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Ghost Sites 35
----- GHOST SITES #35 [February 26, 2000]
----- by Steve Baldwin
(steve_baldwin@hotmail.com)
February means it's Ennui Central around here. But our pathological
cabin fever is lifted by the steady stream of Dead Site tips that loyal
readers of this despised column keep stuffing into our e-mail boxes with
the latest reports of Web Rot.
Thank you all for keeping us focussed on the true horror of winter: Dead
Web Sites frozen beneath the ice!
You'll find a more or less typical crop of gangrenous bit rot in this
month's list of Ghost Sites. Nothing special here - just a rusted Zip
Drive full of non-updated nothingness and abandoned binary ectoplasm.
*---- ALIEN RESURRECTION ----*
----- http://www.alien.com/
This big-budget sci-fi movie came out more than two years ago, leaving a
huge, hideously bloated site chockablock with well-financed,
Hollywood-style bitrot.
Connisseurs of high-bandwidth Web decay will enjoy this site's antique
Shockwave area, an "Alien Resurrection Digizine" that still claims it's
"updated weekly", an Event Calendar that's cocooned itself back in
November, 1997, and a link to a merchandising site that grimly announces
that "Alien Resurrection is Closed".
Alien Resurrection is a classic Ghost Site that demonstrates Hollywood's
matchless ability to construct promotional Web Stinkers that persist
uselessly for years, without any conceivable hope of resurrection.
Thanks to Scott for pointing this mammoth-sized monstrosity out to us.
Related URLs:
http://www.alien.com/index2.html
http://www.alien.com/digizine/index_ns.html
http://www.alien.com/digizine/htmls/calendar.html
http://www.cleanfunpromo.com/index.htm
[3 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, but Well-Preserved
*---- KOOK OF THE MONTH ----*
----- http://www.wetware.com/mlegare/kotm/KotM.html
It's sad but true: KOTM, an ambitious attempt to find "the true
nutburgers of the net and share their wisdom and knowledge with the rest
of the alt.usenet.kooks population", has been lying in a condition we
can only describe as an alarmingly advanced state of dormancy for the
last 32 months.
There's very little left of this site: just about every link is broken.
Still, KOTM's lifeless counter spins on in the melancholy loneliness
reserved for quirkily inspired projects that, for reasons unknown, have
relapsed into a terminal state of cyber-dereliction.
Thanks to Time1159 for sending us news of KOTM's demise.
[4 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, Shows Advanced Decay
*---- BEST OF THE WEB ----*
----- http://www.botw.org/
This bitrotten site is a throwback to the embryonically silly days of
Web Hysteria, wherein "Best Of" award sites briefly ruled the day
(remember Point Communications? Cool Site of the Day?)
BOTW is as dead a site as you're likely to find, and it hasn't mustered
a contest since 1998. But if you're curious about what used to pass for
excellence on the Web, you can peruse its award-winners for the years
1994, 1996, 1997 and 1998, and stratch your head in befuddlement.
Were Web sites so butt-ugly back in 1996 that "The Spot" could win
BOTW's "Best Designed" award? Was the state of Web-delivered fun so
mind-numbingly boring back in 1994 that MIT's Sports Information Center
could walk away with BOTW's "Best Entertainment" Site award?
And did surfers really prefer The Bartender's Joke of the Day to The
Onion in BOTW's Humor Category back in 1998?
It boggles the mind.
Thanks (again) to Time1159 for sending this dangerously corroded relic
on to us.
Related URLs:
http://botw.org/1994/
http://botw.org/1996/
http://botw.org/1997/
http://botw.org/1998/
[5 GHOSTIES] Site is Stuffed, Embalmed, and Ready for Internet Museum
*---- T & G SOLUTIONS ----*
----- http://tgsolutions.com/
T & G Solutions appears to be a VAR (Value-Added Reseller) whose
e-commerce activities bogged down in the Cyberspace equivalent of the La
Brea Tar Pits.
Still, there's a lot to love when browsing this Jurassic-era Web site.
Where else can you buy (for $2,195)a brand, spanking new 100MHz Pentium
Desktop System with 16MB RAM, 1.2GB hard drive, and 28Kbps modem? Or a
$2,899 laptop system powered by a smoking 133MHz CPU augmented with an
810MB hard drive?
Want more? Check out the amazingly geriatric links on this site's home
page, which include a link to Yahoo at its original location
(http://akebono.stanford.edu/yahoo).
Now, that's a Ghost Site!
Thanks to cglow for this Ghost Site Tip.
Related URLs:
http://tgsolutions.com/desktop.html
http://tgsolutions.com/laptop.html
[5 GHOSTIES] Site is Stuffed, Embalmed, and Ready for Internet Museum
*---- THE ORIGINAL CHIPS PAGE ----*
----- http://www.adequate.com/CHiPs/About/Original/
"I just started it", this site's creator pleads: "Be patient. Give me
some time."
Okay - we've given this site nearly five years to get its act together -
do we have to give it another five before its author finally uploads
some additional material on CHiPs, a long-dead, long-forgotten TV show
about California motorcycle cops?
We don't know why The Original CHiPs Page is such a badly neglected
mess, but we'll be big about it, and satisfy our insensate hunger for
LA-based Law Enforcment fiction by gorging ourselves on the many fresher
sites devoted to Adam-12 and Dragnet.
Thanks to Ghostsite (a peculiar moniker) for sending word of this dead
site on to us.
[3 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, But Well-Preserved
*---- CHILD AMERICA MINISTRIES ----*
----- http://www.dallas.net/~wavann/
Here's a sad case of a failed Web charity effort sent on to us by Ghost
Site Correspondent (First Class) Randee Dawn.
It pertains to something called the "Child America Ministries", a
homegrown attempt by Texas evangelist Wayne C. Vann to gather money for
his cause through online fundraising activities.
These activities did not, however, reap much of a bounty: a year on the
Web harvested just $120.75 ($120 from a grownup contributor; $0.75 from
a child), so the online component of the Child Ministries was shut down
on January 1, 1998.
Can you blame him for being bitter?
Related URLs:
http://www.dallas.net/~wavann/evangelist/
[3 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, But Well-Preserved
*---- MILLENNIUM PHILADELPHIA ----*
----- http://www.philadelphia.org/
Another Dead Site tip from Randee Dawn yields this rapidly aging site
devoted to Philadelphia's Millennial Celebrations.
The site's home page yields a zeroed-out, completely dysfunctional
Millennium Clock; inside the site, things aren't any fresher: just a
rusting clump of stuff to do on the night of 12/31/99.
There are a lot of Ghost Sites devoted to 01/01/2000 that we'll probably
devote a special issue sometime in the near future. In the meantime,
enjoy this one, and cache a copy onto your hard drive. In a thousand
years, it might be worth something.
Related URLs:
http://www.philadelphia.org/welcome/welcome.shtml
[3 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, But Well-Preserved
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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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