Thursday, June 16, 2011

Sherman! Get the WABAC Machine ready!

Mr. Peabody and Sherman
set the WABAC machine
Anyone who's been putting websites up on the InterWebs in the last 10 years has (hopefully) learned a few things about layout design. When the Internet first when color-tastic, people created sites that were not only difficult to look at directly without welding goggles, our eyes were constantly being distracted by galloping unicorns and spinning logos.

And then there were the surprise MIDI files that blared watered-down, neutered, electronic versions of our musical masterpieces in an attempt to create a web-based mood (which, until you found the Stop button, was mostly "Annoyed").If you don't know or remember what I mean, see our earlier post on Web Nostalgia.

But for the most part, we amateur web developers are happy that our old creations rest comfortably in a forgotten HTML cemetery somewhere and no one will ever know that we filled our pages with animated GIFs. Unfortunately, the dead may still live in an archive somewhere and it's still possible to watch them live their old life.

The Wayback Machine is a collection of preserved web pages that dates back to 1996 (back when Tracy Chapman wanted just one good reason to stay and Alanis Morissette confused the world with her definition of Ironic). This project combed the Internet and preserved hundreds of thousands of ordinary and extraordinary webpages in all their embarrassingly bad webdesign glory.

This archive is built with collaboration from the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian, and although it was released in 2001, it already stores over 10 billion web pages.

So visit The Wayback Machine, type in the address for the old Toni Braxton Fan Page you made on Geocities, and see if its been archived. Don't forget your shades, just in case.

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