Complement your own office digs today and check out Google’s:

via Flavorwire.

We all hate paying for hosting and the nagging maintenance that come with.

A lot of web stuff does require near constant attention, but what about tossing up those pages that aren’t ever going to change?

Well for the true nerds and github goobers out there “you can host your static content with zero cost, zero maintenance and very little real tech knowledge (just git), a bit of rake) and some gigantic internet nuts).”

Here’s how to host static sites for free on Google App Engine via the github “bucket” tool DryDrop.

(/via Tim of TimShowers.com)

Jon Rafman is behind the 9 Eyes Tumblr, blogging strange, often exquisite images captured from Google Street View.

Part 1 of “The dreaded ‘Idea’” spouts freely new notions concerning Twitter and iPhone/iPod Apps & iOS along with a short treatise-like rant on ideas.

Media

• Monetizing great content stuck on crusty websites

An opportunity exsists for acquiring old, but authoritative content that ranks good.  This written treasure is often buried on neglected websites.  There’s plenty of great information hiding on pages two, three and four of Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) that could be providing more benefit.

Some would just offer to buy the whole site and domain outright.  But dealing with some of these codgers is tough.  They’re often sentimentally attached and want far too much money.  And trying to strike these deals is a time suck.

Why not go after smaller slices of the pie?  Go after the valuable content and leave the relics and ruins of entire sites designed in 1998 to Gramps.

A service company could “crawl” (old) websites for good, well ranking content. Offer to buy (the rights for) it. Both buyer and seller sign a (mostly pre-formatted, pre-made) contract and payment is rendered.

The purchased content “goes to work” for the benefit of the buyer and will hopefully reach a wider, improved audience. Value for all involved.

Doing this manually wouldn’t be worth it.  Either an automated program could seek out the content, or go the other route and get content holders and publisher to come to your site and sell good articles to you.  Some sort of valuation system and/or algorithm would be ideal to kill the many man-hours of sifting through content to determine worth.

• Web video channel

The great video programming on Cable and Satellite TV comes with commercials and it’s expensive.  The Internet offers way more video entertainment options than Cable, but herding all the sprawling internet video is often difficult and time consuming.

The move is on now to make traditional TV more Internet interactive-like while the Internet players — like Apple TV, Boxee.net, Google TV – continue with vast menu systems.

I say go the reverse direction.  I want to fire up an Internet video channel that’s just like an old TV station.  Hit play and walk away.  That’s it.  No sign up, no account.  Instant, continuous Internet Boob Tube with zero interaction.

Unless you want interaction.  (Stop reading here if you’re already sold, but it’s not likely because viewers will probably want some control.  Some other stuff to do.)

Just hit a button and an interactive, overlaid interface could come up (– and/or this interactive interface/menu would show up on a mobile phone app that could also double as a remote.)

Naturally this optional menu for the video channel would contain all the lofty features we’ve come to expect from our Internet media applications:

• learning your view tastes and preferences
• ability to share what your are watching
• skinning & customizing appearance
• fetching programming info and recommendations
• option to integrate and merge with other media sources and service

How will this happen?  How the hell should I know.  That is why nerds exist.

A master/parent channel would be set up and programmed by the company who creates it.  This tech could be used as a platform for others to build and program their own (custom, branded) channels.

The general idea here is switch on an internet TV channel and plop down on the couch.  Less choice, less control, less hassle is the primary intent.  But that won’t fly for everyone who may like it, so also offer hidden menus and controls that’d also empower a premiere, TV-like Internet video channel with a more meaningful interactive experience.

• Video mute button

Add a Video Mute Button to web video players.  Press it and the video folds down, or hides, but audio still plays.

Perfect for the workplace where you want to listen but not watch or fiddle with minimizing, maximizing, resizing, popping out, or otherwise hiding video.

• Simple mass photo sharing

Most everybody wants widespread sharing of their photos and there’s a slew of photo sharing services. But everyone is not on the same photo sharing services.

Why isn’t there a decent service to distribute your photos to all the popular (online) photo places?

We need a web service/app where you upload your photos once and your photos go all over: Flickr, Facebook, Twitpic, Photobucket, Picassa, etc, etc.

