A flake-free future :-(

There’s no free lunch.  Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket. Always back up your work.

I should have learned those lessons years ago.

But when PageFlakes died and came back and died again over the past couple of weeks, I was devastated.  Right now, the site seems most sincerely dead.

I loved Pageflakes as a platform for my most newsy pathfinders.  I loved the bookmark widgets, the anything Flake, the handy RSS feeds, the pretty themes, the customization features. My students relied on our many Flakes for current events guidance across the subject areas.  My teachers use them as a start page for their classes.

Now, instead of this French pathfinder,

We get this:

SERVICE UNAVAILABLE

PageFlakes offered no warning.  I suppose it owed me no warning.   Happily (?) I was able to find some support among my fellow PageFlake using Tweeters and a few bloggers.

I learned my lesson.  I grieved.

And now I am ready to move on.

During the brief PageFlakes’ brief resurrection, I printed all my pages so I could resurrect them on another platform. My two candidates are the free NetVibes platform and the subscription service and community, LibGuides.  Over the course of the next few weeks I’ll report back on my big migration decision.

Suggestions, as always, are welcome!

Filed under: research, search tools, social networking, websites