An interesting mixture of two of the internet's most powerful resources, Wikimapia takes the satellite photos from Google Maps and attatches Wikipedia-style entires to geographic locations. Just type in the name or co-ordinates of a given city, town, or neighbourhood to access encyclopedic information. And, just like the regular Wikipedia resource, if a place comes up lacking an entry, you can write your own! First launched in May of 2006, there are now more than 2 million locations that have entries and you can choose to embed any map entry onto your personal/business website. [More]

Jetspeed is a fast, frenetic sideways shooter. Your task is a simple, weave and bob your Jet in and out of traffic until you locate a tanker and then blow it up with a missile. Making that task tricky is a series of obstacles, such as beam-scanning drones, but also in a twist from the usual formula, a series of "downgrades" that reduces your jet's capability, making each new level harder and harder. [More]

At the impressive age of 107, Olive Riley of Broken Hill, Australia has become an overnight blogging sensation. With the help of her good friend Mike (who does the typing while she tells her stories) she launched "Life of Riley" on February 16th and has attracted thousands of visitors from around the world and accross every age. Filled with delightful photos and interesting stories and conversations, Olive describes a trip she took to Brisbane to visit her Grandchildren, where she went swimming and drank Shandys. Her second story involves an investigation into a local farmer who's being banned from growing lettuce and only time will show what she will post next. Make sure to check out the comments on her posts and you'll see the international spotlight she's grabbed. [More]

If you haven't gotten enough fashion gossip from the swirl of Oscars-related media lately, check out ShoutFit, a social web community inspired by the MySpace craze that allows users to build and show off their own outfits, save them in an online closet, and take a turn on a virtual runway. You can trade secrets, ask "experts" for advice, and select certain members to bestow them with "Trendsetter" status. All this plus the ususal social features - privacy controls, messaging, and photo galleries. Of course if you're looking to see the worst in fashion's there's the HideousSkit website I featured earlier. [More]

From the makers of the popular Samorost and Samorost 2 adventure games comes an evocative and charming short - "Plantage". Set to the music of Danish band Under Byen, this animation short gives us a glimpse into the lives of one of Samorost's orange, striped birds as it passes through the night-time, mossy world, through anicent worlds and over unsual creatures and eventually to a secret gathering amongst the trees. Created by Amanita Design. [More]

Applying mathematics and engineering techniques, the art of Origami has been given a huge upgrade through a process called Crease Pattern. Instead of following the traditional step-by-step folding patterns that result in paper sculptures made out of triangles and squares, Crease Pattern Origami involves organizing a higher number of smallers folds, or creases, into a single diagram that can take hours of pain-staking folding in order to reach an end result. As I'm sure you can see from this online gallery, the results are incredible in their detail and certainly worth the work. Robert J. Lang's Crease Pattern website celebrates both the art and the complex science behind this complex craft, offering up a wide range of free patterns for download should you feel crafty enough to try it out. There's insects, birds, mammals, figures, objects, and geometric designs including tessellations and molecular structures. There is an incredible amount of information here to explore.

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A website in Russia, called The Tattler, is offering a papercraft Bald Britney that you can download, print, cut, fold, and glue into a desktop companion for your cubicle. If you look closely, you can see they even added the lips tattoo on her wrist. To help the popstar out, they are also offering a selection of paper wigs that you can put together and place on your paper Britney. [More]

A major change is being made this year to the way we adjust for Daylight Savings. Here in North America, the decision has been made to make the switch three weeks early. It’s a change that does not exist within the programming of most of the world’s computers and gadgets. This means that, come March 11th, we could experience a large disruption in flight schedules at airports, billing problems with computer networks, and general confusion amongst all electronic and digital clocks as to what time it should be. [More]

In Silversphere you control a metallic ball with your arrow keys, rolling it accross a platform filled with obstacles towards a glowing blue vortex at the other end. Each platform is a tricky puzzle, offering gaps to fill, blocks to push, and other moving balls to avoid. And that's just the first two levels. Make sure to have a pen and paper handy to jot down the passcodes for each level so you can skip back to it later. Created by DX interactive [More]

From a Firely to a Gecko's foot, a monkey's larynx to dust from mars, the Virtual Labs Microscope comes with 90 awesome multi-dimensional samples that you can explore with a click of your mouse on your computer. Martian dust, a pentium computer chip, meteorites, a tapeworm, moss, and so much more. Once you load a sample into the program, you can increase the magnification, in some cases by up to 14400 times, adjust the focus and brightness. For the algae sample the labs suggest playing with the illumination setting, the polarization mode on the meteorites, and use both the X-Ray spectra and the imaging detectors on the sand samples. The free program is available for Windows, OSX, and Unix. For teachers and science geeks there are training materials you can download that explain the theories behind the process. And, make sure to check back for new imaging samples, they say their goal is to add a new one each week. [More]