Advisorator Free: Try this private search engine
Tip of the moment: Try this private search engine
Brave is expanding beyond its privacy-focused web browser with a new search engine that, in contrast to Google, doesn’t track your searches in any way. You can give it a try at search.brave.com. You’ll see instructions to set it as the default after your first search.
While the private search concept is hardly new, the interesting thing about Brave is that it’s building its own index of the web. By comparison, DuckDuckGo relies largely on Microsoft’s Bing for its search results, and Startpage gets results from Google through a unique licensing arrangement. Since my primary complaint with DuckDuckGo has been the odd blind spots in its results, it’s exciting to try a private search alternative with an entirely different index.
So far, I’m digging it. Brave gets a lot of little details right, like including articles date in its results and displaying a news carousel for topical searches. While it’s not without blind spots of its own, it’s also self-aware about those shortcomings: Every results page has a link to the same search on Google halfway down the page, and just like in DuckDuckGo, you can type !g in your search to load a Google search instantly.
The search engine is ad-free for now, but Brave says it’ll have both paid and ad-supported versions in the future. I hope those work out, because the Brave browser’s current business model of replacing website ads with its own still strikes me as kind of gross.
The latest from PCWorld
My Gmail inbox used to be a total mess.
While I’ve always been diligent about reading my emails, I was also terrible at managing them. The number of emails in my inbox—ostensibly a place to triage incoming messages—was in the thousands and inching ever-higher. The disorder was leading to real-world consequences as I’d lose track of important messages.
So a couple of years ago, I finally resolved to rethink my approach. I came up with a different system for sorting and managing my emails, and to my surprise, setting it up didn’t take that long. I’ve been sticking with it ever since.
Over at PCWorld, I’ve written up five steps to a cleaner inbox, based on an Advisorator newsletter I wrote back in 2019. Check it out if you need help cleaning up your own.
Spend wisely
Apple’s entry-level Mac Mini is back to its usual sale price of $600 on Amazon, with the final price appearing at checkout. This version has 8 GB of RAM, 512 GB of storage, and Apple’s M1 processor, and I’ve been using it all week with no complaints (even if some tweaking was necessary).
Earlier this morning, I sent out the latest full issue of Advisorator to paid subscribers. Here’s what’s inside:
- Nine Mac tweaks I wish that I’d made sooner
- A must-try minimalist text editor
- An app that breathes new life into old Legos
- Even more news, tips, and deals to mull over
Sign up for a free trial, and I’ll pass along the latest issue!
Thanks for reading!
I apologize for the longer-than-usual break between free editions of the newsletter, but we should be back to the usual two-week schedule now. In the meantime, let me know if you have any questions, suggestions, or comments.
Until next time,
Jared