There are choices when it comes to search engines. Google search maybe the first thing that pop-out in your head. It’s okay but let me tell you something. For several weeks, I’ve switched my search engines on my iPhone, iPad and Mac to DuckDuckGo.

DuckDuckGo is listed as search engines in Safari along with Yahoo and Bing besides Google. Even the result page isn’t as intuitive as Google when it comes to search for news, DuckDuckGo’s result is pretty relevant and reliable.

There’s nothing wrong using Google as default search engine. I think we already know that Google track your search and click through your search. It’s their business. Google collect your data and monetize it, it’s no secret anymore. If you fine with it then you don’t need to finish reading this post.

DuckDuckGo with its premises “The search engine that doesn’t track you” is just enough reason for me to switch over Google. Overmore you can optimize your search using prefix bang operators.

If you need to search for Macbook Pro Retina on Amazon, you can use bang !a macbook pro retina at DuckDuckGo’s search bar and you’ll sent directly to Amazon search result web page instead of DuckDuckGo’s result page. DuckDuckGo has thousands bang operators you can use and even you can submit your own bang to search directly on you site. Some of the popular bang you can use:

• !w - Wikipedia
• !imdb - IMDB
• !pin - Pinterest
• !wa - WolframAlpha
• !imgur - Imgur

If you’re not satisfied with the result, you can use !g bang to do Google search, the bonus is it doesn’t track you since you’re using encrypted.google.com for this search. There are several bang for another types Google Search, such as images, videos, calendar, etc too.

DuckDuckGo’s website traffic has increased up to 600% for the last two years according the CEO, Gabe Weinberg on an interview with CNBC. As pointed out by 9to5Mac, there are variety factors for the rise of DuckDuckGo, NSA’s surveillance program and Apple listed them as search engine on iOS 8 and Safari 7.1 on Mac. I wonder how much they’ll growth if someday Apple make them as the default search engine replacing Google on iOS and Mac.

If you wondering how DuckDuckGo make money from its services, John Paul Wiltow write on Fast Company:

Instead of profiting from heaps of user data, DuckDuckGo has opted for a simpler business model: Old-school search ads that pair the keywords in people’s queries with relevant ads placed by the highest bidder. Weinberg says the company also makes money from affiliate links to sites like Amazon and eBay.

There’s interesting data on John’s article, apparently 40% U.S adults don’t want the search engines to track what they search, based on Pew Research Center’s survey. John also pointed out that even it doesn’t monetize your click through web search, DuckDuckGo still make revenue which allow the company to hire a new people and mantain its sustainability.

So, let me courage you to switch to DuckDuckGo for a week first.

iDownloadblog:

Two weeks ago, the same 84 percent figure was captured by Apple, indicating that the number of users who have upgraded from previous iOS editions to iOS 8, or bought a new device with iOS 8 pre-installed, wasn’t enough to move the needle.

More interesting than that, however, is the latest data point by analysts Mixpanel which basically tells us that the recently-released iOS 8.4 software update now accounts for 40 percent of all iOS usage, just one week after release.

One can guarantee you when using an iOS devices is you can update to the latest version of iOS in day one after it’s released.

While DuckDuckGo is definitely one of the more private search engines around, bangs really have me loving it. I think once you give DuckDuckGo a shot (if you’re not already), you’ll enjoy them, too.

I have switched my search engine on my Mac and iOS Devices to DuckDuckGo. If you haven’t yet, you should.

Check this out.

I don’t think this thing is possible till I find it on Reddit today.

I’ve tried many blogging platform before and I’ve impressed with static site generators. I’ve tried Octopress before finally end up using Jekyll to serve this blog. All you have to do is write and let the command build the site. Of course there’s a learning curve before because when you start blogging using static site generators, you need to be friend with command line.

There’s plenty of text editors you can use to write on Mac or Windows or any operating system platform you use. But there isn’t one like Sublime Text. Sublime Text is versatile crossed platform text based on Python API. It support various syntax of programming languanges and overmore you can expand its functionality to do other task with plugins.

$70 is the investement you need to own Sublime Text even you can use it free. Trust me it’s worth the money. Talk about blogging with Jekyll, I barely left Sublime Text when writing a new post. From creating markdown file until published it in my hosting site, I only need Sublime Text.

I use Sublime-Jekyll plugins to create new posts, new drafts and move my drafts queue into my post folder. It’s handy when you can create a new post just with keyboard shortcut Command+K and Command+P. To build Jekyll site, you need to run jekyll serve in your terminal but the best things is you can build your Jekyll site inside Sublime Text. I found a gist in Github that can run jekyll build to build your site and output the result to the console.

The last thing to complete the workflow is SFTP plugins. I use it to upload the entire site to my hosting site. You need to configure the path and the host address before.

With this workflow, Sublime Text eliminates around 3 apps I’ve used to blog. I don’t need Filezilla to upload to my site, I don’t need another text editor cause you can customize Sublime Text to suitable to your liking. Sublime Text is once again a versatile text editor. You can use it many ways and even as a task manager to nailed it all.

Brent Simmons:

Write the apps you want to write in your free time and out of love for the platform and for those specific apps. Take risks. Make those apps interesting and different. Don’t play it safe. If you’re not expecting money, you have nothing to lose.

If you’re planning to pursue indie apps development, you’ve to read this.

Today, Apple release OS X 10.10.4 along with the launch of Apple Music. This release include networking fixes since Apple replace dicoveryd with the old mDNSResponder. Discoveryd caused some trouble since Yosemite is released such as memory leak, CPU hogging and wifi dropping. Go update.

Meanwhile from Daring Fireball:

At WWDC, word on the street was that Apple closed over 300 radars with this move. Not dupes — 300 discrete radars.

The site looks nice and San Francisco is the new Apple’s identity.

iPhone camera and microscope lenses is sure not an apple to apple comparison but when you trap in the middle of sub-Saharan Africa, you can use you iPhone to help diagnose people with Loa-loa, an eyeworm which causes river blindness.