{"id":1262,"date":"2009-01-07T14:00:41","date_gmt":"2009-01-07T19:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/?p=1262"},"modified":"2009-01-07T14:00:41","modified_gmt":"2009-01-07T19:00:41","slug":"on-fearing-the-continuity-of-online-services","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2009\/01\/07\/on-fearing-the-continuity-of-online-services","title":{"rendered":"On fearing the continuity of online services"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today I read that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.readwriteweb.com\/archives\/comments_bites_the_dust.php\">co.mments bit the dust<\/a>. Another web service (who remembers the I Want Sandy discussion a while back), ceasing to exist (though from what I see, a lot of folk are using Disqus more).<\/p>\n<p>It got me a little worried. I rely quite a bit on online services. <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Bookmarking, once previously living in my <tt>bookmark.htm<\/tt> file, now is shared on <a href=\"http:\/\/delicious.com\/drbyte\/\">delicious<\/a>. It has proven to be invaluable, storing 3,108 bookmarks. They are a Yahoo! run company.<\/li>\n<li>Photo storage and sharing, once previously sitting in directories on my web server, are now kept on my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/byte\/\">Flickr<\/a> account. Flickr is great, because I can share photos with just friends, family, or participate in a vibrant community of photo enthusiasts. I currently have 16,813 items stored there, with backups on various media sitting in my various homes. They are a Yahoo! run company, and I happily pay them for a Pro account.<\/li>\n<li>I depend on Google Reader (read my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/reader\/shared\/09158656504475450876\">shared items<\/a>) to read RSS feeds. In fact, I have been sharing items as a form of bookmarking them. Ditto with adding stars to items. Don&#8217;t say Google doesn&#8217;t close services &#8211; they have.<\/li>\n<li>I use Google Calendar, because it simply rocks. I also use Google Docs, and I also use GMail (hosted, and regular).<\/li>\n<li>I use Twitter, who has no business model, as of yet. I like it over FriendFeed for one minor detail &#8211; I can update via SMS.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Most of these services have ways for you to get your data out of them, assuming they don&#8217;t exist in due time. But what will replace them?<\/p>\n<p>Sure there are desktop applications. But with the variety of devices I utilise, I&#8217;m trying to cut down from using desktop applications and just focus on working online. In fact, all that is open now is Firefox, Adium, iTunes, TextMate (where I carve this text out), Terminal, Skype and twhirl. On my work laptop, its just Thunderbird, Firefox, Terminal, and Skype that&#8217;s open. <\/p>\n<p>So maybe I need less desktop applications. It&#8217;s good, because that&#8217;s the hope of online services &#8211; live right in your browser. <\/p>\n<p><b>But in tough(er) times, what do you do if the online service you use, disappears? Where&#8217;s the continuity (i.e. will my grandkids be able to browse my Flickr photo albums?)<\/b> <\/p>\n<p>I do wonder, if this will lead to more open source, peer-to-peer\/federated run, online services. Like if Twitter folds up, who&#8217;s to say its excellent community won&#8217;t move to identi.ca ? (till then though, the latter probably doesn&#8217;t stand a chance, besides the very geeky top-of-the-trend open source folk&#8230;)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today I read that co.mments bit the dust. Another web service (who remembers the I Want Sandy discussion a while back), ceasing to exist (though from what I see, a lot of folk are using Disqus more). It got me a little worried. I rely quite a bit on online services. Bookmarking, once previously living [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[664,661,666,600,665,150,663,418,601,659,660,667,392,662],"class_list":["post-1262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-calendaring","tag-delicious","tag-desktop","tag-flickr","tag-gmail","tag-google","tag-google-calendar","tag-google-docs","tag-google-reader","tag-online","tag-online-services","tag-replacement","tag-twitter","tag-yahoo"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4vJD-km","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1262"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1265,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1262\/revisions\/1265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}