Category Archives: Thoughts..

11.24.15
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Things That Are Meaningful To Me #104

I am very pleased to say that I have been nominated and accepted onto the IBM Champion program once more in 2016.  Does it matter?  It does to me.  IBM says the program is about recognising “individuals who make outstanding contributions to our IBM communities…..” but to become a champion you must first be nominated by someone and then your nomination is reviewed by an internal IBM team.  Becoming a Champion for me means that I have made a difference in my chosen area of work, one that has affected or impacted more than just my colleagues and customers.  It also means that someone, somewhere took the trouble to nominate me*.

It’s important to me to have a job that’s rewarding, that makes me challenge myself and somewhere makes a positive difference. I’m not bringing about world peace but in my own way in my own field I’m trying to make things better and someone else has noticed that.

It means a lot.

Congratulations as well to my colleague Mike Smith who also was awarded Champion status,  my sometime colleague and friend Mark Myers from LDC Via and all the other IBM Champions this year.

*I got an email saying someone nominated me and, for the first time ever, I nominated myself as well because who knows what I’ve done this year better than me.  That was tough.  Writing things about myself feels like boasting but I think it was good for me to do it so i’m chalking it up to personal growth.

 

 

02.09.15
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Have Your Say – What Would You Like To See As A 2016 Event?

There’s a community led effort underway to get some feedback on what people who traditionally would come to Lotusphere/Connect(ED) would most like to see in 2016.  This is unauthorised by IBM but there are lots of options under discussion by them, by various user group leaders and other imaginative and enthusiastic people in our community.  Basically no-one wants to let an annual global event go away.   This has boiled down to a single question survey that is anonymous, requires no login and will take you about 10 seconds to complete.

Make your voice heard here

02.03.15
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IBM Connected Part 3 of 3 – What Do I Do Next?

So ConnectED is over and the world has shifted a little bit more.  Going into this year the work I had been doing since 1996 on Mail systems had dropped from about 70%+ of my tasks to about 20% and had been replaced with projects around security, SSO, Connections, Sametime and other related WebSphere / DB2 systems.   Mostly that was because the use of mail systems has plateau’d and there is very little pushing at the boundaries going on so although everyone is still heavily dependent on mail , the systems pretty much ran themselves day to day.  The most upheaval we had last year was related to security updates.

I like working with complex technologies so my work around Sametime, Connections and SAML continues but I’ve also learnt that there are huge gaps in understanding around the supporting systems like LDAP and database servers that customers are struggling with along with their own ability to maintain and manage the built systems once in place.

Then there’s cloud.  As a system designer / installer / engineer / whatever – a move to the cloud in theory means I’m out of a job but I’ve never seen it like that.  I do this because I love to deliver systems that make people’s lives easier and continue to learn and develop myself.  An IBM’er said to me  “I don’t see why you are happy we are doing this in the cloud , surely you’ll be out of a job?”.  Leaving aside that I have no interest in holding customers back to maintain my own career, I wouldn’t get any sense of fulfilment from treading water.

I have projects spaced out across the year and I’m speaking at conferences hopefully in Belgium, Boston, Orlando (no not that one), Norway, Atlanta, UK etc.  However it’s the beginning of the year and I’ve been told no-one contacts me because they think I’m flat out busy – just to be clear, I’m never too busy to take on work 🙂

So where does that leave me?

Waiting

We’re in a transitional stage with Verse which is yet to appear outside of a limited beta in the cloud and is at least a  year away from on premises.  What that will change is still to be seen and I’ll wait and see and decide where I land once I understand more of what it delivers both in the cloud and on premises and the architecture behind it.  Other IBM products continue to add incremental features but nothing that would cause a seismic shift in my personal development strategy.

