The Way Back Machine, taking you places you have never gone before

The Internet never forgets, everything you say, every photograph you upload, every video you play online, it will always be there… the internet never forgets.

So a while ago I have one of ‘those’ moments, looking for something on a website, it wasn’t there anymore when it was a few weeks back. Where did it go to? Well a safe bet would be the link was removed. Anyway, I do some Googling (and even MishMashing) to find someway of digging into a websites creepy history, after all, the internet never forgets… does it?

My search yielded ‘The Way Back Machine’. As the name suggests, this machine is way back, so far back it can go all the way back to 1996. What it does is it crawls through different websites and saves the HTML, but not the assets such as images, PDF’s, Flash files etc. So you get all the text, but none of the pictures or fancy bits, unless they are still online in the exact same location, and I can tell you that it happens.

It’s really nifty, despite being somewhat slow to load, probably because of the traffic load on the servers. I believe they have thus far indexed 55 billion pages, heck, if you’ve made a website years ago you might still find it floating around on the ‘Way Back Machine’.

Admittedly I haven’t found any *real* use for it, however real is simply electrical impulses in your brain, who gives a damn? Its fun! I visited some of my favorite websites from over the years, from way back, before I even knew of such a thing as the internet (and I have no idea how I used to manage).

So without further a due I’m going to present to you my favorite website through the years:

IGN:
1998
2000
2001
As of now

Ctrl-Alt-Del Online:
2002
2003
2004
As of now

Well I have more websites I like, but these two are the only ones I could think of right now. Give it a try, if not for anything, for a little bit of fun, go anywhere you want, including 'those' sites you like to visit, yes you know which ones I'm talking about.

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Posted By: Ahmed - Category: Websites

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Comments

8 Comments. [ Add A Comment ]

Comment by Brenton

October 30th 2006 06:12

Dr Spin
Tales From The Other Side
Blip Blog
Gadget Museum

Do you KNOW how badly that freaks me out?

I can see myself, so vividly, standing up to run for parliment, and watching in horror as Andrew Bolt emerges from the press gallery, a copy of a blog i deleted in 1999 gripped firmly in his hand, a smug, sinister grin across his menicingly satisfied lips...

Comment by Ahmed

October 30th 2006 06:15

Video Gamer Kids
Little Green Foosballs
PolyKicks

I'm not surprised you are afraid, really, umm... so long as he doesn't know about it..\

God I hate Mr. Bolt, but atleast he gets paid to do what he does, aka bull..

Comment by Cibbuano

October 31st 2006 03:05

Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak

How good is Ctrl-Alt-Del? It's running out of steam now, but some of the subplots were crazy funny....

Comment by Ahmed

October 31st 2006 03:22

Video Gamer Kids
Little Green Foosballs
PolyKicks

I have to agree, when I fell in love I read all of the strips in the space of 3 nights... There still are some good ones, but certainly the subplots aren't what they used to be... I remember the one where ethan thought he ate the penguin... and it turns out he ate something else, it was something like Lucas: 'poison helpline is on speed dial?', Ethan: 'yes' Lucas: 'I'll call', Ethan: 'Please'... comedy gold.

This is one of my faveourite stand alone strips: http://ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20031210

Comment by Adrian

November 6th 2006 07:57

Philosophy Blog

That freaks me out pretty badly as well.

I knew that there was a project to provide snapshots of the internet, but I didn't realize it was publicly searchable.

No political career for me...