Computer things that we love but can’t hold onto…
In the Internet and business world there are products consumers embraced, but alas, they are going away or have already disappeared. Among them is Windows XP, which Microsoft is booting out of its inventory. You can still use it but they won’t support it. Companies are still using the product because it was the most stable and well-developed in their cache. Windows 8, hate it… so goes the story. We have one in our home and nobody really likes it. We always head back to our XP or Windows 7 models when working on PCs.

Another fine product that was discontinued is Widgetbox, which provides easy-to-install widgets of feeds, photos, surveys and more. It was ideal for traditional websites as a way to highlight content and feeds. It said goodbye in March 2014. I had to shut down my account. Wahhhhh.

A free product the world uses but many have bailed from is Feedburner. I have been a Feedburner user since around 2008 and have stuck with it even through recent outages, lack of support and rumors about its operations ending. Google has pulled the plug on many products and, after encouraging feedburner users to add google advertising to their feeds, discontinued that service without even a chance to remove the old code. Stupid.

MS Frontpage. This goes back to the late 1900s, early 2000s. We still use it on our computers as a wysiwyg page builder. It’s amazing that our hosting companies support it. Hostway gave a warning to users that they don’t like it and users should move on.

Google analytics: Google used to provide the ultimate tool to analyze your web traffic. Last year they removed key information accessible to consumers which makes the product so-so. Time to find another software.

Yahoo email: The old yahoo email was stable, easy to use and enjoyable. In came Marissa Mayer from Google to create a semi-google clone, but it stinks. My family HATES the new Yahoo email. The only solution I have to date is to go elsewhere (startmail.com is a new start-up secured / private email) that has potential. As for yahoo, if you disable javascript and place adblocker plus on your browser, you have something similar to the old version.