On the Web

* For $3.99 a month, PumpPredictor.com provides text information to consumers, via cell phone or e-mail, about when to fill up, when to not pay more than a certain price and when to purchase as little gas as possible, based on ZIP code.

Sample alert to The Baltimore Sun's ZIP code Thursday: "Gas is going down. Buy only a quarter tank if needed. Pay no more than $3.49 in BALTIMORE, MD."

The site says it brings to consumers the techniques of market timing and inventory management that large commercial fuel buyers like gasoline distributors use. The site says it relies on the same statistics, mathematical modeling and market volatility variables used by pricing managers at oil companies to calculate price changes that trickle down to stations. Users may enter up to five text or e-mail addresses and assign a ZIP code to each. Then on a frequency established by the user, the system will send specific buying instructions based on forecasts for that ZIP code.

The demo is at pumppredictor.com.

* "Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy" on the Web (sethcomedy.com) isn't a series per se but rather 50 one-off comedy shorts that the creator of Family Guy prepared in partnership with Google, which will experimentally be blasting the episodes onto its ad network.

Aesthetically, "Cavalcade" is almost identical to Family Guy, with its short, self-contained "bits" - like comic strips from a modern-day funnies page. Plenty of talking animals, "X walks into a bar" jokes and celebrity put-downs.

In one sketch, a talking horse identifies itself as Sarah Jessica Parker; in another, Matthew McConaughey - trapped in a life raft with another starving man - is stabbed by the man when he won't stop talking about himself.

"Cavalcade" is sponsored by Burger King and doesn't bother with "integration," just an eyeful of BK stuff before each show.

* On the fictional Bask University campus in a Web series called "Hooking Up" (hookingupshow.com), there's a good deal of hooking up (naturally), a huge amount of Facebooking and a few stabs at relationships.

Jessica Rose of lonelygirl15 is in this show, too, as freshman Meg Henley. In one of the few clips available before tomorrow's launch date, she gets smooth-talking Nick Fisher to update his Facebook status to "In a relationship with Meg Henley." She coos in delight as he leads her hand to refresh the page. (Young love, so touching!)

The show features a roster of Web stars, including Kevin Wu (of "KevJumba" fame), Cory Williams ("Mr. Safety") and the giddy and verbose Michael Buckley of the much-viewed Web talk show "What the Buck" as Professor Jerry. The show comes from HBO's new media division, HBOLabs.