ARCHIVE.ORG

For anyone who has ever wondered what the first versions of Kent State’s Web site or even the New York Times’s first ventures into the Internet looked like, there is one place to go to see these clumsy-but-once-cutting-edge sites, and it’s not Google.

The Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive, www.archive.org, will let you search most Web sites for past archived versions.

In a decade the net has gone from low-resolution graphics and 640-by-480 screen resolutions to Flash animation and breaking news video updates. A few minutes with the Wayback Machine shows you how quickly the Internet has evolved.

URBANDICTIONARY.COM

There are certain things you just can’t ask anybody to define for you.

Among those things are slang words, including those often heard in music lyrics. Your friends might laugh if you asked what “golden shower” meant for instance, but now they’ll never have to know.

You can look up pretty much any slang word at You can look up pretty much any slang word at www.urbandictionary.com and get a general sense of its meaning. It’s not an end-all or be-all, but it is pretty interesting.

The definitions are user-submitted. And if you’re bored, you can just hit random and see what weird words you come across.

GASBUDDY.COM

Gas prices go up.

Gas prices go down.

You can’t predict if you’re better off buying gas today in case it goes up or buying it tomorrow in case it goes down. It’s always a coin toss, and consumers are always the losers.

But now you can at least get the cheapest price around.

Before heading out to buy gas, check www.gasbuddy.com or the more local version, www.akrongasprices.com. The sites list visitor-submitted gas prices at stations in the area and across the country.

Do you know of a Web site students would find interesting? If so, please send it to editor Meranda Watling at [email protected].