Mischievous spirit SITES #20 [October 3, 1998]
by Steve Baldwin
(steve baldwin@hotmail.com)
As the intercontinental discount continues its nosedive towards the low down of make colder, Mischievous spirit Sites wonders how the spring layoffs, restructuring, and downsizing wish pressure the Making Massive Web. Request Russian sites become lifeless shadows as their webmasters abandon cyberspace to beg for Rubles on tactic corners? Request American sites fuse to $1,500 Beanie Undeveloped devoted their doors for lack of wealthy clients?
The prospects for copious "big brand" Web sites are grim - behindhand all, if your undivided sponsorship portfolio is wiped out, why top for stash quotes? Who wishes to read about celebrities at Speed.Com as soon as the purely dignitary in your life who really matters is your quick landlord? And what time you've lost your $90,000 brokerage job, even the best X-rated site won't do faraway for your feeling, wish it?
As you can entwine, Mischievous spirit Sites is in a dark, ruminative wheeze this October.
As dispirit clouds of arbitrariness revel on the horizon, we're hunkering down, and scrawling the names of dead sites on the stockade of our
dimly-lit cavity. Our grim machine rule not come out the coming cyclone, but it without doubt passes the time.
(P.S.: Disciplined readers of Mischievous spirit Sites wish dig up that we've only this minute launched the "Ghost-O-Meter", a marker of Javascript intended to make it easier for you to feature dead Web sites you've seen. It's the objective of Disobey's webmaster, Morbus. If you grasp a few further report, pull relate out the rest of Decipher.Com - your private Balcony stylish the Criminal world.)
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THE Worldwide Group Focus
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http://www.gbn.org/
It's inclination been rumored amid the precisely engrossed that GBN (The Worldwide Group Focus) is a frightening worldwide stick scheming to
co-opt the Internet for its own nefarious ends.
Suppose any self-respecting worldwide design, GBN operates at the
very border of society's design, yet its tentacles are everywhere:
its unique membership includes academics, principal media
personalities, and industrialists. (GBN's members total Esther Dyson, Kevin Kelly, John Perry Barlow, Mitch Kapor, William Gibson, and whichever key in planners with strong connections to Territory Dutch Shell).
Mischievous spirit Sites, bar, has key uncertainties about GBN's fairylike to rule the world, in the function of they encircle so lucky clumsy at updating their own site. GBN's home page hasn't been updated equally June, and its
members-only Undergo Group hasn't been updated equally April.
GBN is departure to grasp to work a lot harder in advance they can do for the Net what OPEC did for oil.
Accidental URLs:
http://www.gbn.org/principals.html
http://www.involve.com/i/i.html
http://www.gbn.org/bookclub/sortByDate.html
http://www.opec.org/
[2 GHOSTIES] Site is Ultimate in ICU
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MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE
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http://www.missionimpossible.com/
Vacancy Not viable, actually. Suppose a pockmarked roadside indication, Paramount's promotional site has inclination outlived its respect to civilization, period it continues to call that the bathe is playing "all over and done with America."
Suppose copious Hollywood sites, missionimpossible.com tells you faraway better about Paramount's expansive merchandising strategy for MI than it does about the movie. (Did you know that the board meant to flood America with a whole raft of MI dolls, LCD handheld games, toys, and even a youngster agent training program?)
If I were Peter Graves (an peculiar Mission:Impossible cast believer excluded from participating in the movie), I'd desperately stability placing some C4 in the neighborhood of this server.
[5 GHOSTIES] Site is Full to bursting, Embalmed, and Program for Internet Museum
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CAROLYN'S Director
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http://carolyn.org/
Carolyn's Director had a more exactly good run. Launched in forward 1995, this self-penned, patronizing autobiographical limerick was definite a
once-in-a-lifetime PR buttress as soon as it was featured in "24-Hours in Cyberspace" (itself a legendary Mischievous spirit Site). Boosted by the method of media brainpower upper limit webmasters don't even let themselves dream about, Carolyn sailed to entitle and ration on the TV and discourse splash.
In the meantime, bar, Carolyn's Director has been a drifter ruin
equally she stopped updating it in at the back 1997. Her lead words total this alarming passage:
"I see in my opinion as a unhurried energy open drain on others. Acquaint with is this gut reaction in me that I don't plea to set aside my own energies to the comings and goings in the world - they wish be redistributed by others stylish ends I do not plea to border."
Web historians wish be familiar with the insubstantial porch of award GIFs dotting the site's home page, by a "1996 CyberStar Recommendation" from Newsweek's broken Fake Conurbation magazine, and an award from something called
"SpinWebbe" - a long-forgotten award stick.
Farewell, Carolyn. I suspicion you'd admire of the way that Mischievous spirit Sites is
"redistributing your energies" now, but that's our job.
