It has been 6 months since I decided to de-Google my life, so I thought I would do an update post to let you guys know how I’m getting on, what’s changed since my last de-Googling post, and most importantly, have I gone back to the big blue G?
You may have heard of Let’s Encrypt, the free certificate authority who are hell-bent on getting HTTPS everywhere. But why is that little green padlock in your browser so important? Let’s take a look…
You’re a technical person. You don’t need to use a password manager, because you have mastered the art of obfuscating your password so it can never be cracked, right? Wrong! Let’s have a chat about why your password is probably crap…
I recently got chatting to someone on Fosstodon about password security and in particular, password managers. But I thought I’d share my thoughts here also, as I have much more than 500 characters to play with.
The process of de-Googling my life has now come to end, and I’m pretty happy with the results. However, we all know that Google pretty much runs the Internet, and although I have managed to escape the clutches of Google in many ways, there are some Google services that are simply not feasible for me to stop using.
Ok then, I’ve do-Googled myself from the simple stuff – search, browser, analytics and social media are all done. So that only leaves the tough stuff – Google Drive and Gmail (inc. contacts and calendar).
Unless you have been living in a bubble for the last 20 years, the Internet is probably a very large part of your life. From establishing an online identity, to having a personally branded email address that’s easy to share. Owning your own domain name has a lot of advantages.
Ok then, now we’re on to the serious stuff. I have managed to sucessfully get rid of the easier stuff, like Google Search & Chrome and Google Analytics, but now I’m starting to look at the Google services that have a larger impact on my daily workflow.
Didn’t you know? I’m De-Googling my life and I’ve already spoken about replacing my search engine & browser, so now we’re on to the next step – replacing Google Analytics.
So my de-Googling adventure begins, and I thought I would start with some of the more simple stuff to replace – yes, I know, it’s a cop-out, but I’m trying to change habits of the last decade here, so I’m easing myself in.
I love Google products. They’re easy to use, they look good, and for the most part, they work really well. I was having a conversation with a friend the other day, and we were talking about what would happen if Google closed their doors tomorrow. I quickly realised that I would be in a world of pain.
I decided recently that I wanted to start blogging again. Not in a paid capacity (like I did for MakeUseOf), but rather just some meandering thoughts on a personal blog. That way, I don’t have an editor to please, and I can publish whatever I like.
We all know that password managers are worth their weight in gold, and the most popular of these by a large margin, is LastPass. LastPass is great, I used it myself for a number of years, but it is fairly expensive since doubling their prices in 2017. So are there any decent, open source alternatives to LastPass?
Around a week ago I wrote a rare Facebook post and decided to share it with my friends on Facebook. I deliberately posted this in such a way to see if I can find out how to get Facebook passwords from my friends. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting a great deal of success from the post, but boy was I wrong!
I used to love Google+. For a long time, I didn’t use any other social network apart from Googles own majestic stream of useful and interesting information. However, over time things have dramatically...
Whilst doing my usual rounds of nerdy articles on the Internet yesterday, I came across some news that apparently there’s going to be a Sony and Xbox DDOS attack this Christmas. The “hacker group” that are claiming responsibility for this attack are going by the name of “Phantom Squad”.
Yesterday, Sunday 08th Nov 2015 was remembrance Sunday. A day that is earmarked to remember all those that have been affected by war. As a mark of support for remembrance, many people don the famous r...