10 Greatest Dead Web Projects

Over the last few years there have been quite a few damn good ideas that suddenly went… These are the best them. This is part one of two.

Free CSS Cart

FreeCSSCart started out when a nice, lightweight, standards compliant cart was really needed. Then they made the decision to switch the backend to RoR (for no other reason than because RailsRocks! I imagine). Delay after delay, and finally realizing it wasn’t as easy as that, they decided to keep the admin written in RoR, and the client side in PHP (yes I agree that’s just stupid). And by this time the need had passed and the void was filled by several other, less ass-backward solutions. Damn shame, I loved the logo.

WidgetMachine

WidgetMachine was one of the first and more popular sites for OSX widgets. The site had some hiccups and down time, then in December of ‘06 it went down and never came back. It was talked about on quite a few forums and supposed to come back this summer. Apparently it never did. Bummer it was quite a nice site.

Blogonize

Blogonize was to offer free blog hosting, tools, and tutorials on running your blog. A good idea, with the twist on other hosted blog services as you could choose your blog type. Good idea, never executed. Site has been dormant since the supposed beta launch. I’d venture perpetual beta if it even worked, alas, it’s completely dead.

ASAPAnswer

In contrast to the many other “ask and answer” sites popping up all over the interwebery, ASAPAnswer was supposed to be free, and you could ask it anything. I don’t imagine too many questions were answered in it’s four month life cycle though.

CSSReboot

CSSReboot was a good idea, and damn cool the first two reboots. It was the second-ish reboot site to appear, and was geared towards standardistas. The first while it went off without a hitch, I even participated. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as profitable as the owner had hoped so he sold it. The new owner promptly trashed it with an absolutely horrid design. The next two reboots preformed with marvelous mediocrity. The site has now descended into a generic Pligg Powered Digg clone, no doubt prompted by the creation the next site… which you can see when part two is posted.