Free web services
Since the great Dot Com crash, there’s been a huge rationalization of ‘free web services’ and a corresponding commercialization of many others, covering themselves with a pile of adverts. Every now and then, however, I come across a site that has managed to maintain a functional clean design, free of advertizing, with a really useful service. Three that spring to mind are:
- The Lomographic Society – the worldwide community built up around the Lomo Kompakt Automat camera, offering free photographic hosting for all their members.
- Beer in the Evening – the ultimate A-Z of pubs in London, and the UK at large. If you’re looking to meet up with a bunch of friends, then don’t send around the Streetmap URL, go for the Beer in the Evening link instead.
- Move Flat – Loot clearly hasn’t taken advantage of the opportunities offered by the web for enhancing its advertising services. Still restricting you to next to no lines of text for description, and crude search services. They’re probably afraid of impacting the sales of the dead tree version. Move Flat, however, has no such qualms, allowing incredibly detailed information about your flat to be entered, combined with fantastic search service. What’s more its all completely free!
Rather remiss of me to miss off Blogger the fine blogging service provided by Google. I particularly like the ability for them to securely publish back to your server with SFTP.
May I make another suggestion to your list of free ad sites. I might be biased, but I started a website some time back and still learning but it does offer free ads and a easy interface. i got a lot of good comments from people and i’d be interested to know what you think? I have to admit is still needs a bit of work done. but I’m looking for help in any way possible. Maybe if you like it you could add a link to it on your blog? I hope you don’t mind me asking but i’m trying hard to make it the best site for londoners. have a look at FlatShare