So how much is all of this worth?

Well, I am infected once again with the bug: exactly which paid internet services do I want to retain and how do I deploy, for free, the services I need?

Presently, I am paying for MobileMe (99USD/yr) and a web hosting plan (120CAD/yr): so, about 240CAD/yr. I would really like to rationalise all of this. Twenty dollars a month really isn't a lot, but there are uses to which I could put any portion of that $20/month. I have been reviewing my any options have have these interesting options form which to choose:

a) Well, I seem to need MobileMe. I have three Macs that I use on a near-daily basis, plus my iPhone. The synchronisation of calendar, mail, contacts, and browser bookmarks are incredibly handy. So is the backup facility and the integration of the photo gallery, iPhoto, and the iPhone over the air. There is the option of trying to replace all of this function with services form Google:

Gmail, Google Calendar, & Spanning Sync takes care of quite a lot... except that iCal and the iPhone will not push changes to each other. Google Mobile does, but it is still in beta.

xmarks can take care of browser synchronisation between the Macs but not the iPhone. That is a major negative mark for getting rid of MobileMe; sort of a minor point in the grand scheme of things though.

So, I could dump MobileMe and lose only the immediate push services and bookmarks sync entirely.

b) If I dump the web hosting and keep MobileMe, I need to find services for the spookyhill.net domain: php web service and IMAP mail service.

Google Apps can fill in for IMAP mail service and Blogger nicely integrates with the Google cluster of services in order to replace the blog. However, there is no easy way to transfer posts form Wordpress into Blogger. I have tried many of the various importation tools but they are inelegant or old or buggy or all three. I would not be very happy if I had to re-enter all of those entries. On the other hand, Blogger is free, allows me to 'monetize' the blog, and the custom domain service is free as well.

The alternative to using Blogger is Wordpress.com. It has the benefit of being able to import my current blog (also running Wordpress). The benefits of that are manifest. However, I would rather be able to control my own advertisements and have that custom URL. On Wordpress.com, that will cost 40USD/yr. That's almost half of what I am paying now: not much of a savings.

At any rate, my web hosting service is paid through April 2010; there's no rush to implement any change. Perhaps by then Google Mobile will be a complete replacement for MobileMe!