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Web Singletons?
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Oct 16, 2008 06:00 PM
from the magrathea-dot-com dept.
from the magrathea-dot-com dept.
tcmb writes "There are an uncounted number of web mail and picture sharing services, there are more than enough web sites for online bookmark management and friend-finding, but as far as I know there is only one Internet Archive. Which are the true web singletons, services that exist only once in this form?" And does anything approach the singular time-wasting abilities of IMDB or Wikipedia?
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What? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Well a singleton is a software design pattern designed to allow exactly zero or one instances of a class to exist (typically a database connection). But whoever thought the term applies to the services provided by web apps is just an idiot. Especially since as soon as anyone creates something new and vaguely useful, a dozen clones pop up within a week and do it better (though tend to fail anyways, since they never get the initial market share or publicity of the original - see: twitter). The only organiz
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Patent trolls don't create anything (except pain, suffering and economic hardship for their victims).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well that's the beauty of the singleton design pattern - you can create exactly zero instances if you want. Which in the context of patent trolls is definitely a bad thing, but it still technically fits the misused term.
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
On the subject of patent trolls, Blackboard fits this, despite being such a horrible piece of crap.
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Which twitter? (Score:4, Funny)
Especially since as soon as anyone creates something new and vaguely useful, a dozen clones pop up within a week and do it better (though tend to fail anyways, since they never get the initial market share or publicity of the original - see: twitter).
Are you talking about the microblogging service with a dozen clones or the Slashdot poster with a dozen clones [slashdot.org]?
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Re:What? (Score:4, Informative)
The word "singleton" wasn't invented to describe the design pattern, douchebag. It means there is only one of something and is used correctly in TFS.
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Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
He isn't a douchebag, just a simpleton.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/singleton
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Some day, I'm going to have to introduce you to a new game called 'Bridge', something called 'set theory' or perhaps just to the concept of 'twins'. Then you might learn a few whole new meanings for that word and wonder why you were such an idiot about it before.
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Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
(Archive the archive (the archive (the archive (the archive))))
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Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
Both of them?
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For timewasting (Score:3, Informative)
Or not.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
I've seen someone driven to tears because someone else was reading out the jokes from that site.
(There's taking the joke the wrong way, and then there's "fuck you all, I hate you, you don't know what you're making fun of, I was abused by my uncle when I was eight".)
Zombo (Score:4, Funny)
Everyone knows about Zombo [zombo.com] of course. You could waste hours there without even thinking about it.
Re: "For large values of once" (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry AC.
You missed http://www.obmoz.com/ [obmoz.com]
------
(Can you talk to Mods?
"Hi Mod. I know I am Informative, but since neither of the sites are, save your juicy Mod point for something better.")
The grand-daddy of them all... (Score:5, Insightful)
...is still alive! [badgerbadgerbadger.com]
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There can be only one... (Score:5, Funny)
Timecube.
Unique and a waste of time.
Re:There can be only one... (Score:5, Funny)
Wrong; not a singleton: http://www.thymecube.com/ [thymecube.com]
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What site is this again? (Score:5, Funny)
And does anything approach the singular time-wasting abilities of IMDB or Wikipedia?
looks up at teh awesome bar (cough).
looks at uid.
sighs.
Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say /. is relatively unique.
I hope it's unique! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I hope it's unique! (Score:4, Insightful)
Tubgirl, lemonparty, meatspin, 2G1C, etc. The implementation may vary a bit, but goatse certainly isn't the only shock site out there.
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Re:I hope it's unique! (Score:5, Funny)
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No, no, you got it wrong (Score:5, Funny)
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Yeah, for time wasting (Score:5, Funny)
Try Wikia (Score:4, Informative)
A lot of stuff that doesn't quite make it onto the regular Wiki is found here.
It also hosts some very concise, fictional world Wikis, like Wookiepedia [Star Wars]. and Memory Alpha [Star Trek].
Qik (Score:4, Interesting)
www.qik.com allows you to stream live video and audio from your cell phone. As far as I know, it's the only service on the internet like this.
You mean like Google? (Score:4, Funny)
Singletons (Score:5, Funny)
I hear that eharmony is a good place to find singletons.
Uh... (Score:5, Funny)
You must be new here.
TinEye.com (Score:5, Interesting)
TinEye.com [tineye.com] is an image search engine that works like this:
It analyzes images it finds online, by looking at their pixels and dimensions.
