As far as I can tell, the ban has not yet been enforced. I can access both https://cryptbin.com/ and https://snipt.net/, though my ISP is limited only to Bangalore area.
Edit: Well, it looks like pastebin & dailymotion are banned, but cryptbin and snipt aren't
I recently spent days writing AngularJS app and I came to same conclusion that I should have split the app into modules.
Even though the style of grouping together Controllers and Services works well, it still won't be easy to maintain when the size of app grows big.
One thing that I find genuinely useful is the Traffic/Navigation feature. It is almost always correct and gives me the best route even in Bangalore (India). Also if I search for some location on Google Maps, I get a suggestion on Google Now about traffic, route and direction.
Personally I would go for single device that does everything I need. Something on the lines of what Ubuntu is doing. Even Surface to an extent solves this issue. I don't want to carry an iPhone to call/msg/listen to music, an iPad to casually use internet/read/play games and a laptop for everything else. Better carry one phone which does call/msg/music/internet,reading and minor editing/office stuffs when plugged to dock.
The idea is great but I think there are a few things that you should look into.
1. What if there are so many entries in the main page, that eventually it becomes just noise?
2. There should be some way that I could follow/know more about one who shared his/her work, so that in future if he creates something new I am notified.
3. Wouldn't be better to give some kind of rating system and a search box.
Even though i would be sticking with Google for now, but i commend your compilation. IMO I would go with these alternatives.
Gmail -> +1 to your idea of personal domain. Though there are other alternatives like gmx, fastmail (as you mentioned), etc
Reader -> Thunderbird is not so great, there are many other clients which are far better feed readers like FeedDemon. Even Liferea and Akgregator are good.
Calendar -> Thunderbird and if you have some money to shell out Outlook is unbeatable. Also evolution is not bad either!
Address book -> Thunderbird and Outlook
Docs -> Ms Word or Libre Writer. MS Word has been around for quite some time and is really polished. Writer on the other hand is like an untamed beast with lots of feature.
Picasa -> Flickr, or if you want to get your hands dirty, you can try zenphoto on your personal domain.
Blog -> Blogger has become relatively old and i have seen many of the old blogs migrating to either Posterous or Tumblr. Obviously one can go for their own domain with Wordpress on it.
Search -> +1 on DDG. Its awesome! It has been my primary search engine for a while now.
If they pull this off, it will be dream come true. All will then boil down to 2 device that you carry, your windows phone and a protable awesome tablet cum pc.
Precisely!
When i read this article my first reaction was 'what the hell!'. Be it any social network, you will have to spend quite some time to getting used to and then trying to make the most out of it. Like in case of twitter, it took me quite some time to arrange my contacts in lists, and same goes for yahoo messenger (when i used it!).
Simply critisizing the product on the basis of something which is quite efficient and noteworthy is sad.
I have not tested the OS so i will not comment about how snappier it is, but it just looks to me like one trying too hard to get OSx on Ubuntu. I applaud their efforts to build apps for it but still it would have been much better if they could have put their efforts in building something new, beyond already existing native desktop, may be an enhanced and better tiling wm to add to their os or something out of the box.
Being a active participant of 'Karate' I would also like to add some points
1. Confidence: Karate or any form of martial art bestows you with confidence, not just optimism that you can achieve what you desire and work towards it, but also the zeal and belief within oneself to achieve your goal.
2. Patience is a virtue, you need it when you are writing huge lengths of code and you need it utmost when you are in a ring waiting for the opponent to strike so that you can counterattack.
3. Resilience : Be it any app developer, businessman or any profession, you learn resilience from martial art which you can use anywhere you go or in anything you do.
A good use case for Google wave.
Though Google wave has not been much of a success, but it has really helped a lot of small virtual companies like the ones mentioned in post to collaborate. Its totally free of cost and saves a lot of bucks!