I’m a big fan of internet services. So much so that I am willing to pay for them. While most of us use and love Dropbox, one service that I actually don’t pay for right now, I’m not here to write about that. I’m here to write about the services that many of us are unwilling to pay for. For what it’s worth, the following three services work well on mobile (iOS) and desktop.
Gmail rules the roost for most people. Even though I’ve had a Gmail account since the very early days1, before that time, I was paying for an email service for myself and Mike. Periodically, I overhaul my email setup.2. Recently I made another transition to Fastmail.
I can’t say enough positive things about Fastmail’s service. Unlimited domain names, aliases, plenty of options for aliases under Fastmail owned domain names, good filtering via sieve, and plenty of space. It doesn’t hurt that the webmail application is “not too shabby.”
RSS
Brian just recently made a large post about RSS. I love RSS as echoed during Brian’s post. I’ve been very happy with Feedbin as my RSS hub. It hooks into the apps I use, has good search and sharing options, and a responsive developer. I’ve used Feedbin for a couple of years now and I’ve loved it. RSS and email are my two most used services, so having a solid provider for them is advantageous.
Bookmarks
I’ve used various home grown methods of bookmarking web pages and archiving online content that I wanted a permanent record of. I haven’t kept up with most of the methods because they ultimately took too much involvement on my part. That being said, I think Pinboard is going to work for me.
It’s fast, simple, and affordable. It fits my working style. I like the archive option too.
- I got a Gmail beta invite from a friend mid-August 2004. According to Wikipedia, “Gmail initially started as an invitation-only beta release on April 1, 2004[9] and it became available to the general public on February 7, 2007…” ↩
- This is a habit that would repeat itself several times. I made a big transition after graduating from college and losing that address. My transitions midway through grad school were written about previously. I realized near the end of grad school I would need to transition off of my Princeton email address, which would be a much more painful process than moving on from my undergrad email. In preparation for that, about a year before I graduated, I started to consolidate my mail on our paid server account (protozoic.com). We used that service up until about a month ago, when I moved us to Fastmail. Parallel to all of this email provider movement, I’ve also moved email clients, from Eudora->Apple Mail->Mailsmith->Pine->Mutt. That is a story for another day. ↩
