Since most websites are not CORS-friendly, you need to run the psty proxy on your desktop. python psty.py -a For further information on psty, and a download l

Since most websites are not CORS-friendly, you need to run the psty proxy on your desktop. python psty.py -a For further information on psty, and a download link, see: http://pigshell.com/v/0.6.4/usr/doc/psty.html http://pigshell.com/v/0.6.4/usr/doc/psty.html Alternately, if you don't want to run psty, you could try the "ycat" command which uses YQL to bypass CORS. This is useful if you are trying to access HTML pages, rather than binary resources. e.g. ycat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependenc... | hgrep table.wikitable | html You may have to try it a couple of times; I notice that the YQL endpoint sometimes refuses connections.