April 24th, 2009 : As of today, Yahoo is no longer issuing Geocities accounts and warning current members that their content will disappear from the server “later this year.” For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, Geocities was a virtual empire of free webspace available to the masses launched in 1994 that allowed for the expression of thoughts and interests in what was often very amateurish HTML long before any of today’s social networks. This typically included web pages littered with ticker tapes, auto-start midi music, and animated gifs galore (though if you looked really hard, sometimes you could find a more polished site interface).
The websites were divided into neighborhoods with street addresses based on subject matter. For instance, myself and many other anime fans flocked to places like “Tokyo Towers” and computer geeks nestled into “Silicon Valley.” Geocities’ hayday was in the mid to late 90s when very few services of the sort were available and based on rankings, Geocities was by far the favorite (beating Tripod and Angelfire). In 1999, Yahoo purchased Geocities and everything went downhill from there with many unfavorable changes that made the service entirely unrecognizable to older members. As far as I’m concerned, Geocities no longer existed post-Yahoo, yet today’s announcement has invoked plenty of nostalgia for those of us who used Geocities as our first HTML sandbox.
An announcement was made today on the Official Google Blog stating that people can now control what shows up on Google’s search results page when their name is searched, which is not a lie, but seems to suggest more power than is actually being offered. In an attempt to promote usage of Google Profiles, the company now plans to show profile snippets at the bottom of search pages. And yes, you can control what you put on your profile page and thus paint yourself in a positive light, but only after potential employers have sifted through a pile of top links which may be good, bad, ugly… or someone else entirely (with the same name). And unfortunately, first impressions are a bitch.
So while my initial, wistful impression was that there may be some way to remove offending links from Google, rather they’re just offering users the opportunity to add more information to the database. Of course, this raises security concerns for some who were already tense about the data Google has collected and displayed via search results. People are wondering if Google has intentions the public has not been made aware of. However, having such a powerful online presence, one can assume that regardless of naysayers and paranoia, Google Profiles is likely to garner heavy usage.
Now I had always known that Baloo and Little John were nearly the same character in Disney films The Jungle Book and Robin Hood respectively, but who knew that Disney recycled so many of their animation sequences and to such an extent? I watched these films many times without ever noticing but seeing the clips one after another is really wild! As one blogger commented, “Disney made one movie, and they’ve been tracing it ever since.” This may not be entirely shocking since other cartoons have done the same more blatantly, but I’d assumed that the major motion pictures were offering something new each time. No need if we don’t even pick up on it though.
Also related to Disney’s films, I’m fascinated by the experimental electronic tune called “Alice” which is composed almost entirely using sounds from the Alice in Wonderland movie. It’s a tad repetitious yet pleasant at the same time and has gained an impressive online following. Maybe this is thanks to the recent popularity of electronic music and our appreciation for reworked songs and videos. It seems like everything old becomes new again, especially with the internet’s vast treasure trove of resources.
The mp3 of this song is available at Pogo’s Last.fm Page.
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