I'm upset to hear storytlr is closing down, but not from lack of interest. I use storytlr to do my lifestreaming on www.ianforrester.org and was thinking about deploying it elsewhere.
we have decided to stop operating Storytlr in 10 weeks, on December 31st 2009. The reason is simple: our lives have moved on, kids were born, house were bought, new projects appeared and we don't have time anymore to operate this service properly.
We have spent the last months looking for alternatives, potential partners, and even thought about creating a startup around this project. Yet, in the end, nothing did really make sense for us and we have decided to pull the plug. It was a tough decision to make, it is a sad day, and we feel sorry for our passionate users who have put so much effort into their page and who have helped us improve the service through their many comments.
This is why we have also decided to open source the platform. Not today. It will involve first a major refactoring, since at the moment it looks more like a giant spaghetti than an easy to install package. We don't know when it will ready, but we will do our best to do it as soon as possible. Please get in touch if you want to help with this effort.
Open source it great. But my next thoughts are towards my data. Data Portability is always a worry when a service goes away or down. But they have done a excellent job of allowing data download into CSV files plus there will be a Zip file of any binary blobs like mp3's and pictures.
Nows a good time to find an alternative I guess…at least till the open source version is easily deployable. Sweetcron is looking more and more attractive.