Teaching & Managing Supporting Technologies

The underlying technologies that these systems are dependent on are where many companies have gaps.  Nothing is as important as well structured and reliable LDAP.  LDAP directories are used for everything from authentication to data population , access rights and SSO.  One of the things I want to focus on this year is giving customers a better grasp of LDAP and how to build and maintain the best system they can.  Whether you are on premises or cloud, having a good directory is key to everything else you try to deploy.

DB2 and HADR.  Many IBM products require a Database server and all of them pretty much support Db2, where SQL and Oracle are supported and used there is usually an in house database server team.  However, many customers who come from a Domino background have very little DB2 experience because it’s never been needed and often what was the Domino team have to manage it.  DB2 databases need maintenance in the same way Domino databases need them. The server may keep running but your performance is going to take a hit.  I want to work this year on ensuring those customers who need DB2 systems have the right architecture and training to support it.  Basically what I’ve done for years with Domino.  You wouldn’t deploy Mail without understanding how to run a Domino server, and you shouldn’t deploy Connections without understanding how to run a DB2 server.

WebSphere is now pretty much aligned across products on 8.5x and it’s actually a fairly simple product to understand and manage. It’s just nothing like Domino.  There are plenty of WebSphere courses out there but most of them cover 10% of what you need to work with Connections and Sametime (maybe 25% of Portal) and the rest is irrelevant to your day to day work.  Along with doing lots of WebSphere only projects in the past 18 months I’ve also started doing WAS infrastructure design and workshop training for teams wanting to get up to speed with managing a  WAS environment.  I do the training via remote screen / web conference and it seems to work well as it has the advantage of me being able to use the customers own environment to train against.  I’ll be continuing to work with WebSphere architecture specifically related to Connections and Sametime but also standalone.

Connections101

I’ve fallen behind on Connections101 since losing my fellow editor Paul but I have content now written for building Connections 5 on a Linux platform.  Every time I think i’m done I decide to add a new piece like how to upgrade or add IBM Docs,  but I’m going to go ahead and publish what I have in hand and add to it once the site is live.  I’m also considering a Connections101 on deploying on iSeries. I just need to get my hands on an iSeries again (it’s been a few years since I owned one).

Are You Ready For Cloud?

With all the talk of Cloud and hybrid I believe many customers are at the stage of wondering if they should be moving and if they can move.  I have no incentive to recommend or not recommend someone move but I do understand that what salesmen often don’t tell you  or (to be fair) understand are the limitations of your existing business systems.

I am considering offering a provider agnostic cloud assessment to help you understand what your own technical barriers to cloud may be and whether a hybrid solution will ever be an option for you.   If I am able to review systems and highlight what could move, what could possibly move if it’s changed and what can never move – I’m hoping it will help customers clear out the noise and be able to make a good strategic decision.   I’d basically like to help people understand if a cloud deployment is a viable option for them now or in the future.

Domino 

I’m still continuing to work with Domino and now most of my work is around healthchecks, consolidation, clustering, security and performance.  It’s encouraging to see most customers upgrading Domino to newer versions, I see fewer and fewer EOL (v6, v7) versions out there and it’s still my favourite product to work with.  I’m always delighted to get a new Domino project.

Sametime / Connections Chat

I’m doing a lot of work deploying the A/V elements of Sametime and designing global deployments.  Once more it’s important that when the install is complete, the in house team are able to understand and manage the environment. Especially with the media elements in Sametime which are so dependent on each other and on their interconnectivity.

Summary

So if you’re interested in deploying anything WebSphere related, in DB2, in building and managing LDAP, in Single Sign On across multiple different systems, in workshop training or in understanding if and when you might consider a hybrid cloud strategy – that’s what I’m hoping to be working on and talking about this year.  I foresee another shift towards the end of 2015 (or sooner if no-one is interested in those things :-))

What do you think?

 

02.01.15
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IBM Connected Pt 2 of 3 – The Message

WARNING: This blog post uses the terms “Connect” “ConnectED” and “Lotusphere” interchangeably.  I suggest you do your own internal translation as you read.

