Alternative to Google Search

There is not much to explain here, as I’ve dedicated a whole post to this topic. The more I use Duck Duck Go, the happier I am with it. Particularly because it is quite easy to change between a world wide search or a local (country) search. I use the former for general queries like programming issues, info about books, etc., and the other when looking for restaurants, leisure activities, etc.

Alternative to Google Maps

This one is a bit tricky. I have to admit that Google Maps offers better search capabilities than its main competitors: Open Street Map, Yahoo! Maps, and Bing Maps. You can misspell the name of a business or just provide some keywords, and it will try to find the best match.

But (there is usually a but), I like quite much the “art” of Open Street Map, because it reminds me paper maps and some bonuses like detailing the exact position of the underground entrances (which Google doesn’t, just the approximate location of the station). So, sometimes I use one, and sometimes the other.

Alternative to Gmail

There was not much sense on switching to Hotmail, Yahoo or any other company if privacy was an issue. More or less they all share the same practices. So, the best solution was having my own mail server. I have a modest VPS on Linode, so I set-up the server as you can see on this guide. Therefore, I have an IMAP server which I can use with Thunderbird or when in roaming with the nice Roundcube webmail.

The only lacking functionality is server-side filtering, which I still have to set-up (if you know a way to extend a day to more than 24 hours, please tell me!). I could live with client-side filtering on Thunderbird, but I also want to enjoy it when using the webmail interface.

Alternative to Google Calendar

Having already a mail server, why do not have a calendar server? I took the same approach, and set-up a calendar server using CalendarServer which I can sync with Thunderbird and my iPhone. For even more functionality, I added a web interface with AgenDAV. This time, there is not any feature missing.

Alternative to Google Reader

I wanted to use my feed aggregator on several computers, so setting up a desktop client on each one and trying to get all of them synced was not a viable option. Therefore, I opted for an in-the-cloud solution with a web interface, as Google Reader is. And again, my server comes to rescue! I liked what I saw on Tiny Tiny RSS webpage, I installed it, and I’m very happy with how if works. Nothing to be jealous from Google Reader. It even have a mobile-optimized interface, so it’s not a hassle to check it from the phone.

Alternative to Picasa

To make it clear, I didn’t check the terms of service of Flickr and other providers. I suppose they’re good enough because they’re used by several artists, but I decided to choose the hard way: build my own web gallery. I found Piwigo, with all the features I was looking for and with enough eye-candy to please me. So, after one afternoon of work, I had it working on my server.

Conclusions

I realize that all the options I’m using are not an option for everybody, because of the simple fact that you need your own server and set it up. This simplify the issue to your priorities. If you want privacy and company-independence, learn how to do it or pay somebody to do it for you. If you don’t care, you can just keep using the free services.

Up to now, and after a heavy use of it, I’m very happy with the decision I’ve taken. It has also been useful to learn some new things, and as learning is fun, it has been a nice leisure activity. Mmm, maybe they’re right when they call me geek :P

• Go around with a memory stick all the day.
• Use a online file-sync service.

For convenience, I use the second option. I have some files in the cloud, so they are always accessible and updated from any PC I use (three PCs at work and my laptop at home/wherever). In fact, I can even access them from my phone. For that, I greatly recommend Dropbox. I’ve already talked about it, but in Catalan, so I will make a short summary for English speakers (the Google translation is not so good).

How Dropbox works

1. Create an account.
2. Install the software on one computer (be the OS Linux, Windows or Mac).
3. Link the software to your account.
4. Decide which folder you want to sync. All the contents of the folder are uploaded to Dropbox servers, in real-time (well, as fast as your connection allows). Any modification/deletion/addition of files is automatically updated, with no user intervention.
5. Install the software on another computer.
6. Link again to your account.
7. Decide which folder to share. The contents of the folder are synchronised with the server, or what is the same: the two folders of your computers are always synchronized between them as soon as they have access to the network (usually, at boot up).
8. Repeat steps 5,6, 7 in many computers as you want.

Pros:

• No need to manually sync every time you modify the files, it is automatically done (you can check the sync status).
• You have local copies of the files, so you can work if network is not available.
• You can even access to your files via a web browser.
• Data transfer between server and clients is encrypted.

Cons:

• You have a local copies of the files on each computer, so it could be considered “wasted space” for some people (I prefer to say redundancy :) ).
• Dropbox workers could have a look at you files, even if they say they are not going to. They are on their servers, so…

Making Dropbox safer: Truecrypt is your friend

If you like the idea of using Dropbox, but you are worried about your privacy, or you have to store sensitive/confidential data, there is a solution to the dilemma. Do not share files; share encrypted files.

