Chronotron is a trippy puzzle-solving game where your player's movements are recorded and then repeated when you warp back in time. It may sound confusing, but play a level or two and you'll quickly understand.
Basically you move around the level and carry out a set of actions that should ultimately help you collect the circuit board required to "skip" to the next level. The problem is, those actions won't be enough on their own, so you'll have to warp back in time. When you go back in time, your previous movements are replayed, but you can also move independently of those movements to work in tandem with yourself (or multiples of yourself).
BooRah searches the web for mentions of restaurants in blogs and websites and analyzes the languages in the post to determine whether the reviewer was giving the restaurant a thumbs down (boo) or a thumbs up (Rah). The amount of Boo's and Rah's a restaurant gets are tallied up on the site and then the restaurant is given an overall score. BooRah users can add their own tags to a particular restaurants page, and can weigh in by giving a particular place a Boo or Rah directly on the site.
Currently the service is limited to just 20 large metro areas, with more expected to be rolled out later on. If you're fortunate enough to live in one of those areas you can search for restaurants by your particular neighborhood, and sign up for an RSS feed for your area so you always know about the latest place in town.
You just have to love an online game that knows exactly what it aims to be. And the concept of this game is, well, rather difficult. The Rather Difficult Font Game tests your ability to recognize typefaces by showing you a piece of text and then four font names. Your job is to correctly choose the correct typeface.
As with any multiple-choice test with a limited set of answers, this game becomes rather less difficult as you go, if you're careful to remember what you've already seen. While we're certainly not font experts, by process of elimination we were able to score an 18 out of 30 on our first try.
Like any good time waster, this one can be done relatively quickly, like maybe during your coffee break. And if you are the type of person that feels guilty about the time you spend playing time wasting online games, you can tell yourself that at least with this one you're learning something. Whatever lets you live with yourself, right?
The Beard is a unique time waster in that it is actually possible to be beaten in a relatively short amount of time yet still be totally enjoyable. So instead of spending your entire day wasting time, just get the instant gratification of sweet victory and move on.
The premise is this: you are a knight fighting a giant floating head with a beard in a side-scrolling environment. Think of it as a boss you would encounter in Mega Man and other comparable titles. The "Beard" has a number of moves that you have to dodge as you try to get close and take a swing at him with your plunger or magic bolts. As you get hits you also get experience, which cause you to level and get better weapons with more reach.
The learning curve is fairly easy, and the game's animation and sound effects make for quick and gratifying gameplay. But, you do only get three lives, so expect a fair number of retries before you lay the Beard to rest. And yes, fighting a giant floating beard is actually more fun than you might imagine.
There are days that call for time wasters of a nature that have virtually no learning curve, are simple, and mindless the way Snake is. Comboll is all of those things, but also adds to that the element of very intuitive, nice bouncy physics that are good the way gummy bears are.
The goal of the game (if you can call it that) is to keep your sphere alive in a world of red and blue bars that horizontally scroll across the screen and accumulate as many points as possible. If you continue to bounce on bars of one color, you can build a combo, allowing you to earn a large number of points very quickly. In the event that you do fail to make a jump, your score is reset and you get to do it some more with almost no delay.
You can influence the jump and movement of your ball with the directional keys, allowing you to aim for bars of your chosen color. You can also "double jump" in mid air, letting you stretch some jumps to get where you want. The game comes in two modes, normal and extreme, but after playing the game for a bit we have come to the conclusion that the extreme mode is definitely better, since the bars disappear after you jump on them and hostile flying triangles will make it more difficult to make the jumps you want to.
All things said, if Comboll were an arcade game in the 70's, people would have spent all their quarters trying to play it.
30 fateful years have passed since what is believed to be the first piece of spam has defiled the inboxes of unwitting victims. Since then things have gotten much worse, with Internet scams at an all time high and spam comprising up to 90% of all email.
Gary Thuerk, the only soul that can lay claim to the title "Father of Spam," is the man who started it all, even if he's not to blame for the monstrosity that all of this has evolved into. The enlightening moment in his mind was this: "It's too much work to send everyone an e-mail," ... "So we'll send one e-mail to everyone." And thus the beast was born.
