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Draw all over Google Maps with quickmaps

quickmapsquickmaps is a cool new Google Maps-based web service (or mashup, if you prefer) that lets you get really creative with your Google Maps. Quickmaps gives you a bunch of tools, including a couple dozen markers, line and doodle tools for drawing, and text labels that you can place anywhere on a Google map. Drawing is done with the mouse, and markers and text labels are conveniently drag-and-drop. There's a lot of ways you could quickmaps, but the front page has a few suggestions: "drawing a map to your house, sketching out a cycling or hiking route, or telling everyone where you saw the grizzly bear." quickmaps is super-easy to use, but I was frustrated that in order to remove "doodled" lines you must remove them one segment at a time, which gets old fast. Maps that you create can be saved and shared with your friends. Registration is optional, but if you don't register you can't go back and edit maps that you've saved. And, of course, once you save your map you can embed it in your web site and share it with your friends. I have to say that apart from the doodle-removal issue, quickmaps is one of the slickest applications of the Google Maps API I've seen yet.

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Featured Time Waster

Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

CiviballsI have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.

In Civiballs, you are presented with a few colored balls, and your goal is to get those balls into the same-colored urn on the level. The "civi" part of Civiballs is that there are 3 sets of levels to play, each representing a different civilization. While the civilization doesn't affect gameplay, the artwork for each level is beautifully themed to it's appropriate era.

To play the game, you are given only one tool - a sword with which to cut the chains that are holding the balls. The puzzle part of the game is in figuring out what order, and with what timing to cut each chain. Do it right, and all the right balls end up in the right urns, with no stray balls entering an urn (a no-no). Do it wrong, and you get to start over again.

Civiballs is not terribly deep on gameplay; the entire game can be completed in about 15 minutes. But if you enjoy this type of game, it will be a very enjoyable 15 minutes.

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