This is quickly becoming one of my favorite ways to browse and read online articles. It makes things amazingly easy to read and does it all with one easy click. Here is a little background…

Reading anything on the Internet has become a full-on nightmare. As media outlets attempt to eke out as much advertising revenue as possible, we’re left trying to put blinders on to mask away all the insanity that surrounds the content we’re trying to read.

It’s almost like listening to talk radio, except the commercials play during the program in the background. It’s a pretty awful experience. Our friend to date has been the trusty “Print View” button. Click it and all the junk goes away. I click it all the time and rarely print. It’s really become the “Peace & Quiet” button for many.

Readability is a browser bookmarklet (sort of like a bookmark on steroids). You can install Readability by visiting the Readability setup page.

Occasionally, you’ll want to be sure you are getting fresh DNS information during development or working on servers with hostnames. This has changed in the Leopard version of Mac OS X. The following command will now flush your DNS cache on Mac OS X Leopard:

dscacheutil -flushcache

The HTTP 301 status code is meant for use when you want to redirect a page or URL to its new destination after reorganizing or moving a web site around. This can be on the same domain or an entirely new domain. Here is the W3C definition of the 301 code.

The requested resource has been assigned a new permanent URI and any future references to this resource SHOULD use one of the returned URIs. Clients with link editing capabilities ought to automatically re-link references to the Request-URI to one or more of the new references returned by the server, where possible. This response is cacheable unless indicated otherwise.

The new permanent URI SHOULD be given by the Location field in the response. Unless the request method was HEAD, the entity of the response SHOULD contain a short hypertext note with a hyperlink to the new URI(s).

If the 301 status code is received in response to a request other than GET or HEAD, the user agent MUST NOT automatically redirect the request unless it can be confirmed by the user, since this might change the conditions under which the request was issued.
W3C Hypertext Transfer Protocol

This is particularly useful for search engines like Google, which will carry over page rank to the new page if this status code is seen. If you do not need to indicate permanent displacement, you can accomplish redirection by setting a Location header in PHP. The location header does the actual redirection to the new location, and can be used by itself.

If you set the Location header by itself, PHP automatically sets the status code to HTTP/1.1 302 Found.

Note, if you attempt to send headers after content has been sent, you will get a warning like, “Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by …”. Watch out for empty lines and spaces between PHP open and close tags.

Here is the code to do this in PHP…

<?php
// Permanent redirection
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: http://www.example.com/");
exit();
?>

Just make sure you put these lines in your page before any other content is sent out. The http://www.example.com/ part can be changed to whatever the new address for this resource is.

If you have previously disabled the Mac OS X Spotlight feature and you now find that you would like to turn it on again, following these steps to do so.

1. Launch Terminal and type the following command: sudo nano /etc/hostconfig
2. Find the following entry in the hostconfig file: SPOTLIGHT=-NO-
3. Change SPOTLIGHT=-NO- to SPOTLIGHT=-YES-
4. Save /etc/hostconfig by hitting Control-O and the return key. Next hit Control-X to exit the nano editor.
6. Disable the Spotlight index by typing the following in the Terminal: sudo mdutil -i on /
7. When you reboot, Spotlight will be enabled again.

If you would like to disable the Mac OS X Spotlight feature, follow our guide on How To Completely Disable Mac OS X Spotlight.

One of the primary features of the Mac OS X operating system is their search feature called Spotlight. Many Mac OS X users depend on this great feature but others don’t find it necessary. For those of you who don’t find it necessary, it can improve the performance of your Mac OS X system if you disable it.

To do this, follow these simple steps.

Note that some other Mac OS X features and programs are based on Spotlight’s search abilities, therefore some applications could behave abnormally if you disable Spotlight, particularly in search functions.

Important: These instructions were created based on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. They may work on previous or future versions of OS X but they may not.

1. Launch Terminal and type the following command: sudo nano /etc/hostconfig
2. Find the following entry in the hostconfig file: SPOTLIGHT=-YES-
3. Change SPOTLIGHT=-YES- to SPOTLIGHT=-NO-
4. Save /etc/hostconfig by hitting Control-O and the return key. Next hit Control-X to exit the nano editor.
5. Disable the Spotlight index by typing the following in the Terminal:
   sudo mdutil -i off /
6. To erase the current Spotlight index, type: sudo mdutil -E /
7. When you reboot, Spotlight will be completely disabled.

If you find a need for Spotlight later, follow our guide on How To Re-enable Mac OS X Spotlight.

If you are planning to upgrade to a new Apple iPhone 3G anytime soon, you are probably thinking, “what am I going to do with my first generation iPhone?” We’ll whether you give it to a friend or family member or decide to sell it on ebay, you are going to need to reset the content and settings to their defaults so the new user can make it their own.

This is a simple task (like most things on the iPhone). Just follow these steps:

1. Make sure you sync your iPhone one last time so you have all of your content backed up to your computer.

2. On the iPhone, go to the Settings -> General -> Reset menu.

3. You’ll see the option to “Erase All Content and Settings”, select this option and confirm. This will do exactly what it says and remove all of the content (music, movies, pics, email, sms, etc) from your iPhone and set all of the settings back to their defaults.

A local DNS host file can be very useful when working in a development environment. You can have a development environment and a production environment and simply point the host to the development environment on your machine while all of the other users are directed to the production environment. This allows you to work on the development environment and fully test prior to pushing the changes to the live production environment.

This is a fairly common practice but if you’ve never done it on Mac OS X, then you probably need a hint as to how to do this.

The Hard Way

Step 1: Open up a Terminal windows (this is in your Applications/Utilites folder by default)

Step 2: Enter the following command to open the local host file. (Note: The sudo command requires an admin password to allow you to open this file as root.)

$ sudo vi /etc/hosts

Step 3: Now you can edit the host file. To add a new host entry, on it’s own line enter it in the format:

IP Address Host
0.0.0.0 example.domain.com

Step 4: Save the changes to your host file by pressing SHIFT + Z twice in vi.

As soon as you save this file the changes you made will take effect. To check the changes, you can ping the host you entered to see if it returns the correct address or just go to that host in a browser and see if your development environment opens instead of the production.

If you are new to Mac OS X, you may need to know how to edit your PATH. The good news is that this is an easy task on Mac OS X.

The recommended way is by editing your .bash_profile file. This file is read and the commands in it executed by Bash every time you log in to the system. The best part is that this file is specific to your user so you won’t affect other users on the same system by changing it.

Step 1: Open up a Terminal window (this is in your Applications/Utilites folder by default)

Step 2: Enter the follow command:

open ~/.bash_profile

This will open the .bash_profile file in Text Edit (the default text editor included on your system). The file allows you to customize the environment your user runs in.

Step 3: Add the following line to the end of the file adding whatever additional directory you want in your path:

export PATH="$HOME/.rbenv/bin:$PATH"

That example would add ~/.rbenv to the PATH. The $PATH part is important as it appends the existing PATH to preserve it in the new value.

Step 4: Save the .bash_profile file and Quit (Command + Q) Text Edit.

Step 5: Force the .bash_profile to execute. This loads the values immediately without having to reboot. In your Terminal window, run the following command.

source ~/.bash_profile

That’s it! Now you know how to edit the PATH on your Mac OS X computer system. You can confirm the new path by opening a new Terminal windows and running:

echo $PATH

You should now see the values you want in your PATH.

[Updated 2/10/2012] The instructions now use the .bash_profile method of editing your PATH. This is preferred as it keeps the changes specific to your user. I also updated the instructions to use Text Edit instead of vim so it is easier for a beginner.