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British Library's web domain archive is now available, just not on the web
If you need an illustration of the problems with overly stringent copyright laws, look no further than the British Library. The institution has just made its archive of UK website domains available to the public, but you can't actually visit it from the web -- the Legal Deposit Libraries Act requires that you stop by one of six libraries in the country to take a look. While reforms may be coming, the British Library says there are concerns that site operators could lose revenue if people flock to the historical collection instead of active pages. Whether or not there's any merit to that fear, those who can't swing by a reading room are largely out of luck. The British Library runs a permission-based web archive, but its roughly 13,000 sites pale in comparison to the billions stored in the offline repository. [Image credit: British Library]
Everything Mark Zuckerberg has said in public is available online, but only for your PhD
If you're worried that Facebook knows too much about you, you'll be glad to know that a University of Wisconsin team is returning the favor; it just launched The Zuckerberg Files, an attempt to collect everything that Mark Zuckerberg has said in public. The archive currently offers nearly 50 videos as well as 100-plus articles that include interviews, official messages and transcripts. Don't expect easy access, however. At present, the files are limited to academics -- unless you're writing a thesis on the intricacies of Silicon Valley politics, you'll have to find Zuck quotes the hard way.
Internet Archive brings bygone games and programs to the browser
One of the inherent downsides of technology's rapid advancement is how much of its history gets left behind with each new plateau we reach. However, the great minds at the Internet Archive (IA) have come up with a way to not only preserve our past, but make it accessible via the Javascript MESS emulator that can run a slew of classic games and programs in your browser. Next time you have a hankering to futz with WordStar or play E.T. The Extraterrestrial at work, you won't have to go blow the cobwebs off the relics sitting in the office supply closet, you can just check out the IA's Historical Software Collection. From there, you're but a few clicks away from reliving a curated swath of computing's best (and worst) moments. Now if you'll excuse us, we're going to be playing The Hobbit for the the foreseeable future. [Image credit: wizzer2801/Flickr]
British Film Institute to launch streaming video service on October 9th
The British Film Institute promised that it would put 10,000 movies online as part of the Film Forever initiative, and it's now making good on its word -- if slowly. The Institute will launch the first phase of its BFI Player streaming service on October 9th with a library of more than 1,000 videos, including movies, behind-the-scenes clips and archival footage. About 60 percent of the content will be free, with the rest available as pay-per-view. As for those remaining 9,000 videos? The BFI expects those to appear in the months ahead, and it's launching BFI Player's second phase in early 2014.
Google's 'last step' in Buzz shutdown: moving all data to Google Drive
Google's social networking effort Buzz shut its doors last year but has popped up yet again, for what may be the last time. In an email that just went out to former users, Google noted it's packaging Buzz data into two files which will be stored on their Drive accounts. One is private, which will hold all of their posts both public and private, and another is public, which will contain a copy of any of their public Buzz posts, accessible to anyone who has a direct link (old Buzz links will redirect here.) One important note, is that your comments on others posts will be saved to their Drive files, and you won't be able to delete them once the shift happens "on or after July 17th." Need to do a total wipe / some selective editing? Check the link below to see your profile or the text of the message for a more thorough explanation after the break.
British Library to archive every UK digital publication from tomorrow
If you were ever paranoid that your employer was reading your social media missives, imagine being the subject of some future student's grad school thesis. From tomorrow, Britain's six biggest libraries will be entitled to crawl and archive the web in an attempt to create the UK's official digital repository -- in the same way the sextet must receive a copy of every book, newspaper and magazine published in the motherland. The first crawls will begin in the next few weeks, and your drunken holiday photos could be accessible from terminals in the British Library, national libraries of Wales and Scotland as well as the Bodleian, Cambridge University and Trinity College libraries from as early as the end of this year. As far as we're concerned, we're hoping those long forgotten Livejournal entries will be packed off to Leeds, where the British Library's unloved texts go to sit on a shelf die.
Twitter adds 12 more languages to its archive downloading program
The phrase "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" applies as much to tweets as it does to monumental events. While a select few have been able to download their microblogging archives since the end of last year, Twitter now expanding the site's archive access to users in 12 more languages, including German, Norwegian and, y'know, all of the ones listed in the image above. At least that's something to get non-English speakers through their Tweetdeck withdrawal.
Take a trip in the Wayback Machine to the WoW website circa 2003
WoW has been out for so long that it's actually a little difficult to remember a time when it wasn't out, but a little trip in the Wayback Machine proves that, yes, WoW was not yet released in 2003. You can check out the original World of Warcraft website, complete with six (not eight) races, six (not nine) classes, and screenshots of areas that no longer exist on this archived version. I remember looking at this version of the site that year, checking out screenshots and forum threads, getting excited when all of the possible hunter pets were revealed and wanting to make one because they could "dual wield" -- which I thought meant they could dual-wield guns, not one-handed weapons. Needless to say I was disappointed later. I've never rolled a hunter. Can you believe that at one point we got excited about knowing what kind of spiders we'd be fighting? It truly was a different time. Now we get excited over what kind of dinosaurs we'll be fighting. (Thanks to r/wow for digging this up.)
