10 Handy Disposable Online Services

Originally published at: http://www.sitepoint.com/10-handy-disposable-online-services/

Not everything useful on the web needs a login or a software download. Some services can be a bit more flexible, and a bit less permanent. In this article I’m going to take a look at a host of such services, with I’ll refer to as “disposable services”.

A disposable service, in the context of this article, is one you can use for free with no account or registration. It’s usually a matter of simply opening the website in question and getting to work. A unique URL is often created, which you can then share with others for collaboration functionality.

Here I’m going to list 10 such services that might help you collaborate on the fly or be more productive. In any case, you should bookmark them for future use!

The tools are in the following 10 categories:

  • To-do Lists
  • Code Sharing
  • Text Sharing
  • Collaborative Editing
  • Video Meetings
  • Chat
  • Code Demos
  • File Sharing
  • Image Editing
  • Whiteboarding

Plus a few extra tools for good measure. Let’s get started

To-do Lists: Strike

Strike is a to-do list project by the good folks over at ZURB. Share the list with anybody and work on it together!

The interface is fast and clean and when you’re done you can print it all out.

Code Sharing: GitHub Gist

GitHub Gist is a code sharing tool that lets you paste code from any number of languages. The code can be used by anybody and forked or downloaded.

If you are a programmer and feel like sharing amazing code snippets, this is for you. Whether you even care at all about sharing your snippets, it’s still a free and easy-to-use method of storing reusable code snippets for yourself or your team.

If you’re logged in to Github, the Gist will be associated with your account and will be fully versioned. If you create a Gist anonymously, you won’t be able to come back and edit or delete it later. Gists can be set as public or private, with private only being accessible by knowing the URL.

Text Sharing: Pastebin

Everybody knows about Pastebin; the cool, free, text sharing utility that reveals government secrets and shady business practices everywhere.

If you have something to say anonymously to the world, it goes on Pastebin. You can select code highlighting and pick the language if desired. You can have it listed publicly or leave it unlisted.

You can also set an expiration on your paste so it will expire and be deleted automatically.

Pastebin is not the only game in town, there are many of these types of services such as Tinypaste which allows password protection on your paste, and if you register they even do profit sharing on ads. Try Hastebin which has a super clean interface and supports auto syntax highlighting and more.

Just like Github Gists, you gain some additional features and associations with your text if you have an account.

Collaborative Editing: Collabedit

Similar to Pastebin or Hastebin, Collabedit is a text sharing tool with an added benefit: collaboration with others. Just click “new document” and put in your name, you will have a URL to share with others. Anybody who “joins” your document will be listed, and you can work on the text together as well as chat.

Another good tool in this category is Stypi. As soon as you open the link, a new document will auto-generate for you and be ready to share and collaborate on.

If you are the developer type, you can install Firepad as a collaboration editor in to your own projects. The popular Nitrous.io uses Firepad for its editor, as does Socrates.io which allows collaboration on Markdown documents.

Collabedit creates a pretty small URL, easy to verbalize to someone or send in a text. You might like the interface of Stypi better though.

Video Meetings: GoToMeeting

The free GoToMeeting app lets you set up a quick audio/visual meeting for up to 3 people. Share your screen, microphone, and webcam, with chat abilities.

If you and your collaborators happen to have Google accounts (who doesn’t?), then of course Google+ Hangouts is a very popular meeting tool you can use with relative ease when you are all signed in.

An alternative to GotToMeeting service called vline which provides yet another free, online, instant video chat service using the WebRTC technology.

Our last mention here goes to appear.in, supporting video, audio, chat, and up to eight people per room, also using WebRTC.

Continue reading this article on SitePoint

Shameless self promotion, but check out http://convertcase.net/, quite handy when clients send you emails or documents typed all in UPPERCASE!

it would be great if you can extend this article with code snippets tools and wireframing tools

An article like this could go on forever. People should comment with their favorites!

Here is a collection of animations you can quickly use in a project:

Beautify many types of code:

Generate sprites:
http://spritegen.website-performance.org/

Extract CSS data from HTML:
http://extractcss.com/

If you want to try wireframing/mockups, check this one out:
https://moqups.com/#!/

I prefer Shift-F3 in Word to toggle lower->upper->camel, but until the world is told the secrets behind The Ribbon, yours has a niche.
Maybe you could find the WISWIG editors on the web and pull it into their open source projects …

bootply.com for bootstrap, javascript.

Another for the list (and shamelessly shared): CV-LO, a simple client-side service for creating resumes from Trello.

It’s open source and lives on Github.

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