So Connected is over and the sessions are done.  I would say I found it one of the best in years.  Certainly the content of the OGS and many of the other IBM sessions started to form a sensible strategy that I think customers can benefit from and for the first time in many many years I came away genuinely excited about the potential for the technology and the degree of innovation taking place.  Vague enough for you?  I’m sorry, I’ll get into detail in a little bit.

There was a lot of negative emotion understandably about this being the last Orlando conference (not officially but c’mon) but that aside it’s nice to hear IBM dial back on the CLOUD CLOUD and instead talk more about hybrid and mixed on-premises designs because I honestly believe that is the direction the majority of companies are heading.

So leaving aside the incremental improvements (TLS 1.2, critical view indexing, whiteboarding in mobile, video on smartphone, file transfer via mobile) and trying to put my thoughts into some kind of order let’s start with…

Verse

IBM’s new mail client seeks to innovate and re-imagine how we work with mail. I’m an engineer so when I use those words I don’t use them as marketing speak but in their real sense. The good news is that IBM are really on the right track here, focusing on design and using working “type” personas such as “the searcher”, “the on the go worker”, and “the assistant” to create ways to customise and interact.

The even better news is that there will continue to be a NSF database and therefore a Domino server underneath the hood.  Right now Verse is going to be cloud-only but we are promised an on-premises solution in the 2nd half of 2015.  Obviously one of the most powerful aspects of Verse utilises analytics and links to Watson allowing the client to make decisions for you and present the best and most important information to you all the time based on your previous behaviour and content.  I’m fairly sure we aren’t getting Watson on premises so it will be interesting how the integration will work but I can wait to see that.

In the meantime that NSF architecture extends your client choices from Notes, iNotes and Traveler to Verse, Notes, iNotes and Traveler and reassures existing customers they are on the right path.

There is a great website on Verse with demos of how it works and an explanation of the personas I highly recommend you read and sign up for the beta.

From my perspective this is by some way the most exciting direction in enterprise mail from any provider in as long as I can remember.  IBM are talking heavily about a freemium license and driving everyone to the cloud but I file that under ‘marketing wishful thinking’ and wait and see.  Right now my concern is the technology and that looks right.

Connections Next

Connections continues to be central to IBM’s social strategy, with v5 CR2  due out any day now and Connections Next due this year.  IBM continues to add new features and invest in the desktop and mobile clients.  It’s important to remember that things branded as “Connections” are often an interface to another product via Connections. For example Connections Content Manager adds Filenet integration, Connections Mail adds Domino or Exchange integration, Connections Chat adds Sametime integration, etc.  In 2015 we are told to expect more user customisation of Connections, such as the ability to create and synchronise folders and create, name and secure chat threads.

It’s interesting to see the investment in design carrying through to the new Connections next interface which has removed the emphasis on moving between applications like “Wikis” , “Blogs” and “Activities” and replaced this with a more cohesive experience around a single homepage showing what is most important to you (what you are working on, and what those you follow / network with are doing).  I wish I had photos of this and apologies that I don’t, I took some but was too far away from the stage for them to be any good.  We have said for some time that the “apps” menus make Connections seem too fragmented and it appears IBM are listening.

Once more, on-premises will be at least 6 months behind cloud as new features arrive but I’ve decided they can work out the bugs in the cloud before we install on premises 🙂

Mobile

I always enjoy hearing from the IBM Mobile team who in the past few years have been very open to feedback and suggestions from customers and business partners. One of the things that has come up time and again is the need for a single mobile client to handle mail, connections, chat, etc, instead of the individual clients we currently have and it looks like they have listened and produced that in the upcoming Verse client (initially iOS but then Android).  I’m sure it’s going to be cloud only initially but hope to see it support on premises when that becomes available towards the end of 2015.

So where does that leave customers?  If you are running Domino, Notes, Connections, Sametime (renamed as Connections Chat — euch) and are on-premises then you’re in a good place.  I think the path for most companies will end up being entirely on-premises or a cloud / on-premise hybrid with some commodity services in the cloud and business applications on premises.  At least as far as I can see.

