how to obtain historical information about code and websites

Question

I remember a couple of websites that seemed to be pretty ground-breaking a long time ago, but they are long gone now.

One of them was "Gabocorp.com" ... it had a nice flash interface. Another one was "Octopus.com" ... it was a cool-looking web-based 'mashup' of web content.

Is there a way to find out who coded these sites and contact them or otherwise find copies of these sites that are now defunct?

• http://www.octopus.com/">octopus.com
• http://www.gabocorp.com/">gabocorp.com

Also, if there is some random site that you remember from long ago, and you are a researcher in academia, where do you go if you want to look at the code of the site for study purposes?

Answer 1

Have you checked http://archive.org? Both those sites appear to have about 10 years of history in there, though I haven't looked to see whether it's anything like what you're looking for.

Answer 2

Perhaps whois records and netcraft could help you. An interesting source of ideas could be from Opera's MAMA Project Overview and History