Razing Yahoo!'s GeoCities

Content isn't king at Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO). In fact, it may not even be fit to be a jester. It's more like the messenger getting slain, if we go by the struggling online titan's move to close down its GeoCities site.

Believe it or not, a company that is clearly hungry for traffic and pages to populate with ads -- given its 15% revenue slide this past quarter -- is axing a source of free content generation. GeoCities has stopped taking in new registrations, and is advising existing users to move out before the bulldozers come in later this year.

As anyone who has surfed through GeoCities over the years will tell you, an Internet without GeoCities is like a world of celluloid without Keanu Reeves flicks. The absence of GeoCities won't create a cultural void. Few will miss its passing. It's loaded mostly with hobbyist tribute pages, authored by penny-pinching cybersurfers who put up with primitive tools and gaudy ads in exchange for free hosting. Many of the pages were created years ago, and abandoned like bunny rabbits after Easter Sunday, Ugg boots after winter, and anything Reeves did after the first Matrix movie.

Let's not harp on the fact that Yahoo! acquired GeoCities 10 years ago in a deal originally valued at $3.6 billion -- on the pricey side of the dot-com bubble. Everyone was overpaying at the time.

Yahoo!'s real crime was in neglecting its costly municipality. Instead of making GeoCities more attractive and fleshing out its potential as a social destination for niche audiences, Yahoo! appears to have dusted it under the rug as it moved to sell commercial hosting services instead.

Stupid, right? The guy in GeoCities who is showing off his collection of hissing Madagascar cockroaches or the YMCA basketball coach posting game-day snapshots is never going to upgrade to a paid hosting plan. However, a site like GeoCities can still nurture loyalty from its authors and appreciation from folks who stumble on sites put up by like-minded souls. That has to be worth something, right?

Killing GeoCities is just an invitation for bad karma, even if it's already clear that Yahoo! did something to anger the gods several years ago.

Adam Melling wins O'Neill Cold Water Classic Sco

The Australian-strong crowd of surfers supporting their friends from the reef were having trouble containing their excitement not only at the surfing on display but also at the quality of the sets coming in to this world-class left hand reef break. “It’s been great to have the finals day in the best waves of the event,” said contest director Matt Wilson “We have achieved the grand final at Thurso East which is exactly what we wanted.”

The O’Neill Cold Water Classic Series Scotland by Swatch lived up to its reputation here in Thurso for 2009. It was definitely wild – with howling winds and hailstones integrated into the competition. There was no doubt that it was cold as the surfers covered themselves head to toe in the latest wetsuit gear and the spectators braved the winds in ugg boots , and outfits more often seen in the mountains than the sea, to watch all the action.

And of course it was the most Northern surf contest on the planet. As one of five competitions in the O’Neill Cold Water Classic Series, Adam’s win puts him at the top of the O’Neill Cold Water Classic Series ranking – the winner walking away with a prize of $50,000.

With two events now completed in the Series – Tasmania and Scotland – it’s now on to Cape Town from June 20 – 24 before heading to Vancouver Island in Canada and Santa Cruz, California.

Leonard shaken after the crash, but happiness of

Smitten

And it wasn't just a night on the town that smitten Mark had planned for his model girlfriend to mark her leaving her teenage years behind.

He also showered her with gifts, including jewellery from Tiffany and a pair of the Australian-made Ugg boots .