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Internet Archive races to preserve public Google+ posts
Just because Google+ is shutting down on April 2nd doesn't mean your years of social posts will be lost in the void. The ArchiveTeam recently started caching public Google+ content to make it available on the Internet Archive after the fateful day. This won't include content that was deleted or made private before the archival process began, and might not include all comments or full-resolution media. Still, this will ensure that you have some way of reliving moments years down the road.
Wikipedia fixes 9 million broken links thanks to the Internet Archive
Wikipedia has millions of articles across numerous languages, and that makes it a pain to ensure the links to third-party sites are up to date, if they can work at all. What are you supposed to do if an important reference stops working? You can relax, it seems -- the Internet Archive has 'rescued' 9 million previously broken Wikipedia links by caching them in the Wayback Machine and other archive services. The team accomplished the feat by using a bot to search for broken links in articles and automatically restore those links with archived versions.
EFF and human rights groups sue to have FOSTA declared unconstitutional
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a number of other organizations and individuals have filed a lawsuit asking for FOSTA to be declared unconstitutional, with the EFF saying the law was "written so poorly that it actually criminalizes a substantial amount of protected speech." They're also pursuing an injunction that would prevent FOSTA from being enforced while a court considers the case. FOSTA was signed into law in April and though it claims to be an effort to stop sex trafficking, the flawed legislation features broad language, conflates sex trafficking and sex work and by many accounts, actually makes fighting sex trafficking more difficult. Among those speaking out against FOSTA and its sister bill SESTA were the ACLU, the Department of Justice, sex work rights organizations and sex trafficking victims groups.
Internet Archive is saving all your favorite handheld LCD games
The Internet Archive has been saving gaming history for a while now. It's archived Amiga games (and apps), Macintosh stuff from the '80s (including Space Invaders) and a ton of other retro games you can play for free. Now the group has started collecting handheld games like Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and Space Jam while also making them available to play in your web browser via MAME emulation.
Gawker's journalism will be preserved online
When a billionaire bankrolls lawsuits to shut down a news outlet that they don't like, it's a pretty big deal for how we treat journalism. It's why the Freedom of the Press Foundation has announced that it will launch an online archive for news sites, starting with Gawker. The project, in partnership with the Internet Archive, has crawled every page of the disputed site, as well as others like the L.A. Weekly, for preservation.
Revisit the '90s with a collection of AOL CDs
The Internet Archive is a treasure trove for software geeks. In recent months, the site has hosted everything from GIFs from Geocities to Macintosh games from the 80s. Its latest blast from the past is an entire section dedicated to AOL CD-ROMs.
Go back to 1984 with Internet Archive's Macintosh collection
Not content to sit on the sidelines, the Internet Archive recently resurrected something, too. This time, it's a swath of apps, games and software from the original Macintosh circa 1984. That means stuff like Lode Runner, MacOS System 7.0.1, Microsoft BASIC 2.0 and Space Invaders are on offer in their pixelated, black-and-white glory. Just like the old days. Except, you know, these run in a browser window. The Archive says this collection of stuff from 1984 to 1989 is just the first set of emulations from the machine, so it might not be too long before more apps are available.
The Trump Archive is collecting everything he's said on video
Remember that time US President-elect Donald Trump said one thing years or weeks ago, then reversed his position? If your answer is "which of the many, many examples," you've been paying attention -- and now you have a handy database full of speeches, debates, interviews and other broadcasts to trace his evolving opinions. The Trump Archive is live and has over 780 video clips amounting to over 520 hours of footage to date, with more on the way.
The Internet Archive doesn't feel safe in Trump's America
The Internet Archive collects the history of the internet, one webpage at a time, in order to power services like the Wayback Machine, the free e-book site Open Library and the Political TV Ad Archive. It's a non-profit based in the United States, but today, staffers announced plans to establish a copy of the Internet Archive's digital collections in Canada. The decision is fueled by concerns over President-elect Donald Trump's statements about the First Amendment and net neutrality.
Search for classic GIFs in the Internet Archive's new collection
To celebrate its 20th anniversary, the Internet Archive has created a special treat for its visitors: an utterly enormous number of GIFs culled from the original social network, GeoCities. Fittingly, the new collection is dubbed the Geocities Animated Gif Search Engine or GifCities for short. It features a whopping 4,500,000 animated GIFs from the classic internet era of the mid '90s. Even though Yahoo shut down the service in 2009, each of these GIFs links back to its originating page via the Wayback Machine -- just as with the National Archive's collection.
Internet Archive adds 10,000 Amiga games and applications
With zero fanfare, the Internet Archive uploaded a new collection of software last week from the Amiga, a mid-80s personal computer famous for its impressive-for-the-time game graphics. The new collection is no tidy sum, either, with over 10,000 games, applications and demos. Whether this is the first time these items have shown up on the archive is uncertain, but should you want to relive a golden age of personal computer gaming, head over and play them straight from your browser.
Run 500 hard-to-find Apple II programs in your web browser
Sure, it's easy to find ways to run classic Apple II programs like The Oregon Trail or Prince of Persia. But what about that obscure educational title you remember using as a kid? Is it doomed to be forgotten? You might not have to worry. The Internet Archive has announced that its web-based emulation catalog now includes over 500 relatively tough-to-find Apple II programs that might otherwise have disappeared forever. If you remember using the likes of The Quarter Mile or The Observatory, you can fire it up without having to dig your old computer out of storage.
