11 Web Toys and Generators to Waste Your Time

A couple of months ago, I listed 17 Web Toys for Your Procrastination Pleasure. Now that final exams are over, maybe you'll now have time to play with them -plus eleven more here. Some are fairly new, some are classics, and this list is heavy on music. Have fun!

1. Sort Your Socks

Dutch artist Jogchem Niemandsverdriet, who brought us the classic game of tweezing nose hairs, also has a game in which you sort socks. I do enough of that in real life, but online it's a pleasant distraction. And the graphic that rewards you for a job well done is worth the effort!

2. Incredibox

Design your own songs without knowing a thing about music with Incredibox. Even after you assign music parts to each singer, you can drop them, add more, and make it sound completely different.

3. Desktop Blues

If your taste run a little more to the traditional, try playing the blues with Desk Top Blues. Press all the buttons to familiarize yourself with the sounds before you turn the radio on, and then go crazy making your own blues! There are more soundboard toys linked in icons across the top of the page, like singing in the shower and Guitar Machine. Or you can go to the Instant Blues site to play more blues with different artists.

4. The Singing Horses

One of my favorite music generator toys from way back is the Singing Horses. They may look goofy, but each has a particular talent that blends well with the others. All you need to do is turn them on and off, one by one. Your timing in doing so is important.

5. The Whitney Music Box

The Whitney Music Box is a classic that's worth visiting over and over. It is a demonstration of motion graphics to accompany John Whitney 's book Digital Harmony. The dots are arranged to trigger notes on a chromatic scale when they pass the line. The dots are each timed to a different speed, but they synchronize themselves at constant intervals. Its a bit hard to describe, but you'll love seeing it in action. There are 20 music box variations.

6. iDaft

iDaft is a sound board on which you can recreate the Daft Punk song "Harder Better Faster Stronger" in your own way, using whatever lines you like in any order. It works! You can use a backbeat, but it's not necessary.

7. Tone Matrix

Tone Matrix is a simple audio sequencer. The time sequence is left to right, the audio tones range from high to low, top to bottom. Playing is automatic, so you can change the sequence as it plays nice marimba tones.

8. The Boobah Zone

Boobah is a British TV series for children. It was cancelled in 2005, but the interactive website accompanying it lives on, and has become a go-to spot for adult web surfers wasting time. The Boobah Zone has a great number of games, interactive art, and silliness you access by clicking different parts of the page. MANY different parts of the page!

9. Catflakes

It's snowing catflakes! Once you've watched this mesmerizing web toy for a while, you might notice the control panel at the bottom right. You can change the wind speed, the amount of catflakes, and even their colors. There's also a special button at the bottom you must try.

10. Cold Void

This interactive web toy Cold Void by Rafaël Rozendaal is a real "web" toy, in that you have a spider web you can tear down. Notice that it is one of many web toys you can access at the top of the page, although some contain flashing pages that may trigger an epileptic seizure. Some that don't include a nice controllable rain shower and a sweating watermelon. 

11. I Love You Like A Fat Lady Loves Apples

This is weird. There's a fat lady who loves apples, but you need to help her eat them. Then there are some other surprises along the way that make no sense. But does it have to make sense to be fun?

And if you look carefully, you may see that there are actually more than eleven web toys linked here (wink wink).