Ghostery is your window into the invisible web – tags, web bugs, pixels and beacons that are included on web pages in order to get an idea of your online behavior. Ghostery tracks the trackers and gives you a roll-call of the ad networks, behavioral data providers, web publishers, and other companies interested in your activity.

Available as extensions for Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari, Ghostery also lets you block the trackers it finds, and view the source of suspect scripts. Running it is quite an eye-opener, to say the least.

Really cool to see what websites are really running on your computer!

Read More

I’ve had a love hate relationship with Flash from the get go. It’s used to create beautiful media rich web applications to really enhance websites, but it also drags anything its installed on to a halt. Seriously, every update that is supposed to make Flash “faster” makes it more bloated and slower. Even the new GPU enabled Mac plugin I’m using just kills the computer – and I’m not using a slouch of a machine either (i7 baby!!!). Then, there are the out of control, privacy invading flash cookies that take over your browser making it like the wild west. I decided to sit it out – I’m done with it!

Having using iDevices since 2007 (and being a previous PalmOS lover) Flash kinda seems like second thought to me, so I made the plunge and deleted the plugin. Adobe has setup simple instructions on their website on how to do it. Restarted, and WOW my browsing experience is worlds faster. CPU usage has plummeted and surprisingly webpages all looked the same. I think we reached the level of web maturity where designers are no longer using Flash and embracing open standards. Sure here and there a YouTube video won’t work. But hey, I left Flash installed on FireFox so if I need it I have it. But for my primary web browsing, I’m Flash free! Anyone else want to take the plunge?

Sure, with FireFox there is an easy way to download YouTube videos, but what if you want to download a song posted on YouTube as an MP3?

With a visit to dirpy.com you preform a YouTube search, and the results are displayed in a list. You pick your video and dirpy Studio does its thing – letting you customize the file name and ID3 tag data.

Kinda neat if you ask me!

Read More

So, yesterday we covered how to tether your iPhone using a 99 cent iPhone flashlight app. Well, now the app is pulled.

The problem remains that people want to tether their iPhone for free. Well, my dear loyal readers – I will build you an App that will enable free tethering starting today.

Here is how I’m doing it (and how you can do it too) if you have a iOS developer account with Apple.

I’m going to compile the iphone-socks-proxy app available on Google code and release it as an AdHoc app to the first 80 people who email me their iOS devices UNIQUE ID (?) at SORRY ALL SPOTS FILLED. Also, drop a comment (without your UUID in it) so I know the email isn’t getting caught in some SPAM filter somewhere.

For those who want to know what the iphone-socks-proxy app is, its an open source project that allows you to connect your laptop to the Internet through the iPhone’s 3G/EDGE connection (tethering) without having to jailbreak your iPhone. If you want to install the application on your iPhone you will have to build and install the App from the supplied community code. The code is completely legitimate and does not use any undocumented APIs and NO JAIL BREAK is required.

As for how to use it? Once I build it you will drag the compiled App as well as the mobile provision file to iTunes and sync it to your device.

On your laptop start an ad-hoc Wi-Fi network. On Mac this is done by:
System Preferences->Network
select AirPort
click on Network Name and select Create Network
in Name enter “mywifi”, press OK, press Apply
Connect you iPhone to the add-hoc wifi network:
Settings->Wi-Fi
select “mywifi”
Run this SOCKS App on your iPhone
In the SOCS Proxy tab press Start
take note of the address and port that appear on the screen.
if you get the message “no Wifi” then you are not yet connected to the ad-hoc network. Wait a minute and try again.
put your iPhone face down on the table in order to save battery
configure your laptop application to use your SOCKS (with the above address and port). Some examples:
Safari on Mac (Firefox needs a different configuration):
System Preferences->Network->Advanced…
select Proxies
check SOCKS proxy
in the SOCKS Proxy Server field enter the address and port that appear on your iPhone screen
press OK
press Apply
Firfox on Mac
Firefox->Preferences…->Advanced->Network->Settings…
Select “Manual proxy configuation:”
enter IP and port of your iPhone in the SOCKS Host: and Port:
OK
Unix (Mac) shell commands can be made to use socks (socksify) using the tsocks command (check the man page) (see also).
tsocks is configured using the file /opt/local/etc/tsocks.conf for example, if the proxy is on 169.254.213.179:20000 then the file should look like:
local = 127.0.0.1/255.255.255.255
local = 169.254.0.0/255.255.0.0
server = 169.254.213.179
server_port = 20000
server_type = 5
When finished remember to disable the usage of SOCKS in your laptop application:
Safari Mac: uncheck the above SOCKS proxy and press OK and Apply to restore regular connectivity

Even cooler is the App supports 10 minutes of task completion so you can exit the app briefly without losing connectivity. The last catch, UNEASYsilence (and Experiment23) takes NO LIABILITY on any data charges or loss you may experience. AT&T could wake up one day and decide to limit or charge you for the data you consume. Consult your bill regularly.

Google has begun informing web site owners that they are implementing “interest based ad targeting.” What does that mean? More data mining, but there is a way to opt out of this new practice.

Make the ads you see on the web more interesting
Many websites, such as news sites and blogs, partner with us to show ads on their sites. To see ads that are more related to your interests, edit the interest categories below, which are based on sites you have recently visited. Learn more
Your interests are associated with an advertising cookie that’s stored in your browser. If you don’t want us to store your interests, you can opt out below.

