Today, I spent some time trialling free blog services that aren't owned by Google. The long and short of it is, I don't think I'll be going anywhere anytime soon.
It's not that there's a lack of options out there, it's just that most of them aren't that great. Bit of a bugger, really. for an idea of what I looked at, see this page.
Wordpress.com is okay, but you can't edit your code with the free tier, and while I understand most people won't give a shit about that, it's something that's important to me. Not important enough for me to pay fifty bucks a year or whatever, but still important.
Of the services I looked at, the one I got the furtherest with was Weebly.com. The editing interface was annoying but tolerable, and it almost had everything I wanted. Almost. The first thing it lacked was an RSS feed for the blog comments — which is a pain — because I'd rather get that stuff through RSS than email — and yes, I know I can convert an email inbox to an RSS feed, but I'd rather not have to. Moderately annoying, but not the end of the world. The second problem was that you couldn't peruse your posts through any sort of "master-list" type interface. Not that I could find, anyway. Instead, if you wanted to pull up a specific post, you had to wade through your archives, just like a regular reader would. Fuck that! Deal-breaker, right there. I may not be the most prolific blogger, but even I want a half-decent content-management-system.
Hmmm, oh well. At least it's comfortable living here in the belly of the beast, I suppose.
Yeah, so anyway, this whole exercise got me thinking about all the free online services that I've made heavy use of over the years … and here's what I came up with:
- wikipedia.org
- Goes without saying, doesn't it?
- duckduckgo.com & ixquick.com
- Two search-engines that claim they don't track their users or bias their results.
- images.google.com
- I may not use Google for web searches, but even I can't get around using them when it comes to looking for pickies.
- wolframalpha.com
- A so-called "knowledge-engine". Ask it questions and it spits out answers. Good for currency conversion and the like.
- webmail
- I've used many over the years. Gmail is good, but thankfully there are a lot of strong competitors out there to choose from.
- maps
- Again, there's a few to choose from. Here.com, bing.com/maps, mapillary.com, and openstreetmap.org all have their uses, but if you want street-view, I guess Google Maps is still the king.
- translate.google.com
- Yet another area where Google are way out in front, I'm afraid.
- archive.org
- The biggest collection of old shit on the internet, including the Wayback Machine.
- gutenberg.org & gutenberg.net.au
- Books. Gotta love 'em.
- various manuals, docs, and wikis
- gnu.org/manual, freebsd.org/handbook, perldoc.perl.org, docs.python.org, mywiki.wooledge.org/, gimp.org/docs, blender.org/manual, tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/, flossmanuals.net, and many others.
- w3schools.com & tizag.com
- Two great places to learn about writing code for the web.
- stackexchange.com
- Basically, A network of websites where you can go to find the answers to questions that you should already know the answers to … but can't think of right now … for some reason. For me, stackoverflow.com & serverfault.com are the prime picks.
- sourceforge.net & github.com
- The site where open-source projects used to host their code and the site where open-source projects currently host their code.
- world news/misinformation/propaganda networks
- aljazeera.com, bbc.com, france24.com, rt.com, press.tv, english/cntv.cn, bloomberg.com, etc, etc. Too much of this stuff will send you 'round the bend.
- various podcasts
- Technically, this one doesn't really belong on the list, but collectively they're probably far more useful than the big news networks, so I thought they should at least get a mention.
- abc.net.au & sbs.com.au
- For all the shit I give them, I do hope nobody ever sells this pair off. As far as mainstream news and entertainment goes, they're really not that bad.
- youtube.com
- There are many websites with videos on them, but I don't think any of them really come close, do they?
- tunein.com & radiotunes.com
- Two places to find internet radio stations. RadioTunes also has four sister networks: di.fm, rockradio.com, jazzradio.com, and frescaradio.com; for those interested in electronic dance, rock & metal, jazz, and latino music, respectively.
- jamendo.com & soundcloud.com
- Two communities where music makers can freely share their work with others.
- grooveshark.com
- A community where music fans can share other people's work without permission. If you're looking for a song and can't find it anywhere else, it's probably here.
- deviantart.com
- A community where artists can freely share their works of art.
- rule34.paheal.net
- A community where artists can freely share their works of porn. It's not a very "nice" place, so I don't recommend going there, unless you happen to not be a very nice person. Having said that, every time I've been, I've found something that's made me cackle with malicious glee.
- thepiratebay.se
- I don't know what shape it's in nowadays, but it used to be the place to go for stuff you couldn't get anywhere else. At this point, I think every one of the founding members has done time in gaol, and it's still going (as far as I know). There's a part of me that has to respect that.
- 4chan.org
- A bit like rule34.paheal.net on steroids, but not just for artists to post porn. A community that delights in having no rules and no respect for anything. Sometimes called the worst place on the internet. It's where I used to hang out, once upon a time.
No doubt I've missed a few, but that's all I can think of at the moment. Of course, I'm specifically talking about services — things I access through a web-browser — not products — things I download and run (probably not the most accurate or useful distinction, but it's the one I'm using. Otherwise this would just be a long list of applications and operating systems.)
And so now I'm curious. What are the free online services that you've gotten the most use out of or would be sad to see go away?
5 comments :
Will come back later and comment on your post but in the meantime DO YOU KNOW THAT 4 OR 5 GoT EPS HAVE BEEN LEAKED AND ARE AVAILABLE? BETTER GET ON IT... WE WATCHED FIRST LAST NIGHT AFTER A REFRESH OF THE LAST TWO EPS OF PREVIOUS SEASON. What a great scene between Brienne and Ayra. So great. And like you said, would have been wonderful to have those two womaning it up around the country with their swords.
Thank you for the info. I did NOT know about the leak, and I'm happy to know you've got me covered. I don't know yet if I'll grab them though. According to info I found, it seems they're low-resolution versions that were sent out to entertainment-journalists. I might wait for the higher-quality TV versions. How do the leaked eps look?
Also, did you see my post on the Judge Dredd movie? I don't know if you like action flicks or not, but there's only a day left to get it off SBS. Of course, you can probably get a much nicer looking version any time you want from the same place you got the GoT episodes. *wink*wink*
We only watched one last night, it was fine but in one dark section (where Daenerys went into the dragon dungeon) it was very pixelly/strange.
I saw your post but can't keep up at the moment. It's probably not something I would seek out. It's just not my thang, sorry. But I'll ask Clokes if it's something he'd watch (probably) and then maybe we could look it up. I've heard of it of course. There's just such an overload of entertainments.
OK watched the rest last night, quality was fine! They don't look strange at all. Look hi-res.
Okay, will check it out. Cheers, Melbs.
Did you have any websites you wanted to add to the list? I'm thinking I might pin this page and keep adding to it. Or something. Maybe. I dunno.
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