A friend in his newsletter, BLIANESWORLD asked:

Have you ever switched your email address? I know it is a pain, but I’m thinking
of doing so sometime in the future.

As such, I have heard that there are services that make this much easier for you
to make such a switch. If so, have you ever used such services? And if you have,
what was your reaction to them?

My answer, don’t consolidate instead.

Use a service like GMail, Yahoo!, or Hotmail and go into your existing accounts and forward all of your mail to this single account. The important thing is that isn’t tied to your internet connection, so if you move you or hate it you have the flexibility to change. That way regardless if it is coming from Your Personal Site, AOL, Facebook, Professional Organization, etc. it will all land in the same place. If you plan on getting rid of the one email account in the future, set a permanent away message. Something like “My AOL account, DonJonas@aol.com, will no longer be available after July 4, 2010. When the fireworks go off, so does this account, so please update your address book immediately to DonJonas@gmail.com.”