I just wanted a calendar.
I needed to check which day of the week a date fell on. That's all. Not an appointment, not a reminder, not an account. A calendar. So I typed calendar into a search box.
The first result was google pushing their own calendar that wanted me to sign in. I didn't want to plan anything, I wanted to look at a month.
But hold on a second here, ignoring result #2 in google search for a second here (time and date):
- #3 was yahoo calendar (same login flow as google)
- #4 was an AI overview of the first and second result
- #5 was another google calendar, this time the android app.
- #6 was a top story about kim kardashain's advent calendar backlash (wtf?)
- #7 was microsoft's calendar
- #8 was apple's version.
And that's it, one actual result to a real damn calendar that doesn't require a login.
So I clicked on #2, a calendar website, time and date.
It did have a calendar. It also had a banner ad across the top, another down the side, a "Create calendar" form, three menus of formatting options, and a navigation bar for news, weather, time zones and calculators. In the middle of all that was the thing I actually wanted, nice and tiny.
None of that is bad, I guess. Ads pay for sites like that, even if I don't know exactly what they pay for anymore, and some of them are actually good sites. But I wanted to look at the current month, and the page wanted me to look at an ad for bullshit, or have me make an account and login.
So I made one
So I put up calendar.gripe. One page: today's date, the time, and the month. It loads instantly. Nothing to accept, nothing to close, nobody to sign in as.
Then I needed to add up a column of numbers. Then my get my ip address. Then an iphone picture (heic) as a jpeg. Strip exif location data.
Every one went the same way: something simple, a search, and a page that wanted something from me first. An ad, a sign-up, an email address, an app download, fuck that.
So each one got the same treatment, and a domain named after what it does. Because each one started as a gripe, they all end in .gripe.
Now I have a bunch of them: calendar, calc, ipaddress, fast, maps, convert, pdf, qrcode, pw, unit, timer, tts and the rest.
My rules
- No ads. Not small ones, not "tasteful" ones, not sponsored tools.
- No accounts. You don't need to sign up, I may add sign ups later, but it would be just for you to save your own stuff across browsers. For now, if a tool needs to remember something, it remembers it in your browser.
- Tracking I have basic analytics via cloudflare just to keep track of load and whatnot, but aside from me looking ever so often, no one has access.
- Your stuff stays yours. Most tools do their work inside your browser: your photos, PDFs, passwords and text never get uploaded. The few that need a server (like the speed test) say so, and keep nothing. I honestly don't give two shits about your files, ha.
- One job each, done fast. A tool does the thing in its name, and the page opens ready to do it.
The fine print is in the terms & privacy page, which is written to be read.
So then, who pays for it?
I do.
It runs on Cloudflare: a few dollars a month for the servers, about two dollars a month to store a map of the whole planet for maps.gripe, and the domains. That's the whole budget. There's no business model, because there's nothing to sell.
Is it for sale?
Of course! Make me an eight figure offer and I'll consider it, anything else isn't life changing for me, so don't waste your time.
What's next
More tools, whenever something annoys me enough. If something annoys you, it might be next.
Your tools suck!
I don't give a shit, honestly. I made the tools for me, not you, you'd be shocked at how often I personally use them now.
I love your tools!
See above, haha.
Contact
Can send me an email at hello at tools gripe.