The Martinek Name159 cool, curious & gloriously useless websites
Every link was loaded and checked in October 2026. They open in a new tab. Some use bot protection, so if one stalls, give it a second.
Gloriously Useless 24
The Useless Web ↗One button. Sends you somewhere pointless. Repeat forever.Pointer Pointer ↗Hold your mouse still and a photo of someone pointing at it appears.Cat Bounce ↗Cats. Bouncing. That's the whole site.Eel Slap ↗Slap a man with an eel by moving your cursor.The Long Doge Challenge ↗How far can you scroll the very long dog?HEEEEEEEEY! ↗Exactly what the name promises.Paper Toilet ↗Unroll a toilet-paper roll. Art by Rafaël Rozendaal.Falling Falling ↗Hypnotic falling colours, also by Rafaël Rozendaal.Zombo.com ↗Welcome to Zombo.com. You can do anything.Is It Christmas? ↗A one-word answer, accurate daily.Has the LHC Destroyed the World Yet? ↗Reassuring status page for particle-physics worriers.Koalas to the Max ↗Mouse over circles to split them until a picture appears.Bouncing DVD Logo ↗Wait for it to hit the corner. Wait…Find the Invisible Cow ↗Audio hot-and-cold until you find the cow. Moo.Passive Aggressive Passwords ↗A password field that judges you.Checkbox Race ↗How fast can you tick all the boxes?One Million Checkboxes ↗The famous shared-checkbox experiment.Instant Rimshot ↗Ba-dum-tss on demand.Hacker Typer ↗Mash keys, look like a movie hacker.Bored Button ↗Press the button. Get a random time-waster.Space Jam (1996) ↗The original 1996 movie website, still online.Cameron's World ↗A web collage of GeoCities-era text and images.Windows 93 ↗A gloriously cursed fake operating system in your browser.Bongo Cat ↗Make Bongo Cat play the instruments.
Toys, Art & Music 17
Patatap ↗Every key is a sound and an animation.This Is Sand ↗Pour digital sand into layered pictures.Silk ↗Draw symmetric glowing silk.Zoomquilt ↗An infinitely zooming painting.Sandspiel ↗Falling-sand physics toy: water, fire, plants, lava.Orb.Farm ↗Build a tiny self-sustaining aquatic ecosystem.Chrome Music Lab ↗Hands-on music experiments from Google.Incredibox ↗Drag outfits onto beatboxers to build a track.Typatone ↗Type words; hear them as music.JS Paint ↗A loving recreation of classic MS Paint.Quick, Draw! ↗Doodle while a neural network guesses.Virtual Piano ↗Play piano on your keyboard.Coolors ↗Spacebar-generated colour palettes.Tree ↗Generate ASCII folder-tree diagrams.Pixel Thoughts ↗A 60-second meditation: shrink your worry into a star.Experiments with Google ↗Hundreds of creative web experiments.Google Arts & Culture ↗Museums, zoomable masterpieces, art games.
Explore the World 15
Radio Garden ↗Spin a globe and listen to live radio anywhere.WindowSwap ↗Look out of a stranger's window somewhere on Earth.Drive & Listen ↗Ride through world cities with local radio playing.MapCrunch ↗Teleport to a random Street View.GeoGuessr ↗Guess where you've been dropped on Earth.Google Earth ↗The whole planet in 3D, in your browser.OpenStreetMap ↗The free, volunteer-built map of the world.Old Maps Online ↗Search historical maps by place.David Rumsey Map Collection ↗A vast online collection of historical maps.The True Size Of… ↗Drag countries around to defeat the Mercator projection.Radiooooo ↗A musical time machine: pick a country and a decade.Atlas Obscura ↗The world's hidden wonders and curious places.GeoFS ↗A free flight simulator over real satellite imagery.Google Moon ↗Google Maps, but the Moon.Google Mars ↗Google Maps, but Mars.
Live Earth & Weather 10
earth :: nullschool ↗Mesmerising animated globe of winds, weather and ocean.Windy ↗Detailed wind and weather forecast maps.Ventusky ↗Animated weather layers for the whole planet.Zoom Earth ↗Near-real-time satellite weather & hurricane tracker.LightningMaps.org ↗Real-time lightning strikes as they happen.USGS Latest Earthquakes ↗Live map of earthquakes around the world.Global Volcanism Program ↗Smithsonian's database of Earth's volcanoes.NASA Worldview ↗Browse daily satellite imagery of the whole Earth.Light Pollution Map ↗Where the dark skies still are.National Weather Service ↗Official US forecasts and alerts.