The user process would be simple:

1.) Sign up.
2.) Link up the photo sharing sites you’re already on to this new service — either using openID/OAuth and/or old fashion usernames and passwords — and give options to sign up for additional photo sharing sites.
3.) Upload photos once.
4.) Photos appear at the sites you’ve just approved. Like:

• flickr
• photobucket
• webshots
• Picassa
• shutterfly
• smugmug
• snapfish
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Posterous
• tumblr
• WordPress
• Blogger
• ireport

After upload is complete, there could be and option to:

• Email your photos
• Ofter to try to sell your photos — to perhaps Getty Images, Stock photo sites, etc. This proposed service could take a cut.
• Crawl/search for local, tradional media outlet (websites) to submit photos to.
• Send photo(s) as picture text (MMS)
• Fax your photographs to Grandma and insurance companies (Ha!)

Also, a setting to put copyrights/copylefts on all your pictures, like Flickr does would be vital.

• One-click micropayment button

Professional content creators bitch and moan how no one wants to pay to read.  But if rich people would get on it, they could overcome the hurdles of micropayments, namely, the high cost of individual transaction fees.

Once micropayments take off, there will likely be a button next to content and article teases/previews/summaries to click.  The button could say something like: ”Pay $0.005 with dippold@gmail.com (via Google Checkout) & read.” Click and you’ve just instantly paid for what you are now reading.  That’s it.  No other bullshit in the way.  If there is, people won’t do it.

Warning screen preference and all user settings could be configured from something like Google Checkout.

Subsequent installments of The Dreaded Idea will address reading, music, Computing/Internet/Telephony, and miscellany not fitting neatly into a category.

Google file storage

These screenshots popped up today, looking something like the much discussed, much anticipated “Google Drive”.  In mid January, Google announced plans to start rolling out cloud storage.  Seems you get a free gigabyte of file storage — for any type of file and may share any or all of it — and can buy additional space:

20 GB ($5.00 USD per year)
80 GB ($20.00 USD per year)
200 GB ($50.00 USD per year) includes free Eye-Fi card
400 GB ($100.00 USD per year) includes free Eye-Fi card
1 TB ($256.00 USD per year) includes free Eye-Fi card

Prices for more Google storage

Who’s ready to fork over more information and personal/business stuff to Google?

I just nominated Columbia, Missouri, for Google’s fiber optic trial.  Anyone with home internet access can ask Google to set it up where you live too. Google’s hope is to “make Internet access better and faster for everyone.”

Here’s a few points I made for Columbia, MO:

Why should Google build a fiber to the home network where you live?

Columbia, Missouri’s telecom oligopoly has trampled over everything good and decent for far too long.  Forcing residents to “choose” between two price gouging ISPs with lackluster service and  performance is an Internet travesty.

Any Internet improvement, no matter how small, will vastly improve life for what is surely the most highly concentrated center of culture in Missouri.

Describe the quality of your home Internet service customer support:

After an hour trying to straighten out my erratically fluctuating bill — due to CenturyLink’s incessant system errors — their “Save Desk” is downgrading me from 10Mbps to 3Mbps, again, with no change in price. My Internet speed keeps switching without approval. Something similar to: http://tr.im/NVir Ready to ditch IPTV “service” & their Internet & get Google Fiber. S.O.S.

Web link to supporting material (YouTube videos and other creative submissions are encouraged!)

http://www.ripoffreport.com/cable-companies/mediacom/mediacom-horrible-service-and-2c282.htm

It’s about damn time I got invited to Google Voice.

I’m pretty sure that if you click the above widget, it will ring a phone of your choosing for you to then leave me a voice mail.  (I could set it to ring my mobile, so you could talk to me directly, but choose not to.)

Notice any difference between the two images above?  That’s right.  Google Apps, at long last, is out of beta.  This includes Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk.

I spotted the above pull quote while doing a search with Google News recently.  I use google news on a daily basis and have never seen this before.  You must click “show all ‘xNumberoOf’ news articles” link at the bottom of a story to possibly bring one of these up.

Love how Gmail time stamps the above mail message “negative one minutes ago.”  Apparently this online email application can time travel.  Who knew.