Just visit Google’s Ad Preferences to disable the targeting cookie, or if you are a FireFox or Internet Explore user you can download a plugin to keep yourself anonymous.

Also, if you want to block ads completely may I recommend Safari Ad Block for Safari or Adblock for Firefox.

I find it hardly fair that AT&T offers free WiFi that you can only use on your iPhone or Blackberry, so here is a work around to allow you to use your free wifi on nay device.

Fist of all you have to make sure you have a Blackberry or iPhone to qualify for the free internet. That being said to trick AT&T you have to change your browsers User Agent. If you use FireFox download User Agent Switcher (UAS) to start the process.

Then you need to alter the UAS settings (Tools – User Agent Switcher – Options – Options – User Agents – Add) to the following:

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543a Safari/419.3

(Make sure all of that is on one line)

and if you have a Mac in Safari 3.0 in the Preferences, Select Advanced and check the “Show Develop menu in menu bar”. A new menu item called “Develop” should appear in the menu bar. Click on that menu and select “User Agent” and then select the sub option “Mobile Safari 1.1.3 – iPhone”.

With the user agent now switched you will be directed to a landing page designed just for AT&T iPhones where AT&T is asking your for your iPhones phone number. Put in your iPhone or Blackberries number. AT&T will then send you a text message with a secure lick that you click on to activate the free wifi. Just enter that link into your browser and you have free unlimited wifi on your laptop.

FireFox 3 is great but here are some tips and tricks to get the most out of your favorite browser.

You can duplicate tabs with drag-and-drop. Just hold the Ctrl key while dragging the tab you want to duplicate to an empty space on the tab bar.

If you use Yahoo! Mail or Gmail as you email provider you can have FireFox open them automatically when you click on MAILTO links. Choose Options under Firefox’s Tools menu, select the Applications tab, and scroll down to the mailto: entry. Select Use Yahoo! Mail and click OK. But, the option to use GMail is not included in everybodys version of FireFox. To enable GMail in FireFoxs address bar type in about:config and hit Enter. In the Filter field, type gecko.handlerServiceAllowRegisterFromDifferentHost. Double-click the gecko.handlerServiceAllowRegisterFromDifferentHost entry to change it to True.

Now, cut-and-paste this line into the address bar and hit Enter: javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler(“mailto”, “https://mail.google.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s”,”Gmail”)

Once that is done jsy repeat the process above for choosing Yahoo! Mail, but select use the newly created Use Gmail option.

The internet was lit on fire with news about Google’s “Chrome” browser that is based on the same WebKit engine as Safari. But, I was one of those people who never thought Google would put their neck on the line with a browser when they already had someone else doing the dirty work for them. The people doing the dirty work? The folks over at Mozilla.

In 2006 Mozilla announced that their for-profit division has taken in $72 million [#], primarily through the Google search box on the right-hand corner of the browser. Now that’s Mozilla’s cut, can you imagine how much Google made by all the traffic Mozilla drove their way?

Honestly why Google would want to have such legal exposure from Microsoft or any other deep pocketed organization that wants to sue for anticompetitive behavior. What does a custom browser from Google signify about Google’s relationship with Mozilla? Do you think the world needs another browser?

All I know if Google decided to go it on their own, they must have some really awesome features and integration with other Google services in the works.

When your website is processing information there is no need for a boring “Please Wait” dialog box. Might as well use some Javascript to spiff up your home on the interweb.

Busy.js 1.0 allows you to add/remove loading indicators to html elements on your webpages (inc. overlay color & transparency). It uses unobtrusive javascript to keep your code clean. Requires no plugin/extension or any other external resource!
It works in all the major browsers – Mozilla Firefox 1.5+, Opera 9+, Safari and IE6+. On older browsers, it’ll degrade to simple quadratic shapes.

Really great resource if you are a web designer if you ask me!

Read More

GMail is an essential tool for many web surfers, but its look is aging quick especially with Yahoo’s latest AJAXY offering. Why not spiff up your favorite email app with a really cool skin? All you need to do is in Firefox load the Stylish extension and visit the themes Userstyle page and click load.

Gmail’s anti-spam technology, its thread messages, and its general simplicity has made it quite simply the best webmail service around. But I think we can all agree – Google’s design team is either incredibly lazy or extremely concerned with making sure old people, and people still using Netscape can check their email. To be frank – it’s ugly and looks very outdated. Here is a Gmail design that I deem appropriate for a service of such quality. I am calling this project Gmail redesigned.

I am in the process of working on this style almost daily, so it’s highly recommended you update it often if you want to keep up with the latest features and improvements. Or wait until I make an announcement saying that all the major features are now working correctly. Gmail has over 1500 different styles and a very complicated structure. This style will take some time to finish.

In the future this style can be used by other designers who wish to develop custom themes for Gmail. This style can be very useful as all CSS values are carefully commented.

Please keep in mind this is still a work in progress. All suggestions and feedback are greatly appreciated. If you want me to work on a particular feature in the next update, let me know. Please leave a comment here, or feel free to email me at globexdesigns(at)gmail(dot)com

Before you know it you have the Cadillac of web apps right at your disposal. Any other themes you guys like?