Even though I’d known for a little while it was coming, it was still very upsetting to see the announcement. AOL is shutting Mailblocks down. The suggestion is for mailblocks users to now go get a (free) AIM Mail account.
Except that AIM Mail doesn’t use challenge/response for spam (it has some kind of filtering that “just ok” from my playing with it)…
Oh, and then AIM Mail doesn’t support external accounts (Mailblocks is currently managing my hotmail account)…
Then there’s also the bit about the Ads. As a “paid” mailblocks user, there were no ads. AIM Mail has 3 ads on the inbox alone…
Not to mention that in the AIM/AOL namespace I’m likely to get some lame-ass name like barclayloftus11@aol.com or something…
Frankly, even though I worked on AIM and AOL Mail (and it’s really not a bad email service) I think the whole situation still kinda sucks. But then again, I guess I am pretty biased…