During the past 4 years, AtomIC Systems has been run and maintained by Matt Peddlesden and Steve Brown. During that time we've had a lot of fun together and shared a lot of grief together. We've seen the internet boom and bust, and we've seen our software allegiances change dramatically as our business needs have changed. Its been a fun ride. But the time has now come for Matt and Steve to part (in the company sense) in order to maintain our friendship, which is more important to both of us than the company we run. Things change, people change and people's desires change and thus it is by mutual agreement that it is time to call it a day.
I hope you're still reading this rather than throwing your hands up in the air and running around screaming that DearDiary or UKTrainSim is going to die, because neither is the case.
AtomIC Systems will continue to be owned by Matt, which will operate UKTrainSim and other 'satellite' sites (notably AtMail, The Forums and AtomIC Album).
Steve and Päivi will run DearDiary.Net, Openfiction and will operate a re-branded version of AtMail, The Forums and AtomIC Album.
Anyone who has an AtomIC Premium Account will retain that Premium Account until it expires, whereupon if you use DearDiary you will need to re-subscribe to DearDiary, or if you use UKTrainSim you will need to resubscribe to AtomIC. In other words, you won't lose any Premium time, both companies will honour any existing premium time. When it expires you'll simply renew with the company that runs the service you're primarily interested in. If you use DearDiary AND UKTrainSim we might have to work something out for you :)
With all this in mind, there will be some disruption to the DearDiary.Net and OpenFiction service, along with potential outages for your e-mails if you pick it up through AtMail, while we move servers. The new DearDiary server is almost ready and its envisaged that the move will take place over the Christmas break. In theory in January you won't notice any difference except that DearDiary will become a Hamiko product instead of an AtomIC Systems product.
If you've any questions, please drop me a line or leave a comment here.