The Hot Iron - Vindigo Shut Down But Still Out There

Vindigo Shut Down But Still Out There

By Mike Maddaloni on Thursday, March 05, 2009 at 06:52 PM with 5 comments

Vindigo logo “Now I am wondering what is next to fall.” I asked this question the other day when I wrote of the demise of Yahoo! Briefcase. The next thing I know, I get an email in my inbox from Vindigo. The message, in plain text, stated the following:

“Please be advised that Vindigo is no longer in business and your account information on file will not be billed again. We appreciate your past business and apologize that we are no longer able to provide it to you. This email is a service announcement in regard to your Vindigo account and was sent from Vindigo, Inc., 500 Seventh Ave, 17th Floor, New York, NY 10018.”

That’s it – no link, or anything.

For those unfamiliar with it, Vindigo was a service where you could sync content with either a Palm or Windows Mobile device. With that definition and the proliferation of real-time wireless services, you could guess their business model would not last too long. Plus the service was free, so they were not getting any money from me. As I have migrated from my Palm 680 to my Nokia E70, I wasn’t using the service anyway.

Even though there were no links in the email, I attempted to go their Web site at vindigo.com. Even though there was a “404: File Not Found” error message, I noticed the favicon showed up in the browser. This indicated to me the Web site still may be there in some form. So I Googled “vindigo” and it gave links to other pages on the site – including the profile login page – which were still in place and functioning. Removing the home page is one way to take down a Web site, but remember there are other pages people can easily get to.

I am not trying to build a deadpool here on The Hot Iron, only mentioning 2 sites that are shutting down. As things commonly happen in 3’s, dare I wonder who’s next?

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Business • Mobile Technology • (5) Comments • Permalink

Comments

Unless the Palm Pre has an emulator or something built into it, eventually every app I have on there will be out of business…

Comment by John Wall
on 03/06/09 at 09:21 PM

I have no idea what Palm is planning to do - if anything - with supporting “legacy” apps running on Palm OS, and I haven’t heard anything around that either. However it is a moot point for me as I have dropped Palm and now am a dedicated Nokia user.

There is a PalmOS emulator for Symbian!

mp/m

Comment by Mike Maddaloni
on 03/06/09 at 11:24 PM

Vindigo wasn’t entirely obsolete. And it wasn’t entirely free. The cost was about $30 a year, but compared with the cost of wireless internet, it was a bargain. I was able to sync weekly and download the current movies/shopping/restaurants in my area.

Is there anything else like that out there?

BTW I can still sync and update Vindigo on my palm and get current stuff; so it’s still doing it’s thing…for how long I don’t know.