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Ghost Sites 42
----- GHOST SITES #42 [December 20, 2000]
----- by Steve Baldwin
(steve_baldwin@hotmail.com)
Well, we missed our November Update - proof positive that we're always a
mere FTP session away from becoming a cyber-relic ourselves -- just like
the sites whose passing we attempt to memorialize.
Our slacking off is due in no small part to being very busy offline, and
Ghost Sites is proud to announce that we are now working with The Hired
Guns and Netslaves.com to produce a multimedia "Carousel of E-Failure"
exhibit for the 12/20/2000 Pink Slips Party, a popular New York event
for downsized, outsourced, and just plain fired dotcom workers.
This collection of 136 JPEG images documents the home pages of more than
100 failed Internet companies that "gave up the ghost" in the latter
half of 2000. The exhibit also includes rare screen recordings made of
classic Web sites that died earlier, such as Pathfinder, YPN, iGuide,
Stim, Total New York, and many other Golden Moldies.
The "Carousel of E-Failure" is, to my knowledge, the single largest
repository of dead Web site screen capture files in existence. My hope
is to upload parts of this 255 MB collection to this Web site sometime
in 2000 - so please stay tuned!
Thanks again to all of you who advised me that I should use CopyCafe.com
to produce future Ghost Sites products. I hope to resurrect e-commerce
on this site sometime in 2001, and will definitely use CopyCafe.com's
services to produce the goods.
Related URLs:
http://www.thehiredguns.com/
http://www.netslaves.com/
*---- BOX OPERA ----*
----- http://www.boxopera.com/
Many observers of E-Failure are familiar with the peculiar saga of Josh
Harris, who spent millions of dollars funding the ill-fated Pseudo
Programs Network, a massive, multimedia-laden ghost site that crashed
and burned in the summer of 2000.
What's less well-known about Harris is that throughout the desperate
days of Pseudo's summer collapse, he blithely continued to promote Box
Opera, an odd project mixing puglisim, conceptual art, and God knows
else.
Today, Pseudo is gone and Box Opera is now just another dead Web site
advertising an event that's come and gone. Harris, however, isn't gone -
in fact, he's lately been seen rigging up his loft with an $11 million
array of Web cameras for a project called "We Live in Public", a
Jennicam-inspired Web service providing e-voyeurs with a 24 x 7 view of
the loft life he shares with Tanya Corrin, a nymphlike, live-in
girlfriend.
The cost of this Orwellian experiment has perplexed many of Pseudo's
creditors, but Harris has assured the bean counters that they have
nothing to worry, because "We Live in Public" is destined someday to be
"bigger than CBS".
Related URLs:
http://www.psuedo.com/
[3 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, But Well-Preserved
*---- RUDYYES.COM AND HILLARYNO.COM
----- http://www.rudyyes.com/
----- http://www.hillaryno.com/
Talk about nasty political fallout. RudyYes.com, a site last updated
when New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani dropped out of his race for State
Senator in May of 2000, is still hanging around, long after Hillary
Clinton defeated Rick Lazio back in November.
Want to send some soft money to a ghost campaign? Go to the site's
Donate Area and send it along. (We're not certain where your funds will
go, or why Rudy still needs them, but we're not about to start an
argument with him here).
Have an itch to do some belated Hillary-bashing? Surf over to this
site's companion site, HillaryNo.com, whose boastful headline, "Rudy Up
Big in Latest Poll", refers to a 4/25/2000 press release from
RudyYes.com.
Yo, Rudy - clean up this mess - both of these moth-ridden sites deserve
to become homeless!
Related URLs:
http://rudyyes.com/contents/donate/
http://www.rudyyes.com/contents/news/4-25-00release2.htm
[3 GHOSTIES] Sites are Dead, But Well-Preserved
*---- WMSV RADIO
----- http://www.msstate.edu/org/wmsv/
Frank Lucas writes: "I used to work at the Mississippi State University
college radio station, WMSV, as Music Director, and as far as I can
tell, its Web site hasn't been updated since 1997.
