Pioneering Silicon Alley Games Developer Hyperspace Cowgirls Site Lies in Ruins

Before there were Web developers, there were CD-ROM developers, and New York's Silicon Alley was host to plenty of them, perhaps the most important being Voyager, which failed way back in 1997. Hyperspace Cowgirls (whose name was hatched in a dream experienced by its founder, Susan Shaw) was a project that had more success, but it foundered in the wake of the near complete destruction of New York's technology industry in 2000-01, and ceased operations in 2002.

The Hyperspace Cowgirls site (hygirls.com) is interesting to poke around in especially in its unlinked News area, which provides valuable insight into the star-crossed history of New York's Silicon Alley.

Four Ghosties (Site is Dead, shows Advanced Decay) Very few sites lying in a state of advanced decay ever come back. "Advanced Decay" usually indicates a lot of broken links, possibly some broken applications, and a "Last Updated" sign from many months ago.

The Machine Room Grinds to a Halt; Wins "4 Ghostie Award"

The Machine Room, at the domain http://www.machine-room.org, was a labor of love by IT consultant Alexios Chouchoulas whose objective was to chronicle the early days of personal computers. It launched in 1994, making it an ancient project by Web content standards.

Chouchoulas made several revisions to the site since it launched, but something seems to have become unplugged since the site's last major update, which happened in 2005. Many internal links to the Machine Room's impressive collection of ancient computers yield SQL or PHP errors. This is sad because the site has so many great resources pertaining to the good old days of personal computing. While we hope that this site is eventually fixed and brought back to life, for now its advanced level of decay earns it our "4 Ghostie" award.

Glish.Com, Last Updated in 2004, Wins "4 Ghosties" Award

Glish.com, located at the domain http://www.glish.com, was a site authored by Eric Costello, a New York-based Web developer. Its purpose was general, in Costello's words, Glish was "where I go to write...about my life, my work, my kids, my computers etc etc.." The site got a strong boost in March of 2001 when it was featured in Blogger's "Blogs of Note" area and it clicked along at a regular pace until the Spring of 2003, when its entries grew erratic. Glish.com's final entry is from February 2004.

While Glish.com doesn't suffer from any immediately discernible bitrot (all its images load quite nicely), there are enough broken links on its home page to immediately qualify it for Ghost Sites' "4 Ghosties" Award (Site is Dead, Shows Advanced Decay).

Awarded 4 Ghosties: