nostalgicAs of the 23rd, GeoCities is beginning to shut down. New accounts are not available, and they'll be deactivating the service for good this fall. (So now would be an ideal time to make a backup of your files and look for other hosting options, if any of you are still on GeoCities.)
Remember the days when everybody used ICQ and e-mail and had home pages on GeoCities, Angelfire, and Tripod?
I'd totally link my old Geocities account here - t'was /Athens/Academy/3549 and yes, I actually wrote that out on posters, and amazingly people still checked into it based on the page views I got back in the spring of 1998 - but it's been totally baleeted. In 1999, when the terms of service became odious (especially concerning content ownership), I moved everything to another free host, a Canadian outfit that didn't run ads and offered unlimited space. They thought they could make money, too. Ha-ha. So one day when the prices for domain names dropped (they were starting to be offered free with inexpensive-for-the-time hosting packages), I up and became willmatheson.com.
I wonder what I'd do if I were just starting out today. With the notoriety of high school long past, I probably wouldn't have bothered setting up a formal website. I'd put my photos on Flickr (like I do now), and blog with an external service (like I do now). All I'd do is mention each on the other and on Facebook. The only problematic service is YouTube - Sarah McLachlan is on the warpath apparently and the audio for my cheesy high school movie has been blocked (if you want to see it on its own page, anyway - it still works fine in the channel view). So instead of frigging around with that, I offer viewers the option of downloading directly from the site (use the links on the left) - sure, it'll take a little while, but the quality will make it well worth it. In fact, it's pretty near DVD-quality, doing it that way.
Unless I'm selling something or I'm legitimately famous, there's little point in having a website.
But stay tuned! ;-) (Not like my updates are something you have to "tune" into, and monopolize your attention for. Clearly that's an increasingly-dated metaphor!)