web-services on S Anand

Goodbye Google

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 12:29:25 +0000

Google Reader was where I spent most of my browsing time, but now, it’s shutting down.

Time for alternatives, but not just for Reader: for all Google products. I’m not sure when one of these might go down, become paid, or become unusable.

I just uninstalled Google Drive and Google Talk. but I don’t use it much (I use Skype), so no loss. I’ll leave Chrome for the while, but I’m hearing reports that Firefox is improving faster than Chrome is. Or there’s Chromium.

I’m not worried much about search services (including image, video, scholar and books). When needed, I can switch. Scholar might be a bit sad to lose, but I don’t use it much. Google Translate, too, isn’t essential.

Likewise for content. YouTube’s not a problem. There’re enough other video services. Trends are useful, but not critical. Maps might be, so I’ll try and switch to OpenStreetMap. I don’t use News or Picasa much.

I don’t care much for social media anyway, so Blogger, Orkut and Plus can die any time.

Google’s apps are the worrying ones. Mail and Calendar, in particular. I’ll probably migrate away from them last, but the attempt is on. I’ll be documenting the alternatives I find at https://gist.github.com/sanand0/5176161 (safely cloned locally).

Looks like there’s no safe long-term alternative to being able to host your own apps. Pity.

Comments

Hari K T 20 Mar 2013 12:23 pm: You are right. Probably many of them will follow your path :-) .
Dan Murray 16 Mar 2013 2:01 pm: It is annoying…isn’t it.
Ravikumar Venkateswar 18 Mar 2013 6:33 pm: Reader’s the one that bugs me the most, since they basically out-competed all of the alternatives, even the paid ones. I prefer paid apps, personally, because I know where the money’s coming from, and there’s less chance that they’d make them unusable. I switched from Picasa to Smugmug a while ago, and I’m probably going to move Mail and Calendar to free Google Apps or maybe my employer’s service. Why would you host your own apps instead of paying directly?
Hosting options | s-anand.net 1 Jun 2013 6:49 am (pingback): […] means. I can’t just take that code and move it to another server. Besides, I’m a bit wary of Google pulling the plug. Heroku? Same problem. I just want to take the code elsewhere and run […]
Tarun 21 Mar 2013 11:44 am: What about the appengine, did you explore any alternatives for it? I was quite impressed with script.google.com also, its in-line with your style of coding .
Dev E 22 Mar 2013 3:22 am: How about Nokia’s here.com for maps?
Mathew 23 Mar 2013 12:38 am: Feedly if you plan to keep Chrome.
Om Shankar 16 Jul 2013 11:35 am: Dude. I seriously hope you were saying that all out of anger and they are not your actual insights of other Google products. (Some were ridiculous - like Maps, Gmail, +plus, Chrome, etc.) Coz, if it were, you definitely need to come back to internet in today’s age and have a check again on your updates. Looking forward to your conf. at Bangalore JS. :-)

Google Related Links

Tue, 04 Apr 2006 12:00:00 +0000

Google Related Links. Google’s following Yahoo’s lead in Y!Q.

Amazon Mechanical Turk

Wed, 09 Nov 2005 12:00:00 +0000

The ultimate irony. Amazon has written an API that invokes humans.

Amazon Mechanical Turk provides a web services API for computers to integrate Artificial Artificial Intelligence directly into their processing by making requests of humans. Developers use the Amazon Mechanical Turk web services API to submit tasks to the Amazon Mechanical Turk web site, approve completed tasks, and incorporate the answers into their software applications. To the application, the transaction looks very much like any remote procedure call - the application sends the request, and the service returns the results. In reality, a network of humans fuels this Artificial Artificial Intelligence by coming to the web site, searching for and completing tasks, and receiving payment for their work.

Comments

Karthik 11 Nov 2005 5:03 pm: The robots are taking over the world

Yahoo Next

Wed, 30 Mar 2005 12:00:00 +0000

Yahoo! Next. It’s a showcase of some of Yahoo!’s newest and coolest projects. Like Google Labs.

Daypop is out of disk space

Wed, 18 Sep 2002 12:00:00 +0000

Daypop is out of disk space. Poor thing! Could we lend it some? I mean, could sites like Daypop work out a distributed architecture, using web services? Or using things like space drives? via Scripting News

Publicly available web services

Thu, 22 Aug 2002 12:00:00 +0000

Publicly available web services from xmethods.

Google API

Sat, 13 Apr 2002 12:00:00 +0000

Google has released a Beta API. Programmers, please do something with it. I honestly wish I had the time to use it, too!

IT commoditisation

Thu, 03 May 2001 12:00:00 +0000

The Economist suggests that just as focus of the computer industry shifted from hardware to software, it is now shifting from software to online services. Which means that the computer (hardware and software) will commoditize and only web services will make money.

Web services shut down

Tue, 26 Dec 2000 12:00:00 +0000

Finance.com has shut down. Desktop.com too. NetZero. And the biggest of all: Pets.com (chart). This is more the trend than exception. People who had accounts on these? Tough luck! That’s one reason to stick to big players like Yahoo or Microsoft.