Even defunct websites leave a digital footprint, which makes http://www.404pagefound.com/ all the more striking. The site collects websites from 1994 - 2001 and then displays them for all to see. Most of them haven't been touched for years, though sadly, they haven't aged gracefully.
Still, it's remarkable they exist at all. Most of the original coding's intact, from Clip Art to serif fonts, which makes it possible to track the web's evolution from business card placeholder to an interactive experience unto itself.
The site is not to be confused with the Wayback Machine, which digs up vintage screenshots of contemporary sites, like Yahoo and CNN. It isn't a "worst" of the web collection either, write its founders, since a lot of those sites won awards in their day. To them, part of the fun is "enlightening visitors who rarely stray from modern “2.0″ mainstream sites" and to show "that decade-old pages can still co-exist with the dominant social web." There are plenty of "throwback" sites on the web, "it is just a matter of finding them in a world dominated by “Page Not Found” errors."
[HT @onthemedia]
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