I've had the Sonacom Experience site on my list of things to blog about for a long time, but could never really figure out how to describe it. It appears to be a front-end for a French design and production firm's website.

The site is a Flash-based web toy, where you click on floating globes to unleash visuals and sound stored inside of them. You can control the color of the globes, and the colors match up with feelings or themes. For example, red is Aggression, purple is Vibration, and blue is Imagination.

Sonacom Experience is intriguing and fun to play with, but there isn't really a point. And maybe the lack of a point is the point - Sonacom is more of an art installation than it is game or application, sort of a "look what we can do". It has the same addictive quality as popping bubble wrap; I keep thinking I'll just burst one more globe to see what's inside, then close the site. Just. One. More.

Ninja Roll 2 is a simple ball rolling game that has you drawing a line for your "ninja ball" to roll and bounce down. The goal of the game is to collect all of the stars on each level.

The game has a very sparse look, and the physics of the ball remind me of the superballs that I played with as a kid. It's actually frustrating how bouncy this ball is. Sometimes it's hard to maintain momentum because just as your ball is about to ascend a ramp, it hits some tiny bump and bounces off in an unexpected direction. To be fair, part of the fun of playing Ninja Roll 2 is watching the ball make crazy moves.

Some of the levels appear physically impossible at first, but that's where your ball's incredible bounciness becomes an advantage - you can make it perform moves that you would have never thought possible.

My only gripe with the game is that for some reason it was choppy to the point of almost being unplayable when running in Firefox, but in Safari it is perfectly smooth.

Downhill Snowboard is a physics game with a human dimension. You play the part of the snowboarder, and your job is to successfully navigate down the hill, while pulling off tricks over the various jumps you encounter along the way.

The game is very similar to side-scrolling car-based games that require you to maneuver over jumps and other obstacles, but in this case you do not have an engine, and must rely on the power of gravity to pull you down the hill.

My favorite part of Download Snowboard is how your character moves on the screen. Though you only have very limited control over his movements, somehow the developer managed to make the snowboarder's body move in a relatively natural way, particularly with how the knees flex when landing from a jump.

As mentioned, the controls in the game are limited; you can lean your snowboarder back and forth, jump, and grab either the front or back of the board while in the air. While the graphics in the game are simple and repetitive, there are a wide variety of courses ranging from shallow and long high-speed courses to steep and short hazard-ridden courses.

Neon Maze is a fresh take on maze games. The goal of the game is to reach the goal square with your spaceship, but to do so you need to navigate through a maze of variously colored neon barriers. The only way to pass through a barrier is to change your spaceship to the same color as the barrier, which can be done by passing over color pods spread throughout each level.

The puzzles are challenging, but not too challenging, and the way the spaceship moves when controlled with the mouse has a nice, springy quality, yet it responds in a very snappy fashion.

The game becomes more complicated once you advance to a certain point, and the neon bars become "locked". To open them, you need to have the key of the same color, which you can only get if your spaceship is that same color. If it sounds complicated, it can be, but it's also a good way of twisting things yet one more time to keep the challenge level up.

Try as I might, I just can't get away from the physics games. There's something so compelling about applying real-world movement to a game, even if sometimes the physics are only approximations of reality.

Collider, the game I'm into currently, does a fairly good job of approximating balls rolling down ramps and chutes, and otherwise reacting to gravity. There are three types of balls in Collider: positively charged balls, negatively charged balls, and neutral balls. The goal of the game is to get all of the positive and negative balls to touch, causing them to explode and disappear.

Complicating matters is that when two similarly-charged balls touch, they combine into a larger ball. Conversely, if a large positive ball touches a smaller negative one, the negative ball disappears, and the larger positive ball shrinks proportionally.

Your only control in Collider is to place the balls on the playing board, but you are limited by the "radiation line", which is at different heights on different levels. Once you choose positions for all of the balls (and you have to place all of them), you can press the Play button and watch the level unfold.

The first few are easy, but the difficulty ramps up fairly quickly. Luckily (for some), solutions are available for any level if you get stuck - just click the I button on at the top-left of the window, and amongst the options is a Show Solution link.