"Since the station is part of a university Internet system, it will
probably sit around forever. This station used to be an interesting
alternative to, well, alternative radio in Mississippi when I was the MD
there, but now they just play soul-sucking Top 40 crap.
"What a waste of 14,000 watts. None of those people except the general
manager work there anymore. I work as a music promoter and I dropped
them from my lists months ago."
NOTE: Shortly after release of this issue, we received the following
email from markbyrn: "The Ghostsite article on WMSV radio all wet, and
the website is far from dead. The correct link for WMSV is listed below,
and you can listen live. The format is not the "soul-sucking Top 40
crap", but rather according to the website, "In January of 1999, WMSV
became WORLD CLASS RADIO. The decision to change the identifying logo of
our station was due to the all encompasing nature of the new slogan.
WMSV airs such a variety of World Class music, that the new moniker
seemed only fitting. The decision to make the music format of WMSV an
Alternative/AAA blend really an easy one to make once we did a little
research." Listen for yourself, but in the meantime you should correct
your article. http://www.wmsv.msstate.edu/
[5 GHOSTIES] Site is Stuffed, Embalmed, and Ready for Internet Museum
*---- NOTES WAR
----- http://users.deltanet.com/~grifter/NotesWar/index.html
John Griffen writes: "I saw someone else submitted their own old site,
so I figured it couldn't hurt to do the same...
"This was a writing project a friend and I started on our high school
(1984) BBS and revived on the 'net in 1993. It's kind of a serial
super-hero game of telephone, where whoever wants to write the next
chapter can. My co-editor got really into his freelance writing and I
got into my documentary work and we alienated most of our writers by
trying to freeze out super-heroes in favor of what we thought were more
serious characters. Now, after seeing films like "Mystery Men" and "The
Specials", I realize what we had then was just fine.
"Anyway, our old Web site is still up on a server I gave up 3.5 years
ago and I don't think I could update or change the site, even if I
wanted to. Despite my not giving Deltanet a dime since May of 1997, they
haven't cleared out my Web site. Anyway, someday we hope to restart the
project if we ever get the time.
"Meanwhile, maybe some Ghost Sites readers will enjoy the ephemeral
adventures of Juan Kawashima, Failed Writer or Beth Dialla, the Goth
Spice Girl. Or the Variable Jesus."
[3 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, But Well-Preserved
*---- BUFFETWATCH.COM
----- http://www.buffetwatch.com/
Investor Warren Buffet is looking very smart these days, mainly because
he did something almost inconceivable in the go-go, bubble-worshiping
world of Wall Street: he admitted he "knew nothing" about Internet
stocks, and was unwilling to invest in anything about which he was
completely ignorant. As a result, Buffet wound up virtually unscathed by
the Great Web Wipeout that destroyed almost $2 Trillion in investments.
Which brings us to this Web site. BuffetWatch.com was apparently
launched as a subscription-based site that would let Web users take a
peek into Buffet's master portfolio (which in the case of tech stocks,
would be entirely empty). For reasons unknown, BuffetWatch stumbled
sometime before its June 1, 1997 launch date.
The result is a ghost site that never seems to have signed up a single
paying customer, which proves that Buffet was right - the Internet
really is a pretty crummy place to run a business.
Thanks to Chris Stamper for this tip.
[3 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, But Well-Preserved
*---- THE PARIS WEBMUSEUM
----- http://www.ibiblio.org/louvre/
Remember the early graphical incarnation of Mozilla, Netscape's somewhat
loveable reptilian mascot? It's very much in evidence among the ancient
pages of the Paris WebMuseum, a site whose "What's New" Page hasn't been
updated since June of 1996.
This quaint site speaks volumes about the Web's early days, when a
clean, fast-loading page, a couple of image thumbnails, and a
plain-white page were enough to make any site look "cutting edge".
Thanks to Eamason for this tip.
