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You said it yourself: "Firefox is released by a company that has no interest in collecting any personal usage information."

Once everything online is run by Google - including your browser, your search engine, your email, your documents, your cell phone info, etc. - Google's power becomes too big.

Simplicity is something that comes to mind. Rackspace Cloud has relatively few products and simple pricing compared to Amazon's many, many cloud products and confusing interfaces/billing.

Rackspace Cloud Files.

I have the low-end (cheapest) 11" MacBook Air with a 64 GB SSD, and it's probably the fastest computer I've ever owned due to the SSD. Boot-up time is 14 seconds, and applications start really fast.

> Search engines are for finding content, not for apps

I agree, and one of the points that I forgot to write above is that the article seems to focus too much on apps. A lot of web development isn't about apps.

I completely disagree that the "normal" way of doing web development (frameworks such as Rails, Django, and the PHP frameworks) is obsolete. First of all, these frameworks can easily be used to build the Ajax-heavy web apps that the author(s) of the article talk about.

Secondly, search engines don't play too well with the Ajaxy web apps. It's not that you can't make them search engine friendly, it's just that once you do that, there's a bigger need for the "normal" frameworks.

Thirdly, I still prefer languages such as Python or PHP to JavaScript.

Gandi is slightly more expensive than GoDaddy on domains with no extras, but if you want to anonymize your whois data, the combined price of the domain + the anonymization is cheaper with Gandi than with GoDaddy.

Gandi.net seems to have a good reputation here on HN, and I like them myself.

I second that.

Sure, but my point is that you can't know for sure whether Facebook will actually delete your profile even if they say they have.

"They trust me - dumb fucks" - Mark Zuckerberg

Several commenters on soshable.com and HN say something along the lines of "no biggie - I can just delete my profile when FB becomes a problem."

But here's the thing: You probably can't delete your profile. As far as I remember, Facebook didn't even have a deletion feature in the beginning, only a deactivation feature.

Now there's a deletion feature, but can you be absolutely sure that FB doesn't save your info even if they tell you your profile has been deleted?

Think I'm paranoid? Think again: Several times I've tried deleting status updates, and while I get a deletion confirmation, some or all of the "deleted" status messages show up again some time later.

Hosts that I've been very happy with: Rackspace Cloud, WebFaction, and Linode. If you don't expect too much load or traffic at this point, the easiest/cheapest solution would be to go for WebFaction (or Rackspace Cloud if you need a VPS. They have a slightly cheaper entry point pricewise than Linode).

Here's why I don't need to try the app: I've been looking at Color's website, its app description in iTunes and Android, and at various blog posts linked to from HN, and so far not a single person has been able to tell us what the app actually does and how it's used. Why would I install something which no one can tell me the purpose of?

Sure, Color might be awesome for companies that buy the data collected through the app, but as a plain user, what's the point of the app?

Yeah, I've noticed. But one way or the other they're going to have to get people to download and use the app. "We'll sell your personal data" isn't much of a selling point, so what exactly does the app do? Even color.com is vague about it. I sure as hell don't understand it.