time-wasters

Playing God on your iPhone

Pocket God is an open-ended, relatively crude (in more ways than one) simulation game in which you rule over a small tribe of extremely durable and cartoonishly primitive islanders. If you're new to the game, the otherwise intuitive interface can be a little overwhelming at first--because with each free update, Pocket God adds some new feature to the game world, all accessed through touch interaction with the island's inhabitants and the game's dense, icon-based drop-down menus. Actions range from extremely simple ("poking" an islander and watching him react, or shaking your device to create an &… Read more

Make gorgeous experimental mouse art with Bomomo

Bomomo is a wonderful Flash-based art application that runs in your Firefox or Safari browser. Instead of giving you some simple MS Paint-like tools like a paintbrush, bucket, and eraser, everything in Bomomo is dynamic and moving, leading to some kaleidoscopic creations that you can either e-mail to friends or squirrel away to your hard drive. I spent about 15 minutes layering effects on top of one another, and while the results aren't nearly as professional looking as SXSW Interactive winner Viscosity (review), if you know what you're doing you can create some really gorgeous abstract creations.

What … Read more

Can't come up with any awesome ideas? Here, try this

Ever wish you could come up with the next big thing? The Directors' Bureau's Idea Generator can help you out. It's a Flash app that will tell you how to make a million dollars by randomly choosing a set of words that comprise a potential "idea."

Let's overlook the fact that I wound up with "erotic rubber appliance." Then I re-spun and was given "scary paper book." Okay, now I think we're getting somewhere.

(Via Core77)

Toy Crave: Batteries not included

See what happens when I go away? Someone gives Tim a microphone and all heck breaks loose! Actually, I'm just jealous that I wasn't here to play with all of these awesome toys. Excuse me while I go liberate that Millennium Falcon from Tom Merritt's office...

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Just say no to lame holiday parties

Not to brag, but Crave gets invited to lots of holiday parties. More parties than we care to attend, in fact. And while we do try to send heartfelt regrets to, say, our parents, for the most part we reserve our witty comments for this site. Which is why we're fond of the Holiday Party Excuse Generator from interactive design firm Enlighten. You select the type of party, your feelings for the host, the tone, and how believable you want your excuse to be. The Excuse Generator does the rest, producing pithy replies that start with such phrases as &… Read more

Facebook's Firefox extension is either awesome or annoying. We can't really tell yet.

Although the once-exclusive social networking site Facebook has since opened up to the general public, its user base still largely consists of high school and college students who are prone to procrastination. In fact, Facebook's facilitation of voyeuristic procrastination is one reason that it probably caught on so virally in the first place. And now, Facebook users can integrate procrastination right into their Firefox 2.0 browsers, with the just-announced Facebook Toolbar. It really gives the service an always-there presence on your Web surfing experience. Paranoiacs might find it a little Big Brother-ish, kind of like they did when … Read more