Related URLs:
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/about/whatsnew.html
[5 GHOSTIES] Site is Stuffed, Embalmed, and Ready for Internet Museum
*---- THE MONKEY HUT
----- http://monkey.hooked.net/m/hut/
This site is an old (and ugly) piece of business that seems to have died
more than three years ago.
Users clicking on "The Burning Man Photo Gallery - SPECIAL!" will
receive a page covering the 1995 Burning Man Festival; clicking on "The
Summer Games Journal - SPECIAL!" yields a page recounting the adventures
of Alex Bennett at the 1996 Atlanta Games. Other editorial features date
from no later than 1996.
We know very little about why this odd digital artifact was constructed,
or why it failed. We can only say that it appears to be the only one of
its kind - a fact we're grateful for.
Thanks to cludewilkens for bringing this messy pile of debris to our
attention.
Related URLs:
http://monkey.hooked.net/monkey/m/hut/burnpix/
http://monkey.hooked.net/monkey/m/hut/games/games.html
http://monkey.hooked.net/monkey/m/hut/durst/durst.html
[5 GHOSTIES] Site is Stuffed, Embalmed, and Ready for Internet Museum
*---- THE SUN MICROSYSTEMS STYLE GUIDE
----- http://www.sun.com/webwriting/
Alan Levine writes: "I hate it when Multi-Billion dollar companies
cannot even leave a message or a redirect when they rip down a
well-linked site... with almost 4,000 links to it (as reported by
Altavista, which only indexes 40% of the Web)."
What Levine is talking about here is the fact that Sun's Style Guide was
removed from Sun's servers without any warning from Sun's
administrators, breaking thousands of otherwise sound links. In early
October, Levine was sufficiently angered to send this terse e-mail to
Sun:
"As a web site designer for more than 7 years, I think it is pretty bad
that a major corporation like Sun would just delete a Web style guide
whose URL has been widely published. The least you could have done is to
provide an explanation or redirect page. The problem is made worse
because you have removed an extremely valuable resource."
On October 12, Levine received the following reply from Sun:
"The former Style Guide was outdated and has been removed from our
server. While a new version is being written, please refer to Jakob
Nielsen's 'Writing for the Web.', http://www.sun.com/webwriting/, and
his Web Usability site: http://www.useit.com. We also have many
resources on the Sun Marketing Resource Center that may interest you at
http://www.sun.com/smrc/."
Thank you, J. Akerstrom, sun.com Web Team, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Levine forwarded Sun's reply on to Rick Levine, the Style Guide's author
and co-author of "Cluetrain", a popular business book. Levine added:
"For quite some time I have been sending folks to the Web Style guide
you wrote for Sun, a widely published URL (Google searches prove links
to it are rampant) that resided at http://www.sun.com/styleguide/
I poked around Sun's site for a good chunk of time without finding a
trace of it. I filled out a comment form 3 weeks ago and have gotten a
response above (they completely missed my point about bad Web links
being a disservice and instead referred me to sites I already know
about)
I would think that a huge gazzillion dollar company like Sun could do a
better job of at least leaving a note, a forwarding link, even a simple
URL re-direction, something that is a trivial task for myself with a web
staff of 1.5 (and I am 1). At this point, I am planning to nominate Sun
as a Ghost Site (see: http://disobey.com/ghostsites/)
Just thought you might want to know how your former employer is off the
cluetrain ..."
Finally, on October 30, Alan Levine received a response from Rick
Levine:
"I forwarded your note to the VP who owns all the external Web sites for
Sun. I've been poking them for the last few weeks, and hopefully they'll
reinstate (the Style Guide)"
The story ends there - maybe the Sun Style Guide will come back, maybe
not. At publication date, at least 4,000 dead links continue to point to
the gutted Style Guide area, and no UNIX God at Sun has lifted a finger
to fix them.
Caveat Browser!
[NO GHOSTIES] Site is Missing in Action
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The website edition includes images, a nice design, and all the latest
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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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