Around eighteen months after launch, Nokia bought the company, the management team shattered and drifted apart, and Dopplr simply withered and died on the Web 2.0 tree, while the users could do little but watch it stumble and fall.

FORBES: Gowalla's Accquistion Is Another Web Service Being Switched Off For Profit

For the rest of the public, there is Google or some equivalent just as there is the endless automated decision tree, phone or Web.

FORBES: Statistical Tools and Errands for Fools

Since I last tested Ancestry in 2006, the company has revamped its desktop software program, Family Tree Maker, so the program can synchronize with Web-based data on Ancestry.com.

WSJ: Digging Deeper Into Roots With Spruced-Up Ancestry.com

Web-based alternatives often seem less respectable than their dead-tree counterparts.

ECONOMIST: Scientific publishing