Twitter archive begins rolling out to users today, enables sorting by month and keyword
A "small percentage" of Twitter users may have noticed the feature earlier this week, but the rest of us should officially have access to the service's archive tool soon. After downloading your own Twitter archive, you'll be able to launch an HTML file that provides a familiar web interface, but with vastly improved searching features and full access to all of your tweets since your very first day on the site. The advantage of Twitter archive is twofold: you'll have a backup of all of your tweets (and retweets), but you'll also be able to dig through all those masterfully crafted messages more quickly and efficiently, thanks to localized storage. Initially, the archive option will only be available for users with accounts set to English, but those of you displaying the site in other languages will have access "over the coming weeks and months." Check it out at the source link below.
University of Michigan's Computer and Video Game Archive houses over 3,000 different games, roughly 35 unique consoles (video)
Systems such as the ColecoVision, TurboGrafx-16 and 3DO may have been ousted from most home entertainment centers long ago, but they still have shelf space at the University of Michigan's Computer and Video Game Archive. Slashdot caught up with Engineering Librarian and Video Game Archivist Dave Carter and took a look inside the repository, which has curated around 35 classic and current-gen platforms and more than 3,000 different games. Having "one of everything" is the project's ultimate goal, but the logistics of acquiring every new game make achieving that feat a stretch. "Our realistic goal is to be sort of representative of the history of video games, what was important -- what was interesting," Carter said. "And then, not only to preserve the games, but also to preserve the game playing experience." As a "useable archive," patrons of UM's library can dig in and play at different stations with era-appropriate monitors and displays. While many visit for leisure, students have used the resource to research topics ranging from music composition to the effects of texting while driving (using an Xbox 360 racing title and steering wheel peripheral, of course). You can catch a glimpse of the collection in the video below or visit the archive's blog at the more coverage link.
Amazon launches Glacier archiving service, a cheap way to put your files on ice
Amazon's S3 cloud service has proved a popular proposition, with many large web enterprises happily depending on it (most of the time) to serve up its content. Now, the internet retail giant is offering a similar product, aimed squarely at archives, called Glacier. The idea seems pretty simple, starting from a penny, you can store 1GB of data on the firm's servers for one month. You'll only pay for what you store, and there are no upfront costs. Thinking this sounds like a cheap way to host your website? Well, maybe not, as retrieval requests are sent to a queue, and won't be available to download for a few hours. There's no limit on the amount of data you can store though, which is not surprising, but each individual archive does have a 40TB limit -- so those DNA back-ups are off the menu. Retrieval is priced differently, with 5 percent of your storage (pro rata) downloadable for free, but beyond that you'll have to pay. The service is available from today, with storage locations in the US, Europe and Japan. Full details of pricing can be found via the source.
Twitter's cooking up a way for you to archive your old tweets, relive your Bieber fever again and again
Frustrated by a lack of access to your thoughts and feelings about world events and sandwiches circa 2008? Twitter's working on a way to let users export and download old tweets into a file, according to CEO Dick Costolo. As far a service for search all users, the exec doesn't see such a solution coming any time soon, telling reporters, "It's a different way of architecting search, going through all tweets of all time. You can't just put three engineers on it."
Critical Path, more than an archive of interviews with your favorite devs
Critical Path is, for now, a series of individual documentaries with influential game developers, allowing them to speak freely about the industry and what the future of gaming may come to be. For now, the interviews are candid, short and sweet, but documentary filmmaker David Grabias has plans to turn this project into much more than an online interview storage space."We have a few goals," Grabias tells Joystiq. "We want to provide a documentary-based venue for critical discussion about the art of making video games. We hope to provide developers with a place where they can come for nuggets of inspiration. We also want to provide players with insight into their game experience, and hopefully make them aware of the great minds behind the great games. Finally, we feel we are in a fascinating era in game development. We want to document it for future generations."Critical Path currently offers 121 video clips, 30-120 seconds each, distilled from more than 30 hours of interviews with developers such as Cliff Bleszinski, Sid Meier, Ken Levine, Jordan Mechner, Chris Hecker, Peter Molyneux, Will Wright and Hideo Kojima. There are "a ton more videos in the pipeline," Grabias says, but Artifact is waiting to see how people handle the current offering and will take feedback about other subjects and developers fans are interested in.Critical Path has a few more "transmedia" stages under development, including a feature-length television documentary about the art and anatomy of games, and a mobile app that will go live "hopefully sooner rather than later," Grabias says.
