An interesting attempt at a classification of single-purpose/ single-function/ often single-cumulative-page content websites [defined here: http://kottke.org/08/02/single-serving-sites] now en vogue on the Intertubes. By that metric BlogoSCOPED could indeed be one such, devoted to all things Ghoooglish – even though it is made up of 2 parallell-tracks, blog and forum, rather than author Greenberg's default one (I presume all other BG pages, author indices etc, could be considered service items to the main two). This taxonomy attempt is not quite "there" yet, but interesting nonetheless....

http://isthisyourpaperonsingleservingsites.com/

I especially liked this bit:
"[...] A certain subset of single serving sites seem to defy attempts at categorization [...]"

Interesting page. I don't think Blogoscoped would fit as a Single Serving Site but maybe this one would: http://turnyournameintoaface.com :)

So would Philipp's gaxed.com

This, definitely. But then so would all the word/play generators, calculators and proxies.

Too bad most of tools like the http://gaxed.com are really proof-of-concept projects; of limited-usefulness sites – and all that largely due to being tied to the lowest linguistic common denominator of the web, the English language. Because there isn't a way of ensuring that the output will be in some other, desired target language!

You mean because I don't support letters outside of ABC at gaxed? Well, the reason is that these fonts are hand-made, e.g. I drew the alphabet as neon sign and then cut each letter into a small image. That's the reason but probably no excuse, and you may be very right that this hurts the usefulness of Gaxed quite a bit...

I don't mean to single out this site, as English-only is practically the sole output option of all such generators. But even were you generating glyph-bitmaps of Open Source fonts in memory, then superimposing them on background, there is no mechanism to ensure that non-ASCII input would come out in intended alphabet(s).
http://gaxed.com/image/fhiv8lm.jpg

I was going to end the above with
http://gaxed.com/pic/fhiv8lm
but you just had to be too clever for Blogoscoped's own good! ;-))

[Whoops.

Uploaded your pic here now:

http://blogoscoped.com/files/so-its-a-toy-at-best.jpg
]

There you see... once you begin to consider it as more than simple proof-of-concept, all kind of exceptions and iffy cases crop up (creep up, even). And we haven't even touched on the tricky 'uns.

[ In this particular instance, rather than replacing HERE-pasted gaxed.com image tag with stock pictorial "share it elsewhere advice" followed by its url (which is sort of pointless), I'd simply allow the original image, or perhaps a scaled-down version of it to save on the bitstream.... after all, you pay for both deliveries, so why not permit own generated content to crosspollinate the other site? Just a thought.]

Very good points. And in general I want to and do allow hotlinking from many of the sites I put up, like CoverBrowser.com. In this case I guess I had decided it against it, opting for a Creative Commons please-upload-to-your-server option instead. But as it might create additional server stress, you better prepare with a good server suited for that, because people may hotlink in very busy places. (At e.g. CoverBrowser it is more of an exception but at Gaxed, it could become the rule, and the hotlinking message could someone help with it becoming the rule, even if you're right that it doesn't happen in a specific case provided the inclusion remains.) Don't want to jump too much into the future but I might soon be able to talk more on the topic of enabling hotlinking on a server dedicated to that, let's see :)

Xkcd.com is an example of a site were hotlinking is specifically supported. I think in general, it's the right way to go...

Let the hotlinked version include an advertisement. The user can download the original if they don't want the ad.

The image doesn't need to be a .jpg of course, it can be an iframe or a piece of flash if you want it to include clickable ads.

You didn't read close enough, Roger. The point I was trying to make and inadvertedly made two of them at once, was that

[1] most such tools/generators were never considered beyond their proof-of-concept or toy stage; and

[2] that in order to progress beyond that, a lot of checks and exceptions would have to be made.

Case in point: Philipp's other gaxed.com site generates a subtitled graphic (which I thought of hotlinking as final point WITHIN Philipp's blogempire, not outside of it). Philipp pays for both streams, yet he hasn't considered special-casing inclusion of one of his site's output into another.... a missed opportunity, to say the least.

And now you're proposing ads-as-solution. [personal sort-of-attack removed.]