Express Computer :: “Between the Bytes” :: Val Souza :: April 8, 2002

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Going through my old bookmarks of favourite websites I used to visit, I was surprised and saddened to note that so many of them had disappeared. No doubt some fortunate ones had been gobbled up by bigger fish, but most others likely had their innards ripped out and strewn across the city streets, for gluttonous bloodsuckers to prey on flagrantly.

I know. I worked with a dotcom for a while. The Indian dotcom bust was perhaps even more gut-wrenching than elsewhere. A mad frenzy when everyone wanted in, and an equally mad frenzy to exit and stop the bleeding, all in the space of just over a year-and-a-half. Makes you wonder about the wisdom of all those top-notch businessmen and their highfalutin consultants, with their specious financial wizardry and ostensible forecasting mastery. That apart, the bigger tragedy was that at many of the dotcoms there was a considerable amount of great work-in-progress. Hundreds of man-months of superlative effort, most of which never saw the light of day the pendulum swung from one extreme to the other quicker than salvage could even be contemplated, let alone implemented.

If you’re an ex-dotcommer who wants to indulge in a bit of nostalgia, or just a casual surfer who gets a kick out of time warps, some salvage may just be possible. Check out the Wayback Engine at www.archive.org. Search for the dead-and-buried website of your choice and right before your eyes you’ll see…

A very old website made for me by a friend in the 90’s is still active… It was made on a Web TV if anyone remembers what that was. The address was stuck onto another person’s homepage (that is now gone), so I am sure no one ever saw it this site back in the day.