Online Services I Find Worth Paying For

While I appreciate getting something for free [1] as much as the next person, I’m also very willing to shell out cash for online services which I find both useful and valuable. Here are the ones for which I do (or am willing to) plunk down a few shekels on a monthly or yearly basis:

• Dropbox: I adore Dropbox. This service has saved my ass more times than I care to remember. While the standard service is free for 2GB I pay to upgrade my account to 50GB. While it’s nice to get all that extra space I’ve found that Dropbox has become such an integral part of my workflow that I would pay anyway just to help guarantee it’s around for a good, long time.
• Evernote: I spend a lot of time online and most of that is spent reading. Back in the day I would bookmarks articles I enjoyed. Back in the day I would also lose the bookmark file any time I switched computers. I also would never look at the site again. I’d remember, “Oh, I read something about $foo once…” but be unable to locate it in the morass of links. Enter Evernote. With one click of the browser plugin any site, any image, any PDF is slurped into my Evernote account, metatagged, indexed and sync’d to all of my devices. Data is no longer lost and I’m a happy camper who’s able to search and locate whatever I need. The basic service is free and more than adequate for most people but, yet again, this is a service which important to my day to day work and therefore worth it to me to support financially.
• Netflix: Really, does this one even need an explanation? Probably not but it’ll get one anyway. I haven’t had cable for about twelve years now. I’ve been without a TV for two or three years. My entertainment needs are met via the internet, primarily by Netflix (of which I’ve been a subscriber since 1999). Netflix allows me to indulge my desire for cheesy science fiction programming without having to spend money on DVDs which are just going to take up space in my apartment.
• Github: Github has rapidly established itself as the go-to distributed version control hub on the internet, particularly among open source advocates. Any repository which is open sourced may be hosted for free and includes a project tracker, issue tracker, etc. It’s a brilliant piece of work for which the Githubbers should receive a great many gold stars. I, however, don’t have any open sourced repositories there quite yet. Instead, I pay a small amount every month for the peace of mind which comes from maintaining important files in my own private version-controlled repositories.
• Remember The Milk: The most important tip I took away from GTD was, “write it down in a trusted location and get it off your mind so you can focus.” Remember The Milk (aka ‘RTM’) is that trusted location for me. Any time I think of something I want to or should do I immediately grab one of my devices, type in a quick to-do item and sync it up. Since I started doing this over a year ago my productivity and organization has increased greatly while my stress level has mostly dropped. When something doesn’t get done it’s invariably because I failed to use the system correctly (like not looking at it; hrm). For a while RTM syncing from iPhone and iPad required paying for a Pro account (I do not believe this is the case now), which is necessary for me to capture items on the fly. However even if that weren’t the case I still would pay for this service simply for all the good things it has done for my quality of life.
• Flickr: I used to host my own photo albums. That got to be a drag. Not only that, there were new online services which were doing the same thing but better. At the time I joined Flickr was the hot thing and had yet to be acquired by Yahoo!. The user interface was clean and useful, the features were exactly what I needed. Subscribing for a Pro account got me the organizational features I required. Now my account hosts 1,646 of my photos and am well content to stay with them for the next 1,646 and beyond.
• Spool: This one’s a newcomer to the online service game, so much so that it’s still in private invitation beta. It’s also the only one on the list which currently does not have a fee option for its service and is entirely free. That said, this service has very rapidly become a vital part of my online workflow. While Instapaper enables users to save articles for offline reading, Spool enables its users to save both articles and videos. These are then synced to my iPad and iPhone. I read/watch them on the Muni, in the pub, while waiting in line… The best part is that I no longer have a browser window crowded with “Aspirational Tabs” for things I’d like to get to some day. Click, add to my Spool, close the tab and get around to reading it later. If Spool adds ‘Send to Evernote’ as an option (‘Send to Twitter’ and ‘Send to Google+’ would be nice as well) then I’m a user for life and will pay for the privilege. As they’re still in beta I have great hopes for these features.

[1] Hellooooo, Google Mail, Google Docs, Google Voice, Skype, Twitter… [back to reading!]