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Maximum PC | 100 Websites To See Before You Die (Part 1)

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100 Websites To See Before You Die (Part 1)

Posted 11/23/2010 at 7:19am | by Alex Castle

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Here at Maximum PC, we've always done our fair share of website recommendation articles-including a couple of doozies from the past few years. And of course we're not the only ones who do this sort of article either; it's a proven popular format. But this year, we thought we'd mix things up a little bit. Rather than just focusing on what's services are popular, or which web apps will make you the most productive, we wanted to take a look at what's fun on the Internet. In that spirit, our February cover feature is going to be 100 Websites You Need to Visit Before You Die. These are sites that will either entertain you, educate you, or just plain blow your mind. They're not the kind of website you put in your bookmarks bar and come back to again and again-they're the kind that you email to your friends along with a note that says "holy s*** check this out." So today we've got the first 50 of our 100 Websites You Need to See Before You Die. Where are the other 50? That's where you come in. Once you've read our picks, let us know your own. We'll be picking 50 of the best user submissions to round out our list for the magazine. Anyone who's submission we pick will be in the running to win a whole bunch of awesome prizes (stay tuned tomorrow for full contest rules, prizes and limitations). So, without further ado, here's the list:

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Its name taken from John F. Kennedys famous 1962 address to Rice University, We Choose the Moon is an interactive history exhibit from NASA, allowing you walk through the Apollo 11 Mission, stage by stage. Each stage has a CG visualization of the mission, as well as real audio from mission control and the astronauts themselves. If youre a space buff and havent seen WeChooseTheMoon yet, you need to drop everything and check it out, stat. Windows 8 Review
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Feature Commissioned to help sell Doritos (of all things), Hotel626 is a decidedly non-snack-related horror puzzle game, which challenges you to escape from a haunted hotel while solving challenges and avoiding an untimely demise. The puzzles arent going to thrill seasoned adventure gamers, but the overall production value is impressive, as is the novel use of elements like your webcam, microphone, and even your cell phone. One thing though: you can only play the game at night. (If youre sneaky, you might try changing your system clock to sometime after 6PM)
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Have you ever wanted to conduct your own miniature trip-hop orchestra of French hipster clones? Wait, stop, dont go yet. Actually check out Incredibox, its an awesomely-executed music creation web-app, which lets you create your own a capella groove by clicking and dragging different parts onto a lineup of cartoon Frenchmen. Ok, its hard to explainjust try it out.

The Dionaea House

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The Dionaea House is an example of hyperfiction, a story told through more than just a single running narrative. A bit like an alternate reality game minus the reader participation, reading The Dionaea House involves following a number of threads on different blogs and in comments. We wont tell you anything about what The Dionaea House is actually about, because figuring that out is the fun part.
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maximumpc: @Monkey_Man1867 It just seems quaint because this rig usually sees double-andtriple slot cards. No offense :)
1 day 12 hoursago

Teds Caving Page

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Older than the Dionaea house, and less intricately-constructed, Teds Caving Page is nonetheless a marvelously creepy example of how to tell a story well on the internet. Like the previous example, the less you know about Teds experience in the cave the better, but lets just say that those who are claustrophobic or afraid of the dark might want to avoid this one.

Maxim um PC 633 people recommend this. Maxim um PC 315 people recommend this. Maxim um PC 35 people recommend this. Maxim um PC 41 people recommend this. Maxim um PC 19 people recommend this.
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Akinator

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When you were a kid, did you ever play 20 Questions? You know, where you think of a person, place, or thing, and then your friend gets to ask 20 yes-or-no questions to figure out what it is? Well, it turns out that 20 questions is one of those games, like chess and reversi, thats better played by computers. Think of any character at all, from a movie, tv show, gameanything. Then just answer Akinators questions to the best of your ability. No guarantees, but we think youll be impressed.

Record Tripping

Does your mouse have a scroll wheel on it? Youd better hope it does (and seriously, what decade are you living in if it doesnt) because Record Tripping is a seriously cool, seriously inventive game that pairs wheel-turning puzzles, record scratching, and Alice in Wonderland. The whole things played with just the scroll wheel and the left mouse button, so assuming youve got both of those, head on over.

