OncologyLive® is the flagship publication of OncLive®. Each issue delivers expert insights and clinical oncology news and updates, which impact the day-to-day clinical practice of oncology professionals who work tirelessly to help improve patient outcomes.

	Wall Street has seen dramatic productivity improvements through the implementation of a few rigorously enforced standards, such as SWIFT ISO 15022, which “sets the principles necessary to provide the different communities of users with the tools to design message types to support their specific information flows.” Although Wall Street could benefit from even more convergence around additional standards, the financial community is far ahead of healthcare in terms of standardizing information exchange and other data transactions, and is realizing the concomitant benefits.

	When it comes to setting IT standards in healthcare, the prevailing mentality seems to be more is better. This is not necessarily the case, since multiple standards often address different facets of the same issue, resulting in a multiplicity of standards that can produce the same effect as a lack of standards. Adoption of IT standards in healthcare has been delayed by many factors, but principally by special interests groups—including IT vendors who are seeking to sell dated technology by locking their customers into proprietary solutions; lobbying groups who oppose data transparency, which is one of the benefi ts of wide adherence to standards; and bureaucrats who have tied their careers to adoption of a particular standard.

	Allow me to share a specific example to illustrate the magnitude of the problem as it pertains to proprietary healthcare software applications. I’ve omitted the names of the companies involved, as there are many other examples that are equally egregious. Several years ago, one of the larger vendors of database management systems decided to build a universal database management system (DBMS) that was designed to resolve most healthcare-specifi c data management problems. Representatives from the company interviewed large vendors of EMR systems to determine their exact needs.

	The DBMS vendor made massive changes to its existing product in order to address the needs of specialized healthcare transactions. Having spent well over $100 million on this project, the DBMS vendor tried to sell the product to existing EMR vendors as soon as it was completed. The sales process seemed to be moving along well, until one vendor asked a particularly insightful question: “If we build our EMR application on your system, the basic data storage structure will be exactly the same as my competitor who would also use your product; is that correct?” Th e answer was “theoretically, yes.” The vendor’s follow-up question was: “Does that mean that a large medical center could trade my product for my competitor’s product with minimal eff ort?” Again, the answer was “theoretically, yes, but they would be able to replace his product with yours just as easily.”

	The EMR vendor thanked them for their time and ended the meeting. Several years have passed, and no established EMR vendor has chosen to use the product built by the DBMS vendor as the base for its healthcare applications, despite the fact that the new product would have dramatically improved the proprietary vendor’s development productivity and reduced its time to market. Obviously, vendors are more interested in keeping their customer base locked into proprietary technology than they are interested in widespread adoption of a standard storage system, because it threatens their revenue streams.

	The opposition to standards comes from many sources in addition to vendors. Most organizations act based on their own self-interest. Given this, can standards be established that are fair and benefi cial to all stakeholders? The answers will be determined in part by three factors:

 - No one officially anointed XML or HTML as standards, but their usage became so widespread that they have become de facto standards without an official mandate.

 - If relevant parties are included, this can be a reasonable, albeit slow, approach to setting standards. Occasionally, competing groups of stakeholders form their own consortiums, leaving us with situations such as the HL7 competition with CCR.

 — They can also be effective at setting standards. However, when the government puts its weight behind a standard, it is essential that the standard fill the needs in the marketplace or we can be left with a situation like the debacle with the Department of Defense standardization of the Ada language, which

	Of course, the obvious drawback to each standard-setting option is that each takes a long time to develop and adopt. While healthcare waits for more clear articulation of a few standards, our industry continues to waste money that we can little aff ord to lose.

Dr. Kennedy is the President and Chief Executive Officer of 

Articles

Wall Street has seen dramatic productivity improvements through the implementation of a few rigorously enforced standards, such as SWIFT ISO 15022, which "sets the principles necessary to provide the different communities of users with the tools to design message types to support their specific information flows." 