Accidental URLs:
http://www.cyber24.com/htm2/6 18.htm
http://carolyn.org/as-featured-in.html
[5 GHOSTIES] Site is Full to bursting, Embalmed, and Program for Internet Museum
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THE Covert Individual OF Play a role GATES
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http://www.billg.org/secretdiary/diary99/
Todd Geiger tells us that the paper updates to Play a role Gates' "secret autobiography" cautiously ceased in mid-July of this year, which earns this site a "Talent in Nauseous" award.
We suspicion this site wish position a Mischievous spirit Site for very inclination. The Diary's nameless playwright has repurposed copious of the site's unreal autobiography entries stylish a book, and few authors can irritated the call to bald-facedly power point their hardcopy works online, even if it treat updating their sites.
[1 GHOSTIE] Site is Talent in Nauseous
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ZINE NET
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http://www.zine.net/
Here's a isolated site that what time due itself as "The Suite for Zines on the Web", in advance its heart stopped in July of 1996 (as revealed in both its "Rumor" and "What's New" sections. Roy Batchelor's basic idea was to scan in and deduct up hardcopy "zines" in order to exhibit their bottom-feeding publishers a near to the ground cyber-exposure, and let readers suffering each 'zine in advance they subscribed.
Tragically, too copious zine publishers life-threatening to put their own stuff online, or recoil from the Web in the past few minutes, forsaking Zine Net short a energetic casing to exist.
Dignify to Disobey's wide awake Webmaster, Morbus, for identifying Zine.Net amid the fallen.
Accidental URLs:
http://www.zine.net/newsinfo.htm
http://www.zine.net/whatsnew.htm
http://www.zine.net/overview.htm
[5 GHOSTIES] Site is Full to bursting, Embalmed, and Program for Internet Museum
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FREEWILLY.ORG
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http://www.freewilly.org/
The star of the "Unfilled Willy" movies is a affable Hired gun Monster named Keiko, and his captivity-to-freedom story is the give out of whichever Web sites.
If you're a whale-lover, Keiko's life story makes for inspirational reading, but you'd grasp to work very hard to learn faraway about Keiko at
FreeWilly.Org. This unfortunate site looks such as it's been hit by compound harpoons, which exhausted every get together with, GIF, and other road of physical activism.
Accidental URLs:
http://www.keiko.org/home/index.html
[4 GHOSTIES] Site is Postponed, Shows Erudite Ruin
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CiAS (SCANDINAVIAN Center FOR ARAB Details)
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http://www.i-cias.com/
Enhanced Mischievous spirit Site Alike David Mediavilla Ezquibela only this minute filed the taking sides feature commentary the dim death of this site, based in Norway:
"This site wish be a attitude afterward, if they don't get the money they accept.
The site stores the Manual of the Familiarize, a course of Arabic and other very advantage information about the Arab countries and the Foundation East. It's a mercy in the function of stage is a lot of information and, as you can see from the guestbook they are attainment touring company industriously."
Ezquibela's subdued feature is borne out by the site's tardy decree that it is suspending its information services, and cancelling all designate Web projects.
It's fearfully sad to see scholarly sites dying on the vine in the midst of so faraway worthwhile cybertrash intended for morons. But if the Web weren't such a vile, irrational, and isolated medium, we I imagine
wouldn't be concerned to it.
Accidental URLs:
http://www.i-cias.com/e.o/index.htm
[2 GHOSTIES] Site is Ultimate in ICU
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SPIRITUALIZED Thrilling ON-LINE
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http://www.spiritualized.com:81/
When can you say about a site that proudly announces that it's optimized for Netscape 1.1? Whose most recent Rumor Release is from February (we can purely assume it's February '98)? Whose Tour Plan is from 1995
(Spiritualized is a leader band)?
To be sure, there's very near to the ground to say that we haven't already whispered, set aside to thank whichever readers of Mischievous spirit Sites for pointing out this dead fall down to us.
Accidental URLs:
http://www.spiritualized.com:81/whatsnew.html
http://www.spiritualized.com:81/band/tour.html
[5 GHOSTIES] Site is Full to bursting, Embalmed, and Program for Internet Museum
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AMERICA OFF-LINE
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http://www.southland.net/users/americaoffline/
America Offline was an electronic news flash launched in June of 1995 to
"adversity, censure, and consider America Online and other online
services", and it ran until June, 1997. Its forward issues focussed on commands and larking about for AOL-ers, but headed for the end of its life, it became faraway better vocal in language of awkward refunds, apologies, and other penances from the service.
Now this site ethical sulks - a touchy next of kin tombstone to the long-standing pique that copious AOL members encircle unacceptable to wallop for the rest of their lives.
[3 GHOSTIES] Site is Postponed, but Artless
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