While Google states that this is a change to make link sharing more secure, it is obvious that not all users might welcome this change. The change will first roll-out to Workspaces. As an administrator, you can take action before July 23, 2021 to decide whether or not to enforce the link-change. By default admins opt-in, and their organization links will also be automatically updated. If, instead, an admin opts-out their organization’s members will be notified on July 26, 2021 to decide on whether or not they want to individually opt-out. The update will come into effect on September 13, 2021. Note that Admins can still change organization settings until the final deadline.

As a regular (free) user, you will receive the update notification July 26, at which point you may choose to opt-out before September 13, 2021. So, if you own a few files on Google Drive you made public, you should check whether you want to cancel the update, or replace all your links with the updated version. If no action has been taken, the update will be enforced on September 13, 2021, rendering some of your files inaccessible to users who haven’t accessed them prior to that date.

To learn more about the issue, you can read the blog post at https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2021/06/drive-file-link-updates.html. This update comes following a similar change to make old unlisted YouTube videos private, which you can read more about below.

The simplest of Flash games is composed of one file ending with the .swf extension (Small Web Format, previously called ShockWaveFlash). That file contains all of the code and assets (such as artwork, audio, fonts, etc.) and it’s playable using a plugin called Macromedia Flash Player, which was later renamed Adobe Flash Player after it got purchased by Adobe. The coding language that is used is ActionScript, and graphics are usually vector, which is different from your usual image.

Instead of having an image made out of pixels, vector graphics will instead have information on the lines that form the image. That means you can scale a vector and never have to worry about the image becoming blurry because instead of scaling an image made out of pixels, you are scaling an image made out of lines. This will also in some cases reduce the file size.

Speaking of SWF, there are many other uses for Flash content. You have Flash movies, which are animated cartoons, and applets, which are small applications that are integrated in a webpage. Even online video players once used Flash!

Discontinuation of Adobe Flash Player

Flash Player was once the most used and the most needed plugin for your web browser. You couldn’t browse the web properly without Flash Player because tons of things needed it. In recent years though, Flash has declined in usage and Adobe is planning on killing the plugin at the end of 2020.

Tvpot gained some popularity over the years until another company got their hands on the portal. Once Kakao (카카오) bought Daum, they decided to combine Tvpot and their own video platform, Kakao TV. Unfortunately, Tvpot had to be sacrificed in favour of Kakao TV and the one of the actions the company took was to stop hosting public videos.

Ever since that day, Tvpot became more and more obsolete, as Kakao TV has now become the main attraction. Tvpot would keep sinking into obscurity until it got officially discontinued on November 7 of 2018. Today, almost no record of the website survives, beyond a few WaybackMachine snapshots it’s as if the website (or any of the uploaded videos) never even existed.

The tragedy of Daum Tvpot is a cautionary tale which reminds us that the internet is not forever. Platforms which provide users the ability to upload videos, photos etc. might one day suddenly cease to function. It is a user’s responsibility not to bet on a single platform, and an archivist’s responsibility to always keep an eye on such major platforms.

References:

https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Daum_Tvpot

https://tvpot.daum.net/

https://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/%EB%8B%A4%EC%9D%8C (Korean)

Introducing the Escargot MSN Server. Since 2017, you can use your favourite (supported) version of MSN Messenger once again whether if it’s for nostalgic reasons or just for fun. Follow the instructions, insist your friends to use Escargot and voilà! You’re back in 2005.

Some versions has more bugs than others, and not every function is supported yet but regular instant messaging is in working order.

If you want to find out more, you can visit their website: https://escargot.chat/

Edit 1 May 2021: Escargot link updated (from the old https://escargot.log1p.xyz/)

Earlier last year, I realised that YouTube was about to delete all of their annotations. That would mean that many videos would loose important information and other videos would loose their interactivity.

After making efforts to make people archive as many annotations as possible with the help of screen recorders, a YouTube user contacted me.

Eventually I found myself on a Discord server with people dedicated to archiving annotations before the deadline (the right way, by saving the annotation codes rather than simply recording the screen).

This experience taught me the importance of archiving. Without it, some (possibly important) information could be lost forever. And this is why I am here today. I am here to help in the process of archiving content to avoid losing any data that we might regret not having in the future.

Also seeing the decline of Adobe Flash player is also very sad to me. I, like many of you, grew up playing Flash games on sites. Luckily many teams of archivists are already working on saving as many games before it’s too late. Without them, where would the Flash games be after the Flash websites remove the games due to incompatibility? Memories would be lost. Games would never be played again. Also kudos to Newgrounds for creating the Newgrounds player, which would give the user the ability to play Flash content again on their platform!

That’s it for now. I am not the best at writing; I hope my introduction wasn’t too bad.

See you soon.