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Posts with tag Geography

Filed under: Fun, Kids, Time-Wasters, Education

World Map geography tester

World Map by GameDesign
I'm not entirely sure if I should call this a time waster or an educational tool. I guess it can be both. If you're stuck in 9th grade geography (or know someone who it) it could certainly help.

If you're past all that school stuff and want to see how much geography you remember, check out the World Map by Game Design. You are given a world map and the names of 20 countries. You have about 10 seconds to find each country on the map.

If you are lucky to get some of the bigger countries it's quite easy, but once you have a few small African nations things become much more challenging. I'm not going to share my score. It's too embarrassing!

If you're good at naming countries but not finding them you can try the 192 UN recognized states in 10 minutes. Basically, once you load the page a timer starts to count down. You have 10 minutes to name as many UN recognized countries as you can.

When you type in a correct answer it is added to the list. So if you type something in and it doesn't disappear, it's not right. My biggest challenge was spelling some of the country names. I got about 70 countries entered before I ran out of time and had about 10 that I just couldn't figure out how to spell properly.

So, DLS readers, how are your geography skills?

[Via Eco Worldly]

Filed under: Internet, Web services

TP2Location: Track down where that wrong number came from

TP2Location
It's 2:00 in the morning and the phone rings. You roll out of bed and go grab your phone just in time to hear the person on the other end hang up, realizing it's the wrong number. You stumble back to bed and the phone rings again. You put a pillow over your head and fall asleep dreaming of what you'd do if you knew where that obnoxious caller lived.

TP2Location
can help. Well, to a degree. It won't give you a street address, but if you type any phone number into this web tool you'll get geographic information describing where the call came from. While this may not help you track down the person keeping you awake at night, it might help you decide whether you should place that overseas business call now or wait a few hours until the sun has risen on the other side of the ocean.

TP2Location also has a semi-useful Google Maps feature, which will bring up a map of the country corresponding to the phone number. While this would be great if you were looking at a country the size of Vatican City, the results for New Jersey and California phone numbers are identical: A map of the entire US.

[via MakeUseOf]

Filed under: Time-Wasters

Time-waster: How many countries can you name in five minutes?

How many countries

So you've got the Monday blues, and are looking for Download Squad to find you something stimulating, perhaps even intellectual to waste some time with? Look no further for we've got the perfect thing for you. "How Many Countries Can You Name" is a very simple, yet effective game in which all you need to do is think of, and type into your browser, as many countries names as you possibly can. In five minutes. With nearly 300 countries in the world, it's just as much a game of 'how fast can you type?' as it is 'just how many countries can you name?'

In the name of research (honest!), we've been playing with this a little, and managed to get the number of remaining (i.e. un-named) countries down towards the 200 mark, but we're sure that readers can do better!

[Via unEASYsilence]

Filed under: Fun, Games, Internet

Test your US geography with Statetris

StatetrisThink you can point out Idaho on a map? Then you're probably from Idaho. For everyone else, Statetris is a surprisingly challenging little game that lets you play Tetris with the US states.

Okay, the easy setting is pretty simple. States fall from the top of the screen and you have to put them in position. Since you fill the US from bottom to top, there really aren't that many possible choices for each tile.

But once you hit the medium and hard levels where you have to decide of a state is right side up or sideways, you'll wish you'd paid more attention during elementary school when it was time to memorize the states and capitals. Either that or you'll just decide to move to Canada where there are only 13 provinces and territories.

[via Neatorama]

Filed under: Fun, Games, Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Time-Wasters

Geography Knowledge: Time waster of the day

Time Waster Geography KnowledgeTest your knowledge on where things are, with this Geography Knowledge quiz. You can test yourself on everything from bodies of water to states or even continents. You get three chances to guess the correct answer, and the more questions you answer correctly the higher your score gets. It even gives you the maximum possible score that you can get next to your score, so you can figure out how well you did.

Where do you live? Can you correctly guess the places surrounding you? There are a lot of places in this world, good luck getting them right!

[Via Digg]

Filed under: Fun, Internet, Web services, Google, Social Software

See the world with Panoramio

panoramioPanoramio is a Google Maps mashup that lets you map your photos. It also lets you check out foreign, and local, destinations and images that others have submitted. With Panoramio, users store up to 2GB worth of digital images in their free account, and pinpoint the exact location they were taken, care of Google Maps. This could be a great way to walk your friends through a recent hiking trip in Arizona, or a European vacation route, or quite simply your path to work. I love these kinds of social mashups. They provide a ton of insight into geographical locations, and make me think more about locations that I might want to check out one day, and reminisce about locations that I once was. Not too many places are listed at the moment, but once this catches on, I'm sure its going to provide a lot of great content.

Filed under: Fun, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Web services, Freeware

Placeopedia: Putting Wikipedia articles on the map

PlaceopediaPlaceopedia is a brilliantly-executed Google Maps-powered site which aims to create a map of all the articles in Wikipedia which correspond to a real-world location. The site is attractive and slick and adding a new place from Wikipedia is extremely easy: you just start typing the name of an article and Placeopedia autocompletes as you type—a functionality that should be built into Wikipedia (Greasemonkey, anyone?)—and then you click on the corresponding location on the map. There's also RSS and raw XML data for the 50 most recently-added places as well as KML files for Google Earth. My only gripe with Placeopedia is that you have to click on a link in a confirmation e-mail after every single place you add; perhaps a necessary evil, but it would be nice to be able to add, say, five at a time.

Featured Time Waster

Forumwarz - a potentially offensive time waster

I pwn UAfter spending the better part of an hour on Forumwarz I still can't decide if it's just sick or if it's kind of fun. It's a bit like a car wreck on the highway. I know I shouldn't be looking but I can't quite turn away.

It's sick, it's twisted, it's the internet on it's worst level and darn it, it's kind of fun. At least for a little while.

Forumwarz is a parody role-playing game that takes place on the internet - or at least the Forumwarz version of it. Your goal is to complete missions that are given to you through a mock up of GoogleTalk called Sentrillion.

Your first "friend" is ShallowEsophagus who begins giving you missions to pwn various forums by being a troll. Depending on the character type you are assigned at start up, you have tools like drooling on the keyboard or bashing your head on the keyboard that you can use to destroy forum threads and eventually, pwn a forum.

Future missions involve buying illegal software from the Russians, pwning more difficult forums and other internet oddness.

Completing missions gives you cash, called Flezz in game, and items that you can pawn or use in other missions. The game is NOT for those easily offended. It's crass, coarse and there are frequent f-bombs in the fake chat sessions.

This is also a game for a more mature audience as it requires you to shop at the Drugs R Fun store to get various concoctions to improve your playing, engage in certain cyber activities to get more Flezz and just generally use a more adult perspective.

If you can get past that, here are the more enjoyable and time-wasting aspects.

View more Time Wasters

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