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Filed under: Fun, Games, Kids, Time-Wasters, Web

Savanna Blocks - falling block puzzle Time Waster

Savanna BlocksSavanna Blocks is a falling-blocks puzzle game created by Clockwork Monster that uses a fresh take on a tired genre. In Savanna Blocks your goal is to draw a line through groups of blocks that are touching either horizontally or vertically (not diagonally) to clear them from the board. As soon as you release your mouse button, the blocks that you've drawn on will disappear, but if you draw outside of the group of touching same-color blocks, your line will disappear.

Adding to the challenge is the fact that while you're busy connecting 10 blocks together, rows are being added to the bottom of the screen, shifting the blocks in play and potentially ruining your current line.

There are also special blocks available that will slow down the addition of new lines, blow up an entire line, or simply give you bonus points. The special blocks can be added on to any adjacent grouping you are making.

Savanna Blocks takes only seconds to learn, but I was surprised at how addictive the gameplay is given how tired I am of falling blocks games. Give it a try, you might be surprised too.

Filed under: Internet, News

China blocks RSS feeds

ChinaWhile China has a history of blocking computer users' access to many sites on the world wide interwebs, many clever Chinese citizens have figured out that RSS feeds provided a way around the Chinese firewall. Until now.

Ars Technica reports that China has started blocking any URL that starts with "feeds," "rss," and "blog." That makes it pretty difficult to access the feeds for an awful lot of websites, including pretty much any site syndicated by FeedBurner.

It looks like some Chinese users are having success with online feed-readers like Newsgator. We'll see how long it takes before China bans Newsgator. In the meantime, there's always proxies and anonymous web browsers like Tor.

If you want to find out if your website is blocked in China, Website Pulse has a Great FireWall of China testing tool.

[via TechCrunch]

Filed under: Internet, OS Updates, Windows, Microsoft

Microsoft helps block Internet Explorer 7 update

No IE7Yesterday David reported that Microsoft will be pushing Internet Explorer 7 to all Windows XP users via Automatic Update in Q4 of this year. He also reported that Microsoft will "provide corporations with the ability to optionally block or postpone the automatic download and installation of IE 7." In case you're wondering how, here's your answer: Microsoft has released Internet Explorer 7 Blocker Toolkit, an official tool that will prevent Automatic Update from delievering IE7. The target market for this is system administrators whose essential browser-based apps might break in the new browser, but that doesn't stop the individual IE-haters and ultra-paranoid from using it, too.

[Thanks, Abdul!]

Featured Time Waster

Graveyard Shift - zombie-busting Time Waster

With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

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