If you've ever wanted to drive the Autobahn in Germany, tool around London in an 18-wheeler or do doughnuts in the Googleplex parking lot, the Geoquake 2D driving simulator will help you out. The simulator uses Google Maps for its driving courses.
You can choose to drive through Tokyo Station, London, Las Vegas and several other locations. You don't even have to be a very good driver, since the 2D format allows you to just drive all over everything - quite handy when you keep forgetting which side of the road you should be on in London.
I had the best luck in Tokyo Station. In other locations I had frequent instances of driving over a plain gray screen as the frames per second weren't keeping up. That could be from my old computer or slow internet connection though, and not an issue for those of you with better connections.
It's certainly not a slick video game by any means but it is kind of cool to see what is possible in the future. Grand Theft Auto in your own neighborhood perhaps?
What the font from My Fonts is a web site designed to help you figure out the name of a font from a JPG file submission. For example, if you want to know what font DLS uses, capture a screen shot of some text, upload it on What the font and see what you find out.
It's pretty simple to use, just upload the image, fill in any missing letters and let the site do the work for you. I submitted several things - some that I knew the font name and some that I didn't - and always got a selection of possibilities.
There is also a forum so that if the online tool can't identify a font, other users can try their hand at it.
So, if you've had your eye on someone else's font and have been wondering what it is, now is your chance to find out.
After 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.
As a former high school teacher I have had my share of T-shirt designing responsibilities. Usually you choose some premade graphics, insert your specific text and colors and have the shirts made. Or, you make your own really cool design and pay a lot extra for it to be created.
Design Studio from Sonic Shack makes things a bit more interesting. It's a bit like CafePress but on your desktop and more fun in my opinion. You can upload your own photos or designs (JPG, PNG and GIF files), and add text and clip art from the stock library. There is even an entire category for skulls in the symbols section of the library.
There are also a lot of font choices and options to rotate and flip images to make things more interesting. To use the free version and save your design you have to enter your email address and a password and name the design.
It's nice to have this in a desktop application. It speeds the upload times if you are taking things directly from your own drives and you can use it without worrying about it the web is going to be slow that day. I found it relatively intuitive to use so there was no learning curve.
You can print shirts for as little as $18.50 each, which, for a totally customized, one of a kind shirt is not too bad. You can also add the Sonic Plug-in to your website and sell custom shirts and make a profit as well.
It's always nice to have a good laugh during an otherwise stressful workday, and what's more fun than laughing at outright supidity?
The Unintelligencer uses an array of sophisticated linguistic algorithms to convert your text from perfectly suitable English into the unrecognizable drivel you've gotten used to seeing on YouTube, Facebook, and all your other favorite sites.
Let's try an example from a favorite movie of mine: "i haved an wonderful girlfriend linda. 2gethr wee drove too small cabin ins da mountains. t seems an archeologist hads kum tew dis remote place 2 translate + study him latess phidn: necronomiconexmortis. thee book uv de ded."
Oh, the good times you'll have with this. Send that important departmental memo as a Moron, or shoot the moon and render it Incomprehensible. Unintelligencer offers 5 subtle shades of idiocy!
It's web based, so users of any operating system can utilize this fantastic - and unbelievably useful - tool. I'd like to see a reverse translation so I can finally understand what the hell some of these lolcat people are talking about.
Ok, I filed this under "fun," but once you give it a shot you might disagree with me.
I Wanna Be The Guy may be the most frustrating, hair-pulling game you ever play. As the developer states on one of his Zazzle shirts, it's "The game where everything kills you. Even the moon."
Within the first couple of minutes, I'd died more times than I cared to count, and that's the point. My poor keyboard nearly got smashed across the edge of my workbench. The game is so difficult (and addictive in a masochistic way) that you want to beat it just to say you did.
Levels have an old-school feel to them and borrow certain elements from some of your favorite classic games, like Bullet Bill and Zangief.
What makes it so hard? Anything can pop out from anywhere and kill you. Keep your eye on that wall, it'll start chasing you and then impale your unsuspecting butt.
IWBTG is kind enough to let you turn down the amount of splatter from your death, as well as music and sound effects - which can get a little irritating during an extended session.
This little baby is freeware, Windows only. If you're not ready for the full dose of insanity, grab the demo download and try the first few levels before taking the plunge.
If you didn't notice from reading my last massive time waster, I love classic gaming. I'm also a Firefox user, and always on the hunt for good addons like the rest of you. Thank god for FireNES, an awesome addon for Firefox that gives you ready access to a massive repository of NES games.
After you install it, customize your toolbar and add the FireNES button to give yourself one-click access to the sidebar. The full ROMs list is massive, The toplist contains the 100-or-so most played titles, and you can add any game to your list of favorites with a simple right click.
Best of all, you don't have to hunt down ROMs on horibly cluttered, scam-laden websites. Awesome.
The only possible downside to all this: habla usted español? The developer's page is Spanish only - not a big deal, the install link is easy to find and you can always run it through your favorite translation app.
If you think you're too old to do something like go back to college, learn how to scuba dive, or be social on the interwebs, you can either think again or stay beholden to your self imposed rigid beliefs. One person who throws such nonsense to the wind, is Ivy Bean, a 102 year old former mill worker, who has the distinction of being the oldest person on Facebook.
With 1,217 friends on Facebook (and climbing), Ivy's story has definitely resonated with people. She started with just 9 friends when her story was first published today. It just shows, even if you're late to the party, it's getting there that matters.
To find out more about Ivy and be her friend, check out the Oldest person on Facebook - Ivy Bean group.
