eugene gordin

Here are two seemingly unrelated little tips for you guys, both involving things on the web I simply cannot live without!

Adblock for Safari on Snow Leopard
For those that don’t know, adblock apps are browser add-ons which allow you to hide ads on the web. For Firefox users there’s Adblock Plus (which I’ve written about before), and for Safari there is SafariBlock, which is no longer compatible with Snow Leopard out of the box.

Therefore, those of you who used adblocking in the past were faced with a problem when upgrading to Snow Leopard – there was no real app that was compatible with the 64-bit goodness of Snow Leopard’s Safari. You could force Safari to run in 32 bit mode and use Safari Adblock, but you wouldn’t be able to enjoy the speedy improvements that Snow Leopard brought to Safari that way.

Well today I found a great new app called Safari Adblocker, which is 100% free and works with Snow Leopard’s Safari (it is actually based on SafariBlock, my old favorite adblocker). It includes subscriptions to Rick572’s EasyList (which is amazing), and is quite stable. So if you’re on Snow Leopard and looking for Adblocking, be sure to check out Safari Adblocker.

Google Reader’s Popular Items
The other tip I wanted to share was for those of you who use Google Reader (I have written about its amazing usefulness before too). Last week, the Google Reader team unveiled two new features to its amazing product: Personalized Ranking & Popular Items. Personalized ranking allows you to sort your unread items by “magic,” which is a sorting mechanism catered to what you will most likely be interested in (based on the items you marked “Liked”, and shared items). This is very useful if you use Google Reader frequently (like me).

Popular Items however, is an even more interesting feature: it provides you with popular content from around the web, sorted by the content which is most likely to interest you. This combines the “recommended feeds” and personalized ranking features, and has provided me with some very interesting content to which I was not subscribed before. Also, if you’re a big keyboard shortcut user (I use the J and K shortcuts all the time in Google Reader), you can access the newly-added “Explore” and “Popular items” views by pressing g then e or g then p, respectively.

As always, let me know what you think about these things or if you have any questions.

Posted in Technology | 1 Comment »

No, this post isn’t going to be about making the (amazing) switch from PCs to Macs. Apple does a good job advertising that on its own. In a way, you could say that this switch represented the final step in my PC de-shackling, but since I have to use Parallels quite often for Engineering stuff, that final step is quite a bit off.

This post is about the switch I made a few months back from Mozilla’s Firefox to Apple’s Safari.

In the months leading up to my switching to Safari as my full time browser, I became increasingly frustrated with Firefox, in terms of usability and speed. Each time that I opened a code-intensive webpage, I would get the spinning beach ball for long periods of time (up to 15 seconds), which is simply unacceptable.

On the other hand, whenever I would load any page in Safari, it would load extremely quickly, never crashing or stalling at any given turn.With the release of Safari 3 (with Leopard), I was fully hooked. The interface, speed (see graph), stability, and plugins provide everything I need for my browser. The inline search is gorgeous, and quite useful.

The transition from Firefox was eased even more by installing three separate (and free!) plugins, which I could simply not browse without.

• SafariBlock – its basically AdBlock Plus for Safari (highly recommended!)
• Inquisitor – allows you to add multiple search engines to Safari’s Google search, in addition to providing search suggestions (note: sometimes sponsored ones)
• Greasekit – brings the power of GreaseMonkey to Safari (although not all scripts are compatible)
• Saft – provides a whole HUGE list of improvements and tweaks, specifically proper “open links in new tabs” for Gmail and the like (note: this one isn’t free, but it also isn’t as necessary)

So ignore my previous posts about the power of Firefox (even on PCs since Safari is now available for Windows). Safari is the way to go, and I highly recommend you try it for yourself. The speed alone should be a pleasant surprise.

Posted in Technology | No Comments »

First of all, I’m back from Europe now, and I guess from Southern California too, so I should be posting regularly again.

A couple of months ago, I wrote about absolutely must have Firefox Extensions, including Adblock. Well, little did I know but development for the adblock extension stopped a long time ago update: has split between a number of different authors, and now a better version was available: Adblock Plus. It has tons of bug fixes and added features, of which my favorite is subscriptions (note: as KNK points out, there area few different choices when it comes to Adblock, I however use Adblock Plus).

Basically, instead of importing a list and then slowly shaping it to fit all of the sites that you visit, you can subscribe to a list that someone already has and keeps updated. This way, everytime that person updates their filters, you automatically get the updates too. Very cool stuff and I have my list up for all of you to subscribe to if you’re interested. You can find it here (for a direct link, see my post in the comments).
I cannot stress how much better the internet is with adblock plus (and firefox for that matter), so I highly suggest you guys check it out.

