I found a fun and very challenging racing game this afternoon. Online Drifting World Championships puts you on a track and all the controls are run off the keyboard. I played for about 20 minutes and didn’t manage to make it without spinning off the track at least twice. It is hard enough that time goes flying by as you try to concentrate on busting a good lap.

If you have a good time wasting game let me know what you like to play.

John Doe wakes up wipes the sleep from his eyes and gets ready for another work day. Mumbling about how much he hates Monday’s our imaginary friend doesn’t bother to look both ways as he steps off the curb. Splat! aaannnnnnnddd, fade to black.

He is rather unceremoniously run over by a bus. Family and friends are shocked do the whole seven stages of grief thing and that’s the end of the Earthly story for Mr. John Doe.

Meanwhile out in cyber-space where your Facebook, Myspace, World of Warcraft, Flickr, and thousands of other possible social networking and gaming sites exist there’s a question. What happened to John?

Legacy Locker is an online solution that takes care of the details only you know. Once notification of your death is received, the system kicks in and e-mails start flying. Legacy Locker and similar sites provide their clients with a way to send off that last e-mail to their friends and loved ones. Beyond the social aspect Legacy Locker also touts the financial aspect. “While the work you do today helps your clients prepare their physical assets, there’s virtually nothing in place for dealing with online assets”. 

That rings true to me. I don’t think most people really want to think about the possibility of dying suddenly so it’s easy to see the benefit of a quick and easy online arrangement. I know I sure wouldn’t want to make an appointment to meet with a financial planner to work out the details of my passing, even if it really is the right thing to do.

So think about taking a few minutes away from battling Murlocs, and taking another what color is your Chakra quiz on Facebook and check out some of the online options so your friends can throw a proper online funeral for you.

If you like to be the first in to try something new, I have some news for you.

The Chronicle has started a new feature on our Web site that enables readers to upload their photos and videos to our Online Media Center. Once your photos or videos are uploaded, fellow Web browsers can peruse, rate, and comment on your photos and videos.

We would love to see news photos and videos, but the site is so much more than that. Put up parties, your night out on the town, your dog, whatever makes your life in Lorain County cool, unique and special. Of course, there is a caveat: Please, keep it in good taste.

At this point we do not have a link to it on the main Chronicle site so keep in mind you are still using something that is technically a beta project. If you have any problems using the site, send me an e-mail and I’ll do my best to help.

Enjoy…….

I went over to WEOL this morning to take pictures of the people in the studio for a feature on the 60th anniversary of the station. Weol is part of Lorain County Printing and Publishing, the group that also owns the Chronicle.

Despite being owned by the same parent company, there is surprisingly little interaction between the two businesses so I found it to be a pretty cool assignment.

While I was in the studio, we started talking about the station’s online content, and they told me about their interview with Big Chuck, of Big Chuck and Little John fame.

That show was a staple of my childhood and I spent many late nights trying to stay awake to watch the show. I also spent many nights waking up from bad dreams because of some of the movies. I didn’t want to go near water after watching the Creature From the Black Lagoon.

Take a listen to the show from the online library to hear Les in the Morning and Big Chuck talking about some of the behind the scene memories from the legendary show.

On the list of the most subversive office Web sites of all time is hulu.com. If your I.T. person doesn’t have this site blocked, good for you. If you haven’t heard about hulu yet, let me enlighten you.

Hulu was started in March 2007 by NBC Univeral and Media Corp. These powerhouse companies decided to bring free programming to the Web and there currently are more than 50 content providers putting up top flight content.

Just to name a few of the big dogs in the project; NBC, Universal, Fox, Bravo, USA, even the WWE weighs in with its wrestling programming.

And if you don’t think this site is a treasure trove, think again.

There’s the old stuff — Dragnet, Major Dad, even the Rockford Files live on via the Web site. Heck, in a pinch, an episode of The Big Valley will get anyone through a young Linda Evans withdrawal.

The top five shows on the site are Family Guy, The Office, Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons, Arrested Development.

For Saturday Night Live, there are an amazing 379 clips, 79 commercial parodies, 44 of the SNL Shorts, and 98 of the news and politics segments.

I feel like the Ginsu Knife guy, so please excuse me….but if that’s not enough, they also have movies. The collection of films isn’t really as great as the TV lineup, but hey it’s free and you have eight hours to kill until you punch out and go home. (I’m only saying this because there’s no way in a heck a busy photog like me gets to do it, but I envision someone, somewhere tucked away in a cubicle, passing the day by watching TV on their computer).

With a picture of the site and links