Brainy & Beautiful 25
Neal.fun ↗Neal Agarwal's legendary collection of interactive toys.The Deep Sea ↗Scroll down… and down… to the bottom of the ocean.Infinite Craft ↗Combine elements; discover absurd things.The Password Game ↗Increasingly unhinged password rules.Spend Bill Gates' Money ↗Try to spend a fortune.The Size of Space ↗Zoom out from an astronaut to the cosmos.Space Elevator ↗Ride up through the atmosphere into space.Absurd Trolley Problems ↗Ethics, but ridiculous.Stimulation Clicker ↗An escalating clicker about overstimulation.The Evolution of Trust ↗Nicky Case's playable game-theory explainer.Parable of the Polygons ↗A playable post on how small biases shape society.The Pudding ↗Visual essays that explain culture with data.Information is Beautiful ↗Gorgeous data visualisations.Our World in Data ↗Research and charts on the world's big problems.Gapminder Tools ↗Animated bubble charts of world development.Worldometer ↗Ticking real-time world statistics.Wolfram|Alpha ↗Ask it anything computable.Ptable ↗The interactive periodic table.PhET Simulations ↗Free physics, chemistry and math sims.Falstad Circuit Simulator ↗Watch electrons flow through circuits you build.The Scale of the Universe 2 ↗Zoom from the Planck length to the observable universe.xkcd ↗A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language.What If? ↗Serious scientific answers to absurd hypothetical questions.The Pi-Search Page ↗Find your birthday in the digits of pi.Math is Fun ↗Friendly, illustrated mathematics.
Games Elsewhere 14
Lichess ↗Free, open-source chess.Chess.com ↗Play, learn and puzzle.Simon Tatham's Puzzles ↗Forty-odd classic logic puzzles, free.Puzzle Nonograms ↗Picture-logic puzzles daily.2048 ↗The sliding-tile number game.Wordle ↗Five letters, six guesses.Sporcle ↗Trivia quizzes on every topic.JetPunk ↗Geography and trivia quizzes.Monkeytype ↗Minimalist typing test.TypeRacer ↗Race other typists.Solitr ↗Clean online solitaire.MS-DOS Game Library ↗Play thousands of old DOS games at the Internet Archive.Kongregate ↗Browser games galore.Cool Math Games ↗Logic & strategy games.
Citizen Science & Weird Science 8
Zooniverse ↗Help real researchers classify galaxies, animals and more.Foldit ↗Solve protein-folding puzzles for science.Eterna ↗Design RNA molecules as a game.iNaturalist ↗Identify any plant or animal and log it for science.Improbable Research ↗Home of the Ig Nobel Prizes: research that makes you laugh, then think.The Kid Should See This ↗Smart videos for curious minds of all ages.Science News ↗The latest from every corner of science.SETI Institute ↗The search for life beyond Earth.
Reading, Archives & Rabbit Holes 16
Wikipedia: Unusual articles ↗Wikipedia's own list of its strangest pages.List of lists of lists ↗Exactly what it says.Random Wikipedia article ↗Roll the dice on human knowledge.Random wikiHow ↗Learn how to do something you never needed.Futility Closet ↗An idler's miscellany of compendious amusements.The Public Domain Review ↗The strangest and most beautiful works from history.Project Gutenberg ↗Free public-domain e-books.Open Culture ↗Free cultural & educational media.Library of Congress: Free to Use ↗Public-domain image sets from the LOC.The Met Collection ↗Search the Metropolitan Museum's collection.Wayback Machine ↗See any website as it was, years ago.Mental Floss ↗History, trivia and interesting facts.Smithsonian Magazine ↗History, science, arts & culture.Etymonline ↗Where words come from.Behind the Name ↗The meaning and history of first names.Wiktionary ↗The free dictionary, in every language.
Sounds & Calm 8
A Soft Murmur ↗Mix rain, waves, fire and wind.myNoise ↗Custom soundscapes for focus and sleep.Rainy Mood ↗Rain, on demand.Noisli ↗Background noise for working.Ambient Mixer ↗Build your own ambient soundscapes.Every Noise at Once ↗An enormous scatter-plot map of music genres.Old Time Radio Downloads ↗Classic radio dramas and comedies.RadioReference ↗Scanner frequencies and live public-safety audio feeds.