If you are looking to install the latest free operating system from Apple – Mac OS X Mavericks – on an existing machine but want to start from a clean slate leaving all the space-ahogging files and applications behind, a clean install is what you need, and this post is going to show you how.

We’ve previously showed you how to perform a clean installation of Mac OS X Mountain Lion via bootable USB flash drive. However, the same method will not work for this version. The OS won’t boot from the flash drive upon restart.

In this post, we will give you a walkthrough (expect lots of screenshots) through the entire process of:

1. Creating a bootable OS X Mavericks on USB flash drive, so you can
2. Perform a clean installation on any iMac, or MacBook.

Getting Started

Before we start, here are some of the things you will need:

1. A relatively fast and stable Internet connection as we will be downloading the entire Mac OS X Mavericks (file size: about 5.3GB).
2. If you are installing on a Macbook, make sure it is connected to a power source first.
3. A USB flash drive, empty and format-able, with a storage capacity of at least 8GB.

All good? Let’s roll.

1. Create a bootable Mac OS X Mavericks

Here is an overall idea what we will be doing in the first section of this guide. First we will download a copy of the Mac OS X Mavericks, instead of installing we will transfer the installer (packages and files) to our USB flash drive and make it bootable.

(1.1)
We will first update all available apps. Launch App Store, go to the Updates tab.

(1.2)
Hold down the Option key, click Free Upgrade to start the OS X Mavericks download.

Note #1: Login with username and password may be required.

Note #2: Mac OS X Mavericks is 5.29GB. The download may take from 30 minutes to few hours depending on your Internet connection.

You may want to grab yourself a cup of coffee, check out some cool and creative Macbook decals we had previously featured, or go work on something else, and check back when it is done.

(1.3)
Next, plug in your USB flash drive and:

• Open Disk Utility
• Look for your flash drive’s name on the left panel (refer to the screenshot below) and select it
• Go to the Erase tab
• Select “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” for Format
• Hit Erase button

This will only take a few minutes. Close Disk Utility after it is done.

(1.4)
Launch Terminal, paste the following code (Source) inside and hit Enter. This will copy Mavericks’ installation files into your USB flash drive. Password verification will be required.

 sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app --nointeraction 

Note #1: It may seem like Terminal is idle or not responding much after you hit Enter (most of it is like the screenshot below), but it is perfectly normal.

Note #2: The entire process will take approximately 20 – 25 minutes. Grab yourself another coffee, or check out how Apple’s newly launched iPads faired against its competitors.

Here’s how your Terminal should look like when the copying process is done. Quit Terminal but keep your USB flash drive plugged in. We now have a bootable OS X Mavericks in the flash drive.

2. Clean re-installation

In this second half of the guide, we will make use of the flash drive to perform a clean installation.

(2.1)
Restart your Mac, with the flash drive plugged in, and hold down the Option key until you land on a boot menu (refer to the screenshot below). Double click on Install OS X Mavericks.

(2.2)
Next, on the OS X Utilities dialogue screen, select Install OS X. Click Continue.

(2.3)
Follow the next few instructions on the screen. Click Continue to proceed, Agree to the software terms, Select a hard disk, and click Install.

(2.4)
The installation preparation process will now begin and will take approximately 7 – 15 minutes.

Note: During the installation process, you may experience the indicator hanging at “About a second remaining” for few minutes. Do NOT press cancel, just wait it out.

That’s it!

Your Mac will then restart, and will wrap up the installation process in another 30 – 40 minutes. When this is done, your Mac will restart automatically (again), leaving you at the login screen of a fresh copy of Mac OS X Mavericks.

Note: Run App Store to make sure all applications are updated and compatible with the latest operating system.

Recommended Reading: Setting Up And Configuring Your New Mac [Checklist]

Ever thought about removing a part of your past from the Web? Like a photo of a bad hairdo from college, or a cheesy attempt at building your first website (back when geocities was still in), or a groan-inducing comment from a time you didn’t know better? If you said no to all that, good for you, but that doesn’t mean your personal information is safe.

If you find something that you want removed from Google’s search engine, you can request Google to remove it from their search engine results with its URL Remover Tool. Outside of this, you will need to talk to the people who own and maintain the site to get your data removed.

But if you’re only looking to reduce the visibility of your data online (because deleting yourself from the Internet completely is quite impossible), then these 5 tool can help you get started.

Recommended Reading: Do Not Track (DNT): Stop Websites From Tracking You

We have sites to help you find online accounts you have registered in the past that may still carry discernable personal information about yourself. You can’t be too careful while on the Web.

1. Just Delete Me

Just Delete Me is a wide directory of links to websites that you need to register to use. If you have a problem finding the place to initiate removal of your account, that’s what this site does for you – it takes you to the account deactivation/deletion page.

Also available is information on how difficult it is to delete your account from said site: easy, medium, hard, or impossible. Hard here refers to the involvement of customer service while under impossible, you can find suggestions on what you can get deleted e.g. you can’t remove yourself from Youtube without deleting your Google account but you can delete your channel.

2. AccountKiller

AccountKiller is another site that collects direct links to the account termination page of many websites. It categorizes sites with a blacklist and whitelist. A site blacklisted by AccountKiller means that removing your account from a particular site is very hard or near impossible.

AccountKiller also adds useful information to each site they list. More importanlyt, they also give you tips on how to anonymize your account in the event that the service doesn’t allow you to fully remove your account.

3. Spokeo

Spokeo is a US-only aggregator service that collects user data from online and offline sources. The data collected may include home addresses, phone numbers, who you are related to, your marital status and even your personal value/income. Some of you may not be thrilled to have this kind of information so openly available on Spokeo. Fortunately, there’s a way to remove it from the site.

