ASK AND YE SHALL RECEIVE: ERROR 404 FILE NOT FOUND

Ask And Ye Shall Receive: Error 404 File Not Found
by Pam Ashlund

Before my fingers had left the keys...my prayers were answered. If only I could tag a webpage and know it would still be there when I returned! While I've been tagging used Del.icio.us for a few weeks, I came across another service: Ma.gnolia. I finally got around to importing my bookmarks to Mag. today and was just browsing around, reading the FAQ files, and what did I find? This:

When you add a bookmark to Ma.gnolia, we rush around in the background to save a copy of that web page for your future viewing. Never again will you be lost if a web page moves or gets deleted. Ma.gnolia's saved copies have got you covered, so that what you find stays found.

Would I be pushing my metaphor if I said 'I was lost but now I'm found'? Okay, okay...so how did Ma.gnolia handle the legal/ethical dilemma?

How does Ma.gnolia treat controlled content when making saved copies? Ma.gnolia only makes a saved copy of a web page when directed to do so by a user. We do not crawl the web and therefore you will not find us checking robots.txt. We do, however, watch and respect the ‘no cache’ meta tag should a member attempt to make a saved copy of a protected web page. Additionally, we do not cache images, CSS or Javascript in our saved copies.

Problem solved? I guess I won't know until they dissapear three years from now!


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Comments

Gayle said…
Hey Pam,

Have you ever used Archive.org? It is a spin off from Alexa, which has been creating archive snapshots of the entire web for nearly a decade. They've even donated copies to the Smithsonian I believe. Anyhoo, at Archive you can search for nearly any non-dynamic web page that went offline from the past 10 years. A website that I published in '97 is there! Talk about head spin.

Peace,
Gayle
Fundraising for Nonprofits
gayleroberts.com/blog/
12/11/2006 8:57 AM
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