I admit it - the above comic could be about me. I can be easily distracted by shiny things, so I sometimes have to fight off the urge to spend way too much time playing around with some cool bit of technology, code, or idea. If you're like me, these links may be your downfall. Lot's of things to sidetrack you with. The site I snagged the above comic from is just one of them.

http://www.xkcd.com

MIX is a web development conference put on by Microsoft. They've made all (well, at least I think it's all of them) of the conference topics available online. Very cool - there are bunch of really good sessions available here. Silverlight is looking interesting.

http://visitmix.com/

The TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference is a four day conference with one "track" of speakers that each get 18 minutes to there thing. From what I've gathered, it's mostly an "invite only" type of event of around 1000 people (and even if it wasn't, the $6000 membership fee would probably keep the number of people attending under control). At any rate, they've made something like 200 of the talks available for free, so there are a ton of interesting videos to watch here. Since they're all under 18 minutes, it's easy to fit a video or two in a sitting. Then you can waste another few hours Googling some of the things they talk about.

http://www.ted.com

Google Earth - An "oldie" but a goodie. I can waste a ton of time with this one. Something about the interactivity of it really appeals to me. I can't say I was ever really a map-person until apps. like this and GPS became readily availble. And if you get bored, there are a bunch of neat 3D buildings and map overlays to download. Zoom in, zoom out, zoom in, zoom out...

http://earth.google.com/

Photosynth - If Google Earth appeals to you, you'll probably also love this one. It's basically a Microsoft research project (well, Microsoft owns it now) that takes pictures of some scene and projects it (or builds it, I'm not exactly sure) onto a 3d framework of the original location. Check out the Collections they've got - I swear I wasted a good 45 minutes rotating and zooming into the images. Even if you've seen this in the past, visit it again: they've added a few new collections that are pretty cool.

http://labs.live.com/photosynth/

The above should keep you busy for a while. I had planned on "featuring" a timewaster once a week or so, but at my current blogging pace it'd probably be closer to once a month, so I decided to just group a bunch of the more general ones together into one post. Have fun.