So you've woken up today not feeling very well. What should you do? Document your symptoms using Google Maps. That's the idea behind Who Is Sick? a website that hopes to track illnesses as they appear around the world. You can zoom into your neighbourhood and look for pie-shaped icons representing people who are currently fighting some kind of bug. Each icon displays a number of coloured pie slices with each colour representing a specific symptom - red for runny noses, green for coughs, yellow for fever, etc. Clicking on an icon will give you more info (age, gender) although the idea is to have information submitted anonymously (well, as anonymous as putting an icon over your house can be). For those interested in watching trends and worried about tracking the spread of disease, the website comes with a number of statistical tools so you can see which symptoms are in the majority as well as search tools that let you filter the data by age, gender, and symptom. [More]

Spring can be an interesting time for technology as the arrival of warm weather and new life can put us all into a mood of fun and celebration. This makes it the perfect time for companies to launch some of their “out there” concepts. Today we look at the tentacles of LaCie’s new USB hub, HP’s new blemish-removing digital camera, a toothbrush that can play music inside your head, a robotic dragonfly, and an mp3 player you need to shake to use. [More]

Doodle is a fun platform game that takes place in a land of notebook scribbles. You use your arrow keys to move, jump and duck while hitting the space bar to use your sword to defend yourself against roaming enemies like the spiky balls. The object is to make your way through the maze-like complex and reach the flag at the end. [More]

Advertisers will often lead us to believe that Homemakers are unhealthily, fanatically obsessed with cleanliness. The virtual spokeswoman who stars in the viral website Splat The Mat is no different, in fact she takes it to a new level of annoying. The good news? It's done on purpose with a wink. In order to pitch a new stain-resistant floor mat she encourages you to use your mouse to drop a number of mess-inducing substances onto her mat. Of course she's standing rather close to that mat.... I wonder what would happen if.... [More]

Sundown's Sun Burn Piano features eight animated women who have all made the same mistake - worshipping the summer rays without wearing sun tan lotion. As a result, they have each picked up a nasty burn and if you use your mouse cursor and click on each of them they will let out a little yelp of pain. The yelps form a perfect scale of musical notes and the line of women can be played as a piano. You can play or create your own songs and even record them for repeated playback. If you don't know any songs, you can open up the jukebox and listen as the girls play perform a number of hits including "Here comes the sun", "Ouch of the tiger", and "Burnthoveen". You can also change the type of yelp the women let out, there's a choice of three styles. [More]

It's Friday! This week's puzzle room is a special treat as we return to one of the most popular series in the "no escape" genre. Mateusz Skutnik's 4th Submachine puzzle is called "The Lab" and is the largest complex of rooms, halls, and secret areas yet. As before, you are trapped inside this industrial complex and its up to you to use your mouse and wits to click about, explore, find hidden items, solve hidden puzzles and hopefully find a way out. If you are new to the Submachine series you can play the first puzzles in the series through these links - Submachine: Extended Version, Submachine 2: The Lighthouse, Submachine 3: The Loop , and Submachine Zero: The Ancient Adventure. Click here to see the other puzzle rooms in this section and as always, you can e-mail me at krisabel@gmail.com for clues and hints [More]

Greg Martin's The Polar Bears is a web animation of a polar bear as it roams its arctic territory. Using just a simple black outline against a white screen, Mr. Martin conveys the an incredible amount of visual information about his subject without actually drawing it, allowing his string-like lines to create a 3D body that captures the unique swagger and curiosity of a bear on the prowl. [More]

Got Duck is a website devoted to introducing High School students to the benefits of attending Williams Woods University in Fulton, Missouri. Of course that's not why I'm featuring it here, no, it's the talking duck that greets you when the website loads up. That alone makes it worth the visit, but if you sign up for their mailing list you'll be sent a special password (ducksown) that you can use to unlock a number of crazy items from the website including a squirrel rant, a crank-calling horse named "smarty jones", a surreal video, and two videos spooking MTV shows - "Cribs" and "Ridez". Not sure if it would convince me to apply to Williams Woods, but it's certainly creative. [More]

Set your alarm clocks, your PVRs, and/or your VCRs for tomorrow (Friday) morning's episode of Canada AM on CTV. I will be showcasing a collection of wild, fun, and unusual gadgets including an exclusive preview of Elvis Alive, a singing, talking animatronic bust of the King. Officially sanctioned by the Presley Estate, this robotic Elvis uses infra-red vision and motion-tracking sensors to react to his environment. Motion-captured facial expressions allow him to add emotion as he sings signature hits like Heartbreak Hotel, Love Me Tender, and Hound Dog amongst others. It's a sight that will stop you in your tracks. I'll be posting more details about this and my other crazy gadgets here tomorrow. [More]

Coming this summer as an exclusive for the PlayStation 3, the new PlayStation Eye is an improved version of the EyeToy that was launched for the PS2, offering a better microphone for chatting and voice recognition commands, an improved low-light condiitions camera for video chatting and taking still pictures, and will include special photo and video editing software to help you add cool effects and save your work onto the PS3's hard drive. Full specifications after you click on "More" [More]