You are on page 1of 3

INTERNET ARCHIVE - Old Website Pages Still in Cyberspace

THE WAYBACK MACHINE


http://www.archive.org/index.php

In October 2008, Microsoft announced the closing down of all their MSN Groups Service on
February 21, 2009, the MSN Groups being decommissioned as part of the dismantling of
the services side of MSN.

As a consequence, the main "Link Pages", particularly for those previously put online for
weather and newspaper links, local websites and local webcams, on the MSN
Groups Kintyre's "West Road", Kintyre On Record, Kintyre Way Guides and
Fessenden websites and those for the MSN Groups Skelmorlie, Clyde Steamers and
Greenock Academy websites were brought together on a new website at
kintyreonrecord.co.uk and, as a matter of course, all the other webpages on these
various websites 'archived', for later 're-publication' elsewhere and in other formats such
as the documents to be found amongst the scribd.com archives.

Now, at the end of June 2009, it has been discovered that many of the old webpages from
these MSN Group websites, albeit without any photographs and sometimes without
working links to adjacent webpages (continuing feature stories etc.) were also 'archived' by
the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, a service which has been crawling the web
since 1996 and allows people to visit archived versions of Web sites.

Visitors to 'The Wayback Machine' simply type in a URL, select a date range and then begin
surfing on an archived version of the web which e.g. could take one back to surfing the
internet in 1999 and looking at all the 'Y2K' hype, or, of particular interest and value here,
in revisiting some of the old MSN Group websites.

ABOUT THE 'WAYBACK MACHINE'

The Internet Archive's 'Wayback Machine' is now a massive 150 billion page web archive
which can be accessed through the archive.org website and its new 'machine' came into life
on April 24, 2009, the 20-foot by 8-foot square 'machine' sitting in Santa Clara, courtesy
of Sun Microcomputers.

The 'Wayback Machine' serves about 500 queries per second from the approximately 4.5
petabytes (4.5 million gigabytes) of archived internet 'web' data.

The 'machine' is essentially a cluster of computers and, thinking of the 'modular data-
center' as a single machine, because it acts like one and looks like one, it might be
considered as one of the largest current computers currently in operation.

Amongst the fun statistics from the 'machine' comes the persuasion that today's internet
'web' weighs around 26,500 pounds, around 12 tons, the average web page weighing 80
micrograms and each internet search query 'weighs' around 160 joules, one joule in
everyday life being approximately equivalent to the energy required to lift a small apple
one meter straight up or the energy released when that same apple falls one meter to the
ground or the energy released as heat by a quiet person every hundredth of a second or
one hundredth of the energy a person can receive by drinking a drop of beer !

TRAWLING THE INTERNET ARCHIVES

Three sets of old MSN Group pages have seemingly been archived by 'The Wayback
Machine', namely those for the MSN Groups' old Skelmorlie, Clyde Steamers and
Fessenden websites, these archived page 'trawls' listed below AND, because many people
have an interest in the history of the Clyde's Steamers, a list of 1,072 'archived' pages from
The Clyde River Steamer Club's website, 'trawled' from 2000 to 2007, is also attached

1
here, the CRSC's "GUESTBOOK" pages full of queries and answers about the ships, the
routes etc. etc..

DON'T be deterred by all the little 'red crosses' in these 'archived' webpages, they
generally mean that photographs are not there - BE PATIENT and TAKE CARE to run the
computer mouse's cursor across each 'archived' webpage to ascertain all the (possibly still
working) links !

If you have a web site of your own and you would like to ensure that it is saved for posterity
in 'The Internet Archive', then visit http://www.alexa.com/help/webmasters#crawl_site. -
But, though websites are usually crawled within 8 weeks of any submission, there may be
a 6 to 14 month delay between the date a website is crawled and the date some of its
webpages first appear in 'The Wayback Machine' archives.

'Webmasters' should also note that websites, not least like that of The Clyde River Steamer
Club, which have "Click Here To Enter" cover pages, seem less likely to be properly
'archived' than those which simply open up with their "Home" page.

The Internet Archive is full of many surprises, old books, movies, audios and, its store of
some 40,000 FREE software programs !

SKELMORLIE - which was once at http://groups.msn.com/skelmorlie

Nov 08, 2002 - May 25, 2003 - Oct 03, 2003 - Dec 29, 2003

Feb 06, 2004 - Apr 18, 2004 - Jun 04, 2004 - Aug 28, 2004
- Nov 28, 2004

Feb 05, 2005 - Feb 28, 2005 - Jan 17, 2008

CLYDE STEAMERS - which were once at


http://groups.msn.com/clydesteamers

Nov 07, 2007

FESSENDEN - which was once at http://groups.msn.com/fessenden

Jan 17, 2007 - Jan 17, 2008

and THE CLYDE RIVER STEAMER CLUB which is still at


http://www.clyderiversteamerclub.org.uk
and SEARCH at http://web.archive.org/web/*/clyderiversteamerclub.org.uk/* with 1,072
pages archived at the end of June 2009 OR CHECK

Aug 23, 2000 - Oct 19, 2000 - Dec 04, 2000

Mar 02, 2001 - Mar 05, 2001 - Mar 08, 2001 - May 16, 2001

Jul 23, 2001 - Sep 28, 2001

Jan 20, 2002 - May 28, 2002 - Sep 26, 2002 - Sep 26, 2002

Nov 20, 2002 - Nov 28, 2002

2
Feb 02, 2003 - Mar 21, 2003 - Mar 25, 2003 - Jun 03, 2003
- Jun 10, 2003

Jun 12, 2003 - Aug 06, 2003 - Oct 05, 2003 - Oct 12, 2003
- Oct 24, 2003

Feb 07, 2004 - Apr 12, 2004 - May 13, 2004 - Jun 05, 2004
- Jun 07, 2004

Jun 14, 2004 - Aug 30, 2004 - Sep 23, 2004 - Nov 27, 2004
- Feb 06, 2005

Mar 08, 2005 - Apr 05, 2005 - Dec 01, 2005

Jan 02, 2006 - Feb 09, 2006 - Feb 09, 2006 - Apr 24, 2006
- May 02, 2006

Jun 27, 2006 - Aug 21, 2006 - Aug 26, 2006

Jan 06, 2007 - Feb 07, 2007 - Apr 10, 2007 - Jul 03, 2007 -
Aug 07, 2007

Oct 03, 2007 - Oct 05, 2007 - Oct 07, 2007 - Oct 08, 2007
- Oct 18, 2007

You might also like