~ Early Web Links ~

The Online Books Page, edited by John Mark Ockerbloom and hosted by the University of Pennsylvania, catalogs over 3 million freely available books on the web, searchable by author, title, subject, and serial. It features curated collections highlighting women writers, banned books, and prize winners, making it one of the most comprehensive free ebook directories on the internet.

A sprawling personal link directory by rlcolem covering dozens of categories including health, government, entertainment, news, music, and museums. Built in classic late-90s tripod style, it curates hundreds of external links organized into neat topic sections, serving as a one-stop gateway to the early web.

The Navas 28800-56K Modem FAQ, compiled by John Navas, is a comprehensive reference guide covering dial-up modem troubleshooting, selection, configuration, and brand-specific tips for modems from the mid-1990s through the broadband transition era. Organized into detailed sections on connection problems, drivers, PCMCIA cards, and modem companies, it remains a thorough technical resource for anyone dealing with legacy dial-up hardware.

Created by ODP editor geniac, this page tracks and compares the growth of the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) and Yahoo Directory through detailed size charts and milestone tables spanning 1998 to 2004. It's a fascinating historical snapshot of the early web directory wars, complete with projected vs. actual crossover dates and a Q&A section explaining the methodology behind the size calculations.

Turing Complete User is a long-form critical essay and open-access book by Olia Lialina arguing that the concept of 'the user' is being systematically erased from computing culture and interface design. Drawing on sources from John von Neumann to Don Norman and Facebook, it makes a passionate intellectual case for preserving user agency and visibility in an era of invisible, frictionless computing.

The official NetBSD/macppc FAQ covers everything a user needs to install and run NetBSD on PowerPC-based Apple hardware, from booting and partitioning to Open Firmware, supported hardware models, and peripheral configuration. With dozens of detailed questions and answers spanning networking, ADB keyboards, USB devices, and kernel options, it serves as an indispensable technical reference for running this Unix-like OS on older Power Macs and PowerBooks.

VE3ZSH's Links is a sprawling personal bookmarks directory maintained by a Canadian ham radio operator, organizing hundreds of curated URLs across categories like search engines, hardware datasheets, InfoSec tools, language resources, forums, and small-web communities. The sheer breadth and curation depth make it a genuinely useful launchpad for anyone interested in technical, indie-web, and utility resources.

A richly researched visual history of Delicious, the pioneering social bookmarking site, tracing its design evolution through dozens of archived screenshots spanning over a decade. The creator reflects on digital ephemerality, the cultural impact of tagging and metadata, and what was lost when Delicious faded, making this a thoughtful and well-documented tribute to a formative piece of web history.

Robotstxt.org is the definitive reference for understanding web robots, crawlers, and spiders, covering everything from how to write a robots.txt file to blocking unwanted bots from your site. It includes a robots database, a robots.txt syntax checker, an IP lookup tool, and a comprehensive FAQ making it an essential stop for webmasters and developers.

A subdomain of the legendary Textfiles.com, this archive hosts over 1,400 digitized digest files spanning decades of early internet culture, including the Computer Privacy Digest, Computer Underground Digest, and Telecommunications Digest. Researchers and digital historians will find an invaluable primary source collection documenting hacker culture, privacy debates, and telecom policy from the 1980s through the late 1990s.