I discovered it today, Nov. 6, 02 that antville is not accepting new blogs since first week of September.
It seems that the new subscribers will have to try some other service. I am afraid they will find such an easy to use service anywhere on the net!
Here are a few other alternatives:
http://oksoft.crimsonblog.com/
http://shantanuo.easyjournal.com/

There is so much discomfit, pain, anguish in the day to day life, that it's hard to maintain and improve the relationship with other people. I am ready to forget all that anguish and hatred I had to suffer in the past due to spoiled relations provided all of those people and things get out of my life. That's the only way to forget. You can't forgive unless you forget. And you can't forget unless you farther or distance yourself from those objects.

http://www1.askme.com one of the best and free service will be shut from November 25. This website was listed in the "Top 10" list on my website for the last 1 year.
A great loss to the Internet Community.

Everyone is planning the purchase. Here is my amazon wishlist if in case any one cares. :)

http://www.amazon.com/o/registry/3RJDC5E8DGO8D

Internet is full of surprises. After the attack on World Trade Center everyone said, "I had never thought such a thing would happen." Well, who had thought you could chat for free with your friends abroad? Who had thought all the information on the earth will be available on the click of a mouse? Both, good and bad things happen unexpectedly. You need to be prepared for it!
A lot of people think I am an Internet Expert. They ask me what's next? One of the share brokers, when asked for the good stocks had said, "If I knew which stocks to pick, I wouldn't be working as a consultant!"
As the Us defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld while answering to the question of invading Iraq said, "There are three kinds of issues here... the issue of what we know... the issue of what we don't know... the issue of what we don't know we don't know."
If I know what's next, it can't be called a surprise.
Right? And let me repeat, Internet is full of surprises. Be prepared!

Here is the list of people/companies, I don't want to see going out of business!

1. Dan Diebolt
The person who has taught many people like me, how to use one of the best website called quickbase.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/QuickBase/files/%20Donations.html
I wish I could pay him $20 as a token of my appreciation of his work.

2. Tiny URL
The website creates tiny URL's for eg. http://tinyurl.com/something that will redirect you to your desired website for eg. http://www.mydomain-name.com/~aLongAnd/totallyRubbishURL/Including&and?
http://tinyurl.com
I am sure this invaluable service is worth $50.

3. Lockergnome.com
If I start paying a dollar for every tip I got from this newsletter, well, I guess I will have to pay thousands of dollars. (No kidding!)
Chris Pirillo needs no introduction. I don't know if he accepts donations any more. I had donated $5 last year. and I think it's worth to donate $5 every year!
http://www.lockergnome.com/

4. http://antville.org
Yes, this web blogging system is the best among the top 5 softwares I have tested.
They don't accept donations. But I will like to contribute in some way.
I think the site deservers $50 if they accept.

5. CSS Guru Eric Meyer
http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/
I don't know if he accepts donations. But I would have certainly paid $10 for the CSS Discussion (e-mail) list, maintained by him at..
http://three.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/css-discuss

6. Monsur of bloglet
Monsur Hossain is currently a programmer for the blog community Xanga.com. His latest endeavor is Bloglet, an email subscription service for blogs. Monsur resides in New York City, and keeps his own blog at http://www.monsur.org

7. David Sklar
He is an independent consultant in New York City and co-author of O'Reilly's PHP Cookbook. (px.sklar.com)

8. Ioannis Livassov
cgiscriptshop.com host one of the best Database GUI I have ever seen!

9. waththatpage.com
I use this service to monitor the pages those don't off RSS feeds. The site sends an e-mail containing the text that has changed.

The biggest problem faced by most of the people using the net is SPAM Mail (Unwanted alias Junk Mail).
There are now very powerful tools available to fight junk.

1. First decide if the message is really "one to one" and private. Most of the e-mails sent and received on the net are public in nature ("One to Many"). For eg. an URL of a news story, Photos, Jokes and so on. If the message is not really private in nature, think of publishing it on the net itself. (Yes, the way I am publishing my thoughts through this http://oksoft.antville.org site) so instead of e-mailing all of you (And adding the spam mail mess) it's easy to publish it here. It gets stored as well. So you don't need to worry about your backups.

2. If the messages are really private (for eg. the recipe of French Fries) you can send and receive your messages using hotmail.
There is an easy way to prevent spam, if you are using Hotmail.
Goto "Options" and choose "Junk Mail Filters" Choose "Exclusive".

E-mail from addresses appearing in your address book will be delivered to your Inbox. All other mail will be delivered to your Junk Mail Folder.

This is the most effective way to avoid spam. However you will have to keep checking the junk mail folder to see if you are not missing any new client or very old friend. (Whose e-mail is not in the address book).

Now you can share this e-mail address with the people whom you really want to keep in touch with. Create another Yahoo! or hotmail ID and use this second e-mail address as your 'public' e-mail address.