The AOL Message Boards - Changes?

I saw a rumor that AOL might get rid of their message boards so I decided to find out more information about it. Here is what I found so far.

Dear Message Board users,

We wanted to tell you about some changes that are coming to your AOL Message board experience. Many of the most popular message boards are getting a new look and feel in the coming weeks, while a number of the less frequently used message boards are being retired. Be sure to check back at the People Connection Message Boards page for an up-to-date list of active message boards.

These changes will take place on March 31st, 2009.

Thank you for being part of the AOL Message Board community. We thank you for your patience and understanding, and we apologize for any inconvenience.

Sincerely,

The AOL Message Board Team

source
People Connection Blog

So far this is part of the information that I have found. It seems that AOL may be closing their message boards outside the United States - ie like in the UK and a number of AOL users outside the United States have reported that they have seen messages posted by AOL stating that their message boards will be closing.

AOL Cancels AOL Pictures!

In yet another bit of disappointing news here is information about AOL canceling another one of their features:


Dear AOL Pictures User:

We are sorry to inform you that, as of December 31, 2008, AOL will no longer provide the AOL Pictures online photo service. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

The good news is that AOL has partnered with American Greetings® PhotoWorks® to enable continued access to your pictures through the PhotoWorks service. PhotoWorks provides unlimited free storage, just like AOL Pictures, as well as a variety of options for making creations and sharing your photos. You can access your images on PhotoWorks simply by providing your screen name and password to register for a free American Greetings PhotoWorks account. Register for PhotoWorks now.

While we recommend the American Greetings PhotoWorks option, you may also:

Download your photos to your computer using a new tool that will enable you to quickly save multiple images and albums; or
Purchase a DVD archive of your images. Please note there is a charge for the DVD archive based on the number of images you select.


It is important that you take action no later than December 31, 2008. After this date, you will no longer be able to access your images through AOL Pictures. You may choose from or combine any of the options listed above, based on your needs, as long as you do so by December 31.

Please go to AOL Pictures as soon as possible to register for American Greetings PhotoWorks for continued access to your pictures or to save your images on your computer or to DVD. Here, you will also find more information and step-by-step instructions on each of the available choices.

We sincerely appreciate your being an AOL Pictures user. It has been our pleasure to provide you with an enjoyable online photo experience.

Sincerely,

The AOL Pictures Team

AOL Is RAISING It's Rates!

Be sure to check your AOL inbox because the email has gone out that effective after July 29, 2008, AOL is raising their fees! The fee will increase from $9.95 per month to $11.99 per month.. The increase is due to providing 24 hour tech support for those AOL subscribers that need it. However, long-time subscribers can opt out of this new plan and still get the $9.99 (I thought it was $9.95) plan as long as they don't want the 24 hour tech support. Subscribers opting out of the new fee increase will NOT get the 24 hour tech support but will still be able to call AOL for help if they have trouble signing in with their AOL accounts!

Here is a link to an article from CNet:

AOL Rate Increase

Well It Looks Like Another AOL Favorite Has Bit The Dust!

I'm talking about AOL's download center! There used to be a time when AOL has a place where you could download all types of good and FREE downloads. AOL members could even upload their own works to the download library so that other people could download them and what made it especially good was that AOL scanned the uploads to make sure that there were no virus's on the upload.

What seems to have taken the place of AOL's download center is something called the Download Squad - which I don't particularly like! Maybe I will just have to get used to it?

There still seems to be a way to get to some of the files at the old download center on AOL but the problem is that I'm only able to get to certain files as opposed to having access to all the different types of files available to download.

I may have to work on this to see if I can get to the complete old download center on AOL because I miss it very much!

AOL And Usenet Newsgroups!

There was a time when AOL members had free access to most of the Usenet newsgroups.

In case you didn't know, Usenet newsgroups are message forums where you can post messages, questions and answer other peoples' messages.

But AOL has since cancelled this access to the newsgroups.

The alternative is to join the Google Groups where the access is free BUT you don't get access to the binary newsgroups where you can post pictures (and see / access them as well).

There are some free newsgroup servers out there but the list of them is ever-changing. Some of them are not reliable and some of them allow you to read the posts but you can't post to the newsgroup(s).

I'm currently investigating getting netscape access to the newsgroups. I had netscape a long time ago and remember being able to access some of the usenet newsgroups. The current version of netscape doesn't allow for access to the newsgroups so I had to download an older version of it which I did. Now I'm fooling around with the newsgroups that I have been able to subscibe to. In order to post to these newsgroups you need to have an email account. You can register with netscape to get an email account - which I am trying to do now but I keep getting cut off.

Of course there are newsgroup servers where you can pay to get access to the newsgroups too.