Word on the Street: The Standard Deduction

1 What new ideas from key opinion leaders in healthcare have impressed you the most?

	The commoditization of boutique or concierge medicine. [Crounse points to Jay Parkinson, MD, who is seated several tables away from us.] Look at Jay Parkinson. He started a niche medicine service. He realized that this is an era in which many younger workers are uninsured. He uses every online tool you can imagine to help them get the best care. He’s after the 18—40-year-old, young, urban professional. He isn’t alone, of course, and many doctors are looking for a change. The current system isn’t working for them. They’re asking what other business models are out there.

	It’s Microsoft’s commitment to consumers. We need to understand the variety of reasons behind why consumers are finding themselves in the middle of healthcare. It’s complex, and they’re frightened and frustrated. There is such a thing as the apathetic consumer of health, particularly those that see health and healthcare as an entitlement. We have 40 years of history of healthcare increasingly becoming an entitlement. But those days are over. Anybody who has any money will be spending more on healthcare; that’s a given. When that happens—when consumers have skin in the game&mdash;they’ll start to get more interested in quality, price transparency, prevention, and a lot of things consumers have never been quite so motivated to do. HealthVault is our commitment to give consumers the tools they need in this new environment to take better care of their health.

3 Are consumers aware of what HealthVault offers?

	The press mistakenly reported in some articles that Microsoft launched a personal health record (PHR). That’s not the case. What we did launch was a platform or a service through which purveyors of PHRs and various other services related to health and wellness can play. We are the operating system, and we have a bevy of partners that will come from health organizations, enterprise hospitals, medical device manufacturers, and content providers—all of whom can provision their services on this platform.

4 Beyond consumer entitlement, what are the other challenges to helping consumers better use those tools?

	A focus on standards and interoperability with electronic health records (EHRs) is crucial to achieving even what is commonplace in most European countries today. America is behind the eight-ball. We are the worst of the worst in the industrialized world in this area. Our government isn’t in a position to invest heavily in this area, so the market will have to take care of it. It will come through private investment and through providers and payers. But we are making progress. I used to say we had about 10% adoption of EHRs in this country.

	It’s hard to put a finger on it, but we’re probably now closer to 25—30%. The last holdouts are going to be smaller practices, which are challenged because many EHR systems are still not very affordable. There is a great democratizing effect taking place among vendors—a great deal of consolidation and commoditization occurring. What we need now is a more common, ubiquitous interface.

5 What can we learn from other countries regarding deployment of healthcare technology?

	In many other countries, of course, healthcare is a publicly funded entity, which gives them an advantage in being able to mandate certain things. But that’s really not the power of what’s going on. What I’m seeing is simply an environment that seems to foster a lot of innovation. Why in Asia and certain parts of Europe is cellular technology two generations ahead of what we have in the US? In many cases, particularly in less developed countries, it’s because they hadn’t invested in the old wired industrial age, so now they’re leapfrogging. They aren’t burdened with all this old legacy stuff. They’re using commodity systems to a great degree, and therefore the cost is much lower. What they end up with is much more powerful, more flexible, and adaptable than the systems we’re locked into here.

We caught up with MDNG Healthcare IT Advisory Board Member Bill Crounse,
MD, at the 3rd Annual World Healthcare Innovation and Technology Congress,
held this past December 9-11 in Washington, DC.

5 Questions with... Bill Crounse, MD

Since this is the “fun” issue, I decided to take an off beat look at what your office computers could be doing while you’re not using them. The concept of donating idle computer time to science projects has been around since the dawn of the Internet.

	Here’s how it works: your computer sits idle most of the time, using only a fraction of its total processing power, even when you are using it. For example, as I write this article, every time I stop typing my computer wastes millions of free computing

	cycles that could be spent doing something else. Even more idle time slices are available each time I go see a patient or take a break.