Kinetikz is a simple shooting physics game where the goal is to shoot discs at a ball and manage to move the ball into the goal tile. Getting the ball into the goal replenishes your limited supply of discs, while running out of discs ends the game.

Figuring the angles is reminiscent of playing billiards, but the variously shaped game boards coupled with hazards like small blocks and levers complicates matters somewhat. The levers in particular add an element of interest to the game; some levers are unpowered, and can be moved by shooting discs at them, while others are motorized and move of their own accord.

If I had to describe a recipe for this game, I'd go with one part playing the angles, one part timing, and one part frustration when the first two parts don't work out perfectly. That being said, this game certainly has a challenging, addicting quality.

Sometimes developers hit the nail on the head when they name their applications. Make A Celebrity Odd is a pretty much perfect name for what the service does. The entire capability of this site is to take a celebrity's name, look up a headshot of them, and make it look weird by applying a mirror-type effect similar to one of the ones you might use in Photo Booth on a Mac.

The fun of it is that it seems to be able to consistently find head shot photos, and this is done through Microsoft's new Bing search engine's API. According to the site, this API offers a unique way to restrict photos found to just faces without showing shoulders, while Google can return faces but there is no ability to get specific about whether or not shoulders are shown. Interestingly, the site falls back to Google if not enough results are found on Bing, which is probably a wise choice. The example image on this post clearly must have come through the fallback Google search.

I wasn't sure what the copyright issues would be with a service like Make A Celebrity Odd, but given that everything on this site is done on the client-side via JavaScript, there may not be any. This is arguably no different than if I were to grab a photo of a celebrity online and put it in Photoshop, then manipulate it for my own entertainment.

Except, of course, that this is a web service that appears to display modified images that likely have copyrights on them.

So, what do you think? Aside from being a fun little time waster for a few minutes, is this site a legitimate use of search results? Do you think Make A Celebrity Odd is on shaky legal ground?

I Love Traffic is a unique take on a flow-management game. In it, you play the part of traffic computer, turning lights green and red to control the flow of traffic. Some roads you have control over, while others are free-flowing. This means that to avoid accidents, you need to carefully manage which lights you turn green, and for how long.

The game view is top-down, and while the graphics are simple, crashes have satisfying skid marks and believable motion accompanied by a solid "crunch" sound. Sometimes it's actually not all that disappointing to fail a level when your mistake results in a multi-car pileup, with cars being bounced into other lanes of traffic. A failed level also results in a random fact being displayed, which is sort of fun until they start repeating and you realize you're having too much trouble with that level.

I Love Traffic is a short time waster, and it should take only about 15 minutes to complete the game. My biggest pile-up resulted in about 8 cars shooting off in different directions. Let us know how badly (or well) you do.

Do you like mind-bending puzzle time wasters? If so, I think you're going to like Magneboy. The game play is simple, but the game quickly becomes a thinker. You play the part of Magneboy, and you have the ability to move yourself over gaps of space to steel tiles using your magnetic ability. Some of the other tiles on the board are moveable using your magnetic powers, and still others have effects that change the direction or effect of your magnetism.

The game has a fun, whimsical look and feel, which makes me feel bad for not feeling as calm as the game appears to deserve. But seriously - sometimes the tiles simply won't move the way I want them to. It's frustrating. I mean fun, yes - fun. Frustratingly fun. That's a thing, isn't it? Now it is.

Magneboy: Frustratingly fun.

While pretty graphics are nice, my favorite time wasters are those that have a great concept, and I'm particularly partial to physics games. Color Infection is definitely one of my favorites.

I was therefore very happy to discover that there is now a sequel, Color Infection 2. The concept and game-play is all the same, but this iteration is a little more challenging. In particular, the later levels start using multiple weighted platforms that have you counting on your fingers and backwards trying to make sense of it all.

If that sort of thing is your bag, you're going to like Color Infection 2. If not, I find I keep coming back to Learn to Fly; maybe that would be a good alternative.

