This month I am saying goodbye to a couple of services that I have been using for a while.

First Posterous. At the end of last week it was announced that the micro blogging platform Posterous will be closing down at the end of April 2013. This has been anticipated for a while since Twitter bought it in March last year and assured users that they will not close down without notice and will create an official data backup path.

I started using Posterous when I moved my “Vox Blog” to it (actually migrating to TypePad and then Posterous as it was easer) after Vox was closed at the end of September 2010.

As this is a second blog of “silly stuff” that I do not upload much to it nowadays I have decided to just kill it off. I did consider moving it to another service such at Tumblr but it is not simple to get the archive in there and I have other things to do that are more important. I will however place a full copy of my Posterious blog on my web site and redirect from the original URL so the content will not vanish from the Internet.

There is a small bug in the export where the original Import from Vox is listed backwards, and the Image URLs are mashed, but I fixed the URLs with a little .htaccess hacking. If you need help to do the same please do ask.

Next is Dopplr. Dopplr is a service where you log where you will be travelling to and it allows you to see if your friends are going to the same location. When you attend a lot of events like I do it can actually be useful. The service has been running unchanged since it was bought by Nokia in September 2009. I give it a lot of credit for running apparently untouched for almost 3½ years. Sadly it has just started to play up by not allowing trips to be created, edited, or deleted. It is clearly not being maintained and about to die.

Rather than move to another system (I only know of Tripit and it is not quite the same) I have imported my last Dopplr backup in to my Google Calender. Clearly this is not going to duplicate Dopplr’s social element, but will help with my planning and this is what I have mostly used it for in recent times.

So that is two services gone and I suspect there will be more going before the end of the month. The Internet is always exciting because of the constant flow of new and exciting things on it, but most will eventually vanish or be swallowed up by other services regardless if they are successful or not. It is sad but the way it is.

• Previous Entry: UKHost4U caught posting fake positive comments
• Next Entry: Goodbye Television Centre