Just keep Flickr running, thanks! :-)

Yahoo has given me until the 13th of January to pay for my email service. It is, I think, $24.95 a year, and I've been paying for it for quite some time now. Let me put it this way: until I checked, I thought it was still $19.95.

Years ago, Yahoo provided a decent email client. It didn't fit the way I worked; not having a Wifi card in my iBook, I needed to download my email, so I could read it at Starbuck's, etc. So that's what I did. Then Yahoo started charging. If you looked at your email through their interface, no charge. Reduce their costs and they charged you. (Great business model, by the way.) Still, it worked for me and the price was negligible.

These days twenty five bucks is a lot, the quantity of email I get has gone down so significantly I can go for a few days without getting any. It's all Facebook updates, these days. So I'm looking at my email and saying "Do I actually need it?" It's good for getting bank notifications ("You owe us money, pay up!", "Where's that payment?" and so on... Perhaps it's not so good), and for communicating with those not on Facebook. I also need it for some software downloads and some Internet services; you get the confirmation email and then you can download the app, or access the service. But I often use my Google email for that sort of thing. It's easier! I'm moving a lot of my "instant" communication over to Tumblr and Twitter; they're so much easier, less finicky, too.

I do use Google email; I like how it works. It's actually better from their servers than Apple's "Mail" application. (Which is infinitely better (simpler) than that behemoth, "Outlook"!)

I pay for a Pro account on Flickr, another Yahoo service. I enjoy using Flickr; I think its picture organization services are so much better than Facebook's. I also like the fact that it's not a closed garden; Facebook is a walled garden with a very high wall. But Flickr is slightly expensive, as well; I enjoy using it, and I'm way behind on uploading pictures to it. So I can justify paying for that. I use Blogger (free), and Facebook (again, free). How many communication channels do I actually need?

All in all, I'm not actually sure what I use email for. I can't say for certain that I need Yahoo's email service, in particular. Sorry, Yahoo. I will not be helping you get out of financial difficulties. Just keep Flickr running, thanks. :-)

Carolyn Ann