Anti-AOL

After writing about AOL's "Back to Classic" link malfunctioning, I shot a complaint off to AOL saying that if they want users to see the Classic AOL look, then they shouldn't provide a "Back to Classic" link that doesn't work.

As a mostly unwilling beta tester, I submit feedback to AOL fairly often, but I never get a response (I often curse out whatever product I'm "discussing" before I'm done - I guess that scares them?) but this time AOL's data-mining software must have bounced me to a human support person or something fairly humanoid (perhaps a reply bot?).

According to AOL, there are four ways to restore the Classic look (but as I said in my last article, if you delete your cookies after applying these changes, you will have to restore the Classic look all over again). After I read AOL's reply, I saw that the broken "Back to Classic" link on AOL.com has also been fixed.

Reverting to the Classic look does not restore the Classic AOL.com home page - the colors are off (it's not the same shade of blue that I recall, for instance) and the logo behind the name "AOL" in the upper left-hand corner cannot be killed with anything except the AdBlockPlus add-on (which is only available to us lucky Firefox users). But I guess it's close enough.

Why AOL can't just make the Classic look a permanent setting via Options once you're logged in is probably the next thing I will complain to them about.

To sum up, there are four ways to restore the Classic look:

• Click this link for the blue theme
• Click this link for the classic theme in 7 colors, including blue
• Look for the Classic theme logo in the "theme strip", on the far right, at position #10 (I must correct AOL's word on this: it's in the row of logos along the top of the page, and in the tiny little thumbnails above those; both are at position #10).
• Find it in the "More" link next to the theme strip (I must correct AOL on this, too: I do not see and cannot find the "More" link.)

In order to completely return to the Classic look, you will need to kill the logo strip that runs across the top of the page. The "Back to Classic" link at the bottom of the AOL.com home page and the options listed above will not remove the logos for you.

To turn off the logos, look in the top upper right-hand corner of the AOL.com home page. You'll see a strip of tiny thumbnail images. There's a link to the right of them that says Close. Just click it and the logos will disappear. You'll have to keep cookies enabled or the logos will come back each time you re-open your browser and/or refresh the page.

AOL's Reply to My Complaint

Feedback Reply: New WS

We want to thank you for your recent feedback about the AOL homepage. December 10th was a big day for AOL! We officially became an independent Internet company once more, and the unveiling of our new logo and visual identity was tied to that major event.

We really appreciate you taking the time to let us know your thoughts on our new look. We know that it may have been a surprise at first, but we hope that in time you will embrace the new look and feel of the site. Please do know that we are looking closely at all of the feedback received and determining what additional improvements we can make.

We will be adding new themes in the very near future, and many of them will be shaped around requests we've received. While we have retired most of the older themes from AOL.com and Enhanced AOL Welcome Screen, we have still kept the classic blue theme available. If you are looking for something right now which is a little darker than our new set of themes, we recommend you try the classic blue theme. You can apply that theme right now by clicking here. (Please note, once you click that link, the blue theme will automatically become your set theme.) You can also find it in the theme strip in the upper-right corner of the page in the far right position (#10) as well as in our theme chooser (if you click on the "More" link in that same space). It will say "Click here for the Blue Classic theme" when you hover over it. All you have to do is click once to set it.

For more info and FAQs on our new look, please visit our homepage blog.

If you prefer to return to the "regular" Welcome page, the Classic page, please use this link: http://www.aol.com/?src=classic

Please check back soon for more new themes! And please continue to use the Help & Feedback link any time you'd like to get in touch with us with suggestions.

Thank you so much!

The AOL Homepage Team

And the goggles, they do nothing!

If you don't use AOL or visit their home page you might not know that in honor of their newfound freedom from Time Warner and their Dec. 10 IPO (they're trading on the stock market again under their own ticker - AOL - for the first time in years), they got rid of their pyramid/evil eye logo and replaced it with wow, about twenty new logos, which mostly look like food-colored brains and jellyfish (it's just AOL's way of Rorschach testing you folks, don't worry).

The new logos, designed by random guys that AOL's devs found in San Francisco on whoah-groovy-man acid trips and psychiatrists who administer the latest in Rorschach tests, now run along the top of the AOL.com page in one big, ugly clusterfuck. The new look is, among other things, disgusting, nor is it easy to get rid of, since the link on the bottom left of the home page, clearly marked "Back to Classic", just changes the backgrounds without getting rid of the logos - or the new look.

