Features

www.fazed.org
Fazed is more detrimental to office productivity than a power cut. Its stock in trade are those belly-laugh YouTube videos, staggering photos and heinously addictive Flash games. Yet, unlike Trevor in Marketing, who regularly spams the entire company with videos You've Been Framed would sneer at, the quality control at Fazed is awesomely high. That's because, like Slashdot, it encourages reader submissions, but allows only sites approved by its eight administrators to adorn the homepage. Search the archive for the Prank The Wife video for a morsel of what to expect.

www.angryalien.com
The problem with watching movies is that it takes longer than installing Vista on a 486. So for time-starved film-buffs everywhere, Angry Alien Productions has ingeniously condensed classic movies into 30-second animations. Starring bunnies. Our particular favourites are bleeped-out versions of Reservoir Dogs and Star Wars, the latter of which includes its own out-takes. Of course, the parodies make more sense if you've seen the films in the first place, which rather undermines our introduction. Dammit.

www.eurogamer.net
While our venerable games section gives you the lowdown on the latest PC titles, the comprehensive Eurogamer covers the entire gamut of consoles too. Reviews are spikily written with a decent dollop of humour: it describes the latest FIFA football title, for example, as "like one of those tacky little French cars that used to come in a Special Edition with an Olympics logo on the side and a bonus electric sunroof." A neatly presented bar graph of reader ratings found at the foot of each review means you don't have to rely on the reviewer's opinion. Forthcoming releases are neatly tracked too, with a release timeline and packages of screenshots, videos and previews of each title.

www.roalddahl.com
The official Roald Dahl website draws visitors in with its noisy spinning wheel, adorned with the author's famous characters. You're then directed to the colourful homepage crawling with animated animals and people from the books. Clicking on the glass elevator takes you to the site's index, and a tour guide in the voice of Willy Wonka or Matilda asks whether you want to play "super games" or cook up "revolting recipes", for example. However, if this doesn't help kids discover this site's innumerable treats and never-ending lists of facts, they can always click on the lucky dip for super-easy access. Essential viewing for Dahl fans, and you're guaranteed to learn something new about the author.

www.stickcricket.com
Stick Cricket is much more than an up-to-date, well-designed cricket news site - it's home to a set of addictive cricket-based Flash games. They revolve around batting your way to glory, and whether you're trying to hit Shane Warne for an over of sixes in the All Star Slog or getting Ireland to the top of the Super 8 table they're all great fun. It's the simplicity of the control system that provides the addictive gameplay. With a well-timed tap of an arrow key you can slog high over Long Off or sweep past Square Leg. Get the timing even slightly wrong, though, and you'll probably end up spooning the ball to Mid On.

www.steampowered.com
Not strictly a website, since you need to install a local client utility, but the Steam game distribution service is a superb implementation of an online system that works for both content producers and consumers. Originally used to distribute Valve titles - the mighty Half-Life 2 was one of the first available - it's now a portal for other developers and publishers too. There's no DRM as such; once games are downloaded, you can move them to a new or different PC simply by copying your Steam folder across wholesale. Piracy is prevented by the fact that only one person can be logged into your Steam account at any one time. It's a great system and your games are automatically patched and updated.

www.bluesnews.com
One of the oldest gaming-related sites on the web, Blue's News has been around since 1996. If you're looking for Web 2.0, you'll need to look elsewhere - the layout and look is strictly functional. But if you want a link to the latest screenshots, want to find out if a game has gone gold or you're just looking for a fix of gaming rumours, Blue's News is where you'll find it. There's no shortage of content either - the site has dozens of new links and stories every day.