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Sindre Sorhus is an open source developer who makes cool Mac apps and utilities. I like using —
Googly Eyes is whimsical utility with an unintentional (?) benefit.
Yes, it’s a fun way to guide your (and my Mum’s) eyes to the mouse pointer when it’s hard to see, but those always-watching eyes can also remind us why to consider de-Googlifying our lives.
Perhaps those googly eye movements following your mouse will annoy you.
Excellent!
They’re now a visual reminder of what you’re subjecting yourself to every time you use a Google product.
I find Googly Eyes occasionally useful and always cute (especially the way they blink when I click the mouse!) but no way do I want their namesake (Google) watching my every move. Nor do I want continuing access to my emails subject to the whims of a company that has a history of shutting people down with no recourse.
I still occasionally use Google Drive for collaborating with others, but that’s about it. No more Gmail, and certainly no more invasive Google search engine.
If you’re after a more respectful email provider with some of the features of the Google Suite (and don’t mind paying for it), Fastmail is worth a look. I’ve been with them for years with zero complaints. These days I’m using Duck Duck Go as my search engine, though Kagi looks great as a privacy-centred, paid option.
Customer service matters, privacy matters, and free can be more expensive than paid alternatives. Not so with Sindre Sorhus’ free (or paid) utilities, I’m happy to say! Check out Sindre’s other apps—he’s quite prolific.
Supercharge, his Mac Swiss army knife of utilities, has just been updated with the ability to show a global view of keyboard shortcuts across your Mac. It’s available for a one-off price and also through Setapp. Using my Setapp referral link (plus the code ELLANE) will get you a 30-day free trial for Supercharge and more than 200 other Mac apps, and give me a small commission.
My sister texted me recently to ask me to send her a recipe. I was staying at her place while she was interstate, and she wanted me to get the recipe box down and send a photo of the pumpkin pie card.
Being out at the time I couldn’t access the box, but was still able to send her the recipe before arriving home (nice feeling, that)!
You see, two years previously I had typed her decades-old recipe collection into plain text files (currently living in my Obsidian vault), complete with a photo of each well used, handwritten card. I knew this was one of those irreplaceable things both she and her family would be sad (understatement) to lose, so the time spent on this project felt more than worth it.
That precious collection of family favourites is now in a format that can be accessed from any device, backed up onto three cloud servers, and is in a format (plain text!) that could have been read on the very first computer and will still be readable by any future technology.
That’s one definition of freedom! And here’s another (a 1-minute poem by yours truly).
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