Ready for a screamfest, but not quite prepared to forgive Netflix for the shitstorm they’re making of their new pricing model? To hell with the newborn Quikster and to paying for streaming: Instead, get your horror-flick fix at Fearnet (www.fearnet.com), where you can watch select movies and trailers for free. (Other titles are available with a paid membership.) Streamed content is updated weekly, and members can also play games and chat with other terror aficionados. Seriously, we know you’re dying to catch “Blood and Donuts,” “Pinocchio’s Revenge” and the classic “The Creeping Flesh.”
Everyone needs a little creativity in their day. At Draw a Stick Man (www.drawastickman.com) your mouse-drawn stick person becomes the animated hero of his own saga, where the site encourages you to continue to add details (“Draw a key in my hand!” “Quick, draw a raincloud!”) to further the plot. We won’t spoil the dragon-, shark- and fire-filled plot for you. Suffice to say that once your story is complete, you can send personalized versions of the site to friends. Now that’s using technology to its fullest advantage.
We’re still not sure if this site’s for real or not — but we’re not about to take any chances when zombies are involved. If you spot a zombie invasion, board up your windows and head to the Undead Report (www.undeadreport.com), where you can read the latest undead news (organized according to a world map) and purchase survival equipment like weapons (crossbows, machetes, hatchets, baseball bats), Kevlar hoods, collapsible shovels and practice targets. There’s even a zombie-related collection of online games and fiction (“Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,” anyone?) to entertain you while you stock up on canned goods and padded gloves and await the imminent apocalypse of reanimated flesh.
A sensation among the denizens of Reddit and Digg, the image hosting service Imgur (imgur.com) is a streamlined version of other, similar social sites. Over thirty terabytes of images are uploaded by users daily, with popular ones rising in the ranks to be featured on the home page. The content ranges from funny to poignant to (duh) stupid; it’s the Internet, after all. Be prepared to learn your memes — much of the site is an exercise in ongoing online jokes, culled from Reddit, Imgur itself, YouTube and other places. (Still don’t know who Chuck Testa is? Imgur can fix that. Or at least confuse you further.) Arguably the best part about this site are the comments that follow popular images, which, like the images themselves, can be upvoted according to popularity. Just a word of warning: This is one of those insidious sites where the just-one-more mindset can lead to hours and days of wasted time. Thirty terabytes is a lot.
