My age places me in “Unc” territory, which means I remember a time when the internet wasn’t as widely used as it is today.
My first home computer was nothing more than a machine that let me play Kid Pix and 3D Pinball for Windows – Space Cadet all day. Once those neon colored Mac desktop computers landed in my elementary school classroom, I learned how to type and snuck in some sessions of playing MDK. It wasn’t until my teenage years that I was finally exposed to the wide and wonderful world of the internet—I spent countless hours looking up fake images of Dragon Ball AF characters I swore were real and spoilers for wrestling shows that hadn’t aired yet.
I have to pay my respects to the genius inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. After its inception in March of 1989 and its becoming more readily available for the public in August 1991, it has morphed into an integral part of our lives due to the myriad ways it can be used to educate, entertain, build communities, and more.
In celebration of World Wide Day, I asked ChatGPT to help me in my mission of becoming a better internet user by recommending the most useful free sites. What I found was seven sites that have earned a permanent spot on my bookmarks list.
Saving time and money with these vital sites
ChatGPT's useful free site suggestions catered to my desire to use the World Wide Web to help me save as much time, money, and effort as possible.
The seven sites it made me aware of covered a wide range of uses, such as free access to archived media that’s no longer readily available, ebooks of literary works by revered authors, radio stations from across the globe, etc.
These are the seven sites recommended by ChatGPT that I made a permanent part of my daily World Wide Web surfing:
- Internet Archive : One of the internet's greatest public resources. What it's useful for: borrow millions of books for free, watch classic films, access historical software & games, browse old websites through the Wayback Machine, and find public-domain music & media. Best for: researchers, students, journalists, and anyone looking for hard-to-find information.
- Project Gutenberg : A massive collection of legal, free ebooks. You’ll find over 75,000 public-domain books including classics from: Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Shakespeare. Perfect for reading on Kindle or your phone.
- Photopea : A free Photoshop alternative that runs entirely in your browser. It can edit PSD files, remove backgrounds, design social groups, create thumbnails, edit photos, and export to multiple formats. Many people never need paid image-editing software after discovering this site.
- Radio Garden : An interactive globe that lets you listen to live radio stations from around the world. Great for discovering new music, learning languages, hearing local news, and exploring different cultures. It’s surprisingly addictive.
- FutureTools : Best for finding the perfect AI tool. Instead of Googling “best AI for X,” search here. Categories include writing, image generation, video editing, coding, marketing, productivity, and education. If there’s a new AI tool worth trying, it’ll likely show up here first.
- Have I Been Pwned : Best for security. Enter your email address to see whether it has appeared in known data breaches. It’s one of the easiest ways to know when you should change passwords, enable two-factor authentication, and watch for phishing attempts.
- CamelCamelCamel : Best for never overpaying on Amazon. It tracks Amazon price history so you can see whether today’s “sale is actually a deal, the lowest historical price, and price trends over months or years. You can also set alerts for when prices drop.
As someone who’s an avid reader, a big music buff, a photo editor (I’m the guy who likes to increase or decrease the dimensions of the pictures I include in my articles) and more, ChatGPT’s suggested sites ended up being way more beneficial than I anticipated.
After discovering them, I treated myself to hours-long periods where I electronically skimmed through old issues of GamePro Magazine, finally read Moby Dick in full, and jammed to the Afrobeats tunes emanating from Wazobia FM 94.1 in Port Harcourt, Nigeria.
The takeaway
Thanks to the World Wide Web, we can discover a multitude of cultures, learn different languages, revisit our youth through archived media, and so much more. World Wide Web Day is one of those holidays that reminds me just how valuable the internet is when it’s time to expand our cultural horizons, intelligence, and social spaces.
I’ve learned to take the good with the bad whenever I do my weekend deep dives into every corner of the World Wide Web. With ChatGPT’s free, useful site suggestions, I’ll have a much easier time researching, reading, looking for product deals, etc. in the future.
