Yesterday I read the Slashdot post discussing the power of TinyUrl web service to affect accessibility of web resources.  Most of today, the TinyURL web service is down. (Switching to conspiracy voice):  Coincidence?  I think not!
Tag: web services
Cyprus road tax online. IT gone wrong.
A couple of weeks ago, Vladimir mentioned in his blog that he managed to pay road tax online. I have to agree, this is a technological breakthrough in functionality offered by Cyprus government’s websites.
While paying the tax is now possible, the website is still very confusing. It provided practically no information or instructions on what to do. Now the site looks a bit different though. Notice that ‘Here’ icon that blinks as fast as your computer can render it?
So many people wanted to do it online, and so many failed. Some of them even posted comments on Vladimir’s blog, providing their information (ID numbers and car registration numbers) in hopes that it would somehow work.
Technology gone wrong…
P.S.: As sad as it is, it’s also very funny. Hilarious even.
More on Skype
Let me do a little side note, before I start – Mom, you should really read this post! :)
Now, just a couple of days ago I wrote that I decided to try Skype. I downloaded it and installed on my computer. There were few nice things about it that I noticed immediately, but there are so many more that need a second look!
Here we go…
Continue reading More on Skype
30 Boxes solves calendaring
http://30boxes.com is a brand new webservices. The public beta was launched last Sunday.
The purpose of the site is to solve the surprisingly difficult problem of calendaring. What’s wrong with calendaring, you might ask? Well, lots of things. Existing calendaring applications are complicated and clumsy, unpractical for sharing and social interactions, and, well, “traditional”.
http://30boxes.com chose a fresh approach. They have totally and completely minimized and simplified the user interface.
Entering events can be done with as little as filling in one single text field. Application understands human language like “tomorrow”, “yesterday”, and “next week”. You can have “buddies” which is just their term for contacts. All you have to do to add a contact is specify email address. You buddies can have calendars of their own, you can share calendars and even use the system to send invitations and confirmations/denies for events. You can track a lot more information about your buddies too – Flickr photos, LiveJournal entries, MySpace blog, and any other RSS feed. When there are new items – you get a small icon on the appropriate day of the calendar and can quickly check what they are up to.
The interface looks very clean and works pretty fast. It’s also based on AJAX technology which allows you to see updates without refreshing the page – feels nice.
Check it out – it costs nothing, and can do a lot for your organized life!
My Stickies – the missing piece of your browser
By pure luck I cam across a new service, which is still currently in beta, – My Stickies. Within the first second I realized that it was something that I waited for a long time now.
In essence, My Stickies allows you to attach yellow sticky notes to websites. You can have as many of these notes attached to as many websites as you want. Whenever you come back to the website, you will see all your notes at the same place and of the same size as you left them.
Not only this functionality alone is great news, but there is more. You can even see your notes from a different place. This is great, because you can add notes to sites at home, and than see them later on in the office – no synchronizations are needed.
You can also see all your notes at their website. You can tag them, search them, and use notes as a sort of bookmarks.
Getting all this is easy too. All you have to do is register at My Stickies and install the Firefox extension. The service is free and works exactly as expected. Check it out.