What do I do next ? Well that’s for the next blog…

01.20.15
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A Conference Kind Of Year (Ch-ch-ch-changes)

As I come up for air having completed my presentations for ConnectED 2015, starting this weekend in Orlando, I am in a reflective mood.  I have 3 presentations this year (plus two halves) and I’m really excited about the content.  In fact I’m really excited about what I’ve been working on recently and I already have travel plans to be at (and hope to present at) Engage in Gent, Social Connections in Boston and MWLUG in Atlanta in March, April and August respectively.  This is the year of the conference..

I’m also delighted that many of my friends who can’t make ConnectED are still coming into town to hang out and visit. It’s going to be a very new and different kind of conference. I expect to go back 20 years to the days of quietly wandering the corridors unnoticed and going home to my rented house in the evenings and that’s OK – just so long as those of you who are going enjoy my presentations and say hi

BP201 Creating Your Own Connections Confection – Getting The Flavour Right
Swan, Mockingbird 1-2 Tuesday 5pm.
This is the session where I attempt to explain how to build your Connections environment and take into consideration all the additional products you can bolt on such as Forms Experience Builder, IBM Docs. What features do they give you and how do they affect your design.

BP206 Connections Directory Integration:  A Tour Through Best Practices for Directory and Security Integration With IBM Connections (with Terri Warren from IBM)
Swan Mockingbird 1-2 Monday at 3.45pm
This is a highly technical session looking at the structure and behaviour of directory services for IBM Connections.  How does LDAP behave, how do the Connections applications use the directory and what are the biggest traps people fall into.

BTE201 How to LDAP – Working With External Users in IBM Connections
Dolphin S Hemisphere 2 Monday at 1pm
Adding external users into your Connections environment was a new feature with Connections 5. In this session I’ll take you through the options for configuring external user access and what is the external user experience.  Includes live demos ! (oh yes.. i’m not scared)

Then there are the sessions I’m organising or “guesting” in.

Nerd101 Spark Ideas – What Are Your Inspirations?
Swan 3-4 Tuesday 2.30pm
If you have never been before then Sparks are 7 or 8 people talking for 6 mins on a topic of their choice, this year our theme is what or who has inspired you and we have great new speakers bravely talking about fear, challenging themselves, and what inspires them every day.

MAS101 #UserBlast2015
Swan 7 -10 Sunday 5pm
Let’s face it, this is Mat Newman’s show:-)

My first visit to Orlando was in 1989 – the year Tim and I got engaged and we went using timeshare certificates given by our parents.  In 1990 we went back for our first ever stay at a proper grown up hotel for our honeymoon (they Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress).  In 1991 we went for the last time, we were getting ready to be grown ups, get on that career path and start a family.  We bought a Magic Kingdom “brick” as a memory of our last trip (we expected) for 20 years (until our kids grew up).  Well life doesn’t do what you expect and in 1996 I was working with Lotus Notes for another company, Tim had a job he hated and we hadn’t started a family – we came back to Orlando to Lotusphere.  I remember sitting in our room at the Port Orleans trying to work out how to cram in sessions to as short of time as possible so we’d have a chance to go to a park.  I remember walking around and knowing nobody and nobody knowing me, just Tim and I isolated and looking in from the outside.  I remember sitting three exams in a row in an attempt to get my certification and finish early so I could – again – go to the park. My first exam scored 98%, 2nd 86% and third 77% – just passing.

Later than summer we both quit our jobs having no idea what we were going to do and started The Turtle Partnership with our friend and colleague Mike Smith.  We’ve been to Orlando every January since.  It’s time to say goodbye properly.

09.03.14
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The IBM Champion – Dilemma

It’s IBM Champion nomination time once more.  I’ve been extremely appreciative of being made a Champion in both 2013 and 2014 (since the program for Collaboration Services started) but each year it becomes a very stressful experience (not quite on a par with wondering if I’ll get to present in January but close).

