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Ghost Sites 37
----- GHOST SITES #37 [May 10, 2000]
----- by Steve Baldwin
(steve_baldwin@hotmail.com)
It's a sure bet that the recent NASDAQ meltdown will yield many Ghost
Sites in the weeks and months ahead.
The prospect of these well-financed Web sites sinking like so many
doomed Liberty Ships doesn't fill us with joy - it fills us with panic!
Because chances are that many of these sites will simply disappear,
without anyone thinking to record their passing.
Will posterity feel cheated if it's denied even an inkling of the look
and feel of sites such as Boo.com, Beyond.com, and iVillage? Are these
endangered e-commerce dinosaurs so bereft of aesthetic value that no one
will lift a finger to record their last moments before meeting the
torch? It's sad that so few will mourn these sites' passing. But here,
it's our job to mourn (and take screen shots whenever possible).
Thanks again to the tireless legion of Ghost Site Correspondents who've
sent me word on dead sites in the last month. All of the sites in this
issue are a product of your extraodinary perspicacity and obsessional
zeal.
Related URLs:
http://www.boo.com/
http://www.beyond.com/
http://www.ivillage.com/
*---- WACKYVOICES.COM ----*
----- http://www.wackyvoices.com/
This Ghost Site has a tragic story behind it. At one time it was
regularly maintained by Mary Kay Bergman, a voice-over artist whose
"wacky voices" spiced up animated feature films for Disney and animated
TV series such as South Park. Last year, however, Bergman, took her own
life after a long battle with mental illness, leaving her site adrift in
the cruel waters of Cyberspace.
Whenever lives are cut short, leaving Ghost Sites in their wake, it's
haunting to linger in the abandoned HTML ruins. And browsing through
WackyVoices.com is an eerie experience, especially because its cheery
look and feel provides such an extreme contrast with the unfortunate
circumstances of Bergman's demise.
(Note: This tip came in about three months ago, and I have unfortunately
mislaid the name of its finder. Whoever you are, thank you.)
Related URLs:
http://klaxon.simplenet.com/wackyvo/bio.html
http://klaxon.simplenet.com/wackyvo/fram3d.html
http://klaxon.simplenet.com/wackyvo/south.html
http://www.voicechasers.org/News/mkbobit.html
[0 GHOSTIES] No Rating, out of respect for the Dead
*---- PANAVISE ----*
----- http://www.panavise.com/
PanaVise is a well-known manufacturer of what it calls "work holding
products" - vises, bases, mounts, and other things that hold other
things. (If you're a hobbyist you've probably owned one of their superb
miniature vises, useful for soldering circuit boards or superdetailing
miniature models).
Detracting from the brilliance of PanaVise's product line, however, is
the fact that its official Web site, last updated in November,1999),
houses an incredibly undermaintained e-commerce area entitled "Online
Purchase of Spares".
This area proudly announces:
"We expect to have this service online in late 1998. If you are having
problems getting spares then use the comment to the webmaster located at
the bottom of this page. We will do whatever we can to satisfy your
needs until this service is online."
Nearly two years later, PanaVise's e-commerce area is still disabled. We
can only imagine how many PanaVise products - lacking spares - are
offline now as a result, crippling the Nation's ability to hold onto
things.
Get a grip - PanaVise - update your Web site!
Thanks to Rick J. Reiman for this tip.
Related URLs:
http://www.panavise.com/visemain.html
http://www.panavise.com/sales/shop/shop.html
[3 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, But Well-Preserved
*---- THE FRAMING OF OJ SIMPSON ----*
----- http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/5244/
Rogers Cadenhead, whose perpetual watch for e-cruelty occasionally nets
him a close encounter with a Ghost Site, reports the following:
"After attracting more than seven million hits, William Schreck has let
his "Framing of O.J. Simpson" site grow as cold as O.J.'s manhunt for
the (wink, wink) real killer of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.