All you have to do is search for yourself on the site and copy the link of your ‘profile’. Then head over to this opt out page and paste the link there with your email address. You’ll receive an email with a link to remove your profile. Run a check to make sure that the profile has truly been removed.

4. Delete Your Account

A lighter version of the first two mentioneds sites is Delete Your Account. This one mostly gives you the steps and links required to remove your account from a particular service. There are also tips on what you should do before deleting your account or what might happen after account deletion.

This site is a very brief one and serves only as reference. If however you need help finding where you may have left your digital footprints online, the next tool can be of help.

5. Knowem

Lost track of all the places you have registered previously? Try Knowem to locate those lost accounts. Knowem is a service that helps you check if your username is already in use in over 550 popular sites including social media sites.

While their service is to help you register and book your username or brand if it is absent from a social network, you can use for a different purpose, to locate your username on sites that you don’t want to use anymore. Removal of the info will have to be done manually though.

Do you Instagram your food and Vine your cat’s antics? The hype of smartphone cameras paired with social media has not died down. A new thing you might see in the scene would be 3D videos. You might be thinking how it’s possible to capture life in 3D with a basic iOS camera – with Seene you can.

Seene is a new app with the ability to capture and create 3D photos. Tilting your iOS device gives you the parallax effect similar to how the iOS 7 homescreen wallpaper works. Let’s see how you can create 3D photos and share it with your friends on Seene.

Recommended Reading: Turn Your iPhone Into A 3D Camera With Poppy

3D Photos On Your iOS Device

First, download and install Seene on to your iOS device. Once installed and opened, the app will take you to the main feed. From there you’ll instantly see how cool Seene really is as you tilt your device to view different angles of a still image.

To take your own 3D image, tap on the bottom right camera button. Now point the camera at something you want to capture in 3D. You’ll see that there are many dots, the more dots, the better the effect. If there are too little, Seene won’t allow you to capture the picture.

Once it can recognize the object, tap on the circle.

A 4-directional object will appear on screen. You’ll have to make all 4 triangles turn green by tilting the device up, down, left, and right around the object. Do this slowly and as smoothly as possible without jerking, otherwise you’ll have to start over.

Once all 4 triangles have turned to green, it’ll automatically process the image and then you can choose to share it on your Seene profile, Facebook or Twitter using the Share link provided.

App Limitations & Conclusion

Seene is a very cool app for fun with smartphone photography. However, there are a few small limitations. For starters, Seene only allows you to capture images using an iOS device that has a dual-core processor.

This means if you have anything under an iPhone 4S, iPad or 5th-gen iPod Touch, the most you can do with this is watch the captured image. You probably can see the effect below as well; mouse over it to see the image swirl around.

Capturing the 3D image takes some getting used to; the trick is to move really slowly and tilting the device at the right angles and directions. But overall, Seene is still a very cool app to try out.

Ghost.org is a newly launched blogging platform, initiated by John O’Nolan, and then developed together with Hannah Wolfe. Ghost started out as a Kickstarter project that successfully raised funding of over $300,000. Many popular brands in tech and blogging fields such WooThemes, and Envato backed the project.

The idea behind Ghost is to make the blogging experience easy and beautiful, and unlike WordPress that has evolved as a CMS for creating any kind of website, Ghost is aimed to be a blogging platform, nothing else.

In this post, we are going to walk you through installing Ghost locally on your computer.

Recommended Reading: A Look Into: Anchor CMS Blogging Platform

Requirement

We need Node.js version 0.10.* (the current stable release) to be able to run Ghost. Node.js installation package is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Download it here, and install it.

If you have installed Node.js before, verify the version with this command in the Terminal: node -v. At the time of the writing, my Node.js installation was outdated, so I need to update it first.

Thanks to a tip by Simon Holmes, updating Node.js is so easy. We run the following set of command lines, then wait for a while for the installation process to complete.

 sudo npm cache clean -f sudo npm install -g n sudo n stable 

Let’s verify the version once again.

As you can see above, Node.js 0.10.21 has been installed, and we are all set to install Ghost.

Recommended Reading: Beginner’s Guide To Node.Js (Server-Side JavaScript)

Installing Ghost

You can download Ghost from the official website or from the Github repo.

We will be using command line and Terminal to install Ghost. Ghost does not come with a step-by-step installation guide like in WordPress or other blogging platforms/CMS that you might have come across. So it might not tougher on those who rarely work with Terminal and command line.

Open Terminal and navigate to the Ghost folder that you have just extracted, for example: cd ~/your/path/to/ghost/folder. And run these two commands:

 npm install --production npm start 

Your Ghost blog should now run.

You can access your Ghost blog in 127.0.0.1:2368 URL within the browser.

Ghost Back-end Admin

Go to 127.0.0.1:2368/ghost. For the initiation, input your name, email, and password. Once that is done, you will be redirected to the back-end administration, where you can write, edit, and publish post. The layout is minimal yet refreshing.

Hit the + New Post button to start creating a new post.

Ghost uses MarkDown. You can head over to our previous post to learn how to write using MarkDown.

Final Thought

Ghost is a new blogging platform with a very active development, and they plan to add a bunch of new features in the next version. At the time of the writing, Ghost is missing several trivial features for a blog. First, you can only assign Tags for the post; there is still no way to manage post by category. The Tag archive however is not yet accessible – you cannot sort posts that are saved under Tags on the front-end. Plus, we cannot schedule post, and comment to the post as well.

Despite all that, I’m looking forward to how this new platform will grow, and things that will be built around it in the next couple of years.