A friend showed me this one – archive dot ph – which enables you to read an article that’s behind a paywall. So for example I saw this headline in Rolling Stone “The Democrats Are Winning The Record Store Battle”, copied the URL, bunged it into that webpage and lo and behold was able to read it.
Of course there is the issue, no pun intended, of supporting print journalism, especially what remains of the music press. (Although RS these days is about much more than just music). I think if I wanted to read large chunks of Rolling Stone every day I’d subscribe, but that’s not the case. Between us Mrs M and I subscribe to a bunch of mags/papers we like to read regularly.
Thanks
When you click on a link in Safari (on Mac OS at any rate) it opens a new window with a complete rendering of the page, sans ads and everything. Most of the time, anyway. You can copy/paste and it stays as long as you don’t click off it.
Having switched to DuckDuckGo, I’m missing that particular wheeze – so I might give this a go, thanks.
@mikethep have you had luck with The Australian? I tried your technique -nada
@junior-wells Nope – they’re on to it.
The Australian opens just fine, for me at least, with the OP link …
Me too – I ran away fast though.
Cool cool cool
When I read the online newspapers, I click on all the links that interest me while holding down the COMMAND key on my Macbook. This automatically opens each article in a new tab so they’re nicely queued up for me to read. (This may well be common knowledge rather than a useful tip.)
I have the centre button of my PC mouse configured to do this.
Right click on the mouse “Open link in new tab” also does this
Ah, but you have to first right click on the mouse (I don’t have a mouse) and then click on “Open link in new tab”. Two clicks! Who has the time to do two clicks? One link, one click, that’s my motto.
2 clicks one finger or one click 2 fingers, hmmm ….
In addition to the link in the OP, there is also this excellent site:
https://paywallreader.com/
which provides a choice of search options, including the one Mousey mentioned, to unlock any page hidden behind an evil, money grabbing paywall.
Personally, I use it a fair bit to access the Daily Telegraph’s annoyingly decent sports pages, thereby playing my own, albeit small, part in the long term goal of bringing right wing media barons to their knees (stands on table, raises fist to the air defiantly).
A simple tweak for smartphone users texting long comments to the Afterword – hold your finger on the space bar and it turns into a cursor, allowing you more easily to navigate through the paragraphs and use that Aunt Edith function.
You may all already know this – I only found out last month.
I have no idea what you are talking about Sal.
And there I was thinking it was just me
That happens to me a lot…
Try CNET for another explanation.
Thanks. Just tried it and it works a treat.
I’m pleased to see the great hacks above.
Some of my favourites are:
switch social media off and read something on paper or actually go out and do something.
avoid Twitter, X, Telegram, and any site or network that seems to have more knobs and cnuts (in every meaning of the term) .
Get a ad-blocker within chrome.
Use gmail, which has a great spam filter. (But check spam file every few weeks in case something you want has slipped in there.)
@Vincent
Damn, you beat me to it!
Despite having seen your tips, I thought I’d post it anyway as an example of how quickly spam accumulates
An ancient one, which is probably known by everyone, but just in case.
To save having to type ‘www.nameof site.com’ into a browser address bar, just type ‘nameofsite’ and hit ‘enter’ while holding the ‘control’ button. It will automatically fill in the missing parts of the URL.
Only works for .com domains unfortunately.
Googling with “site:” or “-site:” to focus on (or, with the minus sign, to discount) certain hits can be handy.
Let’s say, frinstance, that you want to see what people have been saying about the “Mouldy Old Dough” hitmakers in Portugal, as one does. You just type this in the search field:
“Lieutenant Pigeon” site:.pt
Or, conversely, you can use a minus sign to exclude hits from any country or any specific site:
“Richard Thompson” -site:.theafterword.co.uk
HOT TIP: You can skip the “www” part from URLs but make sure you start with the dot after the colon. It won’t work otherwise.
(To save you the trouble, I can tell you that the mighty Pigeons were never big in Lusitania, disappointingly.)
This is not a techy tip or trick – just something I didn’t realise until this week.
When you go to a televised match and you see the cool graphics on the pitch side billboards….they aren’t really there. What is there in real life is basic advertising for the benefit of the local crowd – a bit like the cinema ads for the local curry house. When you look at the screens it’s Gillette, Gartorade, Gallaghers – and that’s just the Gs.
This has been around since Google started, but the search bar can be used as a calculator.
Here’s my favourite which I discovered recently. Voice input on Android works really well. In fact, that’s how I’m writing this. Ha.