Ghost Sites

----- GHOST SITES #43 [January 29, 2001] ----- by Steve Baldwin (steve_baldwin@hotmail.com) Thanks to every one of you who continues to send me tips (via the Ghost-O-Meter) about dead and defunct Web sites. Ghost Sites' skeleton crew of downsized site researchers continue to file your contributions, and our February issue will feature the best of your cyber-necrotic choices. This issue, we're going to let you sample our growing collection of dead e-commerce sites that passed into oblivion in the year 2000 - we call it "The E-Failure Museum" - a collection of screen capture files documenting the home pages of 120 commercial Web sites. Mor...

----- 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 worker...

----- GHOST SITES #41 [October 31, 2000] ----- by Steve Baldwin (steve_baldwin@hotmail.com) Well, it's time once again to join hands, burn some incense, say some mumbo-jumbo, and pay tribute to those unfortunate Web sites that have fallen along the way. This month, we ask that you pause for a few precious moments to honor those Web sites that have given their lives so that yours and mine might live. Those sites which, were it not for this column and your contributions to it, would die in utter obscurity - unmourned and unsung. Bitrotten wonders of the Internet - we salute thee! And if you'd like to salute them, please forward any news of...

----- GHOST SITES #40 [September 30, 2000] ----- by Steve Baldwin (steve_baldwin@hotmail.com) So many e-commerce sites have disappeared so quickly that Web preservationists are deeply worried that a large, irreplacable chunk of the 1999-era Internet - that part of it formerly bristling with all manner of marvelous B2B, B2C, and wacky content ventures - has already disappeared from the Net. Few will mourn the passing of these look-alike catalog sites. Still, the culling of the dotcom herd represents a loss to Web history. Are not Web sites - even humble E-tailing projects - our generation's equivalent of cave painting? Do these failed wor...

----- GHOST SITES #39 [August 19, 2000] ----- by Steve Baldwin (steve_baldwin@hotmail.com) Welcome back, ye Sons and Daughters of Bit Rot. Set here a spell, lay down your browser, and listen to a tale of rust, dust, and cyber-mortality. Ponder the Web's lost dawn of miracle and wonder, folly and delight. Sing of great Web sites sucked under by the clutching currents of cyber-indifference. Yes, friends, it's time for another monthly installment of Ghost Sites of the Web - your personal graveside guide to the lost, unburied, and unmourned Web sites that Time Forgot. I'm Steve Baldwin - your sepulcheral Ghost Host. Ask not for whom the Web ...

----- 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 ...

----- 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 aesthet...

----- GHOST SITES #36 [April 6, 2000] ----- by Steve Baldwin (steve_baldwin@hotmail.com) Welcome back to Ghost Sites of the Web: your own maddeningly Quixote-like guide to all things dead and mouldering in Cyberspace. Sorry about failing to publish in March, folks - I feel very badly about missing an issue because it makes me feel very hypocritical - like "the pot calling the kettle black".So I apologize (and thanks for continuing to send those Ghost-O-Meter tips in - they make this month's issue possible!) Enough apologizing - on to the bitrot! This month, we've got a truly scary crop of computer-generated HTML flotsam that comes to you...

----- 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 ec...

----- GHOST SITES #34 [January 17, 2000] ----- by Steve Baldwin (steve_baldwin@hotmail.com) Welcome back to your own monthly helping of the oldest, most archaic Web relics you're likely to find in one place. Someday, these digital dustballs will probably achieve "collectible status" (but we hope we're long dead by then). In the meantime, please enjoy your stroll through the graveyard of Cyber Decay, and say a prayer that your own site remains with the living for the foreseeable future. For some odd reason, the number of tips coming through the Ghost-O-Meter spiked sharply during December, which lets us provide you with a healthy crop of ...