The process works by someone nominating you using this URL  on Greenhouse.  Existing Champions reset each year so having been one before is no guarantee you will be one again.  Why the dilemma? Well each year you can nominate yourself because – hey – who knows better what stuff you do than you ? The problem is where that process meets my own feelings about being a Champion, basically that if I did anything worth being a Champion people will nominate me and if I didn’t they won’t.

Nominating myself isn’t something I would feel comfortable doing so I wait and see if anyone out there considers me worth nominating.

So what’s the point of this post?

Last year a few friends who I thought would certainly be “Championed” were not nominated by anyone – not themselves and shamefully not me.  I had assumed that other’s would do it and they, like me, assumed if they added any significant community value then someone would nominate them.  But that’s not how this works and many many people (rightfully) nominate themselves.   So this post isn’t to ask you to nominate me, it’s not to give you a list of things I’m proud of doing or that I hope have added to the community in some way.  It’s to ask you to consider nominating anyone you think should be a champion, even if you don’t know much more about them than you’ve seen them present or read their blog or they’ve helped you out personally when they didn’t have to.  If they made a difference to you, go ahead and nominate them. The form itself is a bit overwhelming although you need only fill in a small amount and the nominee then gets asked to complete any “additional information” they think the committee should know.

And.. (my fingernails are curling back with embarrassment whilst typing this) but if you genuinely feel I added value to the you or the community this year then I would of course appreciate a nomination.  

08.18.14
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Champion Gift Finding A Good Home

Thanks to IBM my gifts for being an  IBM Champion have arrived.  This year we were given an amount to spend in the online store on various items like jackets and shirts and I chose to buy many of these hot and cold drinks containers which I can donate to charity.  As well as keeping a set myself 🙂  They are very nicely made.

 

IMG_3889

 

 

05.27.14
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The Curse Of The Maltese Falcon

All Tim wants for his birthday is a copy of the Maltese Falcon on ebook. Without DRM.  For a book published in 1929 and famous worldwide you’d think that was possible.  Every summer he re-reads all the Raymond Chandler books and most of Dashiell Hammett (who wrote Falcon) and since we’re travelling most of this summer he wanted an ebook copy.

This isn’t the first book this has happened with – getting non DRM copies of ebooks or even copies of books in digital form isn’t as easy as you might think.  The surfeit of books offered for sale on Amazon or iBookstore is tiny compared to the history of book writing , we just get lulled into thinking EVERYTHING is available when that’s absolutely untrue.  Despite having a small house and not much space I’ve hung onto a copy of every book I’d regret not being able to read again, as well as buying as many as I can on ebook.

So what’s the problem?  Amazon, where I usually buy ebooks (only because the DRM is so easy to remove) doesn’t sell it. Barnes and Noble does and you can remove DRM from those too but I have to create a fake american identity to do that and I’m not convinced the quality of the book they are selling is better than many of the free or cheap ones out there.  Those free or cheap books are scanned and OCR’d and the quality goes from “OK, if I ignore the typos” to “unreadable”.  So far every public version of The Maltese Falcon we’ve tried has been unreadable with the additional bonus of missing chapters.  The iBookstore sells a Dashiell Hammett collection that includes The Maltese Falcon that I own but I read that on my iPad, the DRM in place.  Nothing removes the iBooks FairPlay DRM – a few years ago a hacker called Brahms brought out a tool called Requiem that did remove all DRM from iBooks and it was disabled by the next update of iTunes and Brahms then “retired” his code (I assume this means Apple had her / him killed but what do I know).  There are tools today that remove DRM from Apple media content but not books.

