail, Sparrow or Postbox instead of Gmail, or BusyCal instead of Google Calendar. I vastly prefer GrowlVoice to using Google Voice's website (although there are some Google Voice settings you can't access except through the website, but they aren't ones you'll probably use often). Option 4: Log in to Google quickly using 1Password - If you use 1Password , you can make a "one click" bookmark for logging into Google/Gmail/Google Calendar/etc. Just drag the entry from 1Password to your the bookmark bar in your browser of choice. Brett Kelly did a nice write-up about that feature. "I don't trust anyone! I want to delete everything!" This seems like a huge overreaction, but in just a few minutes of casual web browsing, there are 44 websites which have stored cookies and other cache files on my computer. Are Google and Facebook the only companies out there doing nefarious things with tracking activity online, even if you've told Safari not to accept 3rd party cookies? That seems doubtful. Google and Facebook may be the largest companies, but probably not the only ones. So maybe it isn't a terrible idea. The question is how to do it. If you try to disable cookies, caches, and everything else from within the browser, you'll find a lot of sites just don't work. Instead, it's probably easier to just let the browser work as designed, but then clean up after it. There are two ways to do this: the manual, GUI way, or the automatic, scripted way. The manual, GUI way is to use the "Reset Safari..." That option will bring up a whole host of "cleaning" options: By default there's no keyboard shortcut for it, but you can make one in System Preferences » Keyboard » Keyboard Shortcuts. I use Command + Option + R: Note that you need to have that menu item exactly as shown: Reset Safari... with an ellipses ... not three periods. The automatic, scripted way doesn't allow for as careful or selective deletion, but you also don't have to remember to use it. You can automate it with a LogoutHook, which is basically a shell script which runs whenever you log out. WARNING! This script will run as root and is going to use rm -rf which is one of the most potentially destructive commands that you can run. If you make a mistake here, you could delete data, or render your computer unbootable. "Be careful" is an understatement. "Use at your own risk" is another. As always, make sure you have a verified backup before testing something like this. If you aren't sure what you are doing, stick with "Reset Safari..." Create a file anywhere you like. I recommend /usr/local/bin/logouthook.sh and make it executable chmod 700 /usr/local/bin/logouthook.sh and then tell it to clean up after Safari every time you log out. (Strange aside: if you quit Safari, delete Safari's "binarycookies" file, re-launch Safari, and try to access one of the sites which had stored information in the cookies file, Safari re-creates the 'binarycookies' file. That does not seem to happen if you delete the binarycookies file via LogoutHook.) Then you have to tell the system to use that script when you logout. You'll need to enter your administrator password:sudo defaults write com.apple.loginwindow LogoutHook /usr/local/bin/logouthook.sh Note that the script will delete all of your cookies, local storage, and local "database" files from sites you log into. Plenty of good sites use those technologies to make your web browsing faster, easier, and more enjoyable. Deleting them regularly may be more hassle than it is worth. One of the drawback is that you will be logged out of all the websites which use cookies to keep track of your logins. As always, there is a trade-off between privacy/security and convenience. If you do this, I highly recommend creating 1Password bookmarks for easy re-login for sites you use most often, or create separate Fluid.app browsers for them with separate cookies. What's the right answer? Truthfully, I don't know what the right answer is. For years I have thought that concern about 'cookies' was much ado about nothing, but given the motivation of companies like Google and Facebook to gather as much information about you as possible to sell to marketers, I'm less confident as I once was. Instead, I find myself wondering, why not accept a little inconvenience in exchange for increased privacy? If you do decide to use Fluid.app browsers for Google, you can find some great looking app icons at http://csi.nfshost.com/goodies/. There's also a Flickr group for Fluid.app icons.