So much for AOL's "Classic" look (which I never liked, anyway); it seems it's been laid to rest along with AOL's UK message boards, Hometown pages, and Xdrive, among other things that AOL users actually (how could you guys?) liked.

Unfortunately, the only workaround I can suggest for now is to use Yahoo!, MSN, NetVibes, or another home page for your email and news. If the "Back to Classic" link ever gets fixed or a workaround presents itself, feel free to share that in the comments or to send me an email.

If you just want to turn off the logos, look in the top upper right-hand corner of the AOL.com home page. You'll see tiny thumbnails of the brains logos. There's a link to the right of them that says Close. Just click it and they're gone. You'll have to keep cookies enabled, though, or the jellyfish logos will come back to torment intrigue you each time you re-open your browser and/or refresh the page.

Nicholas Carlson wants you to know the full extent to which doublespeak is used by AOL. To that end, he's reprinted a chart that AOL drew up for their recent earnings call. The chart is titled, in big, bold letters, "AOL Highlights". This gets funnier, I promise.

The total number of subscribers was down, total revenue was down, and of course, total profit was down. But that didn't stop AOL from trying to make things look good, at least to the average layperson. It's hard to absorb what lengths AOL went to to obscure the facts without seeing the chart, so here it is:

To anyone who saw the chart without hearing the earnings call, it might look like AOL had a banner year: there are no negative numbers, and growth appears to be up in all categories.

But, wait.

2009's figures, which are lower, are on the left, while 2008's much higher figures are on the right. If you read charts the way most people do (from left to right) without looking at the dates, you will certainly think subscription, advertising, and all other forms of revenue are up - especially since they're listed under the "Growth" column.

But the "Growth" column figures are purely negative. They're not expressed as such (AOL used no minus signs). By the time I was done reading this chart, I was impressed, but probably not in the way AOL would want me to be: it's the most unintentionally amusing thing AOL has released in a long time (but AIM 6.9 comes really close).

To break it down...

AOL is continuing to suck. To put the missing negative values back into focus, year over year:

• Subscription revenue dropped 29%
• Total ad revenue dropped 18%
• "Other" revenue dropped 14%
• Total of all revenue dropped 23%
• Operating income dropped 40% (ouch!)
• AOL made only half a billion. Maybe less.

Getting all that out in the open makes me feel so much better.

That's right, hackers, this is a no-strings-attached free gift from AOL to you, their nifty hackers - hack into as many free AOL accounts as you want and some of them will be yours to keep, free-of-charge, FOREVER. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity - get'm NOW before other hackers lift all the free AOL accounts for you!

The only catch? Once AOL learns a free AOL account is compromised, it will be "blocked" for about the same length of time: forever. I imagine AOL might delete it.

But hackers: Don't let AOL's silly account deletion stop you!

Even if you must stop using a hacked AOL account after a while, just think - the original account owner can never have it back, either. As in NEVER!

Not even if it was a paid account from, say, 1991, with tons of personal information and thousands of emails that got converted into a supposedly more headache-free free AOL account.

Not even if the owner of the hacked account gives every proof of payment and identity possible to AOL. You can't lose!

To ensure my accuracy, here's Randolph:

How to Make Hacked Free AOL Accounts Your Own

OK. So a month ago (around July 20-30) I was signed offline on my AOL account on AIM. I couldn't get back on. Tryed to reset my password and its telling me all my security answers and information is invalid. I phone AOL's Customer Service line. They transfer me to AOL's Fraud Department. I tell them the story, they "block" the account from anyone accessing it. They asked me to send in 2 forms of documentation stating I am the original owner of the account. A drivers license and a bank statement showing when I was last billed for AOL, on it.

Now. Keep in mind. This is a Free AOL account. It was converted into a Free AOL from a Paying AOL in 2006-2007 when the Free AOL Program launched.

So we phone (also went to) the bank and ask them to look up the account that's tied to the AOL account. It's a checkings account that has been closed for several years now. They want to charge us $6 per page to go back in time because a agency has to go through the account or something like that. So $20 total, they get the statement in a matter of 1-2 weeks and ask us to come pick it up at our local bank (branch). We go to Staples, made a copy of the drivers license and a copy of the bank statement, faxed it in.

