WEB SPECIAL....Alternatives to the world’s most popular WEB SERVICES

Alternatives to the world’s most popular WEB SERVICES

Outlook [outlook.com] Replacement for Gmail
Where it scores
    Unlimited storage and Undelete: We never thought Gmail’s gigabytes of inbox storage would seem insufficient, but that’s a problem for a lot of people these days. Outlook promises that the inbox capacity automatically increases as you need more space. And what’s more, you can even ask Outlook to recover your deleted messages. Email aliases: Outlook lets you create email ‘aliases’, such as mysubscriptions@outlook.com, which can be really handy when signing up for a new website. Since your alias can be autosorted into its own folder, unsolicited mails won’t mess up your inbox. Additionally, you can choose to delete this alias at any time. Social Networking: Outlook has tight integration with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. When you open an email, the sender’s LinkedIn information as well as latest Twitter or Facebook posts show up in a pane on the right, along with options to Like or Retweet. Plus, you can chat with Facebook friends with the builtin messenger app.
DuckDuckGo [duckduckgo.com]
Replacement for Google
Where it scores Zero-Click Info: Search for any item and DuckDuckGo will give you a quick summary by collating information from different sources. So if you were to search for a movie, it will grab information from IMDB, Wikipedia and maybe even a booking site to give you relevant results. And you can ask the search engine “Who won the Oscar for Best Actor in 1992” to get an instant answer.
    Privacy: Google is seen as the big bad villain when it comes to mining for your personal information on the internet. Duck-DuckGo goes the other way by not collecting any data about you, as well as not sending your private data to the sites you click on.
    !bang: A feature that DuckDuckGo users swear by, !bang is a shortcut to let you search within your intended site. For example, if you want to search for the word ‘coalgate’ on Facebook, just type !Facebook Coalgate in the search box and you’ll directly be taken to Facebook’s search results for the term.
Vimeo [vimeo.com]
Replacement for YouTube
Where it scores
    Finding Quality: Finding an interesting video on YouTube is the proverbial needle in a haystack. Vimeo makes this much easier with the several ‘channels’ it has – started by users themselves – which curate cool videos from other users. Additionally, Vimeo does not allow commercial videos, gaming videos, pornography or non-user-generated content, ensuring that the clips are safe.
    Unlimited runtime: In the free acount, YouTube restricts the user to a maximum runtime of 15 minutes per video. So if you have anything longer, you need to split it before uploading. Vimeo does not have any such restrictions.
    Download it: When you come across a cool video, Vimeo allows you to simply download it for future consumption. There’s no need to fire up some fancy third-party downloader like with YouTube.
500px [500px.com]
Replacement for Flickr
Where it scores
    Design & Discoverability: Photography is a visual art, and it should be displayed in a pleasing interface. Flickr has long fallen short of that, but 500px makes up with a gorgeous design. What’s more, the site helps you discover new photographers through daily selections. And then there’s the ‘Flow’ section of the portfolio, which automatically arranges a user’s images by their aesthetic value rather than the upload date.
    Sell Your Work: Much like an artist sells his painting, you should be able to sell your photographs. And 500px makes this a lot easier by letting anyone buy an image on the site. The user earns $40 for every canvas print and $2 for a direct download of an HD image.
    Community: Flickr used to be an amazing community for photo enthusiasts and professionals in the early days, but those glory days are long past. However, 500px is where several professionals are heading after quitting Flickr, so the community is quite robust. And given that each photograph can have its own discussion, it’s a great place to learn more about the art.
Google+ [plus.google.com]
Replacement for Facebook
Where it scores
    Hangouts: Perhaps the killer feature of Google+ is Hangouts, the real-time group video chat platform. Whether you’re on the phone or using a computer, you can quickly set up a Hangout with up to 10 friends. ‘Live Hangout Stream’ lets you broadcast a live event to the whole world.
    Events & Photos: If you are hosting a party or function, you can make an Event page for it. The cool part, though, is that anyone attending it can upload their photos to the Event page in real-time, or at a later date. You get one page with pictures from everyone who clicked them at the event, and Google+ can even create a fun little slideshow video out of them. And what’s more, if you use Picasa, you can upload high-res photos to Google+, bypassing the default 2048x2048 size limit.
    Explore: Facebook puts you in touch with your own friends, but it doesn’t really let you discover people beyond that. Google+ comes with an Explore section that collates the top posts that you may be interested in, based on an analysis of your profile. Not only does this feature let you find new interesting people, but it also keeps you abreast of the latest happenings in news through the trending topics.

Mihir Patkar TL120916