Ghostery is a browser plugin available for Safari, Chrome, Firefox and Opera and it dramatically speeds up the web. Ok, that’s not the goal of Ghostery, but it’s a major benefit. Ghostery blocks calls to web servers that it knows are ad or tracking networks. Some would call it an ad-blocker. I call it a drain unclogger. It prevents Web pages from making additional calls out to known bad actors. It prevents a Web site from hijacking your own browser to track you.

Toektaware (makers of iThoughts) have posted a few previews potential iOS 9 features and I have to say, I’m pretty excited for this stuff. Reminders Integration Spotlight Integration Multitasking

From The Nerdist: Due out exclusively from Amazon on November 17th, The Collected Works of Hayao Miyazaki contains each of the maestro’s eleven feature films: Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, Ponyo, and The Wind Rises. I already own all of these on several formats but I will definitely be acquiring this collection.

Basically, Western Digital is still way better than Seagate even with a smaller sample size for WD. Seagate drives have failed me so often that I refuse to buy anything with one of their platter drives in it.

Monoprice sells high-quality alternatives to many of the major manufacturers of geek utility hardware. These hard cases are great for storing all kinds of stuff. They also carry quite a few USB-C cables and connectors now too. I still think their Zinc-alloy Lightning cable is one of the best I’ve owned.

If this story from Techdirt is true (and it looks compelling) then I hope lots of people are going to jail. In other words, Jim Hood and the MPAA were out and out planning a coordinated media attack on Google using the editorial properties that supposedly claim to have editorial independence from the business side. Notice that with the WSJ piece, they flat out admit that the editorial will be based on the ideas that “we” have developed.

From Engadget: We’ve never heard of Inscape before, but as explained in the S-1 Vizio filed today, it’s based on ACR (automatic content recognition) software licensed from a third party, and viewers can opt-out of participating in it while maintaining other connected features. That’s actually fairly common in modern TVs, and others like LG and Samsung have already rolled out features based on the tech to do things like integrate with TV shows, or display ads based on what the TV is showing.

This post by the good doctor is clever. It’s not clever because he does date formatting in JavaScript.1 It’s clever because he does it by calling a second JavaScript library (Moment.js) stored as a snippet from within another snippet. I usually do my date formatting with Python, but he’s right about the shortcoming with Python or Shell centric snippets. They don’t work everywhere. As of today, there’s a JavaScript engine on every computer I use.

On this week’s Nerds on Draft we talk about some of our preferred project management tools and drink a delicious Mono by Stillwater. Of course there’s a lot of jargon and acronyms but we break it down to the basics so that it’s applicable to anyone. After all, pretty much everyone is a project manager for their own life.

Keyboard Maestro is probably the single most helpful application you can put on a Mac. Today, you can get version 7 for $36 or upgrade from a previous version at a 50% discount. Version 7 focuses on two major interface changes. First, building macros is easier than ever with integrated help for each action, more logical controls for highlighting, commenting, and generally controlling steps in a macro. There’s also now auto-complete for variable names, which is a huge time saver.