	Harnessing the processing power of the millions of computers linked together over the Internet would create more computing power than a supercomputer, at a tiny fraction of the cost. Many scientific projects that require huge amounts of data to be analyzed could benefit by harnessing the enormous unused processing power of all our computers. Luckily this can be done with little difficulty, because the software used to accomplish this runs in the background when your computer is not doing anything important and hence doesn’t significantly affect computer performance.

 project is one of the largest and best known of these eff orts to use idle computer cycles. Based at the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory, SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Life) is the longest-running search for radio signals from alien civilizations. It uses desktop computers to help crunch the myriad of data pouring in from big radio-telescopes. According to the project’s website, it has signed up more than five million volunteers and boasts the largest community of users of any Internet computing project.

	Another cool project is ClimatePrediction.net, the largest experiment to try to produce a forecast of the climate in the 21st century. Th e project utilizes hundreds of thousands of stateof- the-art climate models with slightly different physics in order to represent the entire range of uncertainties in all the parameterizations. This technique, known as ensemble forecasting, requires an enormous amount of computing power, far beyond the currently available resources of cutting-edge supercomputers. The only practical solution is to combine the power of thousands of ordinary computers, each computer tackling one small but key part of the problem.

	For those of us in the medical profession, donating idle computer time to help find potential cures and treatments for disease is a natural fit. World Community Grid’s mission is “to create the largest public computing grid benefiting humanity.” Active research projects include Help Conquer Cancer, which aims to improve the results of protein x-ray crystallography, helping researchers not only annotate unknown parts of the human proteome, but also improving their understanding of cancer

	initiation, progression, and treatment. Other projects include research on AIDS, muscular dystrophy, HCV, and dengue.

	To facilitate scientific access to the Internet’s computers, the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) provides free open-source software that can be downloaded and easily installed. Once this is done, you enter the URL of the project to which you want to donate your idle computer time. For a list of popular projects to which you can contribute, check out 

. Most of the projects seem reasonable, and the tough part is figuring

	out which one you want to support. Personally, I’m torn between SETI and 

, which searches for spinning neutron stars that create gravity waves and may help prove Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity. There are many options depending on what you’re in to, such as the Riesel Sieve group, which is finding prime numbers of the form k*2n-1.

	These projects are independent. Some are based at universities and research labs, while others are run by companies and individuals. When you participate in a project, you entrust it with your computer’s security and data privacy. In deciding whether to join a research project, carefully read its website and ask yourself these questions:

	• Does it clearly describe goals that are important and beneficial?

	• Will its applications damage your computer or violate your privacy?

	• Who owns the results of the computation?

	• Will they be freely available to the public or will they belong to a for-profit business?

	Finally, remember that donating your idle computer time should not encourage you to leave your computer(s) on overnight or for extended periods of non-use. You should continue to power down your systems is usual to help reduce the burning of fossil fuels for electricity, lest we add to our climate problems while looking for its solution.

Dr. Bertman is Physician Editor-in-Chief of

. He is also a Clinical Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at Brown University and president of 

, a leading developer of electronic health record (EHR) software. He also is the founder and president of 

, a consumer website focusing on personal medical topics. He is in private practice in Hope Valley, RI.

Since this is the fun issue, I decided to take an off beat look at what your office computers could be doing while you are not using them. The concept of donating idle computer time to science projects has been around since the dawn of the Internet.    

Searching for Aliens with Your Idle Computer

	We know you’re busy. But even doctors find themselves with a little time to kill every now and then. When this happens, we suppose you could do something like read a book or talk with a friend or family member, but who wants to do that? The Internet was invented so people wouldn’t have to do that anymore, right? What you want to do is go online and poke around a bit, but not just visit the same old boring sites. No, you need a destination, something new and interesting.

	The way we see it, the Internet’s like New York City: it’s filled with all sorts of interesting and unusual diversions, there’s more going on “underground” than you realize, it’s got more than its fair share of junk and garbage, and it’s rife with bad manners and profanity. Plus, it can be kind of hard to find stuff if you don’t know where to look. What we’re saying is, you need a guide to show you around.