Apple's "1944" filmmaker describes the production
Last week, footage of an internal Apple sales video, titled 1944, landed on YouTube. The most notable part of the production was a cameo by Steve Jobs, who was impersonating FDR in the mock war film. One of the creative talents behind the video, Michael Markman, tells the back story about how the film came to be. It's an interesting tale about a moment of brilliance that started off as a routine meeting with Apple's Marketing Director, Mike Murray, and quickly turned into a face-to-face with Steve Jobs. You can read all the details on Markman's blog and watch the video on YouTube.
Steve Jobs plays FDR in this old Mac sales video
It's not often you see Steve Jobs impersonating a former president, but leave it to the creatives who made Apple sales videos to make it happen. Yes, in this never-before-seen footage (well, never seen outside the sales meetings at Apple back in the 1980s), Steve Jobs plays a certain commander-in-chief, and gives his generals (sales guys) a rousing speech. It's a great watch for Jobs, but check out the full video as well, over at Network World. Sales videos are a source of endless entertainment, from Apple or elsewhere, but it's kinda cool to see Jobs have fun with a role like this.
Browse John Peel's legendary record collection, travel back in time
The Peel Sessions -- those are three blissful words to any music enthusiast. John Peel's BBC radio show was the stuff of legends. It launched entire careers and created a legacy of eclectic and intimate musical snapshots by our favorite artists. Can you imagine exploring his record collection? Well, now you can. The Space has created a wonderful site that lets you browse the late DJ's record archive one virtual shelf and album cover at a time -- complete with links to iTunes and Spotify. It looks and feels like the real thing, and provides a fantastic journey back in time. Only the letter A's been cataloged so far -- additional letters will be added (one each week) over the coming months. This is your chance to discover music curated by a man with impeccable musical taste over a period of four decades. Just follow the source links below.
Google celebrates Nelson Mandela with virtual museum
Google today announced the grand opening of the Nelson Mandela Digital Archive, an online collection of digitized photos, videos and documents centering around the former South African president. The site, based out of the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory in Johannesburg, South Africa, was developed with the help of $1.25 million in funding provided by the software giant. The collection includes unseen drafts of Mandela's work, letters to friends and family members and diary entries made during his 27 year imprisonment. The multimedia archive is available for view now. You can check it out by clicking the source link below.
Einstein Archives website rolls out first phase of project to get 80,000 documents online
Believe it or not, there are still things that have yet to be put on the internet. That has included most of Albert Einstein's archives, a portion of which has previously been available, but which now has a greatly expanded online presence courtesy of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (and a grant from the Polonsky Foundation UK). The first phase of that expansion includes some 2,000 digitized documents, ranging from personal correspondence to scientific papers, which are fully searchable and able to be examined right down to the finest detail. Additional documents will continue to be added over the course of 2012, with the ultimate goal being to get all of the 80,000+ items in the university's own archives online (they've all already been cataloged). No word on any future plans for tablet apps or the like, but you can dive into the new website right now at the source link below.
Retro-themed sandbox 8BitMMO announced
Archive Entertainment is looking to get a slice of the massive Minecraft pie (which is square, not round), as the team has dived into the concept of a retro-style sandbox MMO called 8BitMMO. It may not boast the most incredible graphics, but that's kind of the point; players who recall their NES days with fondness will be right at home with the presentation on display. 8BitMMO is touted to be a "100% player-built world," where anything can be built, destroyed, and harvested for raw materials. Up to 250 players can occupy a server at the same time, and there's the option to group or go solo while you build, explore, or fight off the evil LawyerCats. There are quests, PvP engagements, and methods of protecting one's buildings from griefing. This project is the sole creation of Robby Zinchak, who was formerly a producer at Microsoft. Zinchak has been working on 8BitMMO since 2001 and is impressed with the creativity shown in the game so far: "People are creating some genuinely cool architecture - everything from towering windmills to sports arenas. One player even made a huge statue of a flying dragon. The community is very inventive, and I can't wait to see what they'll come up with next!" Currently, 8BitMMO can be played on the official website as it continues to be developed. You can watch the trailer for this interesting project after the jump. [Source: Archive Entertainment press release]
AT&T unearths Jim Henson's 1963 Robot short for Bell
AT&T has released some real gems from its videos archives over the past year, but it's truly outdone itself this week. It's dug up a rarely-seen short film titled Robot that Jim Henson made for Bell in 1963, which was intended to explain computers and data communications to business owners at "elite seminars." It does so with phrases like "Correction: the machine does not have a soul. It has no bothersome emotions. While mere mortals wallow in a sea of emotionalism, the machine is busy digesting vast oceans of information in a single, all-encompassing gulp." Enjoy.