Next day. We call up AOL's Fraud Department and speak to a Customer Representative who can barely speak any English what so ever. Make a long story short: they are telling us they need the Debit card, that was attached to the checkings accounts, number [so now we need to] fax in a document written by the bank, signed by the bank, with the debit card scanned or typed out on the paper. This was when I knew AOL really has lost it.

We aren't able to obtain that AT ALL. The card was shredded YEARS ago and when we went to the bank, they all looked at us funny and even the customers on line behind us said "no that can't be possible".....like we were crazy! The bank even said the 2 forms of ID we previously sent should be ENOUGH. MORE THEN ENOUGH.

Fast forward to today actually just now: I call AOL's Fraud Department. I get an American Customer Representative. She tells me straight up answers.

---

Quote - AOL Fraud Telephone Conversation

Me: What am I suppose to do if I can't get that debit cards information?
Her: I don't know what to tell you. It's a standard procedure to protect the owner of this account. (me obviously)

Me: So let me ask you this. If someone makes a Free AOL account at http://aol.com, how do they get their account back if its compromised?
Her: They can't, they have to sign up for a new one.

---

My jaw dropped. I couldn't believe what I just heard. That's when I just said OK and hung up.

I am BEYOND disgusted with AOL.

I filed a Internet Crime Complaint @ ic3.gov in an attempt hoping to get somewhere.

Please post any ideas/suggestions/comments relating to this. Thank you for reading.

Thanks to Craigs List (my reader's handle, not the website) Randolph (see comment below) for the heads-up.

Updated 7-1-09.

Since I wrote this post it's risen to the #1 slots for the keyword searches mentioned below, so to save you time if you're here for the phone number to report a hacked AOL or AIM account: it's 1-800-307-7969.

Tonight I typed "report hacked aol email" into Google and got, among other irrelevant things: "how to hack an AOL account". Brilliant! Just to ensure my fury shot from moderate to severe, I typed "contact aol hacked" next, and got the same damn results....curses on Google. May fire rain down from heaven all over their precious servers.

I'm trying to get someone help at this very moment for an account that's been hacked and I CANNOT DO IT. Half of it's Google's fault for not returning the phone numbers this person needs - the other half is AOL's fault for not allowing free members to report hacked accounts (I don't have this nailed down yet, but that's the info I'm working on in this person's email, since I list a number to report hacked accounts here; I'm trying to find out if this person called it or not).

7-1-09: Got a response from the person who sought my help with her hacked account last night: "Thank you for giving me this number. I had not called it, but I did today, and they were helpful and cancelled the account. Hopefully it's all taken care of. Thank you again!" Whew.

Since I had a feeling she simply could not find the number, I have added the number itself to my links list (you will see it if you look now on the side of the page) so no one else has to go through not being able to find it again. I hate seeing someone suffer for the lack of something so simple - an AOL phone number that everyone seems to want to hide.

While I'm relieved the person who emailed me is now getting help, and also relieved to learn AOL still assists free users who's accounts are hacked, as far as Google goes, after what I saw last night...Google can blow me.

The "new" AOL UK home page (same old page, if you use AOL.com) soft-launched May 14th. AOL was so pumped they added a direct link to it from their Corporate press release. That's right: they couldn't wait for UK mums to gasp as kids viewed naked women in seductive poses on AOL UK. No other web company would feature nudity on a home page viewed by millions of people each day but this is AOL we're talking about - anything for an ad dollar, I suppose.

Terribly indecent for the AOL UK home page, don't you think?

Click image for full-size uncensored version - possibly NSFW.

I wouldn't want my kids looking at that - would you?

I didn't get in - and stay in - until late on the 14th so I only got one screen grab. It's not full screen or terribly clear (I've cropped and expanded the "money shot" and I'm including the original to prove it's not a product of my editing skills but the real thing). If anyone has bigger/better screen grabs feel free to give us a peek - I checked The WayBack Machine hoping to grab better shots but they stopped indexing AOL UK in 2008.

I don't know how many days the risque photo montage remained online. The same spot on the page now links to a parenting site. Does that surprise anyone? I'd imagine enough complaints poured in that AOL had no choice but to replace naked tree-climbing women with staid-looking parents - the same parents who wouldn't want their kids viewing gratuitous nudity on AOL.

If you catch nudity on AOL's home page (in the UK, the US or India - doesn't matter) and can't wait to share it hit me up on email or leave a comment (if leaving a comment, no inline images - hyperlinks only, please).