Daily Mac App: Fluid
Fluid lets you create an "app" out of a website. If you use one specific website all the time, this alone is very handy. For example, if you wanted a browser specifically for Gmail, you could make one using Fluid and set its own icon, download directory, and other settings. Or maybe you heard about Facebook tracking users even when they are "logged out" of Facebook and want to have a browser that you only use for Facebook. Once you start making them, the uses for per-site browsers start appearing everywhere. I created one for my web hosting company's "web panel" with links on the bookmark bar to domain registration, support links, mail settings, etc. I don't need to see those links all the time, so I wouldn't want to put them on my regular browser's toolbar. But when I need to do something on my host, it keeps me from having to search all over their menus for the settings I use the most. Is there a site that has a better iPad version than the regular version? Make a per-site browser for that site, and set the User Agent to the iPad from the menu. (Unlike Safari, that setting will stay even after the app is restarted.) Fluid is free to use, but for $5 you get a few extra features: Separate cookie storage (usually cookies are shared with Safari). Minimize app to the menu bar instead of the dock Userscripts or Userstyles Lion Full Screen mode Ok, honestly, #4 ought to be a default part of the app, but the others are really well worth the money. Do you use more than one Gmail account? With separate cookies, you can make separate browser-apps for each one, which makes it much easier. (Same goes for Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media site.) Separate cookies for Facebook means that Facebook can't track you whenever are doing when you aren't using Facebook. Worried about Google invading your privacy? Create a Fluid.app for Google and keep its settings separate from your other sites too. Do you like to listen to Internet radio? Make a browser that only appears in the menu-bar and you can easily control it without cluttering up your dock. Use Google Calendar? Create a browser for it, set the User Agent to "iPhone" and put it in your menu bar for quick reference. Using Fluid.app Browsers With 1Password Unfortunately, Fluid.app browsers do not integrate with 1Password. I'm hoping that might change in the future, but in the meantime, the good news is that you can still use your 1Password data using a feature called 1PasswordAnywhere. The short version is this Locate your "1Password.agilekeychain" file Control-click » Show Package Contents Find 1Password.html file (If your 1Password file is in Dropbox, the path will be ~/Dropbox/1Password/1Password.agilekeychain/1Password.html.) Put the full, complete path into your Fluid browser. For example, mine is: file:///Users/luomat/Dropbox/1Password/1Password.agilekeychain/1Password.html (Be sure to change /Users/luomat/ to your path.) That way you can open your 1Password file (read-only) in your Fluid browser. (Note: if you have restricted what sites your Fluid browser can access, you may need to loosen that to allow it to access that page.) Closing Notes The only other drawback is that Safari extensions don't work with Fluid browsers. Also, you may have heard that Google Chrome has a similar feature called "Application Shortcuts." Unfortunately, that feature is not available on Mac OS X, and Google has not said if or when it ever will be. In a world where "web apps" are becoming more and more common, Fluid makes them easier to use than ever. You can use the majority of features for free, so go ahead and download Fluid and check it out. It requires 10.6 or later. Once you start using it, you'll probably find even more uses for it. Some day I'll explain my byzantine system of using Fluid and Choosy, but in the meantime, take it for a spin.
iTat tattoos up the back of your iPhone
"iTat" is a questionable name for a product, but the actual effect of these "iPhone tattoos" looks pretty good. iTat is a system for etching on the back glass panel of the iPhone, which, on the black iPhone, looks like a sort of tattoo. The whole process is being offered by a company called Sirtified, and you can choose a patterned look, etch a picture, or put text on the back of your iPhone in any way you want. Personally I just like the patterns, but I also think subtler is better. Unfortunately, it's a DIY process. You put a special vinyl sticker on the back of the iPhone, rub in some "Super Magical Etching Fluid" (likely some mix of hydrofluoric acid, not to be played with), then wait a few minutes while the glass gets eaten away. It only takes a few minutes and sounds pretty easy if you follow directions (in fact, you can buy the fluid in art stores, and try etching even without their kit if you want), but the only assurance your iPhone gets is that it's apparently easy to replace the back cover if you need to. (It actually is very easy to swap the iPhone's back out, though you will need a "pentalobe" screwdriver. In fact, if you're going to be customizing your iPhone with strong chemicals, it's a good idea to remove the backside plate first anyway. --Ed) Still, if you want a nice etched pattern on the back of your favorite device, no pain, no gain, right? If you do jump on something like this, be sure to let us know how it works out.
Fluid for Mac gets updated to 1.0, offers paid version
Fluid, the neat little application that turns websites into standalone native Mac apps, has finally grown up into version 1.0 after three and a half years of development. The application allows you to move frequently updating pages like Gmail or Facebook out of your browser tabs and onto your Dock where you can more clearly see 'unread' or 'New mail' notifications. It can also help with browser tab clutter (while at the same time adding to the clutter on your Dock...). As before, the app is free, but there's now a US$4.99 optional license that unlocks a few neat extras: the ability to create apps with separate cookie storage, pin Fluid apps to the Status Bar and use Userscripts or Userstyles in Fluid apps. If you've installed previous versions of Fluid, you'll need to remove them and start again with version 1.0, says developer Todd Ditchendorf. "Sorry for the inconvenience, but this is necessary to get Fluid on a solid foundation for future improvements and feature additions." And, he adds on the Fluid blog, "Fluid 1.0 is Intel-only and runs on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard or later. Sorry, but Fluid 1.0 will not run on Leopard or PowerPC Macs."