State of the Union

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Sure, the annual State of the Union address might seem a little dry for an afternoon timekiller, but thats exactly what theyve done here, with data visualizations, statistical analysis, and searchable texts of every single address. History and politics have never been as addictive as this.

Personas

An experiment from MITs media lab, Personas takes your first and last name, scours the internet, then spits out a composite image of what it thinks youre like, based on what it found about people with your name. Of course, unless you happen to have a completely unique name youll see data from lots of people other than yourself, but thats sort of the point.

Soy Tu Aire

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Dont let this pages Spanish intro throw you for a loop, you dont need to speak a word of it to appreciate the music and visuals contained here. Even if floating, lyrical melodies arent your thing, stick with it to check out how the ink cursor effect changes to reflect whats going on in the songs lyrics.

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Mortal_M
September 26, 2011 at 8:36pm

I went to Teds Caving Page and I was hooked, I couldn't stop reading and I even got scared. I will remember this story for the rest of my life. I would recomend to read it at nigth. If whoever wrote this makes a book I would buy it without thinking about it.

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acuity12
August 13, 2011 at 12:09pm

Imgflip.com pretty funny images

kubo.almighty
February 23, 2011 at 6:44pm

Big fan of www.albinoblacksheep.com. Several funny/stupid videos and plenty of entertaining, time wasting games.

almekhlafi
February 14, 2011 at 6:35pm

Very good article and this nice explain I want to post this article on my web site http://www.almekhlafi.com with write this site source if you no have any problem Thankyou

T8RG8R
February 06, 2011 at 6:03pm

http://www.fark.com/

franklyn
January 17, 2011 at 7:56am

input : "there are more things in heaven and earth than are imagined in your philosophy" ...10 translations later we get: "Heaven and earth will have some more of his philosophy"

synthetic_man
January 10, 2011 at 2:23pm

http://www.111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111.com/# It used to have an awesome midi soundtrack as well.

idoop
November 30, 2010 at 1:28am

i would say: http://www.deviantart.com/ must have seen at least once, just browse it :)

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seismiccollision
November 29, 2010 at 9:40pm

http://obama2008.s3.amazonaws.com/headlines.html

BUCCaNOLES
November 30, 2010 at 4:06am

Definitely not on my list.

LibrarianofDoom
November 29, 2010 at 7:49pm

www.wwwdotcom.com Sublime yet direct.

RW
November 29, 2010 at 1:58pm

www.dontevenreply.com

Slugbait
November 29, 2010 at 1:38pm

We've all googled ourselves, we've googled each other, but for something really scary, look up yourself at spokeo.com. People I can't find at all via Google, I was able to find at Spokeo, and sometimes the amount of personal information available is shocking.

cepheus42
November 29, 2010 at 11:37am

Boing Boing - http://www.boingboing.net/ For arts and culture (and TSA merchandise regarding groping your junk), Boing Boing is THE place to go.

The Art of Manliness - http://artofmanliness.com/ Want to tie a tie... or properly smoke a cuban... or wrestle a gator? Here is where men go to learn how to be... men!

Wil Wheaton in Exile - http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/ Mr. Wheaton is grown up out of the Crusher persona, and has become a guru of all things good and geeky. Remember what Wil says: don't be a d**k.

HaitianSensation
November 27, 2010 at 8:42am

http://www.inbflat.net/ : Create your own soundtrack with various videos of instruments

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joejoe347
November 29, 2010 at 8:29pm

Neave.com, its like a collection of little flash stuff!

iDaeth
November 24, 2010 at 9:19pm

Here's another one you should go to before you die; The End of the Internet: http://www.endoftheinternet.com/

cjdavis7
November 24, 2010 at 7:43pm

The astronomy picture of the day. Fantastic pictures accompanied by educated summary of what you're looking at. Often some history thrown in too. apod.nasa.gov/apod/ Also in the astronomy vein...a site that forecasts the "seeing" at a location (how good the conditions will be for stargazing). http://www.cleardarksky.com

Not sure if these two meet the criteria, but they are two of my recent finds: Free audio books. http://www.gutenberg.org Free, WYSIWYG flash web site creator. wix.com

flash739
November 24, 2010 at 5:27pm

Has anyone been to Jim Carreys Website? www.jimcarrey.com really trippy for a celebrity site.

