Au Revoir Dot Mac!

In my last few blog entries one might find my ramblings about moving away from .Mac, and using Web 2.0-based alternatives, and all that nonsense. But until now, I have made no decisions to not renew my .Mac account. And as the phrase “But until now” would imply, I will not be a .Mac member starting December 26, 2006. I really don’t think its necessary to reiterate all the reasons I have mashed together throughout the last few days in several entries, so I will kindly redirect those who are interested there . But one thing that is worth reiterating is my utter dependence on .Mac. Everything related to my life on the internet and my Mac is on my iDisk. Emails, papers, presentations, backups, contacts, calendars…A lot of stuff, my friends. The biggest thing I am worried about is my email. The second my 365 days is up, my wonderful IMAP-based email becomes nonfunctional, and bounces everything back to the sender. There’s no way to get things forwarded or keep the same email unless I pay another $99.

Q: If my .Mac trial, full or sub-account expires, what happens to my data?
If your .Mac trial, full or sub-account expires, any web pages, files you have backed up to or stored in iDisk, messages left on the email server, contact information stored in Address Book, and websites saved in Bookmarks will be removed. Emails sent to your .Mac Mail address will bounce back to the sender. If you are the owner of any .Mac groups, group pages will no longer be accessible or visible to group members, and messages sent to the group email address will bounce back to the sender.

So for email, I will turn to my college to which I am applying in a few weeks. I think they should turn on my email accounts fairly early, hopefully before December. That way I can just move all my stuff there–they seem pretty dumb when it comes to space limits, too. So I should have a pretty good amount (even though I don’t use that much anyway). If it does take longer than I expect I will just move back to my old Gmail account, and wait it out. For calendars and contacts, I will use whatever email I am using at the time. Although HipCal looks pretty awesome. I don’t use .Mac for social networking on anything like that, so that isn’t any issue. And for Web space–you’re looking at it. Clearly the only thing I am going to have problems with is moving email addresses. Just think of all the different accounts, newsletters, contacts, and God knows what else I am going to have to update. But I guess we will cross that bridge when we come to it. All I can do now is tell .Mac not to automatically renew and say goodbye to Steve’s solution.

In other news, Thom Yorke’s new cd rocks.