Give Jason Scott a high-five for his hard work saving Geocities

You’re stupid and I hate you. I haven’t even met you, don’t even know where you are or what else you do, and I hate you. … This has to have been one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done, and it’s your fault.
Geocities archivist Jason Scott • On his frustration with Yahoo over their closing of the iconic site. He notes the company’s shortsightedness in taking a historic service and throwing it out the window – and worse, not helping Scott’s Archive Team with the process. The message, in our view is epic and vitriolic. As it should be. Our favorite part: “So now in two days you’re going to shut this place down, this collection of genealogy and pages by people who’ve died and collections of writing and art and music and you’re going to turn it into dust because Carol Bartz said Yahoo needed to save a few bucks.” Throw this guy $25 so he can keep doing what he’s doing. He deserves it. • source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

This is how Geocities should be remembered: An ugly piece of crap, but our ugly piece of crap. Not specifically ours, but the Internet’s. Yahoo’s biggest financial folly and the reason why we still fear for the futures of our good, not-awful friends Flickr and Delicous. But an essential reminder of the anyone-can-screw-with-it nature of what makes the Web awesome. Good show, XKCD. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

Yahoo’s closing it, so they’re working fast. Jason Scott has made it his mission, at least since Yahoo announced that they’re closing Geocities, to download old pages from the site to preserve them for history. The software he’s set up downloads five sites a second and has downloaded over 200,000 so far. They’re grabbing as much as they can but it’s a little tough to be comprehensive with such a highly-used service. And if you’re curious about the overall structure of Geocities, nerdlinger, click the link, because Scott goes into it in great detail. Ah, Geocities: The pet rock of the ’90s. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

GeoCities is survived by two cousins, Angelfire and Tripod, along with an uncle, Jeeves.
All three are believed to be terminally ill.
JR Raphael • In a PC World blog post on the demise of Geocities. You still remember it, right? It was a way that you could put yourself on the Internet for free with a giant ad on top. 15 years in, its owners, Yahoo, have chosen to pull the plug on the useless piece of junk they paid $4.7 billion for a decade ago. Mainly because, well, there are other places you can go to talk about yourself on the Internet. • source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 2 Comments • Permalink

26 Oct 2009 20:08