digipres

a fun living computing history project done by a small CERN team in 2019 that i’ve never seen anyone talk about: they rebuilt the first web browser - tim berners-lee’s WorldWideWeb for the NeXT Cube - as a modern in-browser experience. it really looks and feels like a little NeXTStep application.

the project site:
worldwideweb.cern.ch

the interactive browser:
worldwideweb.cern.ch/browser

to browse, click document -> open from full document reference -> type in a url

fellow waybackmachine users of a certain vintage:

for those who remember, xoom.com of the 90s and 2000s was a free webspace provider among other things. hundreds of thousands of xoom members created their own homepages there. myself included.

paypal recently bought the xoom.com domain. they presumably put in a “do not archive” exclusion request to IA, who granted it.

the purpose of the exclusion request is to exclude URLs for the owners of the original webspace, NOT the new owners of a domain name.

the unfortunate consequence of this is that wbm has now excluded every single *.xoom.com/user/ homepage from existence. hundreds of thousands of homepages.

paypal does not own your childhood homepage just by virtue of buying a domain name. i assume this was an error made in haste at IA. anyone working at IA care to chime in - or better yet, correct this oversight?

Starting my journey to #ipres26 tomorrow. Excited to speak #digipres for a few days. If you want to learn about how magnets affect magnetic media like #floppy disks, come see my presentation on Thursday! Also, I may have gone overboard on sticker making, please come see me for some fun topic themed stickers!