Yes, I understand that a decent video card that will run Crysis can be had for just North of $100, but these fancy-pants games just aren't for me. I grew up with a Commodore 64, Wildcat BBS, and MUDs. Every now and then I get a hankerin' for some old-school gaming action, and here's where I go to get my fix.
Abandonia Abandonia is one of the biggest and best-known abandonware sites around. Abandonware is software the copyright holders don't support or distribute any more. Why does that matter? Well, it means that they mostly don't care whether someone like Abandonia distributes it for free (read Wikipedia for more).
And Abandonia is more than happy to redistribute forgotten classics. Their collection boasts such classics as Descent, Ghosts 'n' Goblins, Bad Street Brawler, Starflight, and Betrayal at Krondor. What's more, they have "extras" like boxshots, CD inserts, and printable maps for many of the titles.
Despite its seriously flawed name, Coccinella, the open source IM client, has some interesting features that might make you do a double take. The idea of chatting and having the ability to draw on a whiteboard, as well as play chess during a chat session sounds like fun, so I decided to give it a spin.
I learned from the process that Coccinella is the Latin name for ladybug. It is not, as I had thought originally, a bacteria found in pond scum. I continued my pursuit, preferring to focus on the cute little ladybug in the logo and ignore the unfortunate "ella" associations with the name.
Coccinella is a free download for Windows, Linux and Mac. After downloading the application, the set up assistant leads you to select from a list of servers to open a new account on. Although Coccinella can connect to any Jabber/XMPP instant messaging server including Google Talk, AOL, MSN and ICQ, you have to dig for information to find out how. The set up assistant leads you to select from various servers and so I created an account with Jabber.org. I was happy I did.
Earlier this week, I told you how the $1000 do-nothing application called I Am Rich had been pulled from the iTunes app store. While I doubt many people miss that particular bit of software, the latest app to be removed from the store was actually kind of fun: it's PhoneSaber, a lightsaber simulator for your iPhone. It uses the accelerometer in your device to respond as you swing your phone, making noises straight out of Star Wars. It was also free.
According to TheMacBox, the creators of the app, "I've had a chat with a guy from THQ Wireless (who own the rights for Star Wars apps on mobiles) and as we were always expecting, PhoneSaber is not allowed to be on there." Apparently THQ discussed the idea of an official, licensed PhoneSaber app, which could be tied to Star Wars advertising. TheMacBox is being given access to the original saber sounds to develop the new app, and they're pushing for it to remain free. If you have PhoneSaber already, you're probably safe: since the creators removed the app voluntarily, Apple probably won't remotely delete it from your device.
So here at Download Squad we've been into wasting time lately. Here's another time waster, this time all about physics.
You can visit Phunland and download Phun which is a 2D physics sandbox type game. Basically you have your toolbox of gears, levers, springs, boxes and more to build whatever your heart desires. You can start with a preloaded scene that has some pieces already there or go from scratch to build whatever you want.
I chose a wagon and added some springs to make it keep smashing backwards into the wall. I am more of a word nerd than a physics nerd so this was about the extent of my capabilities.
The media page has lots of YouTube videos of phun physics in action as well as a movie explaining phun and even playing the phun theme song. So if you need some phun fun check it out. If you're one of those people who finds physics enjoyable it just might get your creative juices moving on a boring afternoon.
I tried not to post about this, but after using it I just couldn't help myself.
Yet another head-in-hole type photo manipulator, Turbanizer takes your image and allows you to overlay any of several fashionable turbans. The simple interface provides the granular controls you'll need to create an oh-so-convincing composite: it'll scale your photo or the turban as well as tweak the color intensity of your fabulous new headgear.
With more than 120,000 beautiful creations to date, the public is clearly embracing the opportunity to try on a turban without making the lengthy plane ride to the Middle East. Why, Turbanizer's not only fun, it's also environmentally friendly! There's even support for your Flickr and Facebook photos (though laziness and the desire to produce the screenshot above necessitated a Google image search, in my case).
As a bonus, Turbanizer even displays interesting facts about turbans while you wait for their Flash application to load. Give it a try yourself - and as-salaam alaykum!
It looks like Apple has removed one of the most talked-about iPhone apps in its app store. The app doesn't do chat, it doesn't connect you to any web services, and it doesn't even let you enter any text. It's called I Am Rich, and it does absolutely nothing. The price tag? A reasonable $999.99. Apparently having its red gem icon on your iPhone's home screen is supposed to bring you a grand worth of prestige.
When this app was first discovered, there was an immediate flurry of folks wondering how it got past Apple's screening process. Although I can't find any comment from Apple, and the app's creator hasn't updated his website, the app store link to I Am Rich no longer works. I wonder whether the author made any sales before it was removed. At around $100 to develop, a single sale would leave him with 10 times what he put in.
This is a simple and quick time waster for you word nerds from Lunchtimers. Or even for those of you that always like to slip a naughty word into a scrabble game.
Remember those refrigerator magnets you had when you were a kid that were all letters? Letters is the same concept in your browser with one fun twist. Instead of just you playing with the letters you have to share with whoever else is logged in. When I tried it there were 12 people sharing letters.
Every time I got close to spelling out "Download Squad Rules" someone kept stealing my letters, moving them around and trying to put them into their own words. Of course when someone named Kevin tried to proclaim he was god, I took the time to change it to goofy which seemed to annoy him since the next thing he came up with was who?
There were plenty of people using their letters to spell out naughty words and plenty of others who would immediately try and change those naughty words into something nicer.
See what you can spell before someone steals your letters.
After spending the better part of an hour on 
Abandonia
