Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
Ghost Sites 21
----- GHOST SITES #21 [October 26, 1998]
----- by Steve Baldwin
(steve_baldwin@hotmail.com)
Rogers Cadenhead wrote us recently to ask whether we might have a rare
copy of Spiv - a long-departed Web site that tanked years ago - in our
archives. Unfortunately, we didn't, and have been kicking ourselves ever
since.
The idea that dead Web sites, or at least screen grabs of their home
pages, might become as desirable as discontinued Beanie Babies is a
fairly new meme. But who ever thought that cereal boxes would be worth
thousands of dollars?
Wouldn't it be great to have a mint-condition copy of YPN (Michael
Woolf's disastrous fiasco), or a "like new" copy of iGuide to show to
your kids? Or an actual screen shot of Mecklerweb in its prime? I
frankly doubt that these rare artifacts exist anywhere, even on Brewster
Kahle's Archive.Org site (if they do, Brewster has them locked up in a
vault he won't open unless Sotheby's calls).
In the meantime, friends, do yourself a favor and take a screenshot of
any Ghost Site you find. You just never know what perverse collectible
fad is going to come along!
*---- TOTAL NEW YORK ----*
----- http://www.totalny.com/
"Everything Must Go!" screams this doomed site's home page. And
everything did, when Total New York shut down in early 1998.
Judging from its frozen Interactive Calender, the end apparently came on
Thursday, February 26th, 1998, when a deadly cloud of obsolescence
quickly overwhelmed the site's Urban Access Search Engine, its Fashion
Section, and even The Spanker, an oddly-conceived literary project that
young Ghost Sites readers should probably stay away from.
Fortunately, Sean Elder, the site's executive producer, had enough time
to put Total New York's ghostly gallery of dubious editorial
achievements into eternal rotation on the home page. By doing so, he
assured Total New York a permanent home in the Web's Museum of Glorious
Editorial Folly.
Related URLs:
http://www.totalny.com/buzz/
http://www.urbanaccess.com/
http://www.totalny.com/totalfashion/
http://www.spanker.com/
http://www.totalny.com/about/staff/#elder
http://www.totaltour.com/revolution/index.html
[5 GHOSTIES] Site is Stuffed, Embalmed, and Ready for Internet Museum
*---- OMNI MAGAZINE ----*
----- http://www.omnimag.com/
My old friend Jim Freund reports that Omni Magazine gave up the ghost a
few months ago, and that its Web site is now static and lifeless. Omni
was the first major magazine to give up its print incarnation in favor
of a Web-based presence, so it's sad and sobering to see it die.
Freund believes that the demise of Omni was a direct consequence of the
real-life loss of Bob Guccione's wife, Kathy Keeton, who believed in
Omni's Web site and kept it from harm's way as long as she could.
This Ghost Site story does has a happy ending, because the hardy souls
who created the Omni site, Ellen Datlow, Pam Weintraub, Rob Killheffer,
and Kathy Stein, have gone on to form a lively new sci-fi site named
Event Horizon.
Related URLs:
http://www.omnimag.com/ed_ink/keeton.html
http://www.e-horizon.com/
[5 GHOSTIES] Site is Stuffed, Embalmed, and Ready for Internet Museum
*---- PARANOIA.COM ----*
----- http://www.paranoia.com/
James McInish was kind enough to let us know that Paranoia.Com, a
conspiracy-minded site with a lot of cachet in the Web's early days, is
one with the ages. The official reason given on Paranoia.Com's home page
is "bandwidth reduction" an incurable affliction that's killed other
popular sites such as Jeff's Nude of the Month.
Even though Paranoia.Com claims its "web server is now on the way to
being completely down", some of its internal parts are still operative,
including The Psychedelic Tabby Cabal, Kevin's Little Dream World, and
the Unabomber Political Action Committee. Many of Paranoia.Com's
denizens, however, have packed up to seek fatter, more reliable pipes to
funnel conspiracy theories to the masses.
