How were things with my favourite band 10 years ago?

It has been said that nothing gets lost on internet. "Be careful if you upload your pictures", "Once it's there, you cannot get it out" etc. Well usually people don't pay any attention until it hits you in the face. You find a picture on internet you remember posting 5 years ago but you are certain you removed it also. "How in the hell can it still be there?" you ask. Man some even say that putting something online is like having a tattoo...forever. Sure you can try to get it removed with expensive laser treatments but it usually always leave a trace. Just like it goes on internet. Search engines like Google crawl websites and index them so people are able to find information they are looking for. Google indexes images also and every now and then you stumble on a picture that can be found in Google but when you try to follow the link, the image is no longer there. What happens is that although you have removed the picture from it's original source, there are still snapshots for instance in searchengines.

That sounded like a lecture...by no means it was ment to be one :) That's just the way it goes. But having searchengines is very important. I think majority of us use those searchengines every day cause let's face it, internet is the nro 1 source for information these days. When you need to find something, you sit on the computer and start punching. The fact that you find something is cause those searchengines have crawled websites and stored the information. But every now and then we stumble on a website or service that really helps us. Cause of my work in Metal From Finland I need to find information about finnish metalbands very often and not all of it is accessible anymore. Bands renew their websites, some information gets lost along the way. Some even want to remove some information cause "Well it was part of our past and we don't stand for those things anymore". But I still want to read about it dammit! Well now there's a chance that you can.

Introducing you WayBackMachine (www.archive.org). This is how the website describes itself: "The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public."

Browse through over 150 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago. To start surfing the Wayback, type in the web address of a site or page where you would like to start, and press enter. Then select from the archived dates available. The resulting pages point to other archived pages at as close a date as possible.

Below are some links I checked:

Metal From Finland
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.metalfromfinland.com
Only year 2007 was indexed but you can see how MFF started :) Oh the nostalgy!

Nightwish
Starting point
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.nightwish.com

Nightwish member-profiles back in 1999
http://web.archive.org/web/19991009190501/www.nightwish.com/English/english.htm

HIM
Starting point
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.heartagram.com

(Ville Valo biographjy back in 2001)
http://web.archive.org/web/20010627001615/heartagram.com/valo.html

Children Of Bodom
Starting point
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.cobhc.com

The 69 Eyes
Starting point
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.69eyes.com

Well by now I think you've got the general idea what it does. I use it mainly for checking band-stuff but remember that it's all about websites...not just bands so you can check just about anything there! Have fun people!