Watch out, AOL users. If you see this in your inbox - like I did tonight - then you've got Phish. Symptoms of Phish are as follows:

1. You have an irrepressible urge to click on real-looking links to AOL
2. You think this phisher's email is so convincing
3. You can't understand why the fine folks at AOL, a multi-billion dollar company, misspell words, mangle grammar and forget to punctuate

That last item is your cue to RUN as far away from your email as possible until the urge to click on links passes.

I hate AOL but that won't stop me from giving you a a few tips to help you stay sane:

1. AOL will never email you to ask you to update your billing information.
2. No one at AOL will ever ask for your password.
3. Emails from legitimate companies with misspellings, grammar and punctuation errors are NEVER legitimate emails.
4. If you're not convinced, make sure your browser's status bar is enabled and hover over the links within the email, then look at your status bar. You will see that the links point to other websites, NOT to aol.com.
5. WARNING: Sometimes phishers use fancy Javascript in their email to make it look as though links point to AOL - but it's a trick. If any of the above facts apply to the email you are reading, do not click on the links.

I have my suspicions that the phisher's email was sent to me because I run Anti-AOL. I get all kinds of pranks via my inbox because of this blog. I just roll with it. In fact, I'm turning my victimization into a public service announcement tonight to help millions of other people, which is pretty darn nice of me.

Related Material: How to Protect Yourself From Phishers and Other Attackers

Asking why AOL screws up nearly everything they touch is like asking why the sun shines on a clear day, but I'm a sucker for tradition, and for two years running I've done so, so why not a third? It's reasonable to expect this is the last Top 5 I'll ever do on AOL since the company is dying. With no further ado, AOL's top five blunders of 2008:

AOL purchases Bebo. Why?

In AOL's biggest "WTF?" moment of 2008, they blew a cool $850 million on Bebo, a mostly UK-based social network that only 5 million Americans visit regularly, then admitted they wasted their money on it. To put the gargantuan-ness of this mistake into perspective, imagine one billion dollars. Now imagine Facebook. Now imagine that not even Facebook, the biggest, most successful social network on Earth besides MySpace, is not worth anything near one billion dollars. It probably isn't. Subtract a measly $150 million dollars from that billion we were just kicking around, and that's what AOL paid for an overseas flea circus that word of mouth says makes the population of MySpace look upright, prudish, and filthy rich in comparison.

Further imagine that even the most successful social network cannot survive without money. That's not a fantasy - that's the truth. So far both MySpace and Facebook have proven hard to monetize. People tune out or block out the ads that support those sites, so the profit margins are at best slim. Now imagine that Bebo doesn't have anywhere near MySpace's audience or reach. Do the math on the ad reach - ain't too pretty, is it?

In the end, it looks like AOL paid $850 million to do an integration of the Bebo and AOL home pages that a small team could have whipped up in a week flat for say, $6,000. It's like NetVibes all over again - did Netvibes cost anyone $850 million? $850 million bought AOL little more than the right to brag on Bebo's home page:

"The top part of the homepage [now] allows you to receive email updates from AOL, Yahoo Mail, [and] Gmail directly to your Bebo homepage. Underneath that section, you will see a "changes" area that let's you see what is going on with your AIM, Twitter, Flickr, Del.icio.us, YouTube and, of course, your Bebo friends. On the right hand side, you will see a media recommendations area which includes all of your subscriptions and stuff we think you'll enjoy."

Wow. $850 million for a web page integrated with some of AOL's services that will gain traction with not one more person in the US than it has so far. Being a fiscally austere person, this sort of extravagance gives me fits. Do you know what AOL could do with $850 million dollars?

1. AOL could give a $212.25 refund to every person in the US who has ever used AOL, assuming 40 million total signups and maybe 20 million users who got screwed by over-billing practices at some point.
2. They could pay Google back every penny they lost taking a dumb risk on AOL as an ad and search partner - not that Google deserves to be compensated for their hard-to-explain short-sightedness.
3. They could simply hang onto it to add to their lousy bottom line. I could get more creative but I'm too tired to bother.

AOL raises dial-up rates again.

