Bon Bon: Internet Wayback Machine

Speaking of blasts from our past, on our recent Downtown walking tour the MC101s were fascinated by Ross Cutlery, a knife store that became somewhat infamous during the O.J. Simpson trial.

I don't use this website a lot, but when I do I'm sure glad it's there.

The Internet Wayback Machine is a partial (but still pretty voluminous) archive of web pages as they appeared a few months ago or a few years ago. For example, one of the videos I use in Mass Comm 101 used to have an online transcript. It came in quite handy for those students who wanted to quote the video. Then the transcript was taken off the web. With the Internet Wayback Machine, it's easy to go back in time and find it.

Using the Wayback Machine, I can see what CNN's front page looked like on Sept. 11, 2001. Or maybe I want to see what Google's search page looked like way back on Dec. 2, 1998.

In any event, I'm just scratching the surface. In addition to finding yesterday's web pages, this useful and entertaining archive has search tools for audio, video and other stuff that is--or, more importantly, was--on the web.