	Anyone who dreams about traveling to exotic places should visit the online home of National Geographic Traveler, “the world’s most widely read travel magazine.” Here, you will find a treasure trove of travel tips and suggestions, photographs, and interesting articles, guaranteed to infect you with the travel bug. Browse the “Features” section, where you will fi nd the editors’ choices for the 2006 and 2007 top 50 tours of a lifetime, with direct links to learn more about each tour; “Sudden Journeys,” which includes 25 stories written by experienced travelers about spontaneous travel plans that led to some amazing memories; and “48 Hours Destination Guides,” which can help tourists make the most out of their time in any of 15 profiled cities. The “Photos” section features galleries of breathtaking photography from some of the most beautiful locales on the planet. Additional features include a travel blog, podcasts, and a newsletter that provides travel tips and deals.

 Jaw-dropping photos and photography content (including useful photo tips and advice and links to the some of the Internet’s best photo sites), and the “Little Book of Travel Wisdom”

 May cause acute envy, wanderlust, and the sudden urge to update your passport

	A community weblog where anybody can sign up and contribute a comment or a link to something they found online that struck them as interesting, odd, important, poignant, whatever. You never know what you’ll find here.

 MeFi Projects, a service “dedicated to helping MetaFilter members announce their new Web projects to the world”

	Find the answers to all your movie- and TV-related questions at IMDB (stands for “Internet Movie Database”). A quick search will provide links to trailers; cast and crew information; trivia and goofs; plot summaries; and much more. You can also search by individual names to find information and links to every movie/television series your favorite actor, director, or key grip has ever been involved with—in chronological order, no less. Great for settling bets (What’s the name of that actor who played the jerky bad guy in The Karate Kid, Back to School, and Just One of the Guys? What was Tom Hanks’ first film?).

 The easy-to-use navigation bar helps to quickly fi nd everything from trailers to reviews to summaries.

 Check out the “Memorable Quotes” section for your favorite movies, if for no other reason than to spare your colleagues from hearing another butchered rendition of Bill Murray’s Caddyshack monologue (“So I jump ship in Hong Kong and make my way over to Tibet…”).

	Music lovers, this convenient online tool allows you to type in the name of a favorite artist and, in a matter of seconds, stream music on your computer by that artist and other similar artists. This fun tool can help you discover new music you might not otherwise get the chance to hear. Take it a step further and download the Last.fm application to your desktop for free, enabling you to tap into its social network and communicate with other users who share similar tastes in music.

 “Scrobbling” (Last.fm keeps track of the songs you listen to most, enabling you to construct a musical profi le)

 Potential for impressionable young ears to be polluted, possibly terminally, by music from The Eagles.

	Need a place to upload and organize your digital photographs so your friends and family can view them? You should sign up to use Flickr so you can upload, organize, and view your photos and also allow other users to view them and post comments. Additional Flickr features include the “companion blog,” where you can post photos with comments and captions and ask and answer questions about photography; member reviews of the best and most popular cameras; and collections of interesting photos recently uploaded by members. Flickr has many partnerships with printing companies, enabling members to create photo cubes, books, and posters through Hewlett-Packard; “bookstorequality” books through Blurb; greeting cards, minicards, postcards, sticker books, and notecards through Moo; calendars, wrapping paper, mugs, puzzles, mousepads, t-shirts, magnets, and keychains through QOOP; framed photos through Imagekind; and bumper stickers, hats, buttons, canvas prints, postage stamps, and photo sculptures through Zazzle.

 Tech Tips, Tricks, and Downloads for Getting Things Done

	Lifehacker is a daily blog that features “tips, shortcuts, and downloads that help you work and live smarter and more efficiently.” The creators pledge to publish more than 20 tips each day, and they don’t disappoint. The info and resources available here cover an exhaustive range of interests and applications, everything from “downloads, websites, do-it-yourself projects, how-to`s, and tutorials” to “shortcuts and tips for going beyond the default settings and getting things done

	in the most clever, unexpected and efficient ways.”

