I have had the same e-mail address since the year my father died. 1999.
I have used the features, when .Mac was available in its original form free, I have been a loyal subscriber to the same service now until the service’s death come next year.
MobileMe has hosted 3 versions of my blog without fail, without hiccup, and without downtime.
From the humble beginnings as “The Draconian Clan Homepage” in true 1990s style to the slightly more up to speed original flameflash.net to what you see today.
(I can’t guarantee how long those links will work, by the way).
No, I haven’t changed the site design since 2007* when I got my first copy of iWeb. That’s because iWeb is such an amazing and easy to use product.
*of course, this has been carried over since to the new wordpress format.
The Internet has seen me grow to who I am, from the now defunct wbs.net (webchat broadcasting system) that was bought out by go.com (they host sites like disney.com now) to the defunct disinfo.net email service (aside from hotmail, this was my first real email address). Disinfo still exists, but at a .COM.
I remember when hotmail wasn’t owned by anybody but themselves… I also remember closing my account when Microsoft bought them out.
I remember when Google wasn’t a household name… Yahoo was.
So get off my lawn!
I was a part of something. Something bigger than me, but I felt, at my naive age, like I was building and creating something.
Like I was a part of it.
I know better now, of course. Heck, trying to keep up with how much technology changes is an almost full-time job in and of itself. The folks at IGN do a good job of showing that, especially since today marked the first day of E3 and their coverage of it.
DotMac (.Mac) was the first web service I ever bought and paid for. The Internet is supposed to be free… right?
But here I am… 11 years later, and I still use it faithfully… because it works.
I really hope it stays and continues to work with iWeb, but if it doesn’t, I’ll find a new home for hopefully my iWeb uploads and this site… but if I don’t… well, I still have until June 30, 2012.
-FF
PS. Below is the full text of the email I just got, italics added by me to stress that it’s not my original text:
Dear MobileMe member,
We’d like to share some exciting news with you about iCloud — Apple’s upcoming cloud service, which stores your content and wirelessly pushes it to your devices. iCloud integrates seamlessly with your apps, so everything happens automatically. Available this fall, iCloud is free for iOS 5 and OS X Lion users.
What does this mean for you as a MobileMe member?
When you sign up for iCloud, you’ll be able to keep your MobileMe email address and move your mail, contacts, calendars, and bookmarks to the new service.
Your MobileMe subscription will be automatically extended through June 30, 2012, at no additional charge. After that date, MobileMe will no longer be available.
When iCloud becomes available this fall, we will provide more details and instructions on how to make the move. In the meantime, we encourage you to learn more about iCloud.
Sincerely,
The MobileMe Team
FlameFlash.net 