The time finally has come and after a little more of Two weeks of advance notice. Youminis.com Startpage will be no more. This is not the only thing that ceased to exist this October. Goowy. Yourminis parent webtop also ceased to exist after being inoperative for a while.

Dear yourminis user,

We’re sorry to inform you that as of October 27, 2008, we will no longer support the yourminis startpage. As a yourminis user, you already know that one of the best things about widgets is their ability to give you access to the content and features you value from different locations across the Web. Because there are already so many great startpage solutions out there supporting yourminis (like myAOL, iGoogle or Netvibes), we’ve decided to let the startpage experts take care of the startpages, so we could focus on what we do best — building widgets.

The startpage link has already been removed from the site (although you can still access the site directly at http://www.yourminis.com/start), and the startpage itself will be completely removed on October 27, 2008, so please make sure to export all of your content from the site prior to this date. Although we know that this is an inconvenience, you can export your feeds data as an OPML file, take most of your content, and import it into other startpage solutions (see instructions below). yourminis widgets will continue to work on other sites as they have in the past.

Yourminis startpage and the Goowy Desktop were at some point in the late 2007 one of the best example of good widgets and good widget implementation. i also found odd that the Goowy and the Yourminis Startpage was not one and the same. this decreased the focus of the two products from the letgo even as active projects. nonetheless. they were the respective best Startpage and webtop done in flash. this were also the reasons why it got acquired by AOL. because they were good and one of the best Widget Startups back when they bought them.  but the purchase of  Goowy/Yourminis was a technology & team acquisition. Yourminis is what now powers AOL Widget Ads, and its also part of the new  My.AOL. Goowy Webtop is now part of AOL Mail. something i find funny is that AOL also released a RIA AOL Mail based on Silverlight 2. i have tested them both and there is just no contest. RIA AOL Mail truly shines even as a Beta. i wonder if what is being added to the regular AOL mail will have a RIA AOL Mail counterpart. but that is something for another post.

So. a Final Goodbye To Yourminis Startpage and to Goowy Webtop and Hello again to AOL that will now bring Widgets to all. something i  of course plan of keeping up with. so if you were using yourminis or goowy. the new My.AOL and the new AOL Mail do deserve a try. but if anyone represents a Widget based Flash, Flex or Silverlight powered Startpage. this is the time to let all those Yourminis and Goowy Orphan users Know of it.

Yourminis Startpage Closing