Tags: Browsers, OS Independent, Tips
Posted in Technology | 1 Comment »

Welcome back for the 2nd installment of my essential software series. In this post, I will cover the must-have Windows programs that I would install the minute I had a new computer before me. First off, let me just say this part isn’t going to be nearly as pretty as the first part in the series, simply because it is only now that Microsoft is adopting larger icons for its programs. That said, lets begin:

Antivirus AVG: Grisoft AVG is one of the most powerful antivirus solutions for Windows offering a complete selection of tools and utilities to secure your Windows PC. Alternatives: McAfee, Norton Antivirus CD/DVD Burning Nero: Nero is a fully functional, CD/DVD authoring program that allows burning of data, video, audio, and images. It also includes all kinds of disc customizations, menus, etc. Alternatives: Easy Media Creator, Ashampoo Burning Studio, DiscJuggler Instant Messaging Trillian: Trillian is an instant messenger client that allows connections to AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, and other messaging services. See my post below for more information. Alternatives: Gaim, Miranda Security Spybot Search & Destroy: A free utility that is extremely helpful in both removal and prevention of spyware and malware. Every Windows PC needs this. Alternatives: Help yourself -Get spybot. Windows Defender: Microsoft’s solution to their own security problems. Its actually quite a powerful and useful program. Avoid problems – Get Windows Defender. Alternatives: Adaware Web Browser Mozilla Firefox: A skinable, secure, customizable web browser with tons of features, plug-ins, and anything else you would need. Be sure and install the adblock and tabbrowser preferences plugin I mentioned in my post below. Alternatives: Opera, Internet Explorer 7 FTP Browser SmartFTP: The simplest, most straight forward FTP browser out there for Windows. A must-have for anyone with webspace. Alternatives: CuteFTP, FileZilla Media Playback K-Lite Codec Pack: K-Lite Codec Pack is a collection of codecs and related tools and will play back all of your movie formats using Media Player Classic (a very good alternative to later Windows Media Players). Alternatives: XP Codec Pack, Codec Pack All in 1

Up next is part III in this series, which will cover software for both OSX and Windows that a new computer (and you) probably can live without, but shouldn’t.

Tags: Software, Windows
Posted in Technology | 2 Comments »

Recently I have been seeing my friends purchase new computers, both Macs (hurray!) and PCs (alas!), and have been asked to put on their new computers software that I think every computer should have. And after I did this a couple of times in the past week, I noticed that I have a pretty set group of things that I believe every new computer should have.

I have gathered everything you need and will be posting it in this three part Initial Transformation series – the first on OSX Programs, the second on Windows programs, and the third on miscellaneous software that’s necessary for both. Without further ado, here are the Apple OSX Essentials:

CD/DVD Burning Roxio Toast: Though I don’t burn anything except data cds and dvds, Toast is the easiest way to create video dvds, music cds, burn images, and all of it with a really simple user interface. Alternative: DiscBlaze Instant Messaging Adium: Adium is a free instant messaging application for Mac OS X that can connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, and more. Alternatives: Proteus, Fire Windows Virtualization Parallels Desktop: The best and fastest program that to run Windows (or any other OS) on your intel Mac out there, hands down. See my post below for more information. Alternatives: Q, Crossover Office Desktop Manager Virtue Desktops: The amazing accessory to Parallels Desktop that allows you to switch between Windows and OSX like this. Alternative: Desktop Manager Web Browser Mozilla Firefox: A skinable, secure, customizable web browser with tons of features, plug-ins, and anything else you would need. Be sure and install the adblock and tabbrowser preferences plugin I mentioned in my post below. Alternatives: Camino, Safari, Omniweb, Opera FTP Browser Transmit: An amazingly simple, very pretty FTP Browser. If you own webspace, this is a must. Alternative: Cyberduck Media Player VLC: The media player to have to play everything from DVDs to Divx movies to simple AVI’s. Alternatives: Quicktime, Divx Player

Stay tuned for parts II and III for more OSX and Windows programs that are a must on any new computer!

Tags: Apple, Software
Posted in Technology | 2 Comments »

I was going to get right into this post, but I realized that I should step back and let anyone who doesn’t know, find out. If you are still using Internet Explorer, and you care about your security, sanctity, and sanity, please download Mozilla Firefox and never use IE again. Firefox has unparalleled advantages over IE, including tabbed browsing, enhanced security, and extensions.

It is these extensions (or plugins) that really separate Firefox from any browser, including Safari. The two extensions that I personally cannot live without are Tabbrowser Preferences and AdBlock.

I use Tabbrowser Preferences in order to force all of my new browser windows to open in tabs as opposed to new windows, significantly speeding up browsing and allowing people who like tons of different pages open at the same time to organize their browsing in one simple window.

While Tabbrowser Preferences is a very helpful browser add-on, AdBlock on the other hand should be a requirement for anyone who visits any webpage. AdBlock is a content filter that allows you to block any kinds of images or inline frames both directly, and using wildcards. Furthermore, AdBlock allows the importing of other people’s AdBlock databases, which spares you the work of having to manually block ads yourself. For everyone’s convenience, I have attached my well refined and time tested adblock list, and encourage all of you to download it, and import it once you download AdBlock.

To import a list into AdBlock, install the AdBlock extension, download my AdBlock Filter File, restart Firefox, go to Tools–>AdBlock–>Preferences and in the Preferences window go to AdBlock Options–>Import Filters. Point adblock to the Adblock Filter File you downloaded and you are all set.

Let me know if you have problems with either of these extensions, and I’ll gladly help you out. If you are interested in finding more useful Firefox extensions, check out Cnet’s three part article on the Best Firefox Extensions.

Tags: Browsers
Posted in Technology | 1 Comment »