There seems to be a new meme: 15 websites/Services I’d Pay For. The question which bothers one is would I really pay for them?. Let’s for once go down the list and comment.

• Gmail: Would I pay for GMail? Yes. But more even I’d pay for the hosted GMail. If it came with push to, because the hosted GMail actually is the only reason to pay for Google’s email service. Agreed the UI is great compared to other, although my preferred hating platform, Yahell, has become better with time.
  Why would I pay for a hosted email platform?
• Google Maps: Google Maps is a great service, but again… why would I pay for a service provided by others for free? Especially considered I already pay yearly to have my TomTom updated.
• WordPress.org: I would never consider paying for WordPress. The beauty of WordPress is the GPU/GNL spirit. If it weren’t for those, I’d rather pay for ExpressionEngine than for WP. Just because the platform is more mature.
• Statistic platforms/plugins:To be honest, although I have both Statcounter and Google Analytics installed here, I couldn’t care less for stats. I’m a huge fan of CrazyEgg though and pay for this service on several sites I manage.
• Craigslist: Considered I’m in Europe, Craigslist is pretty much useless to me. Even its European counter part, Gumtree is rather useless because I have an active social life and usually just have to tell/ask friends to sell/obtain something.

Several more, specifically US focused services are mentioned in the article, such as MLB, so it is very hard to comment on those. The only services I actually do pay for and enjoy paying for are:

• Flickr. I do pay for flickr, although I do consider switching to SmugMug, having the option to keep all my pictures somewhere as a backup option other than my hard drives and my own (soon to come) photoblog, is perfect to me.
• Last.fm: I do pay for the freedom of having my own radio station, based on what I listen to.
• Web hosting: Rather than using WP.com I pay for my own web hosting and like to have all my stuff in my own control.

To be entirely honest, there are only few I would pay for. Most involve platforms I use for websites, but otherwise I can perfectly live without many of the services which have become all day usage to me.

[Via WLTC]

So Andrew, you’ve bought into the simplistic argument that reducing paper usage will save trees. Actually reducing paper usage is more likely to reduce the amount of trees grown. Most trees used to make paper are grown by private land owners. If the market for those trees goes sour those land owners won’t replant trees after they are harvested. They will divert the land to something more profitable — like growing houses. I know. I’m one of those private tree farmers
A comment at WLTC.

Every person engaged with nature, rather than profit, knows that a full grown tree can generate more oxygen than any young tree.

As Andy and I were chilling tonight after a couple of really hectic days, chilling in the beer garden with some pints of cider, obviously flickr soon became the main topic of the conversation. The popular Yahoo photosharing site has been the topic regularly here already. But somehow, flickr needs something more.

Photophlow certainly is a great addition to flickr, but in the end it’s nothing more than _one more social network_. A waste of time.

Unless… flickr had something more…

What flickr really needs are blogs. Yes, one step _back_ and be prepared to the already traditional flickr members backlash, but blogs are needed.
Why?

Not every flickr user will daily post new pictures, but sometimes they might live events which could be directly linked to their flickr presence. Like Andy and I did yesterday. So far the only way to link this up with my flickr account is to write an entry on my own blog. An entry totally independent from my flickr account. And from our mutual social network contacts. Differently said, noone on flickr really is aware about how our firstly virtual social contact now became reality. IRL reality.

Was it worth it? Yes!
Was it wirth blogging about? Frakkin’ yes!
Is it an experience to share with my flickr contacts who only follow our pictures and not our personal blogs? FFS YES!

But there’s no way to do so.

Over the last two days I had the joy of both meeting one of my favourite photographers on flickr and helping him with a removal.

The beauty of social networking finally has come to reality: I have met someone I first met online in real life.

The irony: we only lived about 700 yards away from each other.

It was a pleasure to finally be able to connect the virtual world with reality.

Sadly my thighs and legs don’t agree though. :)

But now, I’m back online.

Music legend Trent Reznor¹ has done it again. After the free release of Ghosts some weeks ago, NIN this time released their latest, The Slip as a free download.

as a thank you to our fans for your continued support, we are giving away the new nine inch nails album one hundred percent free, exclusively via nin.com.
the music is available in a variety of formats including high-quality MP3, FLAC or M4A lossless at CD quality and even higher-than-CD quality 24/96 WAVE. your link will include all options - all free. all downloads include a PDF with artwork and credits

The album will also be released as CD and on Vinyl next month.
The album is available in standard MP3 quality, lossless FLAC and M4A downloads and in high quality WAVE format. Latter 3 options are torrent downloads.

Great to see music being released on the hated platforms.

Fans also might want to follow NIN on flickr, which NIN also uses as platform to release press images.

1. From Nine Inch Nails for the culture barbarians among us [↩]