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How to ditch Google for more privacy and fewer ads

How to ditch Google for more privacy and fewer ads

Nice workup on getting off the Google train. I still have a Gmail account, but never use it. If I didn’t have my own domains, and e-mail to go with them, I would be on FastMail. I have heard nothing but good things about the service, and US $40/year for 15GB of storage, plus all their other features, is a great deal.

I’ve been using DuckDuckGo exclusively as my search engine for quite a while now. The service has gotten much better from its early days, when I still had to go back to Google some times to find the link I was looking for. My backup these days is Bing. Microsoft is slightly less scary than Google only because they are not interested (yet) in selling my search data to advertisers.

The Smartest Things Ever Said About Facebook

The Smartest Things Ever Said About Facebook

thislifeofleisure:

To commemorate the demise of my Facebook account, and the myriad of questions people usually have about why, here’s some of my favorite quotes on Facebook:

“Facebook seems like a terrific way to stay in touch with people who don’t have the sense to quit dicking around on Facebook.” – Merlin…

I really want to spend less time on Facebook. I really need to cull the people I’m following (not necessarily whom I’m friends with; see what I did there?) so as to tidy up the timeline. At least I’m still mostly reactive to Facebook. My posting of any original content has dropped dramatically, especially since I severed the auto-posting tether from Twitter.

Unfortunately, there are people I truly care about scattered about the land, and Facebook remains, for all its ills and evils, the only place to interact with some of them.

How to beat procrastination

How to beat procrastination

For me the biggest challenge that I face while trying to write my book is to not get stuck in the middle of the story. Usually I love writing the first few chapters but then all of a sudden it gets…

Jules Winnfield Hockey Coach

Jules Winnfield Hockey Coach

I can not stop laughing.

All Aboard the Texas Eagle: Austin to Dallas Edition – No. 4 St. James

All Aboard the Texas Eagle: Austin to Dallas Edition – No. 4 St. James

Dallas or Fort Worth -> San Antonio might be a fun trip with the boys the next time we head down there for vacation. Of course, then we’d have to rent a vehicle…

In This Year’s Super Bowl Ads, Positive Portrayals Of Men—And More

In This Year’s Super Bowl Ads, Positive Portrayals Of Men—And More

The Dove ad may have caused some dust to get in my eyes…

The Evolution of iOS

The Evolution of iOS

PSA: How to do good backups

PSA: How to do good backups

tbridge:

Since a friend of mine had a data loss incident and is now struggling without a good backup, I thought I’d remind everyone how important good backups are:

There are many schools of thought on this, and many levels of paranoia concerning your data. You don’t have to take all my advice to have a…

Why James Cameron’s Aliens is the best movie about technology — The Message — Medium

Why James Cameron’s Aliens is the best movie about technology — The Message — Medium

I Have So Much to Learn From My Sister, Africa – Prodigal Magazine

I Have So Much to Learn From My Sister, Africa – Prodigal Magazine

I sit on the ground with her, this woman in the brightly printed dress and crow’s feet from the Widow’s Village in Rwanda.

She sits with a thud, because the genocide has that kind of impact–it has robbed her of her husband and her children–and she has been listening to another woman tell her story and the memories–they’ve just collided and shoved her down.

So I sit there with her in the dirt, a child in my lap and the village around us.

“God is good,” she whispers.