The archive service was established as the Bedfordshire Record Office by historian and retired zoology professor George Herbert Fowler, who had been elected as a county councillor in Bedfordshire in 1912.

BBC: Sand memories a first at Bedfordshire archive

Using Factiva, a Dow Jones-owned media-archive service, about 25 New York-centric newspapers, magazines, websites and blogs are scanned daily and scored based on what names are mentioned, the number of times the name occurs and the placement of the mention in the article, such as in the first paragraph, in a headline or caption.

WSJ: Methodology for NYIndex

But an online service called the Wayback Machine at archive.org keeps records of old Web sites.

FORBES: Google Me Not

My on-line email service keeps running out of space and I have to archive messages locally and then delete some of the stuff that is on-line.

FORBES: Why We Should Expect HDD Growth Later this Year

Facebook's service is designed to combine traditional email, instant message and cellphone text messages into one system, routing messages to whichever service is best for each person, and keeping an archive of it all.

WSJ: Facebook's New Front in Google Rivalry