TL;DR: gaestebin is a private, secure, open source pastebin for Google App Engine.
Pastebins are incredibly useful. But most of the public pastebins are not suitable for sharing within a company (think code fragments, log messages etc.) and most private pastebins are either ugly (except hastebin!), hard to setup/maintain and usually forced to be behind the firewall (for security).
I only got my Nexus 7 yesterday so this is not meant to be an in-depth review driven based on days of experience. Take what I say with a grain of salt, but like they say, first impressions are last impressions! So read on…
Dear United States Citizenship and Immigration Services,
I came to the US in 2003. I earned my Ph.D. from one of the top university systems in the world. I’ve since worked at two startups. Aren’t these small businesses the engines that drive the US economy? Would you disagree that I have made meaningful contributions to the wealth, the economy and the intellectual property of this nation?
My wife is an artist. She earned her Master in Arts & Technology from one of the finest art schools in the world (and bore much of the financial burden of attending a private school). She has since created art that has been displayed and recognized all around the world. Would you disagree that she has made meaningful contributions to this society?
As law-abiding (non-permanent) residents, is it too much to expect that our families will visit us, once in a while?
Facts:
It therefore follows that our lives are dominated by Internet advertising.
The traditional model for advertising has been that publishers put out ads to catch the attention of consumers via some like of delivery network. In the past these delivery networks were in print, on radio, on television and now, on the Internet. It seems like a win-win for everyone: the delivery network gets paid by the publishers; the publishers make money because they get more customers; the consumers find out about publishers that they may not have otherwise known.
But a new trend is emerging now: consumers directly pay the delivery networks to NOT see ads from publishers.
Where & how do you consume content on the web these days? I find that increasingly, I get to the content without ever going to the website of origin.
For instance, on my iPhone I read pretty much everything via Flipboard. On Android, I’m still struggling to find a good Flipboard replacement and shuttle between Pulse, Google Currents and recently, Feedly. In either case, I rarely ever go to the actual website.
I still get some of my content fix from Google Reader (xkcd, Abstruse Goose etc).
Most of the “news” — that is, when I’m in “skim mode” — comes from social media, mostly G+ and a tiny bit from Twitter.
I remember the days (several years ago) when Techcrunch changing it’s site layout used to be a news in itself. Now I can’t remember the last time I visited Techcrunch (well, that could be partially attributed to the content quality…)
My point is, in all of the above cases, the app or service presents the content in an origin-agnostic manner. When you read something on Flipboard, it’s presented to be consumable via the Flipboard interface (in most cases), and not meant to preserve the look and feel of the origin website.
And such apps and services are just becoming more and more prevalent: Evernote Clearly; Readability; content-provider specific apps such as those from Time, CNN, NYT etc.
So, is website design becoming irrelevant? Especially for content-heavy sites?
(The Oatmeal is an exception — Matthew forces you to visit the website, and it’s always worth it)