Why is this bothering me so much? Well the idea that today the world of “books” for the generations behind me has shrunk down to those available as ebook. I still love to browse a bookshop whenever I can find one but I’m also usually the youngest person there. Our choice, range and ownership has gone out of the window.  Amazon have no interest in building a large publicly available all encompassing library of books that might have a small audience.  They have an interest in selling high volume / high profit.  The most recent fight between Amazon and Hachette where Hachette books (including those by Michael Connolly and “Robert Galbraith” were removed from sale with no explanation) gives all of us reason to worry.

So is there another way? A way to have DRM free ebooks.  I realise greedy and backward thinking publishers hold much of the blame but my access to books is in danger and it’s time for publishers to realise they are strangling their own market, for resellers to realise that DRM isn’t protecting sales and for the rest of us to start doing I don’t know what…..  I had hoped that Apple would negotiate with publishers to go DRM free but clearly writers are more powerful than musicians and the argument that worked for music isn’t going to work here.  It also is more than apparent by the closing of bookshops that they haven’t learnt the lessons of the music industry.  The bookshops are your storefronts to the online purchase – I connect to your wireless in the store, download a book and the store gets a % of sales. Seems easy to me.

If there’s some good news out there for the future of books, bookstores and ebooks I’d love to hear it…

 

05.14.14
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My Shameful Secret (well one of them)

It’s sad but true, I have reached well into my 5th decade (no! surely not.. you’re right, I don’t look it) and have never owned a bike or even learnt to ride one.  For the past 4 years I’ve owned a recumbent exercise bike and cycle on that 6 – 10 miles a day but I’ve always wanted to ride a bike.  Partly because we live less than 1/4 mile from one of the most beautiful parks in London – Bushy Park and partly because when I met Tim he was an avid cycler who raced and cycled 40 miles a day.  He stopped because I didn’t know how and despite trying occasionally over the years we discovered I didn’t have much sense of balance but more importantly i’m short.  Not petite, just short.  That means my legs are short, my torso is short, my arms are an OK length which is surprisingly of little use in life.  Basically finding a bike I could get on and then stop without falling off has proven difficult.

Our last attempt about 10 years ago where I used his old bike went spectacularly wrong and it’s taken me this long to get up the nerve to try again, or I’m finally at the age where I simply don’t care about looking stupid.  So some friends on Facebook very kindly gave me advice, the crux of which boiled down to “get to a bike shop”.  Well there’s a great bike shop 100m from our house called Burts Cycles, it’s been there for over 100 years (60 years in the same family) and Tim remembered it from when he was very little.  Sadly not fondly.  He can’t remember why but for some reason he never wanted to go there again. So I found another bike shop about a mile away and off we went this morning.

I won’t mention them by name here.  They were awful.  I had wondered about getting a folding bike because from what I’d seen the stepover was nice and low and initially at least we only wanted it for cycling a few miles in the park.  The guy dismissed that as worthless (folding bikes are no good apparently) and then proceeded to try and push me to buy a “Giant” bike that was clearly no good for me (but great for him at 600 quid).  I struggled getting on and off and as I tried to explain to him my problem he kept saying “well you won’t get anything smaller you’ll just have to practice”.  Suitably chastised, embarrassed and deciding that bike riding really wasn’t for me we left.

On the way home we passed Burts Cycles and I asked Tim to stop.  This is a wonderful bike shop.  I explained my shortness problem (you know, in case he couldn’t spot that) and he showed me specialist frame builders who build for a smaller frame, then gave me a 75 quid 2nd hand fold up bike to try getting on and off and suggested I walk it round the corner to the car park and try it out.  That was great – I could get on and off it easily and even managed to cycle a bit and stop without crashing.  We came back to the shop all excited and he then directed me at another bike that was on special offer with a similar low step over but new and even had a basket (what! don’t look at me like that, I want a basket).  Again I tried it out and loved it so we bought this beauty.. my very first bike.

Gab's Bike

 

Of course we then realised Tim would need one too and once more Burts Bikes were fantastic – when Tim pointed at a bike he liked the guy said “yes that’s nice but you don’t need to spend anywhere near that much if you’re just cycling casually, this one is half the price”.  Again a quick test run and we both ended up walking home with shiny new bikes.