	Known for too long by too many as “the fat guy” half of the pioneering television duo Siskel & Ebert, the collected reviews on this site demonstrate that Roger Ebert is and always has been much more than one thumb. While you know him as a cultural icon, you may not know that he’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer. Many of his movie reviews read more like essays on the human condition. His passion, his occasional anger, his politics, and his humor all shine through. Pick or pan, thumb up or down, what shows through on nearly every review on the site is that Roger Ebert really loves movies. Ebert has been battling throat cancer, and is still unable to speak, but his typing fingers are in fine form. Whether you consider yourself a movie buff or not, an Ebert review is a must-read, and an entertainment often far surpassing the movie being reviewed.

 The “Movie Glossary,” a collection of reader-submitted movie clichés and rules.

 The sheer joy and pleasure Ebert and his contributors take in all things cinema.

 For some real fun, do a search of Ebert’s reviews for the movies he awarded zero stars.

	This site houses a daily roundup of “the latest Web buzz” from all the hottest sites (digg.com, reddit.com, flickr.com, youtube.com, slashdot.org, etc), plus “Quickie” links to interesting content from a variety of websites.

 Provides a quick-and-easy way of finding interesting online content.

	This informative travel site is chock full of “unbiased, user-generated travel content” about destinations across the globe. It offers insider tips, reviews, and photos snapped by travelers and locals. The site also informs about “Things to Do,” “Local Customs,” and even “Warnings or Dangers” for each destination profiled.

 The “10 Great Things to Do on VirtualTourist” site tutorial and the Travel Guides.

	Billing itself as a “connection engine,” Daylife is a continuously updated site that covers world news, with high-quality photos, stories, blogs, quotes, and more. It features everything from politics to science to celebrities to sports. The interactive “Highlights” link displays coverage of world events with images and a scrolling preview.

 The “All Perspectives” feature, which links to similar takes on each story from dozens of news and entertainment outlets

	Not sure if that Lindsay Lohan Herbie sequel is worth the money? You’re in luck. Head over to Rotten Tomatoes and check out its massive archive of film reviews (the site boasts more than 127,000 titles and 644,000 review links in its database). Click on “Tomatopicker” to select a genre, or pull a review based on its approval rating from the “Tomatometer.” Also review soundtracks, synopses and trailers, and look up show times for movie theaters in your area. If you’re an indecisive moviegoer who relies on critics to tell you what soon-to-be blockbuster hit is worthy of an $11 popcorn and $8 blue raspberry ICEE, this is the site for you.

 Links to just about every worthwhile review, from online and traditional media sources, for just about every movie.

: Lots and lots of links and other site clutter can make navigating a bit tricky.

 Definitely check out the Special Features for robust interviews, retrospectives, and other goodies.

	Robert M. Wachter, MD, posts “lively and iconoclastic ruminations on hospitals, hospitalists, quality, safety, and more…” What sets Wachter apart from the thousands of other voices clogging the medical blogosphere are the depth and breadth of his experience, and his reasoned, analytical take on the latest healthcare news. What that means for you is a lack of fiery ranting from a soapbox, and an intense focus on how politics and policies affect actual clinicians in care settings. In the “About” section of the blog, Wachter promises to “…do my best to make it fun, interesting to read, and a bit contrarian and controversial. But never boring or wishy-washy. At least, that’s my goal.” Wachter rarely misses the mark.

	Start each day with a visit to this regularly updated repository of links to user-contributed online bric-a-brac, curiosities, and other ephemera.

 The interesting commentary that accompanies most links, plus links to other, similar sites and blogs (where you’ll find even more links).

	Just can’t keep up with the latest video games? Wish you could play something simpler? Too ashamed to get that old Nintendo game system out of attic (assuming it still works)? Well, you’re in luck. At this site, using just a few keys on your keyboard, you can play hundreds of the most popular games from the original Nintendo game system. Ah, the good-ole-days of Super Mario Brothers and Tetris!

 The titles of the Japanese games (Be-Bop Highschool, Booby Kids, Flappy, Muscle Tag Match, et al.)

 The constant nagging to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox (enough, already!)

 Join the game-of-the-day mailing list to receive a link to a Nintendo “cult classic” each day in your Inbox.

