Ask HN: What defunct websites would you love to see revived?
There is this great literature site I used to love, which closed down some years ago. My only consolation was
to visit the Wayback Machine and read all the pages there. I was wondering how many other great sites I am missing
because they are no longer accessible. Do you have any suggestions?
In an ironic twist, I have just discovered that the site has been taken down from the Wayback Machine. It is redirecting now to a new site the authors are creating. It pains me to say it looks inferior in every single way, and most of the original content is gone. Their prerogative, I suppose.
48 comments
[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] threadI remember how cool DivX was at the time, but you don’t hear much about it now since other standards have succeeded it.
The interface and website UX was sleek.
This is a supposed copycat
I think the embedded video bit is broken
I never got to try it! I wish there was an archived page of it somewhere but it was an online multiplayer game environment, too, so I don’t think it would have worked without the server.
(was in alexa top 10) at some point.
Edit. Looks like I confused this with TVShack.
I've always wanted to rebuild it, but never quite had the time for it. Was even able to snag the original domain name years later, but even that went nowhere. In a few years my own kids will be the same age I was when I played it, it is an odd thought.
"It is not hyperbole to suggest that it changed my life. Even today, writing in 2015, over a decade after this game vanished forever, it's still a huge part of my life. I met my wife through it. I made many lifelong friends there. I've been to Cosmonaut weddings and visited Cosmonaut graves. I've met a couple of hundred players in person. It still resonates as a community today."
What a cool sounding community.
:)
Winamp.com (from the 2.x days) was also full of useful stuff. The plugin architecture meant that you could make Winamp2 do just about anything with av files. Including DJ'ing and video playlists.
Those two and Geocities.
I wish I had saved a copy of my own old websites and blog posts. I used to have a Windows Live blog as a young teen. It would be interesting to find it again.
This is part of a book I am planning about the "other internet". Neocities pages, minimalist non JS sites, "notebook sites", in general, modern websites that try to be as far as possible from the "walled-gardened" internet which is sadly the norm now.
Give me a holler if you need any help pulling statistics or whatever.
If you know, you know. It was one of the coolest website gardens on the early web. It was a personal handcrafted wiki, art project, and community focused on psychedelics, anarchism, mysticism, futurism, ecology, and rave culture.
I wonder what was in the forums.
http://bluemars.org/
(Still links to a landing page). Basically a stream of ambient music. Many late nights were spent coding listening to "space ambient music".
Fortunately a kind soul has made an alternative stream at:
http://echoesofbluemars.org/
The site's description reads:
> In attempts to reestablish communication with the lost Bluemars fleet, an echo of past transmissions was found. Retransmitting signals from years ago, these echoes give us a glimpse into the past.