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The L-files - Gadget Family’s guide to being unproductive online |
This column has often discussed time saving tips and strategies to improve your skills in being organised. Of course, as you know, this is literary fraud. This month, we bring you an area in which the Gadget Family has real expertise and first hand knowledge. As a community service, we recommend you do not visit any of these top ten time-wasting sites.
1. StickCricket
http://www.stickcricket.com
Score as many runs as you can off 10 overs of fast, medium and slow bowling using the four arrow keys to drive, hook, cut or duck.
With more than one million visits a month from 500,000 individuals, stick cricket is proud to waste more office time online than (almost) any other net-based activity.
2. Radio on Demand
http://www.abc.net.au/streaming/audiovideo.htm
Missed the end of Julie McCrossin’s interview on Life Matters this morning? Catch it now. Many of the ABC’s best radio (and TV) programs are archived on the web, and can be listened to (or watched) at your leisure.
3. Footy Tips
http://footytips.com.au
Join us at Footy Tips for our fourth annual Super 12 tipping contest. Play for fame, glory and the admiration of your peers. Sign up at footytips.com.au and join the comp ‘Iluka’ to compete against the Northern Rivers’ finest.
4. Online Golf
http://nabiscoworld.com/games/nb_shock_nbge.htm
A fully-featured free online golf simulation. Play alone, set up a private game with distant friends, or (the most fun) click ‘Join Any Group’ and compete against golfers from all over the world.
5. ebay
http://ebay.com.au
Buy and sell anything at the world’s online marketplace. Brand new designer fashions, hard to find DVDs, sold-out concert tickets, pinball machines - you can spend hours of the day and spend hundreds of dollars.
6. Weather watching
http://mirror.bom.gov.au/products/IDR282.loop.shtml#image
Be able to anticipate local showers to the minute. Impress your patients by warning them in advance that they will need their umbrella to get to the car. Watch those rainstorms roll by on the Bureau of Meteorology weather radar based in Grafton.
7. Fantasy Rugby
http://www.fantasyrugby.com/s1205/
Select and coach your own Super 12 team. Fantasy Rugby provides you with the ‘virtual’ cash to assemble and manage your own team of international players.
Each weekend actual on field performance of your selected players is measured using thirteen key game stats, which earn you points. Buy and sell players each week in a stock market environment ensuring the best mix of players are scoring for you each weekend.
8. Webcams
Use a webcam to check out the surf at Byron - try www.weatherchannel.com.au. In fact, from http://www.earthcam.com/ you can check out just about anywhere (or anybody!). See who’s about in Times Square. Keep an eye on the penguins in the Indianapolis Zoo.
9. Flash up a movie
http://www.flashforward2004.com/default.asp?Location=15,121,651,827
Flash films are a genre of short animated films made for online viewing. At the Flash Forward site, you can view all the films that have won awards since they started in 2000. Try your hand at total knee replacement (http://www.edheads.org/activities/knee/swf/surgery.htm), winner of the educational award in San Francisco, 2004. Or catch up with the latest technology in cartoons.
10. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/game.shtml
It is the 20th anniversary of the ‘Interactive Fiction’ game based on the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. To celebrate, the BCC has made the whole game available online. Start with ‘Stand’ and ‘Turn on Light’. Twenty years on, I am still unable to get past a door that refuses to open unless I can prove my intelligence. I suspect that I have even less chance now than I did then.
(Ed. Note - it has now become clear why Gadget Man took so long to submit this article.)
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