Tim's Bike

 

Of course we now have to go back and collect the car….

05.12.14
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How I Wrangled Control Back From My Browser

I’ll admit it, I’m a privacy freak.  I limit what information I share publicly, I never give my actual date of birth, mother’s name, or correct answer to any question.  I have dummy mail accounts set up for when sites want me to register and I VPN if I’m anywhere but at home.  I think it’s important to be aware of what’s happening when you’re working in a browser, what happens when you leave tabs open and the degree to which you can and are tracked.  For me the convenience of letting a company know more about me in return for them customising my experience is an insanely unequal exchange.   I also know a lot more now about how Google etc track and use information (thanks to my brother in law Rob for his expertise).

But then again I also refuse to have loyalty cards.  Taking some degree of control back from your browser activity is not only responsible it’s empowering and healthy 🙂

Like notes.ini settings, more is not always better so I’ve gradually built up a handful of extensions that give me more control over my browsing and recently added a couple more that have the added benefit of being fascinating to watch and mostly free.

Toolsbar with Extensions

Extensions

1Password stores my passwords for multiple sites so I never have to reenter them.  I used to use this a lot but much less so since I switched to using password patterns which I change every 4 months.  I have 3 patterns at a time one for “I don’t care if someone gets at this” , one for “this has information on it i’d like to keep secure but nothing financial” (like my IBM registration), one for sites which hold payment information.  Each site has a unique password constructed from a pattern eg “first two letters of site in caps plus the number 1111 plus the letter X in caps” but not that 🙂

Evernote web clipper isn’t about security or privacy but it allows me to snap any browser page into Evernote.  I store all my reference documents personal and business (some encrypted) in Evernote and sync it to my iPad.  It also recognises when I snip a recipe and stores that both in itself and in its companion free iPad app called recipes.

AdBlock blocks ads.  There are sites that simply are unreadable and do not render in Safari unless all the ads are blocked and then they look normal.

AVG Do Not Track prevents sites I visit tracking me and sending information back to social networks and advertisers.  I have the option of allowing tracking but I find leaving this on allows me to clearly see what’s being attempted by sites I visit.

ClicktoPlugin for Safari prevents plugins from loading automatically on any site unless I then click to run them.  Even better it replaces media including flash with HTML5.  Whenever Safari was sucking CPU it was always down to some flash running somewhere, installing this has completely fixed that problem.

My two newest plugins are DuckDuckGo and Disconnect.Me.  DuckDuckGo is a search replacement that honours privacy.  It conducts a simultaneous search of Google and Bing if you want but your searches aren’t filtered (“customised”) by your assumed preferences from your search history.  Read more about it here http://dontbubble.us and here http://donttrack.us . Nothing is saved or tracked.

Disconnect.me is theoretically similar to Do Not Track but much more granular and is showing me more information about what a site is doing.  I’m easy to disappear down the rabbit hole here but take a look at this report from visiting the Facebook homepage

Disconntect.me on Facebook

So we have (confusingly green means blocked) – 4 advertising requests, 3 analytics requests and 215 content requests.  What Disconnect.me does is restrict content that doesn’t come directly from the site and page you visited.  They recommend you do not block content unless you’re 100% sure as it may affect site rendering.  At the bottom you can see they claim to save significant time and bandwidth in page loading too.  I don’t have any issues with Bandwidth myself and it’s not something I’m that worried about so I honestly haven’t tested if that’s true.  For each section you can expand and see what has been blocked and choose to whitelist sites.

My favourite feature is the visualize page button which gives me this rendering of sites requesting access and which ones are blocked.  I can mouse over any icon, see the site and whitelist / blacklist it.

So that’s it.  I can’t think of anything I’m missing (that frustrates me and i’d like to take control of) but I’m open to suggestions..

Visualisation of Site Requests