The facts about animated GIFs are stark. They only support a palette of 256 colors. No current browser lists support for animated GIF as a codec for the HTML5 <video> tag. That omission is understandable, as GIF compression of animation isn't particularly efficient. They even lived under an unfashionable cloud of patent uncertainty during the web's formative years. And those are just some of the traits I love about the format.

GIF's origins are modest. The Graphics Interchange Format was introduced by Compuserve in 1987 with a specification published by the late Larry Wood. By just two years later, GIF had grown popular enough that the specification was updated, with a fairly rudimentary ability to display multiple images bolted onto the specification. (The spec warned, "The Graphics Interchange Format is not intended as a platform for animation, even though it can be done in a limited way.")

It is an internet radio, a cyberspace shuttle, and a kind of archive. LMB takes you on a journey through an almost forgotten web that is loud, colorful, often "personal", and doesn't care about standards. Though it might be forgotten by many, some parts of it are still there, waiting to be explored. And maybe we can learn something along the way. What?

LMB plays a continous stream of MIDI music. However these aren't just random tunes, instead the songs are taken from websites where they are being played as background music.

While playing a song the LMB cyberspace shuttle flies through a stream of images that have been taken from the website you're (kind of) listening to.

WARNING! THIS LINK HAS BRIGHT FLASHING COLORS. DO NOT CLICK IF YOU ARE PRONE TO SEIZURES