While it's not as flashy as news of AOL buying Bebo, AOL raising dial-up rates from $9.99 with tech support to $9.99 without tech support or $11.99 with tech support is the stupidest thing they did all year. No one wants dial-up anymore, so no one will use it if they can help it. Dial-up has fallen so far out of favor with the masses that they willingly pay top dollar for DSL, broadband, and even high-speed dial-up, with it's promise of near-perfect image and data compression at top speeds and a price-tag of about $17 a month. Today's websites, based heavily on Flash, AJAX, and image-rich style sheets, just don't load well at dial-up speeds.

Even AOL's dial-up users realize this, with memberships dropping from 9 million to 6.9 million year-over-year. AOL's answer to declining subscription revenue was not to keep the rate low to attract as many users as possible, but to raise it to maximize profit on the few people left who either like or must use AOL dial-up for whatever reason.

The only saving grace for AOL users is that from word-on-the-street talk, I gather most people who use AOL dial-up still pay about $23.90 a month for it. Like my sister-in-law, who hasn't used her AOL connection in years - so anyone who either signs up now or asks for the new, "lower" $11.99 rate will actually save money compared to how much AOL dial-up used to cost. What a thought!

AOL blew the Google deal.

This had to be the easiest deal Google ever made with any company: "Let us help improve your search scores and run ads against your sites in our results. In return for that, we're buying 5% of your company". How could anyone screw up a deal that sweet? Leave it to AOL to find a way. Google is taking a huge loss on the deal, writing it off to the tune of perhaps $500-750 million, nearly as much as the Bebo purchase cost AOL. Talk about fiscal irresponsibility...

AOL didn't buy Yahoo!. Yahoo! didn't buy AOL.

As I've said many times over the years, I think an AOL-Yahoo! mash-up would be match made in heaven given audiences of similar ages, income levels and interests (shopping, chat, email, social communities, etc). I can't see why this deal shouldn't be done. But leave it to the perennially indecisive Jerry Yang, Yahoo's former CEO, to sit on his hands instead of doing more than "talking to" AOL, and leave it to Yang's spiritual twin, Jeffery Bewkes, to engage in the same hand-sitting while encouraging the same fruitless "talks". What a waste of both companies combined potential - which I think would be a marvel previously unseen in this world.

AOL leaves Journals and Hometown users hanging.

The way AOL handled the closing of AOL Journals and Hometowns was a perfect disgrace - and a typical example of how AOL alienates even their most loyal customers, hurting their bottom line in the long run more than their stupidest purchases ever could. Users of these sites were given scant notice of AOL Journals and Hometowns closing down - about 30 days - and no way whatsoever to automatically download or transfer files to another site.

Feeling for them, I searched the Internet for a program that could handle the download process without users having to cut and paste perhaps thousands of posts into Word or other cumbersome Office and note-taking programs.

Joe Manna soon pitched in with more tips to help AOL users get their files, and finally, one week after AOL gave notice, they finally teamed with Google to get user's files moved to Blogger. Unsatisfied with Blogger as a new platform, many users chose to simply download and save their files instead.

After Hometown closed, People Connection, Joe's blog and my blog continued to get hit with desperate pleas from AOL users who missed the deadline. In a last-minute save, Joe O. of taimantis.com, a former Hometown user, did some research and found AOL left the Hometown files up on their FTP servers after the deadline. He contacted me and Joe Manna to tell us how to download the files, and Joe Manna and I did what we could to get the word out to AOL users. Of all of AOL's blunders, this was the most inconsiderate one of all.

Related posts: AOL's Top 5 Blunders of 2007 and AOL's Top 5 Blunders of 2006.

Last updated 12-06-08 concerning which AOL message boards are being shut down.

11-22-08 Just discovered that Joe Manna had the same idea I did and expanded the hit list using information gleaned from years on the inside. Check it out...helps my post make more sense in many respects.

Silicon Alley Insider recently posted an ""AOL Hit List", saying: "We've got an internal list of 50+ projects AOL has shuttered or plans to shutter." I thought I'd try to break it down more specifically.

