Kitcatt Nohr Digitas

Registrations are a drag. There is no other way about it. I have never met a person who loves online registrations. Ever. If such a person exits I would really like to know. I know people who like doing all sorts of chores. People who genuinely enjoy ironing, or washing up, or weeding the garden. Some people even enjoy much more extreme and painful activities, you know, like drinking tabasco sauce from a pint glass. But registering for online services? No, not one person I know.

Not even in the latest jackass movie they submit to resolving captchas. That would be crossing the ethical boundaries. Submitting someone to resolving captchas for the entertainment of others? Unthinkable!

Well there is a hope for all of us. An increasing number of services which (are you ready for this?) do not require any registration! I’ll mention just a couple here: DropMocks and Spamavert.

Lets say you want to quickly upload some photos or images. You can, of course, use one of many online repositories (Flickr, Picasa, Panoramio, Facebook, etc.).

To get your flics online you have to: log in, find where the upload link is, make album (or set, or folder depending on who you are with) to hold the images, click upload, find the images, and... you are nearly there. Some will allow you to upload only one image at a time, so you have to repeat browse step many many times, and then you have to locate the URL to the photos you have just uploaded. Phew!

And that is if you are registered. If you are not... Better not to even think about it.

Now enter DropMocks. You type in http://www.dropmocks.com/ in your browser (well, not in IE, but that can barely be even called a browser any more). You drag your files in it, and guess what? You are done!

Honestly. That is it. Your photos are there, your link to share (nice and tiny) is there. Perfect. I love DropMocks.

Obviously, this is “insecure”. Anyone who gets to this page can delete or add images. Not that they are easy to guess. With a current URL logic (case sensitive 5 ASCII characters) there is 459 million, 165 thousand and 24 potential image sites. Even if you view each for just 1 sec, it will take you 14 years 6 months 21.91 days to go through them all.

If all you want is to put up some pics quickly, and then remove them, this is more than secure enough. Open, drag, done.

Of course, if you want you can register, and login, and make your items nice and properly secure. But you do not have to. And that is the beauty of it.

I cannot resist but to mention another wonderful online service here. Spamavert. How many times have you been asked to register somewhere and you have to provide you email address. Not just any old email ( is my favourite) but a proper, valid email address.

However there is a problem. You do not really want to give your email, and opt-out box is nowhere in sight. You are receiving enough spam as it is, but you want to get to whatever you are registering for. What are your options?

Well, you can always create an address like (or gmail, or yahoo, or something else). But can you be bothered? Name, surname, pets name, shoe size, pet’s shoe size, and not to forget the beloved captchas... No, probably not.

To the rescue comes spamavert. Just go to http://spamavert.com/ and it will pre-generate random, not used email address .com 

If you wish you can put whatever you want .com. You hit the read button and you are reading emails sent to this address.

Paste that new address into the email registration field, and you are done: disposable, single use email addresses. No registration necessary. Lovely. Lets hope this trend catches on.