Here's a fun extension from the experimental section of Mozilla's Firefox add-ons site. It's called Puzzle, and once installed lets you turn any image from a page you're on into a sectional puzzle with pieces that can be moved around. Upon completion you have the option to ramp up the difficulty, which goes all the way up to a 15x15 grid. It's also able to resize larger images into smaller, laptop-friendly versions.
To toggle it on you simply right click on an image and select which difficulty you want. It then opens up the image (in puzzle form) in a new tab.
I didn't have any luck getting it to work with Firefox 3.1 beta 2, however it worked fine in the current public build of Firefox 3. As with all experimental add-ons, you'll need to be registered with Mozilla to download it.
With Puzzle installed you can take any photo and turn it into a quick game.
(Credit: CNET Networks / Josh Lowensohn)File this one under "cute, but not there yet." One of the new Web sites that was showcased at Tuesday's New York New Tech Meetup was PictureDots, which falls under one of my favorite categories of Web 2.0: borderline useless time-wasters. Basically, with PictureDots you can create your own connect-the-dots puzzles, share them with your friends online, or print them out for your favorite kids (of any age). Kind of a cool idea, especially when you think of the procrastination opportunities.
(Credit:
Picture Dots)
But there's a downside. It's cute, but it's not particularly efficient. You have to manually insert the "dots" for your puzzle, which can take a lot of time. If there were some way to "smart-select" the edges of what you want to select (a la Photoshop), it'd be a much easier process. Besides, I still can't think of a reason why I'd want to take the time to make a connect-the-dot puzzle. But I'm sure there are folks out there who think otherwise.
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