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Ghost Sites 38
----- GHOST SITES #38 [June 28, 2000]
----- by Steve Baldwin
(steve_baldwin@hotmail.com)
Well, it's Summer again, and the living is... perilous. Many proud
e-commerce sites have disappeared beneath the waves; others - including
this one - struggle along without a prayer of ever becoming profitable.
There's a sickness in the air - a sort of CyberCholera that infects
anyone drawing too close to the carnage. The main effect of this disease
is to replace all vestiges of optimism in the observer's mind with a
crushing pessimism about the future prospects of most Web sites.
Fortunately, there's a bit of good news to report -- in our very next
installment (August of 2000), Ghost Sites will celebrate its Fourth Year
of Internet Publishing . Thanks to all of you for helping to keep this
column alive, and thanks to everyone who sent in tips for this month's
issue through the trusty Ghost-O-Meter.
*---- THE PAINTSVILLE HERALD'S Y2K SURVIVAL GUIDE ---*
----- http://y2ksurvivalguide.bizhosting.com/
If you're still jittery about Y2K, you're not alone. The good people
down at the Paintsville, Kentucky, Herald ("Covering Johnson County like
the morning dew since 1901") created a Y2K survival guide last year, and
they're not about to let their guard down just because the Doomsday Date
of January 1 passed almost seven months ago.
If you're a fan of old fallout shelters or abandoned missile silos,
you'll dig this site, which includes a truly frightening Y2K Bug
background graphic, a Y2K survival checklist, a very scary discussion of
Y2K worst-case scenarios, and a strange but oddly inspiring account of
how one Johnson County man's manual propane pump invention might have
prevented Kentucky's population from freezing to death in the wake of
the Y2K apocalypse.
Thanks to spect-url for this tip.
Related URLs:
http://www.paintsvilleherald.com/
http://y2ksurvivalguide.bizhosting.com/worstcase.html
http://y2ksurvivalguide.bizhosting.com/invention.html
[3 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, But Well-Preserved
*---- THE STARS AND STRIPES MILITARY NEWSPAPER ----*
----- http://www.stripes.osd.mil/stripeslite.htm
Stars and Stripes is a time-honored publication providing "hometown
news" to America's armed forces around the world, and one would think
that its Web incarnation would be as powerful and sleek as an F-117
Nighthawk.
Unfortunately, the news section of Stars and Stripes went AWOL more than
two years ago -- its most recent issue now dates from April 9, 1998.
Worse, when users attempt to access old articles, they're greeted by the
following cryptic error message:
%1 is not a valid Windows NT application.
Stars and Stripes Forever? In a pig's eye. It's depressing to think that
our national Military Newspaper now exhibits such an astonishing lack of
preparedness. Sad Sack himself must be at the controls.
Thanks to Chris Stamper for this find.
Related URLs:
http://www.stripes.osd.mil/
[4 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, Shows Advanced Decay
*---- USA TODAY: ATLANTA '96 ----*
----- http://www.usatoday.com/olympics/olyfront.htm
When Ghost Site Correspondent rmac3 sent word that an enormous Olympics
site on USA Today's servers had survived for 22 months without being
deleted, we rang every alarm bell in the office and then hunkered down
with the ALT-PRINTSCN button to document this monster before it's sent
to the cutting torch.
This remarkable relic - a fully-functional megasite built in early 1996
using a (then) fashionable frames-based layout, probably racked up
millions of hits in its heyday. Today, delinked but not completely
decommissioned, its many areas continue to function just as smoothly as
they did nearly four years ago.
USA Today's Olympics '96 site is one of the oldest, best-preserved Ghost
Sites ever produced by a major media outlet. Its design sensibilities
reflect those of hundreds of frames-based sites built in the 1996-97
period that are now extinct and forgotten; its remarkable 22 months of
survival earns it an Internet endurance record - perhaps a Gold Medal in
Unintended Persistence?
[3 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, But Well-Preserved
*---- MOVIEREVIEWS.COM ----*
----- http://www.moviereviews.com/
MovieReviews.com was one of a cluster of sites launched by
Oklahoma-based Digimedia.com. Combining a searchable database with a
User Submit facility allowed it to cheaply harvest movie reviews from
the Web's legions of underexposed, unpaid writers and reviewers (Hey,
this kind of thing worked for Amazon and AOL, right?).
Unfortunately, MovieReviews.com never seems to have attracted enough
attention from movie fans to populate it with content sufficient to keep
it current for long. As of June, 2000, the newest film reviews in the
site's "New Flicks" area are at least a year old (reviews currently
include The Wild Wild West, Eyes Wide Shut, and Hoop Dreams). Worse, its
"Top Buzz" news area seems to have experienced a seizure way back in
April of 1999.
Lack of traffic seems to have done this modest project in, and we
suspect that hiring one or two professional film reviewers might have
kept it alive longer. Still, as demonstrated by the case of
mpXreview.com (below), reviews-based E-zines often find traffic-building
very difficult, with or without hired scribes to churn out fresh
content.
Related URLs:
http://www.moviereviews.com/reviewcgi/top20reviews.cgi
http://www.moviereviews.com/reviewcgi/news/top20news.cgi
[3 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, But Well-Preserved
*---- MPXREVIEW.COM ----*
----- http://www.mpxreview.com/
Many of us have Ghost Sites in our closet, and this doomed site,
launched in January of 1999, is one of mine. Throughout the first half
of that fateful year, I wrote and/or edited about half of the MP3 music
reviews on it. The rest were written by its publisher, Teri Baldwin.