Truecrypt allows you to create encrypted partitions or containers. A container is a file which can be used as a partition or disk drive, encrypted and protected with a password. Actually, it can be encrypted with a password + a key file, but then you always need to have at hand this file for accessing to it. As I like lists a lot, I will explain how to use Truecrypt in this way.

To create your encrypted container:

1. Install Truecrypt software on you computer.
2. Execute it, and follow the wizard to create a virtual volume.
3. That’s all! :D

How to use the container:

1. Run Truecrypt.
2. Select the file (container) you have created before, and mount it.
3. Now you should have a new disk drive/partition available on you system. Copy files to it as you would normally.
4. Unmount the volume using Truecypt.

Quite simple, right? So, what’s the deal with Dropbox? You can put the encrypted container inside the Dropbox shared folder, so instead of getting access to all the files, they only receive a single encrypted file with no idea of what’s in there. Sure that they could try to crack it, but its like if somebody would like to hack your server by brute force (not impossible, but at least quite difficult).

To be sincere, there is a couple of drawbacks on that:

• You have to manually mount and unmount the encrypted file each time you want the data to be synced. While the volume is open, Dropbox will not sync it as it is considered to be “used by another application”.
• The sync is slower, as instead of just updating the files you have changed, it has to update the whole encrypted file.

I have found a balance between convenience and privacy putting on the encrypted volume just the sensitive files or personal data (e.g., pictures and documents), and outside of the container (but still inside the shared folder) the files that are not important but I want accessible and updated at all times.

Nowadays we use search engines a lot. They have become the standard way of finding websites on the jungle of information that the WWW is today. Web directories are a resource of the past, we just input our words of interest in a textbox, hit the Enter key, and rely on the answers of Google, Bing or Yahoo. They seem to work quite well, and they are free, so what’s wrong with them?

Just two things:

• You are getting a biased view of the web.
• Your telling A LOT about you to a company (and it’s third parties). Probably more than you would under other circumstances.

There is more out there.

When using a search engine, you are getting results according to its criteria. At the beginning, the results were sorted according to more or less objective parameters that measured the quality of the sites. But it has changed. You have probably noticed that you get different results for the same search when you use other computers or compare it with the results that other persons get. I could explain here why this happens, but the web page Don’t Bubble Us explains it with a lot of pictures, not much text and in a funny and easy to understand way. So, before continuing, please have a look at it (and then come back ;) ).

Done? Are you a bit disappointed about the search engine you use? I was. You have probably read the last part about DuckDuckGo, but I’ll talk about it later.

Searching for “herpes” is telling them (and other companies) that maybe you have it.

This is how it works. They know about your interests, your problems, what you are shopping… your life. Again, and in order to do not repeat what others have explained better, I recommend having a quick look at Don’t Track Us.

How do you prefer to be recognised?

So, now you could just be in the mood of “I don’t care about all this bullshit, you are a paranoid” or “OMG! I’m selling my life and having a distorted view of the world! I’ll never use it again.” Or something intermediate, just a bit worried and willing to find a better search engine that keeps your privacy while providing a good service.

Emergency services use dogs. I use ducks.

That’s the search engine I’m using, and the one I recommend: DuckDuckGo (DDG from now on). The have a very nice privacy policy, and I’m quite happy with the results. Actually, what they do is using other search engines to get a bunch of results, and then rank them according to its parameters of quality. So, we could say that they are acting as an anonimizer between you and several search engines.

In addition to that, they have some tricks that make the experience more enjoyable. One is the red box, also known as zero-click info. It is a red box (d’oh!) shown at the beginning of the search results, containing a topic summary or related topics.  It could be the explanation of an acronym, the result of a mathematical operation or conversion between units, a short definition, etc. I’ve solved several of my quick searches just with that, with no need to go inside other sites.

Zero-clik results for ESA

Next tip I love is the !bang. There are a set of keywords that allow you to perform specialized searches. You can !python to look at python documentaion, !mineforum for minecraft forum, !images for Google images (yes, they don’t provide this service yet), !filestube for search in filestube, etc. So, kind of shortcuts for other sites. And the list of options is huge.

To sum up this short review, to get an idea of the overall capabilities of DDG, try the searches on the goodies page.

Putting a duck in your life.

