|
OK, let’s be honest. How many of you actually put in a total of
eight hours of real work per day? If
your answer to that question is around six hours spent working with the rest of
the time spent goofing off, then you are right in line with the rest of the
country. Actually, Kentucky ranks third highest in the country in time spent at
work not doing work—we Kentuckians tend to waste on average almost three hours
per day. Now, I’m not one to judge. Truthfully, as is the case with nearly every
person alive who has ever had a job, I’ve been known to spend a little quality
time playing Solitaire at work… In fact,
I am dedicating this week’s article to helping you have a little fun while you
are at your PC, not doing work. But if
you get caught, don’t blame me. This
week we’ll take a look at some cool websites that offer fun and free games to
play. Preferably while you are at home
and not on the clock.
Online gaming is a trend that
has been popular on the internet since the early 90’s, possibly even before
that. Many popular retail computer games
allow online playing against multiple opponents. Star Wars Galaxies, Halo, and Half-Life are
among the best, in my opinion. But these
games cost money in order to install them on your computer and then you really
need a high-speed connection to play them effectively. Thankfully, there are a multitude of games
out there you can play online for free.
Most sites will require you to register and others may also require you
to download and install some software to enable game-play, but these are simple
tasks that do not take very long. There
are too many sites on the internet to list each and the games they offer, so
aside from listing a few personal favorites, I will simply say this: go to
Google.com and search for the name of the game you want to play.
Now for you children of the
80’s who remember spending all day in an arcade, dropping quarters into slots
in order to have the privilege of blasting some aliens, you simply must visit http://www.tripletsandus.com/80s/80s_games/arcade.htm.
This site has PacMan, QBert, Frogger,
Defender, and the best game ever developed, Galaga, among others. If only this site had been around in 1985 I
could have saved my parents thousands of dollars in quarters. That would have been totally awesome to the
max, dude. If Poker is your game, then
try out BetFairPoker.com where you can bluff along with players from all over
the world. You can usually find me in
one of the Texas Hold’em rooms, wiping ‘em clean under the screen name
‘Daday’. And for those of you with
little ones, go to KidsDomain.com/games to find a list of games appropriate for
children.
Whenever you play online, be
sure to never give your credit card information. There are plenty of sites out there that
allow you to play for real money.
Remember that this is illegal and that most if not all of these sites
are based in another country. As a
result, if you become a victim of credit card fraud it could be very difficult
to set things right. Also, be careful to
play responsibly; I was playing a game of online Cornhole a while back and
wasted about three hours in what seemed like five minutes.
Now, for the Cool Site of the
Week... This week’s site is
Wikipedia.com. Building on the very
popular ‘Wiki’ technology that allows website visitors to edit content on a
site, this is a world-wide, free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. No matter what subject you are researching
you can probably find it here. And, if
you have expertise on a particular subject, you can edit the encyclopedia entry
and expand on the description. You can
even add an entirely new entry into the online encyclopedia if you wish. Your text is then made available to others
who visit the site. Wikipedia.com is a
fun and informative site that I use very frequently.
On a personal note, I would
like to say a heart-felt thank you to all those who have contacted me with
feedback on this weekly article. It is
good to know that the time spent every week in putting together this ‘labor of
love’ is not in vain. I appreciate your
comments and ask you to continue to let me know your thoughts on how I can
improve this weekly feature focusing on technology.
As always, if you have any
questions or suggestions for future articles, please email me at mike@MikeBryant.com.
|