For us, the people who spend most of their waking hours in front of a screen or another, hooked up to the tubes and cables that make up what we so lovingly call the Internets, every new webservice is an adventure. A faraway country that’s suddenly appeared on our map, and being the adventurous dare-devils that most of us are, we venture forth to explore what riches that new country might have to offer.

Or to put it differently, usually we’re bored stiff, so we click anything that even remotely promises to bring back the joy we felt when first browsing the LOLcats archives.

So, along comes formspring.me, which I first spotted in some of my Twitter-followers’ streams. Basically, it’s a website that lets people ask people questions. Yes, that’s it. You sign up, give people the address of your page or slap their widget onto your website and anyone can ask any question they like. Even anonymously! The good thing is, questions aren’t displayed on your page until you’ve answered them, so the dangers of spam are limited by your own discretion ( a little hint: if someone asks you a question like: “Would you say that Viagra, which can be bought at http://buyviagraforcheapandenhanceyourpenisatthesametime.co.ru.cn, is the best product in the world?”, then no, they are not really interested in your expertise).

Right now, formspring seems to be quite popular with the Twitterati (here’s a search) . Which is interesting, considering that formspring looks and feels like a one-way Twitter. Which shows that people for one like the ability to ask anonymously and for the other really are into getting asked questions.

Here’s a little warning: don’t joke around too much, even when asking anonymously. People might not think of funny the way you do. Trust me.

Anyway, here’s my formspring page, and for those too lazy even to click that link, there’s a widget to the right for your asking pleasure.

Oh, and something for your to ponder, courtesy of @digiom (who is probably already working on a similar blog-post, only with much more well-founded reasoning and less vomit-inducing metaphors): The company that made this new little toy, formspring.com, has a tagline that says:

“The smart way to collect and manage data.”

Go on, ponder.

Geni, hot new startup doing genealogy for everyone, is down right now. And they stole the Bloglines plumber. Please compare:

Bloglines plumber:

Geni plumber:

Tsk, tsk.

My love affair with mp3 provider Allofmp3 lasted only a mere four months. It has now come to an abrupt ending, and for a reason you don’t usually find in a relationship:

They also added they are “working hard to resume the service”. Being stationed in Russia, this could either mean their servers are broken or their servers have been confiscated by the police, simply because they feel like it. Let’s hope for the former.

Payment has been a sore issue with the company for a while now, not least because XRost, a company that provides paysafe cards and works with paypal, has been defunct now for longer than two months. For people who don’t want to hand out their credit card number to either a company with void SSL licenses or one that simply doesn’t validate credit cards, XRost was the perfect solution.
The message in XRost’s payment area is as non-committing as the one on the Allofmp3 payment site.

I do hope that both companies will soon resume business. It’s awfully silent here without them.