If you have decided to give DuckDuckGo a try, do not rely just on opening the web page each time. You are not going to do it. You will just use the search box in Firefox or the omnibox in Chrome/Chromium, therefore relying again on you previous search engine. To force yourself to use it for a while, you have to configure it as you default search engine on your browser. Fortunately, it’s really really easy, just a couple of clicks. If you visit the DDG homepage, you’ll see a link with the instructions to do it. So, do it. Now. If you don’t like it, you can always come back. But I haven’t ;)

Happy searching!

Cookies not for eating

Citing wikipedia, we have:

A cookie, also known as an HTTP cookie, web cookie, or browser cookie, is used for an origin website to send state information to a user’s browser and for the browser to return the state information to the origin site. The state information can be used for authentication, identification of a user session, user’s preferences, shopping cart contents, or anything else that can be accomplished through storing text data on the user’s computer.

The part about user’s preferences and shopping cart sounds quite useful, doesn’t it? Actually, cookies are useful. Thanks to them we can autologin to sites where we have logged in before, keep our preferences if the website has some personalization, etc. So, the concept is not completely evil. If you visit a site and accept their cookies, you’re accepting that they keep track of you in exchange of some services.

He also thinks that cookies matter.

Cookies from strangers

So, we agree on accepting cookies from a website, but do you know that by default you are also accepting cookies from other sites apart from the one you are visiting? Maybe the website you are visiting has ads, from a third party, and these ads are storing cookies in your PC so that they can track you. Or if it has a Like button from Facebook (like I have in the blog… should I remove it?), Facebook is using it to put a cookie on your browser to track you even if you are not in the social network. These cookies are called Third Party Cookies, because they don’t belong to the domain/website you are visiting.

Do not eat the bad cookies

Fortunately, blocking those cookies is easy with most of the browsers. In some very rare cases not accepting these external cookies could affect the navigation experience (that’s what they say), but I’ve never had any problem. An easy step-by-step guide for Firefox can be found on the Firefox Help, with nice screenshots and everything. For Google Chrome/Chromium, it’s not so well explained on the official Chrome Help (it’s hidden in the “Block cookies by default” section), but it’s just going to Preferences > Under the Hood in the left panel > Content Settings button on Privacy section > Check Block third-party cookies from being set.

And that’s all, Folks. If you research a bit you will find that there are plug-ins and extensions to improve even more your privacy regarding to cookies, but this is a good starting point.

But it’s time for changes. A few weks ago, an innocent comment of a friend awoke something inside me. During the next days I deeply thought about how I’ve been managing my digital life, and the conclusion was that I’ve been screwing it up. Time to take action. Time to be like it was before, when it started with a 28800 bps modem (I really miss that sound) and paying per second of connection.

I’ll try to write posts about different topics: search, mail, web services, online calendar, file sharing… Actually, I’ve already changed several of my habits and I’m very happy with the results, so writing about it shouldn’t take long. Stay tuned.

Pues eso, Google+ es la red social de Google. Después de estar escarmentado con Facebook, me la tomé con cierto escepticismo al principio, pero después de un par de tardes de documentarme, la abracé como el sustituto perfecto de Facebook. Para dejar las cosas claras, yo no era un gran fan de Facebook, principalmente debido a:

• Sus condiciones de uso. Cualquier cosa que pones en Facebook pasa a ser de su propiedad.  Les das permiso para hacer casi cualquier cosa con el contenido que pones en Facebook. Sí, incluidas las fotos esas de tus últimas vacaciones.
• La casi imposibilidad de controlar con quien te comunicas. ¡Yo no quiero hacerlo todo público a todo el mundo, ostias!. Si, en un suponer, cuelgo una foto yendo de farra por ahí todo colocado para hacer la gracia con los amigos del pueblo, no quiero que mi madre la vea (hola mama!), ni tampoco mi director de tesis (ei, hola Jaume!). Facebook incorpora un sistema de listas para poder filtrar el contenido pero está tan mal diseñado y es tan poco usable, que incluso yo que soy un friki tecnológico he desistido, hastiado de lo engorroso y complicado que es.
• Malas prácticas de la compañía. Por ejemplo, vendiendo información a terceras empresas según dicen.
• Y por último, la de basura que tiene. Que si juegos, que si galletitas de la suerte, que si quieres entrar en el grupo de “bolsas que se ponen señoras debajo cuando llueve”… En medio de ese mar de distracciones cuesta encontrar cuando alguien dice algo interesante. He llegado a bloquear personas sólo por lo que llegaban a contaminar con chorraditas.