Related URLs:
http://www.paranoia.com/~fraterk/
http://www.paranoia.com/~kevintx/
http://www.paranoia.com/unapack/
[3 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, But Well-Preserved
*---- THE TWINKIES PROJECT ----*
----- http://twinkiesproject.com/
The Twinkies Project was one of the Web's first great funny sites. Along
with the Exploding Macintosh Page, it pioneered the use of a deadpan
documentary style to highlight the deconstructionist fun of destroying a
cherished object - the Twinkie.
Like latter-day Warhols armed with a blowtorch and a set of high-voltage
test probes, the madmen who subjected Twinkies to such an exhaustive,
exquisite series of torture tests left an enduring body of humor behind
them, but this site is in dire need of an update (it was last edited in
May of 1996).
If Twinkie science doesn't progress, what hope can the future bring?
Related URLs:
http://desperado.scvnet.com/~demented/mac/home/index.html
http://twinkiesproject.com/oxidation.html
http://twinkiesproject.com/resistivity.html
[5 GHOSTIES] Site is Stuffed, Embalmed, and Ready for Internet Museum
*---- ZIMA.COM ----*
----- http://www.zima.com/
I'll confess that I've never liked Zima, and don't know how anyone in
their right mind can drink it. So when Brian Woodman called in the news
that Zima.Com had died, I headed over to Coors.Com (Zima's owner) for an
official explanation. I was frankly hoping to see an acknowledgement
from Adolf Coors that he had woken up one morning with a bad taste in
his mouth and had decided, on the spot, to withdraw all traces of Zima
from the Web.
But it turns out that Coors.Com is also a dead site (at least for the
moment), which leaves the precise circumstances surrounding Zima's death
among the Web's Great Unsolved Mysteries.
Related URLs:
http://www.coors.com/
[4 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, Shows Advanced Decay
*---- PATHFINDER ----*
----- http://www.pathfinder.com/
Because I spent my formative years as a Web producer at Time-Warner,
I'll always care too much about what happens to Pathfinder.
Recent events aren't very cheery: People Magazine is withdrawing from
the site in order to set up exclusive shop on AOL, Time-Warner is
refocussing its Web efforts on shopping, instead of editorial, and a
project I've done a lot of work for, Netly News, closed down a few weeks
ago.
These developments are discouraging enough, but what really troubles me
about Pathfinder these days is the enormous number of odd test pages and
other fraying bits of HTML that keep floating to the surface as I tool
around the site.
I'm not sure what to make of these bizarre experimental anomalies (which
are clearly not intended for public consumption) - I hope they don't
mean that Pathfinder is literally starting to pop rivets. But their
presence suggests that something's definitely going on behind the scenes
- and I can only pray that what's going to happen will be good.
Related URLs:
http://www.people.com/
http://www.pathfinder.com/photo/gallery/buttest.htm
http://cgi.pathfinder.com/time/daily/0%2C2960%2C9679%2C00.html
http://www.pathfinder.com/asiaweek/script/sample.html
http://www.pathfinder.com/money/flattax/oldindex.html
[1 GHOSTIE] Site is Calling in Sick
*---- 100TH.COM: A CELEBRATION OF THE BOSTOM MARATHON ----*
----- http://www.100th.com/index.html
April 15th, 1996, was a big day in Boston, and thanks to the slothlike
efforts of WBZ News 4, the entire world is doomed to re-experience this
moment until Kingdom Come.
If you're interested in antique Web technologies, this site is a gold
mine. You can play with VRML versions of the course, view animated
QuickTime movies, and fiddle with a Javascript "Pace Calculator" to
figure how many steroids you should have taken 30 months ago to win the
race.
In a marvelous morsel of unconscious humor, most of these mossy Web
gadgets were cobbled together by an outfit called "Tomorrow's Technology
Today, Inc".
Related URLs:
http://www.100th.com/course/vrml/index.html
http://www.100th.com/course/mov/index.html
http://www.100th.com/calculator/index.html
[5 GHOSTIES] Site is Stuffed, Embalmed, and Ready for Internet Museum
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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/
TO SUBSCRIBE: majordomo@disobey.com BODY: Subscribe GhostSites
TO UNSUBSCRIBE: majordomo@disobey.com BODY: Unsubscribe GhostSites
------------------------------------------------------------------------
