30th August 2000

Coming from the "Running Out of Cache" department, Lockergnomie (and Cluetrain Manefesto author) David Weinberger knows there's more than one way to skin a site. Which is more frustrating: being attacked by a computer virus or smacking into the dreaded 404 message? But the page used to be there; you just saw it last week! It's shuffled off its digital coil and moved on to a higher plane of existence. Whatever. Here's a semi-decent workaround. Short of slapping the site manager upside the head, type your way to GOOGLE.COM and search for the dead page. Use specific keywords or enter the entire Web address into the form. Once the URL is found, you may see a 'Cached' link displayed beside it. Duh. With any luck, you'll be able to sleep soundly tonight... knowing full well that there's hope for abandoned Web pages. The slash is a terrible thing to waste.