AOL? You mean SOL

Rico says he can only imagine the shock and horror of the folks who'd put hours of work into loading their personal histories and photos up on the Hometown site, only to have it blown away with no notice:

Dear AOL Hometown user,
We're sorry to inform you that as of Oct. 31, 2008, AOL® Hometown was shut down permanently. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
Sincerely,
The AOL Hometown Team

There's the usual fulminating about their inability to get their files, their intentions to sue AOL, and other fruitless ranting, but those folks were screwed... The ones who bailed early got their files, but at least one guy put them on Geocities (a Yahoo POS), and who knows how long that'll work?
Rico says he's happy with Blogger; it's run by Google and, barring total internet disaster, they're liable to be around for awhile...