Jun 13 2008
A Semi-Dodgy Way to Find Content Ideas
Bored of slaving away on my stupid Beijing website that is taking up all of my time and kind of sucking the life out of me at the moment, I decided to head on over to Archive.org and play with the Wayback Machine as a distraction.
I did the usual stuff… checked out some of my own early site attempts then I looked at the sites I read regularely and I managed to kill a good amount of time essentially doing nothing. Then I thought of looking up a few websites that I used to visit but had vanished from the internet for one reason or another. I managed to find a few of them and has a little trip down memory lane.
Then I had a brainwave… lots of these defunct sites have a lot of good content that is rotting away in the archives of the Wayback Machine. What if some of that great content were to be rescued? It would be completely unethical to copy an article entirely, but I don’t see anything wrong with have a poke around for some ideas.
Or maybe I’m just looking for a way to justify wasting so much time on the Wayback Machine!
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I've been travelling since January 2008 living off earnings from the web. Follow me as I bum around Asia and beyond, getting up to mischief and working online as I go.
dodgy but good nonetheless
I looked into this myself. I don’t think it is dodgy but I reckon many do. make sure you search the text in Google before you use it, if its not there then go for it!
I’ve been so enjoying your posts about using the Way-back machine! That’s a great idea for some writing ideas, I’ll have to check it out. Although I might use it as more of ‘inspiration’ instead of taking it word-for-word, although that’d be an easy way to get some good articles.