Sponsor's Message

It's interesting to reflect back on those halcyon days and wonder what ever happened to some of those ground-breaking sites and the people who created them.

One of the very earliest of the "must visit" sites was Wammo.co.nz, a site that showcased local Kiwi sites with a short review. Thanks to the kind folks at the Internet Archive, you can even browse back through pages from this long-gone website.

Hot on the tails of Wammo was SODA.co.nz (Site Of the Day Award) which similarly reviewed a new site each day. Here are the Archive's selected pages from SODA.

These days, the closest thing we've got to a new website announcement service is this page over at NZSearch and Aardvark's own New Sites page.

I've not heard from Anson Parker, the man behind Wammo for quite some time but SODA's creator, Dave Blyth is still active in the Web Design business.

But where was all the other local content in those days?

Yes, Aardvark was there -- and perhaps it was the dearth of other sites to visit on the Web that helped it gain the popularity it has continued to enjoy. Hell, way back in 1996, Aardvark was generating 3,000 advertiser click-throughs per week.

As far as the mainstream media goes, it was The Press which led the way for all other online newspapers with their excellent news site.

Note the SODA awards on that page -- yes, the NZ Web was a *very* small place in those days.

One of the great things about The Press was that you could easily exchange emails with the people behind it -- now most news sites are just a flimsy HTML escutcheon covering a huge, impersonal, corporate body.

NZ's content scene was small but even the wider-web didn't really have too much to offer in those days.

CNN and the Nando Times were early news-providers, and of course we can't forget that Yahoo! has been around for ever.

Searching the web back in 1996 was however, a whole lot less rewarding than it is today. Before the arrival of AltaVista (possibly the first really comprehensive search engine), it was really hard to generate any significant traffic to a new site.

But enough from me.

I'd love to hear from all the "old timers" out there who have been surfing the Net for at least six years or more. What are the sites you remember most fondly and where are they now?

If any Aardvark readers want to share an opinion on today's column or add something, you're invited to chip in and have your say in The Aardvark Forums or, if you prefer, you can contact me directly.

Contacting Aardvark
I'm always happy to hear from readers, whether they're delivering brickbats, bouquets or news tip-offs. If you'd like to contact me directly, please this form. If you're happy for me to republish your comments then please be sure and select For Publication.

Other media organisations seeking more information or republication rights are also invited to contact me.

Just add a couple of lines of JavaScript to your pages and you can get a free summary of Aardvark's daily commentary -- automatically updated each and every week-day.

Aardvark also makes a summary of this daily column available via XML using the RSS format. More details can be found here.

Contact me if you decide to use either of these feeds and have any problems.

Linking Policy
Want to link to this site? Check out Aardvark's Linking Policy.

Did you tell someone else about Aardvark today? If not then do it now!