7 Fun Sites You Can Only Find On The Gopher Web
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Yes, I said the Gopher Internet. No, I don?t mean the species. Let me explain
what the heck I?m talking about, and how this relates to fun sites.
You see, way back before these new-fangled graphical web browsers like Firefox
and Internet Explorer were invented, with all their fancy Flash games and
eye-candy fun sites, there were two Webs. There was the world wide web, and
then there was the Gopher web.
The World Wide Web has, obviously, gotten pretty popular. You?re using it
right now. It?s estimated that there are more than 12 billion publicly
accessible websites on the WWW today.
The other web, meanwhile, has stagnated. According to its biggest search
engine, there were less than 100 sites left in that weird alternative internet
as of 2007. And Mozilla has announced that future versions of Firefox
(starting with Firefox 4) will not even be able to display sites from it. (In
fact, if you?re reading this much later than 2009 you might well not be able
to access the fun sites listed below.)
Gopher is dying, and will soon be gone entirely. There are a huge number of
things that have contributed to it?s failure as an opposing standard to the
WWW, from poor marketing to licensing fees to the fact that it?s named after a
type of icky creature. It?s like Blu-Ray versus HD-DVD, only less people care.
You probably haven?t even heard of Gopher before. And who can blame you? It?s
a fading star, now only used by nostalgic geeks. But believe it or not,
there?s some cool stuff on the early internet. Why limit yourself?
Crash Course In The Early Internet
Most URL?s you?ve seen probably start with http://. For example, this URL to
this website is
http://www.tekeeze.com. Gopher URLs, on the other hand, always
start with gopher://. The URL to the Gopher search engine mentioned above is
actually
gopher://gopher.floodgap.com.
Old websites are not known for their flashy designs, colorful fonts, or for
lots of images. They usually consist of text and links. If you don?t like
reading unless it?s a picture book, you might not like Gopher.
I?ll admit, it wasn?t easy finding the links listed below. With so few fun
sites still left from those days, I was hard pressed to find even seven that
would appeal to a general audience like the people who visit this site.
Having said that, I think you might find you like some of the ones I did
manage to find. Take a look?
7 Fun Sites Only Available On The Gopher Internet
1. Online Book Initiative is a free collection of public domain books much
like Gutenberg, only on Gopher. Read full-length books from authors such as
Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, William Shakespeare, Arthur Conan Doyle, and many
others.
2. Groundhog Weather Updates ? This site provides up-to-date weather data,
moon phases, and more for selected cities in the United States and the world,
without any banner ads, or indeed any graphics or color at all. Plus, it has
yet another clever name!
3. Ascii Text Art Generator ? Enter a phrase, pick a font, and voila! Your
text is instantly converted to ascii art. As a closet fan of ascii art, I
actually think this one of the fun sites is really, really cool ? I just
bookmarked it.
4. Twitpher ? ?Twitter For Gophers? ? As this site?s tagline says, ?Forget
Web 2.0. The time has come for Gopher 2.0.? You can access the latest
twitterings in 100% text-only, graphics-free Gopher awesomeness.
5. Sean?s Humor Site has pages and pages of jokes collected by a
fun-loving Gopher user named Sean MacLennan. I was trying to decide whether to
include Sean?s page in this list of fun sites, but after reading some of the
stuff on there and laughing, I figured I had to.
6. Music! Find free, legal MP3s from popular bands like Stop Asking Stupid
Questions, Bread and Freedom, Jazzilla, and Tea Man With Tea Gum. All four of
those bands are part of the ?noise? genre, which does sound an awful lot like
radio static, but still.
7. Fortunes ? This website lets you play with ?fortune,? an old Linux app
that randomly displays fun qoutes from famous people, sayings like the kind
you see on fortune cookies at Chinese restuarants, and other funny messages.
In short
Unfortunately, many fun sites from the early internet aren't accessible using
modern browsers like Firefox.
If you're over 20 this might weird you out: today's kids weren't even alive
when these fun pages were popular.