His email inviting people to come see a product presentation of the DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY, which was written in all caps (setting the standard for years to come), was met with a very negative reaction foreshadowing how we still feel today about unsolicited emails. Interestingly enough, the email generated about $12 million in sales for Thuerk, which is probably why spam is still filling the inboxes of young and old alike: it works.
You probably think you're hot stuff because you can type 90+ words per minute. But how well do you perform when you've got a couple of other speed typists hot on your heels? While competitive typing isn't likely to hit the Olympics, or even ESPN2 anytime soon, TypeRacer is an online game that makes typing speed tests a bit more interesting by letting you see how your skills stack up against others.
TypeRacer asks you to type a relatively short snippet of text, which may be a quote from a book, movie, or something else you can purchase on Amazon (the site is designed to make money by getting you to click on Amazon affiliate links). As you're typing, a little car will move across the screen and you can see other drivers/typists racing. New races start pretty regularly so you should only have to wait a few seconds to join a race.
Just remember, if you spend too much time eying the competition, you're going to fall behind and then you'll never make the high scores list.
Posted Apr 29th 2008 12:00PM by Todd Ritter Filed under: Fun
If you're tired of cheery, politically-correct e-cards and want to say it like you mean it, check out Wrongcards' offerings. Their e-cards don't have animated fluffy bunnies or smiling sunflowers, but they do have direct, honest quotes and illustrations covering the obvious topics like birthdays and anniversaries.
For example, send a "get well" card that says what you're really thinking: "Get Well, but if you don't, I'd find it very consoling if you left me your Wii." Or for the confident romantic, try this one: "Obviously this anniversary comes as a surprise...because you should totally have dumped me by now...but whatever..."
Wrongcards has the standard featureset of other e-card sites: send the card to multiple e-mail addresses, add your own custom message to the card, and get notified when someone reads your card.
Over the last few years we've seen the Palm OS platform stagnate while Microsoft, Apple, and Symbian continue to develop their mobile operating systems. Oh sure, there will be a new version of the Palm operating system at some point, but at this point we're not sure there will be any manufacturers willing to run Palm software on their devices.
But here's one good reason to pull your old Palm PDA out of the junk drawer, or even pick up a used one on eBay: Game-maker PDAmill is offering its Palm OS games for free. All of them.
The game developer recently announced that they would stop developing for Palm. And while the company could have continued charging a small fee for some of its excellent video games, they instead decided to give them away.
The games included Arvale, an RPG, several games in the GameBox series which include classics like Solitaire, Mahjohng, Snakes, Blocks, and Cannons, and Snails, which is a turn-based action game similar to Worms.
Perhaps it's a blatant F.U. to content creators everywhere or maybe it's just an F.U. to Rockstar, but the Pirate Bay has gone out of its way to temporarily rename itself "Liberty Bay" in honor of the upcoming Grand Theft Auto IV.
The purpose for the publicity stunt is unclear, but -- considering the company's line of work -- it's likely to get the word out on the highly-rumored rumored Grand Theft Auto IV torrents that all the young kids blab about nowadays. Though we don't think the site's blog will address the gutsy move unless Rockstar starts throwing a fit, we'll let you know if things gets messy.
If you have a penchant for survival/defense type games, R.O.B.O.T. (Relatively Obedient Being Of Thought) will be right up your alley for your time wasting needs. It is basically a cross-over of both a defense game and a survival game (which intrinsically overlap as it is) in which you utilize both manual movement and firing with turret placement to advance through levels.
The premise appears to be that you are a Robot defending a heap of rubble and dirt, or getting attacked on top of it, however you like to think of it. As you kill enemies and progress through waves, you are able to buy upgrades for you plasma gun (your primary means of disposal), your treads, a placeable (and enhanceable) turret, as well as your shields, armor, and an EMP shockwave for use against heavily shielded enemies. Of course, the waves continue to get harder, with more enemies coming in all shapes and sizes and attack styles, which keeps things interesting.
Once you progress a fair bit into the game, it is fairly difficult even on easy, but if you feel that does not apply to you can go all the way up to Insane difficulty. But, regardless of the difficulty your play it at, it's all very forgiving since you can always continue from the last wave you managed to clear.
Launchball is a fun, smart, and polished game courtesy of the Science Museum in London. The game uses a common premise: coax a ball into a goal. The objects you can use to accomplish this task though are based generally on electricity, magnetism, and mechanics.