Fake.app makes powerful Web automation easy
Todd Ditchendorf (Celestial Teapot Software) is probably best known for creating Fluid, a Site-Specific Browser app that we love to talk about. While Fluid was a great and well-executed idea, Todd's latest app, Fake, is truly inspired. The easiest way to describe Fake is to say it's Automator for the Web. It may not have the mass appeal that Fluid does, but its target audience (Web designers and developers, as well as Web power users) will have no trouble appreciating its capabilities. Fake, like Automator, offers an Actions library and allows you to create drag-and-drop workflows with Web-specific capabilities. Fill a form, click a button, follow links ... basically, you can automate anything that deals with HTML and DOM elements. You can even inject CSS and JavaScript into pages, which opens doors to extensive security testing, among other things. Sound intriguing? Read on ...
Fluid lets you embed webpages as your desktop or in menu bar
I refer to my calendar a lot during the day, but I don't always have my calendar program running. Most of the time I just want to glance at something to confirm the time/date of an upcoming event, or just double check a date: "What is the last Sunday in May? Oh right, the 30th." It occurred to me today that I could make life a little easier if I could have my calendar embedded in my Desktop. Those of you who remember Microsoft Windows' "Active Desktop" feature may shudder in fear at the idea because, at least in my experience, Active Desktop was a complete and utter disaster. It never worked well, if you could get it to work at all. There are extremely geeky ways of doing this but MacOSXHints.com had a simple solution I didn't even know was possible: Fluid.app. Now I've used Fluid.app for a long time, but I never knew what the "Embedded SSB" or "MenuExtra SSB" actually did. Turns out that either of them are a potential solution, not just for calendars, but for any web page. [Editor's Note: Fluid just recently went open source, and though the blog hasn't been updated yet, we're told the SSB creator is now open source as well.]
Jeff Kaplan on WoW development: "We debate like crazy"
Our buddy Phil Kollar of Game Informer (who was on the podcast recently) got a chance to talk to Jeff Kaplan about the World of Warcraft, and while Kaplan repeats a lot of what he's said before, the interview is worth a read for a look inside Blizzard's design process. What's probably most interesting is that it's very fluid and very dynamic -- just as much as we're arguing on this site and on the forums about how Blizzard should do things, they're also arguing and going back and forth behind the scenes. He does talk specifically about cutscenes, saying that the Wrathgate scene was an experiment that paid off well, and we should expect some more of that kind of storytelling even as soon as in patch 3.3 (you may have seen it before if you're checking spoilers). And he does talk about raiding sizes and accessibility -- Blizzard has always wanted to do smaller raids, both for the feel of them and for the tuning, but it apparently took them a while to bring 40 down to 25 and then down to 10 correctly. Finally, he doesn't reveal anything about the new MMO, but he does say that singleplayer gaming will always have a place at Blizzard's core -- even when you're playing a multiplayer game, the singleplayer experience should still feel right. True enough, good interview.
Prism single-site browser goes 1.0 beta
The concept of a single-site browser or site-specific browser (SSB, either way) is simple: give me a window with one website in it, preferably a desktop application replacement like Gmail, RTM, Basecamp or Zoho, and let that window behave like a regular application with its own Dock icon, notifications, etc. If you're spending a lot of your time on a particular site, this can simplify your life quite a bit; if you're mixing up GTD with ADD (as so many of us seem to be), an SSB can help limit your distraction horizon while you're trying to maintain focus and flow. The inspiration for many SSB offerings was the Firefox offshoot Webrunner, and the descendant of that project has now earned a 1.0 beta designation and its own website: Prism, from Mozilla Labs, gives you a power tool for creating your own SSBs at will, either via a Firefox extension or by launching the Prism config app and typing in the target URL. Aside from having a dockable icon for each website you convert, you can also set your SSBs to launch at login, or assign mailto: links to open your web email client (similarly achievable for Gmail with the Gmail Notifier tool). If you have to keep separate sets of credentials for work & personal accounts for web services, no need to log in and out repeatedly -- just set up a Prism SSB for one of the accounts, and the passwords & cookies will stay as they need to be. In my brief testing this morning, several sites worked just as expected; the only sticking point is that the Choosy extension gets confused about whether or not Firefox is running when an SSB is open. Safari 4 developer seeds had offered a "Save as Web Application" feature for creating SSBs, which has been stripped from the File menu in the current public beta but still looks to be part of the final release; meanwhile, you can still make WebKit-centric SSBs with the excellent and free Fluid. What site or webapp would you put in a single-site browser? Thanks to everyone who sent this in. [H/T to Lifehacker]
Flickr Find: the Fluid icons pool
The team down the road from me at Carsonified have been doing it, and you can do it too. Fluid is a fantastic free app that turns any web site into a self-contained application on your Mac. If you want to keep your webmail outside your normal web browser, Fluid is what you need. Thing is, all the apps it creates need icons, just as any app in your Applications folder does. By default, Fluid grabs the .ico files it finds on web sites and uses them as icons, but they don't scale well. Where can you find decent alternatives? The answer is the Fluid icons pool on Flickr, where a busy community of Fluid users have been busy making a selection of beautiful icons that work perfectly with any Fluid SSBs (Site-Specific Browsers) you've created. The icons in the pool might look weird to start with, but that's because the PNG originals have been converted to JPG format by Flickr's brain. To make use of an icon you like, make sure you view and download the full-size original, which will be the PNG file you need.