Chain of Fire is a strange time waster for me to write about, because the goal of the game is to kill all of the people on each level by burning them alive. It's sadistic, sociopathic, and yet somehow compelling. I sort of wish the game had a different theme, since the gameplay could have been exactly the same if the game was focused around infection, or some other form of passing along a state.

In any event, it's not - it's all about burning cute little stick figures that are running around with no hope for survival.

Game play is simple - you can choose a person to set on fire by clicking them, then clicking the direction you want them to run once they have ignited. Any person or tree that person comes in contact with will then also ignite. The goal is to burn as many people or trees as possible with the least number of clicks to meet the point value listed for each level. Typically this means you must burn everything in one or two ignitions.

There's so little interaction after lighting off your first man, yet the game is sort of mesmerizing in the same way that the simple computer game Life is mesmerizing to watch play out. The main difference, of course, is that while in Life the goal is to preserve life as long as possible, in Chain of Fire it's the opposite.

Redstar Fall is a game that falls into the "balancing games" genre of time waster. The goal of the game is to carefully lower the red star onto the main platform without letting it fall off the side, by carefully removing the blocks that are supporting it in the correct order.

The game is definitely a no-frills affair, with an almost spartan look, but that's not a bad thing; the game play is very solid, and while the graphics aren't stunning, they're very functional and don't detract from the game's fun in the slightest.

Some of the later levels include blocks that can't be removed, exploding blocks, and multiple platforms, only one of which is the correct one.

The game is fairly quick to complete, making it a good choice if you're looking for something on your coffee break that isn't going to tempt you to continue playing into work time.

There's a certain style of time waster that I find incredibly addicting - those in the "see how far it can fly" genre. Two previous favorites include Shopping Cart Hero, and Air Voltare. If you like those games, you're going to love today's Time Waster, Learn to Fly.

In Learn to Fly, you play the part of a penguin who is not happy to be a flightless bird. Your job is to research the best way to achieve flight, which in this case involves sliding down a ramp and flying through the air with a glider strapped to your back and rockets strapped to your sides.

There are 4 increasingly harder levels to master in Learn to Fly, but as you go you can purchase power-ups for your equipment and your abilities. To beat each level, you must exceed set goals for height, distance traveled, length of flight, and top speed. To win the game you must travel at least 6000 feet, and you then receive a rating based on how many "days" (test flights) it takes you to get there. It took me 25 days to achieve flight.

I have to say, this sort of time waster often does not have an end goal, but rather continues on ad infinitum. It's nice to know that once you hit the 6000 foot mark, you've won the game. How many days will it take you to achieve flight?

Little Wheel is a wonderfully-illustrated puzzle game starring a robot in a city where the power is out and everything is broken and needs repairing. The levels are cast in shadow against a slick sunset background that suits the game's collection of machines perfectly. Little Wheel is also one of the only flash games I've played with a soundtrack that didn't drive me nuts after 30 seconds. Sure, the fun, jazzy music does get repetitive, but it's good enough to leave on for a little while. The sound effects are great, too.

A little while is probably all you'll need to beat Little Wheel. It's a pretty game, but the puzzles are a little easier than I'd like. Wanton pointing and clicking can get you through some levels, but it's worth playing each level just to see what the machines do. I wish it were longer and more complex, but Little Wheel looks and sounds better than most of the casual puzzle games out there.

Here's another physics-based time waster. In Roly-poly Cannon your job is to kill all the cute little Roly-polies, using as few exploding cannonballs as you can. The levels include exploding TNT barrels, moveable objects, and various materials like wood, rock, ice, and metal.

This one is on the brain-dead side as far as physics puzzle games go. If you get frustrated, just start shooting a stream of cannonballs, and in all likelihood you will succeed. Interestingly, it seems that if you shoot enough cannonballs unsuccessfully, you will be mercifully taken to the next level. This one is perfect for when you're up late at night and you don't know why but you can't or don't feel like going to bed but you can't really think anymore and everything's just getting to you and nothing's going your way and you just want to do something mindless and killing cute little characters makes you feel powerful in your pathetic and meaningless dreary existence. Or is that just me?