There are basic shapes like "ski jumps" and ramps, but there are also batteries and steam generators (which also require a water tank and fire) to power magnets and fans. There are switches, springs, cushions, and rubber blocks. Each level provides you with a certain set and quantity of objects to help you get the ball in the goal (not all objects need to be used though).
If you take a few seconds to create a free account, you'll be emailed a code so that you can login at a later time and resume where you left off. Otherwise you have to play through all of the levels each time. There are three main categories of levels: tricky, sneaky, and crafty.
You can even create your own levels and share them. In the "Extras" section, you can play levels that were created by players.
Using an interesting blend of real-world video and cartoon-enemy overlays, ToonCrisis is a fun Flash shooter with an original soundtrack of punk-ish/ska songs to keep you motivated.
The objective is simply to kill the monsters by aiming your laser-shooting hand (which is, of course, in the shape of a gun) at them and clicking the left mouse button. There are different types of enemies including some that don't move but shoot things at you, some that move and take a bunch of shots to kill, and bosses (complete with separate energy meter) that must be beat before moving to the next stage.
The game flow is similar to arcade games like Area 51, Time Crisis, and Virtua Cop in that you walk a bit, kill all the enemies, walk more, kill enemies, defeat boss, repeat.
Today we bring you two quick flash games to waste time. Fulfillment is a tangram-style game where you must fill a square area with shapes so that none of the background is exposed. The target area gets progressively larger (starting at a 3x3 grid), and each level is timed. Points are awarded for level completion, with extra points for completing a level quickly.
Have you always thought that Hallmark greeting cards are too cheesy? Have you wanted to follow in the steps of Mr. Deeds (at least, the Adam Sandler version of Mr. Deeds) and write your own cards? Well, now is your chance...sort of.
Phreetings is a Facebook app that allows you to send a photo and a short greeting to a Facebook friend, a la greeting card style.
As far as Facebook apps go, Phreetings couldn't get any simpler. Type in a keyword at the top of the page to search for photos, and Phreetings displays the results (all photos are from Flickr, and licensed by the Creative Commons license).
Drag the photo you want to send over to the section on the right hand side of the page, then type in a short message below. You can choose an optional color scheme for your greeting as well. When your greeting is ready, hit the send button, enter in the name of the recipient, and your greeting is sent.
All in all, a simple application that helps spread your web 2.0 greetings both near and abroad.
BooRah searches the web for mentions of restaurants in blogs and websites and analyzes the languages in the post to determine whether the reviewer was giving the restaurant a thumbs down (boo) or a thumbs up (Rah). The amount of Boo's and Rah's a restaurant gets are tallied up on the site and then the restaurant is given an overall score. BooRah users can add their own tags to a particular restaurants page, and can weigh in by giving a particular place a Boo or Rah directly on the site.
You just have to love an online game that knows exactly what it aims to be. And the concept of this game is, well, rather difficult. The Rather Difficult Font Game tests your ability to recognize typefaces by showing you a piece of text and then four font names. Your job is to correctly choose the correct typeface. 
The Beard is a unique time waster in that it is actually possible to be beaten in a relatively short amount of time yet still be totally enjoyable. So instead of spending your entire day wasting time, just get the instant gratification of sweet victory and move on.
There are days that call for time wasters of a nature that have virtually no learning curve, are simple, and mindless the way Snake is. Comboll is all of those things, but also adds to that the element of very intuitive, nice bouncy physics that are good the way gummy bears are.
30 fateful years have passed since what is believed to be the first piece of spam has defiled the inboxes of unwitting victims. Since then things have gotten much worse, with Internet scams at an all time high and spam comprising up to 90% of all email.
If you're tired of cheery, politically-correct e-cards and want to say it like you mean it, check out Wrongcards' offerings. Their e-cards don't have animated fluffy bunnies or smiling sunflowers, but they do have direct, honest quotes and illustrations covering the obvious topics like birthdays and anniversaries.
Over the last few years we've seen the Palm OS platform stagnate while Microsoft, Apple, and Symbian continue to develop their mobile operating systems. Oh sure, there will be a new version of the Palm operating system at some point, but at this point we're not sure there will be any manufacturers willing to run Palm software on their devices.
