Linerider

Part Jackass stunt, part physics lesson, Line Rider encourages users to "draw" their own ramps, hills, and slopes with a pencil tool, then sends a virtual sledder (wearing a red scarf) along the route until he swoops, swerves and crashes. Build an elaborate enough course and you'll feel like a little kid playing in the snow again, zooming downhill, popping up in the air, wiping out on a ramp jump a la Evel Knievel. Check out http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/40255643/

Sound Sleeping

The Sound Sleeping website lets you mix together loops of rain, thunder, ocean waves, and other relaxing sounds using a simple flash application, resulting in a blend of sounds to help you sleep or relax. Check out http://www.soundsleeping.com/

Learn to juggle

Impress your family and friends by learning how to juggle with this simple instructional video from Jason Garfield of the World Juggling Foundation: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6366713757585864298 

SoundtrackNet

Filmmusic.com was founded in mid-1996 as an idea to centralise Internet resources relating to the genre of film and television music. The site includes movie soundtrack reviews, interviews with the musicians behind popular and current soundtracks, and previews of upcoming movie scores. Check out http://www.filmmusic.com/

Suggestica

Looking for a good book to read on motivation? There are hundreds, possible thousands to choose from. The Suggestica website uses "trusted experts" to recommend books in various topic areas including self-help, business, motivation and relationships, saving you the hassle of finding the right titles to read yourself. Check out http://www.suggestica.com/

How many of me?

There are 300 million people in the United States. How many of them share your name? Find out by visiting http://ww2.howmanyofme.com/

Tangerine

Tangerine is an amazing little Mac application from Potionfactory (http://www.potionfactory.com) that scans your music library and analyses all of your songs, determining their beat intensity and beats-per-minute value. You can then make playlists based on this data. What this means is you can make a playlist for slow relaxing music, hard workout music etc without having to hunt those song types down using the genre or artist field in iTunes.
I tend to listen to music by genre as I work - sometimes I feel like classical, or Pink Floyd, or Dire Straits, or movie soundtracks, or tv themes... Tangerine will now let me create playlists based on “feel,” and that’s gonna change my whole working experience.

The app looks very cool too - it looks a lot like iTunes, with album art and a cute little spinning Tangerine as it processes your songs and analyses their beat. I’ve got 14246 songs in iTunes and it only took an hour or two to analyse them all.

Grab the beta yourself at http://www.potionfactory.com/blog/

Daily Comics

If you enjoy comics like Dilbert, Peanuts and Garfield, check out http://www.quadspeed.com/comics.html for these and other comic strips, updated daily.

Self publishing via the web

Want to publish your own book? Lulu is an on-demand publishing service that prints and ships each book as it is ordered, then offers online tools for authors to sell and market their books over the Web. With no upfront fees, Lulu (http://www.lulu.com/) takes a commission only when each book is sold. Blurb (http://www.blurb.com) works in a similar way - it's  self-professed goal is to "bring book publishing to the masses," in part through software that helps authors lay out their manuscripts. Each company transmits the author's final manuscript over the Internet to a professional printing firm, where it is printed, bound and shipped directly to the purchaser or author. No warehouses or bookstores are involved, as in traditional publishing. Blurb and Lulu say they are unleashing people's pent-up desire to publish books that otherwise might have never existed, much the same way that Web logs triggered a new wave of self-expression.

If we disappeared...

What would happen to the Earth if mankind suddenly disappeared? According to the Times Online (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2399972.html), within hours, nature would begin to eradicate its impact. In 50,000 years all that would remain would be archaeological traces. Only radioactive materials and a few man-made chemical contaminants would last longer - an invisible legacy. Check out the timeline image at http://www.treehugger.com/files/doom_1.php

Cute Animal Pictures

If you need some "cute" in your week, check out these animal pictures from Kalamazoo Animal Rescue: http://www.kalamazooanimalrescue.org/funnies/fun_pics/fun.htm

Phrase Finder

Here's a list of Latin phrases and sayings (including translations) that are used in English often enough to have become part of the language - http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/latin-phrases.html

Check it out...

The Ancient Web

The Ancient web is an online resource for Students, Teachers, and anyone interested in the cultures of the ancient world. Current cultures listed on the site include those of Chile, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Peru, Romania and Spain, with more on the way. Check out http://www.ancientweb.org/

Check it out...

Fix those photos

If you've ever wrestled to get a decent shot of the outside and inside when shooting indoors on a sunny day, or been disappointed to find your subject silhouetted when shooting into the sun, this website has the answer. Joshua Keay describes simple techniques you can use in any version of Photoshop to restore detail to underexposed areas of a photograph. Check out http://www.photojojo.com/content/tutorials/five-minute-photo-fix/

Check it out...

Convert Anything

The website "Media Convert" at http://media-convert.com/ will convert audio, video, documents and spreadsheets from one format to another at no cost. Simply upload a file (50MB or less) and choose the output format, and the site will convert the file for you. Hundreds of different format types are available, for example, you could convert a PDF document into a Flash animation

Check it out...

The Great Books

The Access Foundation holds that time spent reading the Great Books is time well spent. Great books lists are not meant to be exclusive of any tradition or culture, but rather form a foundation of knowledge on which to stand. Reading the great books allays the "busyness" of modern life; encourages self-examination, increases reflection, and provokes intellectual curiosity. From the ancient classics to the masterpieces of the 20th century, the Great Books "are all the introduction you’ll ever need to the ideas, stories, and discoveries that have shaped modern civilization." Check out http://www.anova.org/

BookMooch

BookMooch lets you give away books you no longer need in exchange for books you really want. It's as simple as entering the name of a book you want to give away. Once someone requests the book and you send it to them, you earn a point you can use to request a book from someone else. Check out http://bookmooch.com/

Cocktail collection

The cocktail search tool at http://www.bolscocktails.com/ uses a clever flash tool to help you locate cocktail recipes by sweetness and strength.

100 words

The idea behind 100 Words is simple: Write 100 words, no more, no less, every day. Read some of the 24000 entries submitted by visitors (or submit your own) at http://www.100words.net/

Roman Numerals

The Roman Numerals section at Nova Roma explains the numbering system the Romans used, and includes a tool to convert the Arabic numerals we use today into the numbering system of the Romans. Now you'll be able to understand the release dat at the end of movie credits... check out http://www.novaroma.org/via_romana/numbers.html

4 year old drumming prodigy

Igor Falecki is 4 years old, and can play the drums better than many adults. Check out the amazing video of Igor currently sweeping the web: http://axiomsun.com/home/misc/4_year_old_drumming_prodigy.html

Facebook

Facebook is a social utility that helps people better understand the world around them. Facebook develops technologies that facilitate the spread of information through social networks allowing people to share information online the same way they do in the real world. Facebook is made up of many networks - individual schools, companies or regions - each of which are independent and closed off to non-affiliated users. To join Facebook, people can authenticate into a school or work network, or they can join a regional network. They can then create profiles to connect with friends, share interests, join groups, send messages, writes notes and post photos. Facebook registrations are now open to everyone at http://www.facebook.com/