Winterpeg.com (Thanks, That strange guy!)

Winterpeg.com is the web's #1 source for news about the city of Winnipeg, assuming you're trapped in some Groundhog Day-esque time anomaly where the date is perpetually August 14, 2002.

The site features plenty of low-quality photos depicting Winnipeg attractions and sporting events, plus a non-functioning calendar that only goes back one month. Despite promising growth in its short-lived heyday ("over 10,000 page views a month" according to the FAQ), the site suddenly stopped updating more than a decade ago. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, someone pays to renew it year after year.

Why? "Believe it or not, we felt that Winnipeg's nickname, 'Winterpeg' was somewhat derogatory," explains the FAQ. Maybe the site's owners pay the hosting fees to keep the URL out of the hands of those who would use it insultingly, or perhaps the hope is simply that someone with deep pockets will find the now-reclaimed "Winterpeg" pun irresistibly clever and offer to buy the domain for a tidy sum. Any century now...

It can't be for the ad revenue, because the site's listed sponsors and advertisers no longer exist.

It's certainly not to show off the webmaster's design skills, which are limited to tables on a blue background. It looks like he tried to figure out how to do frames and failed miserably, because every page embeds THE SAME PAGE. It's like opening a safe and finding a smaller safe inside.

To give him some credit, he did manage to roll out the latest in turn-of-the-century technology: A Java chatroom! (Alas, it no longer loads.) There's also a guestbook filled with spam and a couple messages from a confused Winnipegger who just wants "the winning numbers from last friday saterday feb, 2005." It looks like even the spammers gave up on the site, which is perhaps the saddest indictment of all.

– Adam "rubber cat" Jameson (@robbercat)