The List

Video/radio/Winamp

• UnCut brand - the UnCut video brand will be shut down by Dec. 18th
• HiQ - phased out near the end of 2007 in favor of Amazon Unbox, which was also shut down in September, 2008
• Fugu - could be a chat GUI or a Secure FTP GUI or an AOL ad wrapper - or none of those
• Windows Media Streaming was the preferred streaming technology for full screen videos on AOL Video - no idea if they've dropped the technology yet
• AOL Video 10ft - a partnership between AOL and Intel to bring on-demand video to Intel Viiv Based PCs
• 10ft on 2, HiQ - could be related to the above
• AMoD on MCE - could be movies on demand for Windows Media Center PCs
• AMoD on TWC - could be movies on demand at Time Warner Cable
• Video Commerce - could be AOL's partnership with Alliance Entertainment
• Predixis on Winamp - released with WinAmp 5.1, a "song recommendation" technology to create playlists
• Ceased ingesting 3rd party videos - hard to say what this means, since the UnCut video uploader still works - maybe it means no more partnerships with other companies for videos - or maybe no more third party pre-roll video ads
• AOL Video DRM - file protection used on AOL in2tv with now-defunct AOL HiQ videos
• Onstream - video search technology introduced by AOL in 2005, replaced soon after by Truveo video search
• 2CMedia Productions - once produced videos for RED (AOL's teen-oriented site) and KOL (for younger kids)
• UnCut on Mobile - means no more AOL UnCut Video for Mobile App Beta testers
• UnCut Payloaders - could have something to do with an API for uploading video
• HP IP enabled TVs - probably a content deal to provide video for IP enabled TVs
• Magnify.net - a mixup - AOL was going to develop APIs to use on Magnify.net's platform but went with Truveo instead
• Direct File Downloader - could be this deal with the Pure Digital Flip Ultra Camcorder company
• H.264 - a a video codec used by AOL
• Userplane enabled-syndicated video player - 3rd parties can embed this player and earn revenue for their websites with it; owned by AOL
• New content management and ingestion system - RAINMAN is long gone. Maybe Axiom is getting the axe as the content-manager for AOL's Help site - or maybe Big Bowl, AOL's replacement for RAINMAN, is being done away with altogether (also see Big Bowl-based AIM Dashboard, below)

Messaging/social platforms/homepages/toolbars/personal media/community

• Transition US Chinese Portal - AOL made a portal for Chinese speaking Americans in 2006 - it's still in Beta - over two years later
• AIM Today - lets you view IMs you've sent and received - still open as of this writing
• ADP-based AOL.com Apps - could be this ancient deal between AOL and ADP, struck in 2000, to let small businesses process payroll on AOL software clients
• Transition AOL Pictures to Bluestring - this one makes no sense since AOL is scrapping both sites - which makes me wonder if this entire list is out-of-date
• AOL Hometown - the site is not loading tonight [or the day after] even though it's not supposed to close down until October 31st
• ICQ Universe - works like AIM Today - still open as of this writing - and ICQ Labs - works like the AOL Beta site - also still open as of this writing
• ICQ2Go Java version - the online ICQ web app - still available as of this writing
• ICQ Pro, ICQ Lite, ICQ 4, ICQ 5, ICQ 5.1 - these are all old versions of ICQ. Current version is version 6
• Older AIM clients - current version is 6.8
• Old ICQ Welcome Screen - I guess this one is self-explanatory
• Journals - same as Hometown - all will be shuttered by Oct. 31st
• FDO Chat - see "Message Boards" below - this could be the technology embedded into the older IM client included with AOL desktop client software - could also be the old FDO-based online chat rooms - see comment below
• 10" Vista Applications - hmmm - could be for the Asus Eee - but that seems to run XP - you have to hack it to run Vista
• UNPT-based welcome screens - can't find anything about it online
• Big Bowl-based AIM dashboard - Big Bowl is the content management system that replaced RAINMAN. It too is considered inadequate by AOL and is being phased out.
• AOL message boards - Update, 12-6-08:: Some message boards already shut down; any "low-use" or "inactive" board to be scrapped. All message boards "moving to new platforms" by "end of year". More here. I figured AOL meant discontinued FDO-based message boards which were used only with the AOL client software - FDO boards were phased out and users switched over to the HTML boards about a year ago - but apparently I was wrong.
• X-Drive Desktop is still available for download as of this writing

Client-side software & safety

• OpenRide - this desktop client, with the ill-fated "Dynasizer", was discontinued by 2007; replaced with the still-current AOL Desktop client
• AOL 8.0 and AOL 8.0+ support* - this desktop client was discontinued by Sept., 2003
• AOL 9.0 - Bunker Hill support* - this desktop client was discontinued by May, 2004
• AOL 9.0 Optimized - Thailand support* ["Thailand" is a reference to the version, not the country it was released in] - this desktop client was discontinued by July, 2005
• Active virus shield (Kaspersky) - discontinued anti-virus software released by AOL for use as a standalone product
• Free anti-virus (legacy McAfee) - AOL still offers some of this with Virus Scan, but no longer bundles McAfee anti-virus with client software
• Safe search & surf - could be this Safe Search
• Computer check-up - scans for and fixes PC problems - still available as of this writing