Portal
November 24, 2010 at 2:58pm

I really like http://www.translationparty.com/, it's an excellent waste of time. What you do is enter a phrase, and it translates it back in forth from Japanese and English until the translation errors are removed.

aaronj2906
November 23, 2010 at 10:33pm

Kind of reminds me of something like "Phantasmagoria" from the 1990's.

JohnP
November 23, 2010 at 9:52pm

Just the 1st page and I have spent 2 hours. Wow!

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QuadCoreAbe
November 23, 2010 at 7:37pm

THE IMPOSSIBLE IS UNKNOWN AT ZOMBO COM!!! YOU CAN WASTE YOUR TIME ALL DAY AT ZOMBO COM. AT ZOMBO COM, YOUR BOSS DIDN'T REALLY FIRE YOU FOR STARING AT ZOMBO COM ALL DAY. ENJOY MY HISPANIC ACCENT FOR HOURS !!!! ONLY AT ..

ZOMBO COM

AmTGMan
November 23, 2010 at 3:27pm

"Therefore, go once, waste a day, and then never look back. Youll thank us later."

I can tell you that the bolded bit is a complete impossibility. Once you visit TVTropes, you will keep going back...

Ghok
November 23, 2010 at 10:18pm

Not if you look once, spend 5 hours looking at it, and then never dare go back for fear you'll get trapped again! Laughed out loud when I read the description.

whyyes123
November 23, 2010 at 1:44pm

I'm calling it right now, 4chan will be in the Part 2 list.

madmaxx
November 23, 2010 at 1:18pm

download all these site addresses to a folder in my Favorites for Internet Explorer 8

BenMo
November 23, 2010 at 12:41pm

It's good to see that Zombo is still making the list.

aCi11i3s
November 23, 2010 at 12:16pm

Well I definitely won't be getting any work done today.

blindhorizon
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November 23, 2010 at 11:00am

so many good sites so little time to get to them while at work...LOL

sniggler
November 23, 2010 at 10:55am

YTMND and LMGTFY, for those of us who never knew the internet existed until 5 minutes ago <_<

sniggler
November 23, 2010 at 10:55am

YTMND and LMGTFY, for those of us who never knew the internet existed until 5 minutes ago <_<

Cleaver
November 23, 2010 at 9:19am

I always thought that AtomSmasher's Error message generator ( http://atom.smasher.org/error/ ) was an excellent timesink.

jjrocks
November 22, 2010 at 9:57pm

Two sites http://www.newsmap.jp/ <- covered on another post but I still love it http://www.paulgraham.com/ <- simple but informative

nmanguy
November 22, 2010 at 9:22pm

Akinator is going to be the death of me. THANKS A LOT.

gendoikari1
November 22, 2010 at 9:33pm

Same here, although I did manage to stump it with Louis St. Laurent and the main character of Turkish Star Wars.

nmanguy
November 22, 2010 at 10:55pm

Yeah, it got stumped on Morgan Grimes and Jack O'Neill's Robot Clone, but it guessed Claptrap right.

weaslem32
November 22, 2010 at 8:48pm

www.rayoflight.net should be on your list. The website just went through an overhaul, but you can still find the legacy site in its projects page. This site has always been truly amazing utilizing flash in the greatest way. The site has been around for over 10 years and the creators are incredible artist. Truly a must see.

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probus
November 22, 2010 at 8:44pm

Great list, but maybe 10 a day for 10 days would be better, because frankly I'm already suffering from information overload. That's my fault, not yours, but still. "It's not you, it's me."

SirBC
November 25, 2010 at 6:31pm

Six degrees of Sabbath!

http://labs.echonest.com/SixDegrees/

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