Total, que estaba yo muy contento con mi twitter y solo consultando el Facebook de vez en cuando por si acaso (porqué desgraciadamente hay gente que prefiere enviar mensajes por ahí en vez de utilizar el veterano correo electrónico *sigh*), cuando van y me echan a la cara Google+, con:

•  Sistema de círculos. Best simple idea for a social network ever. Tu pones a la gente en un círculo o varios, con un simple arrastrar del ratón como si pusieras iconos en una carpeta, y ale, cada vez que escribes o publicas algo eliges que círculos pueden verlo. Yo por ejemplo tengo un grupo para la familia, otro para los amigos del pueblo, otro con los que juego a Warmachine, otro con gente que conozco pero que realmente no se merecen el calificativo de amigo (no es nada personal, es que coincidir en una clase de doctorado no es motivo suficiente para ganaros mi confianza infinita :P), etc. Puede sonar lioso, pero la gestión de los círculos está tan bien diseñada que se hace de forma intuitiva y sin suponer un esfuerzo extra.
• Videoconferencia integrada. Las quedadas, llamadas hangouts en inglés. Pues eso, que te puedes poner a hablar de repente con la gente de un círculo que esté conectada (o personas concretas), directamente desde el navegador. Perfecto para charlas improvisadas sin tener que estar media hora tecleando, leyendo y cruzando mensajes.
• ¡No hay basuraaaaaaaaaaaa! Solo gente hablando, colgando enlaces, comentando, etc. Hoy me he asustado, porqué han anunciado que van a añadir juegos, pero ya han dejado bien claro que és muy fácil ignorarlos. Seguramente habrá alguna opción para desactivarlos y que siga siendo como es ahora.

Con estos puntos cumple lo que yo le pido a una red social. Así que lo tengo claro, he empezado a usarla bastante activamente y cada vez me paso menos por Facebook. De hecho, tengo pensado cerrar mi cuenta dentro de no mucho, ya os avisaré ;)

Quieres tener una reunión con alguien

No eres un usuario registrado

1. Simplemente te vas al perfil de la persona (por ejemplo, el mio es http://tungle.me/sergi) y veras que días y horas tiene disponible.
2. Escoges la duración de la reunión.
3. Seleccionas, dentro de su periodo de “tiempo disponible”, cuando te va a ti bien. Cuantas más opciones pongas, más probable es que a la otra persona le parezca bien alguna.
4. Introduces los detalles de la reunión, como que temas a tratar, en que sitio, etc.
5. Y ya está. Recibirás un correo informándote de si te ha aceptado la petición, y a que horas. Qualquier “negociación” sobre el tema se hace via correo electrónico.

Si eres usuario registrado

El proceso es el mismo, solo que además, si tienes sincronizado tu calendario verás que horas tienes tú disponibles (para no tener dos citas al mismo tiempo :P), y una vez haya sido aceptada se agregará automáticamente a tu calendario.

Recibiendo citas

La gente, a través de tu perfil (para esto si que hay que estar registrado), ve que horas tienes disponibles. Cuando alguien haga una propuesta, recibirás las diferentes opciones que te plantea, y con un par de clicks aceptas/rechazas, agregando-la si es necesario a tu calendario sincronizado.

A mi me ha parecido muy práctico, y una forma de estandarizar y automatizar la tediosa tarea de organizarse el calendario .

M’ha sorprès molt, em pensava que això només ho volien fer a ciutats grans, com vaig veure que feien a Barcelona, però si ho han arribat a fer a Sant Joan és que ho volen fer a tot arreu… impressionant.

De fet, el que és molt útil (sobretot si t’has de moure amb moto) és la imatge del radar que es pot consultar per la web de Meteocat. Amb aquesta imatge pots veure exactament a on està plovent i amb quina intensitat d’una ullada ràpida. Però la pàgina de Meteocat no està molt optimitzada per terminals mòbils, i vaig pensar que era una llàstima malgastar tants kilobytes només per fer una ullada ràpida d’una imatge.

Així, doncs, m’he fet una pàgina per consultar el temps des del telèfon, que mostra de forma ràpida els mateixos mapes de Meteocat. L’únic que em queda pendent és millorar el tema de la predicció a 8 dies, que ara redirecciono “a lo bèstia” a un menú en JavaSript que és massa pesat pel telèfon.