Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group

  "Even though the documents on the Internet are the easy documents to collect and archive, the average lifetime of a document is 75 days and then it is gone." -- Brewster Kahle, November, 1996 Researchers from the Internet Archive , Protocol Labs , and Old Dominion University will revisit the question “how long does a web page last?”  The answer frequently given is 44 , 75 , or 100 days, all of which stem from research that dates back to 1996--2003.  It is well-known that “44-100 days on average” does not capture the complexity of HTTP activity, but it is an easy to remember scalar number that people can understand.  Much of the circulating knowledge regarding this question comes from the 1990s and early 2000s, before the large-scale adoption of JavaScript in web pages for dynamically producing content and the proliferation of native mobile apps (e.g., the release of the iPhone in 2007 ).   The Filecoin Foundation has generously funded ($75k) this yea...

In my wallet I have a few ₹500 Indian currency notes that say, "I PROMISE TO PAY THE BEARER THE SUM OF FIVE HUNDRED RUPEES" followed by the signature of the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India . However, this promise was broken two years ago from today, since then these bills in my pocket are nothing more than rectangular pieces of printed paper. So, I decided to utilize my origami skills and turn them into butterflies. On November 8, 2016, at 8:00 PM (Indian Standard Time), Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the demonetization (effective in four hours after midnight) of the two biggest currency notes (₹1,000 and ₹500) in circulation at that time. Together these two notes represented about 86% of the total cash economy of India at that time. More than 65% of the Indian population still lives in rural and remote areas where availability of electricity, the Internet, and other utilities is not reliable yet. Hence, cash is a very common means of business...