WWDC '08: Interview with Todd Ditchendorf
Kicking off our WWDC 2008 interview series is a chat with Todd Ditchendorf, developer of Fluid. We caught up with Todd shortly after the Keynote and offered him a penny for his thoughts. We covered thoughts on the iPhone, Mobile Me, the future of Fluid and more. The interview took place before our last post on Fluid was written, so there's no mention of the Safari 4.0 seed that was distributed shortly after. Video after the jump.
Apple seeds developers with Safari 4.0
Apple has seeded developers with a copy of the new Safari 4, which adds some new features and is based on a newer version of WebKit. Apple is also rumored to be using the SquirrelFish JavaScript engine which allows for faster Javascript processing.New to this version of Safari is the ability to save webpages as "Web Applications." This new feature allows Safari to save pages similar to the way Fluid does. You also have the ability to choose how new windows will open (i.e. with your favorite bookmark, blank page, etc.). One of the biggest "features" is the fact that Safari 4 (along with the new version of WebKit) scored a perfect 100/100 on the Acid3 test. If you are inclined to see what the new version looks like, World of Apple has placed some screen grabs on their blog for your viewing pleasure.
Cover Flow for a more Fluid browsing experience
Fluid, the site-specific browser we've featured before, has added a sweet new feature: Cover Flow for sites like Google, Digg, Flickr and more. In case you haven't given it a shot yet, Fluid allows you to create mini-browsers that are specific to a site – such as GMail, for example – giving you an icon in the Dock and quick access to your most-used pages. Fluid's author, Todd Ditchendorf, has made a short video that – with an entertaining musical score – shows the usage of the new Cover Flow feature, as well as showing some basic tricks for making the most of Fluid. Fluid is free, so check it out and make your site-specific browsing experience that much cooler.
Green-themed kids' game nabs $3.2 million in funding
Fluid Entertainment, a game company that employs only 14 people, has raised an impressive $3.2 million in funding for the development of a Flash-based online social game for kids aged 6 - 11. The game has an environment-friendly theme.After the successes of Webkinz and Club Penguin, these kid-oriented games and virtual worlds are hot items for venture capitalists, according to VentureBeat. Fluid is one of many companies aiming to enter that sector of the industry, but its game is particularly intriguing because it aims to use the medium to "[affect] real-world behavior around environmentalism and sustainability."This is one more example of the virtual world and MMO phenomenon expanding beyond the hardcore role-playing game niche and "just for fun" design. Fluid is aiming for a summer release of the new game, and its business model will combine subscriptions, micro-transactions, and apparently the sale of real-world merchandise. With $3.2 million in funding, these guys could end up notable players in the kids' MMO space, so we'll be watching them.[Via Mashable]
Fluid makes site specific browsers easy
We've covered the concept of site specific browsers before. Basically these are stand-alone browsers designed to work with just one website, e.g. Gmail. Fluid takes this idea to the next level by automating the process of creating Webkit based site specific browsers. When you launch Fluid it asks for the URL and name of the site, and then it creates a Cocoa application just for that particular site. The reason that this is handy is that it separates your general browsing (and related crashes) from your Gmail, facebook, etc. Fluid is in beta and can be downloaded from Todd Ditchendorf and requires Leopard.
