These projects are all very different, but the dynamic is the same. Someone builds a cool, free product, it gets popular, and that popularity attracts a buyer. The new owner shuts the product down and the founders issue a glowing press release about how excited they are about synergies going forward. They are never heard from again.

One of the reasons I chose to get involved with pinboard in the first place was this strange notion that paying for something meant recognising in some way, it’s value to me as a user. Delicious was one of those tools that seemed perfect until — boom — one day it was moving home and I really felt left in the lurch. Maciej’s promise was that by paying for the service, I could own one small even insignificant space of the web. My own little internet archive. Even delicious couldn’t promise that, and the web evolves, changes and adapts so rapidly as to make some links obsolete even upon creation (otherwise known as link rot). Pinboard offered an alternative view on things – I could pay for a service that offered me some kind of non-monetary value!

Obviously it’s completely up to you to come to an assessment on value, I can’t help you there. What I can say is that I completely agree with Maciej, some things just are worth paying for – so what are you waiting for? Developers should ask for reasonable reward for all the effort they put into something. The Pinboard approach was to grow a service slowly, using available resources and learning from failure.

Why do I think this is worth considering? A few reasons. The first is that rarity of material tends to place greater value on its existence. This can be seen in many places, from the high bid value on original photos of the early Beatles to the scathing criticism on Walter Isaacson’s missed opportunity. The very fact that it’s hard or impossible to recreate or newly obtain more of the same makes any piece of history immediately more valuable.

The second is that I’ve been noticing more of our endless efforts toward creating the highest resolution ever, or the never forgotten childhood, or the documentation of almost everything. With each minute, we’re capturing, storing, tagging, linking and tweeting about all the moments unfolding. But are we really focusing on these moments or simply archiving them for future reference? Each new piece of memory committed to our online paths adds to the collective memory, in some awful way decreasing the value of each one ever so slightly (I’m not trying to say each new piece of recorded media is equally worthy, or valuable, merely pointing out the inverse affect of this point compared to my first).

The third is that it would seem like our viewing habits are skewing towards the shorter, the more bite-sized, the digestible chunk, over long form or slower forms of media. Time pressure and digital media availability have influenced this, certainly, but certainly a shortened attention span would be a factor. I think this is linked to the material we’re digesting, the media we consume and the sheer availability of it for all to enjoy. The more supply we have, the faster our demand is satiated and the sooner we lose interest.

I think it’s useful to consider the legacy we’re consuming and the legacy we’re involved in creating. A paucity of material to work with left generations to their own imaginations to be creative or inventive. The breadth of material we have, literally at our fingertips, has had a real impact on the way we think, learn and feel. I’m certainly not of the opinion that it’s wrong, or that a shorter attention span is even a bad thing in the first place, but it’s certainly worth unpacking.

For sure, these thoughts are unfinished, but one has to start somewhere.

I liked having access to the main products in one spot. I hate navigating multi-click menus.

I do agree with MG, regarding the likelihood that the google navigation will eventually creep up into the browser controls themselves, but I do wonder if that will make them easier or harder to find/use? The google search has been a part of the browser as far back as I can remember (showing my age here), so that precedent has been set. It will certainly be one way for google to differentiate their browser even further, it even seems more like a step towards an OS based experience than a browser based experience.

‘If your Flickr URL is flickr.com/photos/yourname,find yourself at ihardlyknowher.com/yourname’

Ihardlyknowher is a very simple, minimal interface for viewing a Flickr users’ photos, with options to switch between large and small photos for varying bandwidths. Also available are a flickr user’s sets.  It succeeds where the Flickr interface doesn’t – it just makes it simple and easy to view a set of photos without any extraneous branding or annoying GUI elements getting in the way.Seems like a breath of fresh air after being continuously frustrated by the Flickr interface (aside from the already mentioned GUI, something’s not quite right I just can’t put my finger on it..).

I have an update on the Bus Tracker concept mentioned earlier. It appears that Google have begun the push to integrate public transport timetable data into their maps application. I came across the Google transit feed specifications when checking through the google code pages, and found a fairly comprehensive explanation of what data Google needs to integrate this as an interactive/navigable map.

It’s not too hard to see that the data needed to implement something like this will not be the hardest to track down (thanks again in part to earlier tools provided by Google) and some others can simply be arbitrarily entered (such as stop descriptors or route labels etc.).

This does not make life completely easy for the project in mind, but it does point yet again to a workable (if at first static) solution which could be implemented with only a minimal dose of pain.