You can run over 1,000 Windows 3.1 programs in your browser
The Internet Archive has spent many years gathering and storing digital content from the past. It now hosts millions of web pages, texts, videos and audio snippets, but recently the site expanded its collection to include software, or more specifically, games. After making more than 2,400 DOS titles available to play in the browser, the Internet Archive has embraced the GUI and done the same for Windows 3.1.
Yesteryear's malware was gorgeous in its simplicity
The Internet Archive is apparently devoted to preserving all parts of the web's history and that even extends to malware and viruses from the MS DOS era. The good news is that you can peruse a pretty sizable collection in the Malware Museum now without worrying that they'll wreck your machine. Like the nigh-forgotten PC games it has collected over the years, the malware plays within browsers. To a point, they're even somewhat interactive. I wasn't able to get the "CHKDSK" command to work, but that may be an effort to accurately portray this nightmare from yesteryear. You know, where, no matter what you tried, you were stuck watching idly as personal data went up in a cloud of digital smoke.
Political TV ad archive preserves lies for the ages
You're about to see a lot of political TV ads in the US (if you haven't already), and keeping tabs on them is going to be... difficult. Who paid for which ad, who are they attacking, and who's playing fast and loose with the facts? That's where the Internet Archive wants to help. It's launching a Political TV Ad Archive that will use audio fingerprinting to track federal campaign spots in 20 markets spread across eight states. In addition to preserving videos, the collection will include info on where and when the ads have aired, their sponsors and their targets.
Google's banning sexually explicit content from its blogging platform
Many X-rated Blogger accounts might cease to exist in the near future, as Google will no longer allow anyone to post sexually explicit or nude videos and images starting on March 23rd, 2015. It doesn't end there, though: Mountain View also wants old account owners to delete any content that violates that rule, or else it will forcibly make those blogs private (all posts will only be visible to owners) after the aforementioned date. Blogger's current content policy allows visuals that show nudity and sexual activities (barring illegal ones like bestiality) so long as the blog is marked "adult." Censoring those types of entries, according to the policy, "is contrary to a service that bases itself on freedom of expression." Google has yet to reveal why it had a sudden change of heart.
You can play 2,400 classic DOS games in your web browser
If you're a PC gamer of a certain age (cough), you've probably lamented that many of the titles you played as a kid are hard to use on modern systems without downloading emulators or waiting for special re-releases. Well, it just got a lot easier to relive your gaming glory days. The Internet Archive's growing collection of web-based retro games now includes roughly 2,400 MS-DOS classics -- you can now play cult hits like Gods or Tongue of the Fatman in your browser. This won't quite recreate the experience of sitting at the family computer, of course. The project's Jason Scott warns that you can't save your progress on the web, and that some games could still "fall over and die" despite attempts to include only those programs that are likely to work properly. But look at it this way: even half-functional web emulation could prevent a much-loved game from fading into obscurity.
Now you can play 'Defender' and 900 other arcade classics in your browser
It seems like the Internet Archive was just getting started when it resurrected WordStar and The Hobbit from floppy-disk purgatory. Now, the latest additions to the Javascript MESS emulator are of the arcade variety. Specifically, games including Defender, Mr. Do!, Zaxxon and Joust are now playable in your browser. The IA's website says that most of the Internet Arcade's games should work, although some better act as a "verification of behavior programming" than anything else. Jason Scott, who runs the collection, has a blog post detailing what browsers perform best (a 64-bit version of Firefox is tops, apparently) and how to setup a gamepad for the whole shebang. You know, if digging through gaming's origins is your thing. Be careful, though. Playing Millipede as a kid may have cost you a few quarters, but if you get caught playing it at work it could be a whole lot more expensive now. [Image credit: Rob Boudon/Flickr]
Internet Archive starts preserving classic game consoles on the web
Many gamers won't load a console emulator for much more than a brief nostalgia kick. The Internet Archive has loftier goals, however. It's expanding its Historical Software Collection to include the free-to-play Console Living Room beta, which recreates classic '70s and '80s systems on the web for the sake of the historical record. The initial library includes hundreds of games for the Astrocade, Atari 2600, Atari 7800, ColecoVision and Magnavox Odyssey. There are gaps in the catalog, and sound isn't working; the CLR isn't yet a match for a conventional software emulator, let alone the real thing. The Internet Archive promises to address both problems in the near future, though, and it shouldn't be long before its collection delivers a complete vintage gaming experience... minus the old-fashioned tube TV.
Wayback Machine web archive survives destructive fire but needs help to recover
If you're one of the many people who've relied on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine recently, for example when government websites were taken offline during the shut down, then the non-profit organization is now calling for your help in return. A fire broke out at its main scanning center in San Francisco yesterday, causing an estimated $600,000-worth of damage. No one was hurt and no digital data was lost, since the Wayback Machine uses multiple server centers around the world. However, it sounds like the fire destroyed some books and other materials that were in the process of being scanned. The Internet Archive is calling for assistance in two forms: cash donations and fresh scanning projects from anyone who has physical collections they want to preserve, because the group has a second scanning center and needs to keep its employees busy. Follow the source link to find out more.
