Papyrus, that purveyor of quality greeting cards and stationary products (you know, the one with the gold hummingbird stickers) is going out of business, citing the current shopping environment as it relates to greeting cards.

AOL has announced that they will be discontinuing AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) as of December 15, 2017 (that’s 10 weeks from today). As the iconic, and essentially first, widely deployed, widely used, and widely successful instant messenger, this has come as a shock to some, who are actively mourning AIM’s demise, and pretty unhappy about AOL getting rid of Instant Messenger.

If you use Verizon for your email, receiving email at or sending it from a verizon.net email address, have we got some news for you: Verizon is retiring their email service. This means you have two options: switching to a new system entirely and losing your @verizon.net email address, or switching to AOL (where you will still be able to send/receive using your Verizon email address).

Blackberry has certainly had its share of problems. From global Blackberry outages to Yahoo making Blackberry not an option at Yahoo, to CEO Thorsten Heins rather ridiculously predicting the death of tablets, the Blackberry has certainly seen better days.

Countless people ran to their local supermarkets and convenience stores today, to corner the market on Twinkies, Hostess cupcakes, Snoballs, and Ho Hos, as the news of American fixture Hostess Bakery announced that it would be closing after being unable to resolve a contract negotiation dispute with the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM, or, simply, “the Bakers Union”). Pictures of empty Twinkie shelves at grocery stores started showing up on the Internet, and, at just about the same time, Twinkie’s started showing up on eBay, and through Amazon, at prices of as much as $1000 or more for a single box of Twinkies.

Anti-spam service Postini is closing, being shuttered by Google (which acquired Positini in 2007), and Google is transferring all Positini customers to Google Apps. So, what do you, as a Postini customer, have to do about this? According to Google, not much.

For those of you who follow email deliverability, whitelisting, etc., you may be surprised to learn that Goodmail is closing up shop. This means that there are just two main email deliverability services out there now – Return Path, and SuretyMail email accreditation and deliverability services (the latter of which is provided by our parent company, ISIPP).

Geocities is shutting down. Love it or hate it – use it or villify it for all the spammers that at various times infested it – when Geocities closes its doors, it will mark the passing of a long-time resident of the Internet web scene.