To search, a user uploads an image, and TinEye returns a list of links to similar images, said images' dimensions, and links to the pages on which said images are posted.
It's useful for finding originals from photoshopped images and for finding images in a series if you have only one image and know it's part of a series.
And no, I don't work for them(but I do use the site almost daily).
Nope, not google... (Score:3, Interesting)
Archive.org isn't unique (Score:3, Informative)
Check out Australia's web archive run by the National Library of Australia: http://pandora.nla.gov.au/ [nla.gov.au]
It may not be the same size yet, but many of the web app clones have the same issue as well. Its scope is also different as well - aiming at Australian content, but again many clones limit their scope as well.
OurCampaigns (Score:3, Interesting)
There are lots of political sites, but my site OurCampaigns [ourcampaigns.com] is a bit different than anything out there.
It is custom programmed and is a structured international view of politics at allows user contribution. Lot of current and historical race result data, going back hundreds of years. High level to local level. Right now a half million political races. News items, endorsements, candidate information, party information.
wheresgeorge.com (Score:5, Informative)
I lost interest when it seemed like very few of the bills I entered were later tracked.
Snopes (Score:3, Insightful)
TV Tropes (Score:5, Insightful)
And does anything approach the singular time-wasting abilities of IMDB or Wikipedia?
Google for "TV Tropes". No, I'm not giving you a URL. If I had to go find the URL, I might accidentally look at the URL. And then I'd end up clicking some of the links there. But there's no way to read through a Trope page without being curious enough to click on at least two of the links there, and then two of the links on each of those, and then... well, I just put dinner in the oven and I do not want to suddenly snap out of a fascinated reverie an hour from now when the smoke from my kitchen burning down reminds me that I'm starving.
Time-wasting singleton? (Score:4, Funny)
This does -idle.slashdot.org [slashdot.org].
space-time continuum monitoring (Score:4, Interesting)
There is only one space-time continuum monitoring service, http://space-time.net/ [space-time.net]
Stephan
LHC destruction monitor (Score:5, Funny)
Things that should be a single authoritative site (Score:4, Interesting)
There are quite a few situations where life would be simpler if there were just one definitive instance of something - mostly indexes / official repositories of some kind, but sadly at the moment we have a multitude of these things with no single instance providing 100% coverage :
- Airline flight schedules : presumably every airline has planned its timetable months in advance, but there is no obvious place to search across all of them (cf. www.nationalrail.co.uk which I think does have the authoritative timetable across all mainline railways)
- List of all properties for sale in the country; in the UK the seller has to choose which estate agents to list with, and the buyer then has to go around a load of different agents to find out what's available. It'd seem obvious for this to instead be a nationalized thing - what added value do estate agents / letting introduction agencies provide anyway? (as distinct from letting agencies that also do some property management)
- Web Search : there is scope for different search-engines to provide fundamentally different types of search (ie. text, image, audio etc) : but why do we need more than one of each type?
- Scientific Journals : pre-print servers (arXiv.org) are starting to solve this problem, but lots of papers still get published in obscure / less-popular journals and if your university library doesn't subscribe to that one then you can't easily read it - and once you leave university they become pretty much unavailable to the average member of the public.
Pretty much all the things I can think of that would be better as a single instance have the problem that they are run commercially - so there are problems with monopolies if we ever get just one of them, and the tin-foil-hat brigade might have something to say if they were nationalized (and in many cases could just be right too : imagine if our primary news outlet were government controlled)
Free stuff seems to find its own level of singleton-like-ness, some keeping just one instance : ....
- IMDB, CPAN, w3c.org,
others forking to meet differing preferences like linux distributions, tech news website etc.
Re:I'm Sorry, but . . . (Score:5, Funny)
Usually, I'd rather be right than happy.
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Re:I'm Sorry, but . . . (Score:5, Funny)
They do if you have any sense.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no shortage of idiots on the web.
Re:gnaa (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no shortage of idiots.
Fixed that for you.
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Re:Here's a semi-unique time waster for 'ya ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Singletons are the loneliest objects that I've ever seen...
Factories can be as bad as a Singletons
They're the loneliest objects since the Singleton
False is the saddest value that you'll ever know,
True, it's the saddest value that you'll ever know...
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Re:Here's a semi-unique time waster for 'ya ... (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, it was first recorded by Three Dog Night in 1969 and written by Harry Nilsson. allmusic [allmusic.com]
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