	Warning - this site might turn you into a gadget junkie. If you are someone who enjoys taking photographs during every spare moment, then this site is the next best thing to actually having a camera in your hands. Dpreview.com previews and reviews cameras and camera accessories; every new item you see here will make you wonder “Is my camera good enough? Or does it need to be replaced immediately by this new and improved model?”

 The buying guide, informative discussion forums, and scads of in-depth reviews.

 Guaranteed to induce acute gear envy and chronic drooling in shutterbugs.

 Before visiting the site, tell yourself that these products are just for looking at, not for buying. Even better, hide your credit cards.

We know you are busy. But even doctors find themselves with a little time to kill every now and then. When this happens, we suppose you could do something like read a book or talk with a friend or family member, but who wants to do that?    

The Ultimate Timewaster's Guide to the Internet

Keeping with our “timewaster’s” theme, we’ve compiled a few links to some of our favorite online games and game collections. There’s something for everyone here: sports games; puzzles and logic games; action and adventure games that range in difficulty and complexity from simple shoot-‘em-ups to rather immersive experiences with intricate plots and graphics; one-note games with no real purpose beyond the initial visual joke; and games with fiendishly convoluted rules, objectives, and scoring systems. The best part is, all you need to play these games is either 

, both of which are available online for free from 

 (chances are, you have one or both of these already installed on your computer).

The 50+ games offered at this charming site couldn’t be simpler, requiring only your mouse or perhaps the use of the spacebar and arrow keys on your keyboard to control the game characters. Each game asks the player to perform one or two simple tasks, usually summed up in the title of the game itself (

, Aim and Fire, etc). The true appeal of these games lies in their colorful, whimsical graphics and characters. They really are a joy to behold and demonstrate how simple Flash animation can be used to create an engaging and entertaining game experience.

This is a tough call, but we’d have to go with 

, in which you control a rabbit-and-turtle team (the rabbit carries the turtle on his shoulders, naturally) as they walk through an orchard. The turtle, who of course is armed with a slingshot, attempts to shoot apples and oranges off the trees, timing his marksmanship to cause the dislodged fruit to fall onto the snakes that seem to infest this particular orchard (mistimed apple shots are no cause for alarm—a quick tap of the spacebar repositions your team, enabling the bunny, now astride the turtle’s shell, to rap the offending reptile with a stick). Oh yeah, we almost forgot: our heroes are also beset by murderous crows intent on spoiling their orchard stroll with a blitzkrieg of old-fashioned bombs (the kind that look like cannonballs, feature a lit fuse, and are most often seen in old Three Stooges shorts). What provoked the birds? Who lit the bomb fuses? Why is the rabbit wearing an unbuttoned red vest? We may never know the answers to these questions.

, a “game” in name only, which depicts a tug-of-war between a rhinoceros and five men, who weaken as the game progresses. Players must constantly click each man to replenish his strength; otherwise, the rhino runs off, dragging the men behind it. That’s it; no strategy, no tactics, just lots and lots of clicking.

Play this hilarious and dangerously addictive game, and unleash your inner Zen guitar wizard. Guitar Shred Show combines comical cartoon visuals (the character you control, Mr. Fastfinger, looks like a cross between a kung-fu master and The Dude from The Big Lebowski) and educational, interactive guitar lessons. Use your keyboard to play epic solos, ragin’ riffs, lightening licks, and noodly runs as Mr. Fastfinger strikes textbook guitar hero poses (our favorite move is his high-steppin’ running-in-place routine with kimono/bathrobe flying akimbo). The game also displays notated guitar tabulatures as you play. After a little practice, you’ll be ready for a musical showdown on The Mountain of Tapping Dwarves and all set to embark on The Magic Carpet Tour. Don’t ask, just do yourself a favor and check out this game.