Sadly, the last update appears to have been on Feb. 10, 1998 -- two long
years in which no more leads were analyzed linking the Goldman and Brown
families to organized crime and the Colombian drug cartel, and no one
else made the connection between the Goldman family's move to Southern
California and the increased flow of drug money to the region."
This dead site is a classic piece of home-grown, hand-crafted HTML
hyperbole. Most of its links are dead, and its design (or lack of it)
typifies many such primoridial sites gathering dust on Geocities.
Related URLs:
http://www.cruel.com/
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/5244/letstalk.html
[4 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, Shows Advanced Decay
*---- INTERACTIVE WEB-PAGING PRODUCTIONS ----*
----- http://www.primenet.com/~iwpp/indexv3.html
Because so few early (1994-95) 1.0 and 2.0-level browser optimized sites
survive in pristine condition, learning of this one lit up every bell on
our Ghost-O-Meter.
Who wouldn't love a vintage site christened in 1995 containing "special
layout enhancements which look and work best using Netscape Navigator
1.1N (or its latest beta version) or another HTML 3.0 compatible
viewer"?
Some of this site's strangely ambiguous marketing-speak is unconsciously
funny -- check out this entry on its "Services" page:
"WWW - An Unbelieveable Resource Of Information: Probably the most
exciting element about the Internet is it's an unbelievable reservoir of
information. Just about anything your mind can dream up can most likely
be located on the Internet."
Everything except a Dictionary and a Spell Checker.
Thanks to jyoung for finding this amazing relic.
Related URLs:
http://www.primenet.com/~iwpp/services.html
[3 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, But Well-Preserved
*---- LOLLAPALOOZA.COM ----*
----- http://www.lollapalooza.com/
Long-time readers of this column will recall that we identified the Web
site of Lollapalooza (an annual Rock Concert project) as a flat-liner
more than three years ago.
When the site was freshened back in 1997, we removed it from our Master
List of Ghost Sites. Now, however, the bitrot is back, and it's worse
than ever. Although the site's index page is gone, a few JPEGs survive,
presenting a fragmentary picture of this site's heyday. A lonely page
touts the headlining appearance of Dwight Yoakam, but very little else
remains.
The original 1997 Lollapalooza page was a dreadfully bloated Ghost Site
whose image-mapped GIFs took up thousands of kilobytes. At least this
corpse is a lot thinner.
Thanks to Lukas for this Ghost Site tip.
Related URLs:
http://www.lollapalooza.com/pics/
http://www.lollapalooza.com/tours.html
[4 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, Shows Advanced Decay
*---- DANGERWILLROBINSON.COM ----*
----- http://www.dangerwillrobinson.com/
Ghost Site corresondant Lukas also reports that Lost in Space Galaxy,
built by New Line Cinema to promote the crummy 1999 remake of what was
originally a crummy TV series, is dead.
This hideously over-endowed site, chocked with just about every
bandwidth-sucking interactive doodad the human mind can conceive, must
have cost many thousands of dollars to construct. It's more or less what
we've come to expect from dead Hollywood Web sites - all sizzle and no
steak.
I suppose there are people alive today who are passionate enough about
Lost in Space to download the various players from ToggleThis,
Macromedia, and Cosmo required to enjoy this site. But I wouldn't
recommend doing so, or spending a nanosecond on Doctor Smith's
dysfunctional BBS system. Life is just too damned short.
Get me out of here, Robbo!
Related URLs:
http://www.cannery.com/cannery/cgi-bin/smith_bbs.cgi
[5 GHOSTIES] Site is Stuffed, Embalmed, and Ready for Internet Museum
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The website edition includes images, a nice design, and all the latest
news about Ghost Sites. Go there to read the latest:
http://www.disobey.com/ghostsites/
Copyright 1996-1999 Steve Baldwin Associates.
Webdesign, hosting and publication by Disobey.
http://www.disobey.com/
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