Noel Hennelly designed the site, and Feargal O'Sullivan handled its
technology.
The site took a lot of work to run - a lot of listening, researching,
writing, and re-writing. Most of the MP3 musicians we reviewed were
complete unknowns who had never had a word written about them, so
naturally, they loved what we were doing. But site traffic never
exceeded 40,000 page views a week. Competition from major music
magazines (including Rolling Stone) soon blunted mpXreview's competitve
advantage. After an investor* promised $100,000 to keep things going and
then changed his mind, our little band broke up and let the site drift
into the shallow grave it lies in today.
As revealed by the date-stamped articles in the site's Past Reviews
section, the production of music reviews ceased in July, 1999. The
sites's once busy MP3 News Section was converted to a set of static
links, and its Special Reports and Opinion Sections lapsed into rusty
immobility.
As I felt the site sinking, I considered deleting the whole thing so it
wouldn't become a laughing stock in the MP3 Music Community, but then,
in October of 1999, one final update was uploaded to the site to
commemorate the death of Jean Shepherd. Drawing upon my own reel-to-reel
collection of Shepherd airchecks, I uploaded about eight hours of
material to the site. Now, mpXreview.com is dead - an unchanging virtual
shrine to one of my favorite literary heroes.
Ashes to ashes.
(Note: if anyone is interesting in listening to fresher Jean Shepherd
airchecks, please go to www.flicklives.com).
* The name of this investor will be sent to anyone sending us e-mail
proving that he or she is a Certified Student of Web Morbidity.
Related URLs:
http://www.mpxreview.com/past/
http://www.mpxreview.com/news/
http://www.mpxreview.com/specialreports/
http://www.mpxreview.com/opinion/
http://www.flicklives.com/
[4 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, But Well-Preserved
*---- 15 MINUTES ----*
----- http://www.movies.warnerbros.com/twister/cmp/fifteen.html
This lonely page - which dates from 1996 - is all that remains of
Jeffrey Zeldman's first effort to extend the reach of his successful Web
site into the realm of Streaming Net Radio.
According to Zeldman, who recounted the unearthing of this rare find on
his own site, Don Buckley - a Warner Brothers executive, personally
penned 15 Minutes' promotional copy:
"15 MINUTES is a soon-to-be-launched fifteen-minute long audio magazine
program for the Internet which allows instant listening on demand around
the world. It is the Internet's Entertainment Tonight with an attitude
and no need for all that makeup and hairspray."
Elements in the plan for 15 Minutes included a 15-minute interview, a
movie review, a profile of a "weird Web person", and something called
the "Phoner of the Week".
Why this demo wound up tucked away on one of WB's movie sites remains a
mystery. Like many experimental projects hatched in the labs of Old
Media companies, it promised to rule the Web but never moved beyond the
prototype phase.
Thanks to Morbus for this Ghost Siting.
Related URLs:
http://www.zeldman.com/com0500d.html
[4 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, But Well-Preserved
*---- THE OFFICIAL BABYLON FIVE SITE ----*
----- http://www.babylonfive.com/
When TV shows die, their Web extensions often suffer slow, agonizing
deaths. Babylon Five was a popular TV show with a large Web following,
and the site has been around since 1995 (when it was launched on
Time-Warner's ill-fated Pathfinder megasite).
By 1996, however, the B5 site had reverted to Warner Bros after a
protracted political battle, and it found a permanent home on a disk at
WB's Burbank server farm. There it churned along for several years,
until the show was cancelled.
Today, decay rules B5's Cyberspace station. While the site's bulletin
board areas are apparently still active, the rest of the site is frozen
in time. Symptoms of neglect include a very rusty News Page that doesn't
even have a date stamp; other areas of the site bear a 1998 date stamp.
(Warning: this dead site still chews up an awful lot of bandwidth, so
steer clear of its extravagant Shockwave, Quicktime VR and huge GIF
files).
Thanks to BAS112066 for this tip.
Related URLs:
http://www.babylonfive.com/cmp/b5news.htm
http://www.babylonfive.com/cmp/stellarc.htm
[3 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, But Well-Preserved
*---- THE GREAT THOMPSON HUNT ----*
----- http://www.tekknowledge.com/gonzo
Christine Othitis, who runs a site devoted to Gonzo Journalist Hunter S.
Thompson, sends word that she's the unfortunate custodian of a Ghost
Site. Here's how it happened:
"The site is called The Great Thompson Hunt and once upon a time, it was
on Geocities. Then I moved it to another server when someone gave me
free space on his server. Or at least, I thought it was his server.
Anyway, for about two years I was merrily uploading and updating the
main site and a mirror, offered by another admiring techie gonzo fan.
In mid-Jan, I found I was unable to upload to the main site. Called tech
support, emailed the guy who I thought was in charge - turned out to be
someone else. Anyway, for various reasons, the old site is still
persisting and I hope it dies soon (but that's out of my hands).
Happily, we had the mirror, and I also bought the domain name
www.gonzo.org
Hunter S. Thompson seems to have a good techie following, and now and
then I get irate emails from people about why I haven't updated the site
since mid-Jan.
It's going to be heck getting relisted in web directories and stuff like
that, but if you could please let your readers know that I can't update
http://www.tekknowledge.com/gonzo and that the current site is
http://www.gonzo.org, I'd be quite happy."
Christine, it's been so long since we made anyone happy that we'll leap
at the chance to do you this small favor.
[4 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, Shows Advanced Decay
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Copyright 1996-1999 Steve Baldwin Associates.
Webdesign, hosting and publication by Disobey.
http://www.disobey.com/
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