Geocities closing down, closing down, closing down...

Yahoo has announced that they have decided to get rid of all the free Geocities web sites and encourage users to fork over a lot of money for one of the premium webhosting sites. Not right away, of course, but later this year.

How does that affect my blogger account?

Well, it so happens that my first school website was a geocities website. It had a minimum amount of success with my then-current students. However, one of the problems was that there was an advertising bar on the side of the page. It could be closed, but it reopened with every click. It was useful or appropriate for a school website.

However, the page offered 15 Mb of free storage, which didn't have advertising attached. Most of the images that are on this website are actually stored on geocities, which is also why, on occasion, they all disappear for about an hour or two when the bandwidth is too high. (That doesn't happen too often because this page doesn't have that kind of popularity.)

What it means for my page is that I'll have to find someplace else -- cheaper than $10/month -- to store all the images. I seem to have problems with linking directly to the xwhy.comicgenesis.com images, so that isn't a solution. But I need to find a solution soon, because I have to edit more than half the posts on this blog.

I will also have to hurry up and copy all the current book reviews on my other book blog Real Soon Now.

UPDATE: Well, two choices have emerged. First, I tried linking an image from Flickr and that seems to work, or I can use a Google page. Yahoo, which owns Geocities, also owns Flickr, which I've been using for a while and already has some of my images. Google, on the other hand, owns Blogger, where this blog resides. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

I tried using Blogger for my images before and it was horrible, but I believe that was before Google bought it. So I have a decision to make. Any input from anyone that uses either one, or just from my legion of readers (who number almost as many as the Legion of Super-Heroes ... at least, the version from the late 70s) who want to give an opinion.

Besides, I really, really appreciate comments, even the ones from people who aren't related to me or owe me money.