Seven years ago in March of 1996 I helped to bring a little mapping website to life.

At the time it was called Proximus Free Maps, but in a few months it became Mapblast and the company became Vicinity.

Quite a bit happened to Mapblast over the years: it got smaller, it was the bomb, it joined the GPSy's, it ballooned around the world, it was under the weather, and it went to a lot of weddings.

This week it was finally put to sleep by its new owner, Microsoft.

Cringley will have to use another service in the future to find out where his Dog Psychic lives.

Goodbye Mapblast.