Hi All,
Welcome to the past! Or, the past is prologue. Whatever the case is, readers might want to visit a site called the
Internet Archive. It is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites and more. Or at least that's what the 'official'
Internet Archive' blurb says it does.
The
Internet Archive/Wayback Machine indexes over 310 billion (yes, billion) webpages over time!!!
Users can use a particular part of the site called the 'Wayback Machine' to see what a particular website looked like at a specific date in time. Type in a website address and up comes a timeline of the specific dates which you can see what the site looked like. Check out some of the popular sites like
Yahoo,
Google or
Newsday from one year ago, 5 years ago and then, if available, 10 years ago.
It'll be absolutely clear to you that sites change and are made more user friendly over time!
The Internet Archive basically works using a spider to index a site in the past. The
Internet Archive then saves the site so users can view it using the
Wayback Machine. Links on the original site do sometimes work - but the link does not go to current links. Remember, this is just a snapshot in time of a particular website. Also, finding images on a page like Yahoo News can be hit or miss...
For more information on how the site actually indexes webpages, click on this
Archive.org FAQ.
For more information about the
Internet Archive in general, click on this link to the FAQ.
Enjoy the links and the site and the 'older' internet!
Regards,
Stu