This marvelous little game consists of a square, around the inside of which slowly bounce little colored dots. When you click one (and only one), it inflates like a balloon (or maybe it expands like a supernova?), remains at its maximum diameter for a brief second, and then deflates. Each time any other floating dot collides with your little supernova, it, too, will inflate, setting off a chain reaction as additional dots come into contact with it, inflate, and touch others. To advance from level to level, you must inflate a certain number of dots: one out of five to get past level one; 2 out of 10 to get past level two; and so on, all the way until the 12th and final level, which requires the Herculean task of exploding 55 out of 60 dots. So simple, yet so maddeningly addictive. We dare you to give up before completing all 12 levels. You can’t do it. Go ahead and try. We’ll wait…

We have no idea why, but the venerable candy maker has assembled a pretty sweet collection of online games at this site. You’ll find dozens of sports games, arcade games, card games, and puzzle games. All you have to do to play any one of these is sit through a few seconds of some rather innocuous gum commercials (and who doesn’t like Big Red?).

 here (with an honorable mention going to 

). Features include superminimalist golf courses that look like they were drawn by five-year-old Escher wannabes using an Etch-a-Sketch on a background of what looks like crumpled paper; a stick-figure duffer who must hack his way through some maddening and death-defying holes; and even a design-your-own-course option for aspiring desktop Robert Trent Jones Jrs.

There’s really no point to this game that combines a grinning caped crusader-type equipped with wrist-mounted grappling hook launchers, some rather dubious physics, and a completely absent sense of proportion. To wit: players are supposed to use the hooks to latch onto various everyday fl ying objects (helicopters, balloon-powered gondolas, etc) as they swing, well… around the world. Yet your score is measured in yards traveled.

Having said all that, it’s mighty habit-forming trying to maneuver that buffoon as he swings from UFOs and other flying contraptions.

Another fine game collection, UGO definitely has cornered the market on games with odd titles that describe exactly what gameplay entails. Exhibit A: Light People on Fire, which is not as gruesome as it sounds; Exhibit B: Kitten Cannon, which is. Other interesting games and titles include The Last Dinosaur, Santa Launch, One-Ton Gorilla Warfare, and Yeti Bubbles.

“You are the client in an advertising agency and you have to kill the ideas of the agency staff.” Also qualifies as “Bitterest Game.” We’re also partial to the puzzle game Draw Play, which presents the not-as-simple-as-it-looks challenge of drawing simple black lines to create paths, platforms, and other stepping stones/obstacles as you try to navigate your way through various levels.

, which is better experienced than read about (Runner-up: “Bitterest Game”).

, hands down. Despite the promising title, it’s like the designers weren’t even trying.

All the fun of Tetris, mixed with 7th-grade US geography. Use your arrow keys to properly align and position each state as it falls toward a map of the United States. Failure to correctly orient a state before placing it in its proper position means you’ll just have to try again the next time it comes around. It takes fast work with the keyboard to move and manipulate big ol’ California and shuffle it out West once you start filling in the Plains states. Figuring out the proper alignment of the smaller New England states ain’t easy, either.

It’s not a drink, or even Tom Cruise’s on-set nickname. No, it’s another devilishly simple-yet-fun game involving colored dots drifting around a monochrome playing field. This time, the instructions are simple: use your little white dot to collect the green dots; touch a blue dot to bank points; dodge the red dots. As you touch each green dot, they stick to you like, well, like something sticks to something else (attention: there is an opening in Simile and Metaphor Procurement at 

), until you’re trying to maneuver around something that looks like a mutant bunch of chardonnay grapes, desperately avoiding the red dots (are they picking up speed?), waiting for a blue dot to make an appearance. The more green dots you can collect prior to docking with a blue, the more points you score.

,” which requires you to touch the green and blue dots (no sticking, this time) and avoid the red dots, all three of which go faster and faster as the game progresses; and “

,” the point of which is to avoid touching anything, like when you’re in a rest stop bathroom… or on a date with Lindsay Lohan.

Keeping with our "timewaster's" theme, we've compiled a few links to some of our favorite online games and game collections. There's something for everyone here: sports games; puzzles and logic games;

February 2008 | Oncology Live®

Word on the Street: The Standard Deduction

5 Questions with... Bill Crounse, MD

Searching for Aliens with Your Idle Computer

The Ultimate Timewaster's Guide to the Internet

Online Games for Everyone