Filed under: News, Web services, Yahoo!
GeoCities (1995-2009) is finally put out of our misery
To paraphrase Obi-Wan Kenobi: we felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
So, let's take a moment to remember GeoCities. The easy website-creation service opened in 1995, and many Internet users set up their first homepages within its quirky "neighborhoods". Back before everyone had a .com, GeoCities sported long, convoluted URLs with directories like SiliconValley/Pines or SunsetStrip/Towers. In 1999, GeoCities was purchased by Yahoo!, and has been a Yahoo! property ever since.
Although GeoCities sites are all disappearing from Yahoo!'s servers today, you can still take a trip down memory lane. Archive.org has started a Special Collection to catalog the sites. The effort was supported by Archive Team and includes a collection of those ever-present "Under Construction" GIFs from the heydey of GeoCities.
Popular geek-centric webcomic XKCD paid its own tribute to GeoCities today, reskinning the site to look like a stereotypical homepage, circa 1996.
I don't know if this is a labor of love or merely the brainchild of four very gifted games designers, but Level Up is a really weird mash-up of gaming elements that you have probably never seen in a Flash game before.
Let's start with the premise itself: Groundhog Day meets Memento. The game experience revolves around 'days': you explore the world and the clock slowly ticks towards the evening. You bounce around picking up gems and talking to the denizens of 'Level Upland'. Eventually you feel tired and head back to ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
lolMYNEWAIMSNlol said 1:23PM on 10-26-2009
DEATH TO GEOCITIES! LONG LIVE ANGELFIRE!
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Dennis Marks said 1:48PM on 10-26-2009
Too bad we were not told sooner. If the archive was done recenty many pages, such as mine, will be lost since they were deleted months ago. I had no reason to leave them there after I moved.
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