Mobile

• Legacy WAP portal - the old version of the mobile portal
• WAP 1.0 portal - a discontinued mobile portal - very few web reference besides Desktop Blog's

Email

• Old Webmail product and infrastructure (Atlas) - replaced with shiny new stuff
• AOL communicator mail client - a special standalone AOL email client - looks like it's still available for purchase
• Old mobile mail product and infrastructure (PigeonMail) - this looks like it was discontinued by 2007, but I can't find reliable web references for it
• Old calendar product and infrastructure (Tardis) - can't find any web references to it
• Old sync infrastructure - no idea - could refer to AIM Sync, or to mobile sync

Voice

• Aim phoneline - make calls with a phone number used with the AIM chat client gone - replaced by AIM Call Out

*Apps still run

Just a little research and my best guesses went into this (on a few items I might as well have thrown a dart blindfolded since all 2 or 3 choices were equally plausible). Do you know more than I do? Let me know in the comments.

In AOL's quest to profit solely from advertising placed on websites, in email and in IM clients, they are slowly but surely dumping almost every subscription-based business they own. The most recent victims are Xdrive, Bluestring, AOL Pictures, AIM World (I can't find anything on it except this MySpace page so I think AOL might mean they're shutting down AIM soon) and MyMobile.

MyAOL is also rumored to be "sunsetting" soon and rumors have AOL selling the dial-up subscription business by August, which is only another week from now. We'll see. In the meantime...

AOL does not offer much of a Plan B to anyone using services that are about to get closed down. The most AOL's spokespeople will say about the fate of those services is this:

AOL will try to sell Xdrive, AOL Pictures and Bluestring so that existing users of those services will be able to transition to a new provider, but if no buyer is found, the products will be shut down by the end of the year...

If the services are closed, AOL plans to either burn end users' content into CDs and DVDs and send it to them or walk them through how to save the photos, videos and other media to local hard drives...

Which translates to:

"If we don't sell these services real soon you had better pray we burn your data to cheap discs and get'm in the mail within 6-8 weeks...and that we get your street address right, while we're at it."

Puh-lease. Here's my advice.

DON'T WAIT for AOL to get off their tushes to do something (stupid) for you. Get your data off of Xdrive, AOL Pictures and Bluestring now.

It will cost AOL a small fortune to burn your data to CDs and DVDs, not to mention I'm unsure if they can do so legally since it requires their employees to enter your account to burn your data and puts your private files on physical media that can be played back by anybody at AOL before it ever gets sent by snail mail to you (yes, I can feel another big AOL data leak coming on - watch out!).

In the meantime, do you have an Xdrive account? If you do sign up for a free or low-cost service like Adrive and transfer your data from AOL to them now. Adrive offers a pretty sweet deal: 50GBs free storage space with all the bells and whistles Xdrive has and more.

Do you use AOL Pictures and/or Bluestring? If you do get a free - or low-cost if you prefer - Photobucket account now. Photobucket handles videos, slideshows, regular pictures, gives you all the embed codes you need, allows you to sort media into albums and galleries and to edit, crop, and tag everything.

Remember that this is me suggesting you move your data and media to these services and that traditionally I am hard to please (and getting harder to please by the day). The fact that I hate almost everything should be enough to convince you that Adrive and Photobucket are good choices.

In other news, a while ago AOL spent almost $850 million to buy Bebo, a social networking site much like MySpace. Yet AOL's CEO Jeff Bewkes says he wasted AOL's money on Bebo. He doesn't really care, he's "just sayin'", but most senior AOL managers cared plenty.

That's just one reason why you the customer will soon go without your Xdrive, Bluestring, and AOL Picture accounts...because AOL has got to pay for Bebo somehow, and the services you actually pay AOL to use aren't making enough money to cover Bebo's cost.

It's a sad day for AOL customers who had faith AOL would do the right thing by them...sorry, but Time Warner is looking to dump AOL to the highest bidder as fast as they can, so free yourself from AOL's clutches now. It's not a matter of "if" but "when" - don't say I didn't warn you.