Google Traffic isn't the official name for it, but I think it should be. Head over to Google Maps find a major city and then click the traffic button in the upper right corner. All of the major routes through the city will be color coded according to how quickly traffic is moving. You also have the option of looking at how traffic will be at a different time of the day. Click on "change" next to "Live Traffic" and adjust the slider to the time of day that you'll be traveling. Traffic is also figured into driving directions. You'll now see an estimated time for your directions, and a new up to ... in traffic estimate. From what I can tell the real-time data seems to be rather accurate. Except that by the time your on the road for 15 minutes, everything could have changed.

Audible is the internet re-incarnation of books on tape. They have over 50,000 books to choose from. Once you've selected your book, you download it and sync it to nearly any portable audio player, or one of thousands of PDAs, smart phones, GPS and other devices that support Audible. Books typically run about $10 to $25 and you can usually get your first one or two for free if you do a quick search for a coupon code. They also offer a subscription plan where books cost around $10-$12 depending on the plan. Even with a subscription, once you buy the book, it's yours to keep, even if you cancel the subscription. Between audio books and podcasts I always have something to listen to during my commute. Some of my recent reads include:

Google Reader is a great way to aggregate all of your RSS feeds and view them from anywhere. I use it in combination with Yahoo Pipes (see yesterday's post) to keep tabs on news, tech and some of my favorite comics. There's also a mobile interface for Google reader for your phone. The two keep in perfect sync, so you never end up reading the same things twice. I also find the add star feature especially useful from my phone. For example, I usually browse my feeds during lunch, and mark several as starred that I don't need to read immediately. Then when I get home in the evening I'll pull up the starred items on either my phone or desktop and read them from there.

Yahoo Pipes can take some getting used to. The slogan for it is "Rewire the web." What it allows you to do is work with RSS feeds to combine or filter them to create your own custom feeds. Instead of having to write your own program in PHP, or something similar, to do this, Yahoo provides you with a nice graphical interface where you literally "wire" blocks together to combine feeds, add filters, and make other modifications that help you create your own custom feed. I use it in combination with Google Reader to read some of the local newspapers. Here are a few of my pipes:

Pandora is your own personalized internet radio station. Once you sign up, you start by telling Pandora about one artist that you like. It then uses data collected as part of the Music Genome Project to find other music you might like. It then begins playing music. As each song comes up you have the option to give it a thumbs up or thumbs down. Pandora then uses this feedback to refine your playlist. Even better, Pandora now supports several mobile phones. You can see if they support yours at here.

Google will covert units for you. Try entering "7920 ft. to miles" into the search box. You can even use it as a calculator, for example try calculating the area of a 2.5 inch radius circle like this "pi*2.5^2"

TICalc.org has software for any TI graphing calculator, and some software that runs on your computer. Be sure to look thorugh the archives.

20q.net will guess just about any object that you can think of by asking you 20 yes/no questions.

For internet and media utilities I recommend AnalogX. Their tools are all free and very high quality.

Want to know what that song was that you heard on the radio? Yes.net can tell you. Just let it know when the song played and on what station and it will find the name of the song and even link you to the CD.

Traveling somewhere, and don't feel like scanning channels on your radio all day to find a station to listen to? Have Radio Locator do the work for you. You can search by Zip code or city and state to find all the stations that you can recieve in that area, and what their format is. I'd suggest you see what format your favorite station is as at home, and then find a similar format in the city that you're traveling to. One final note, you can get a bunch of technical details for any station, including a map of the predicted coverage area.

Looking for a way to kill some time? Addicting Games Has hundreds of ideas. One of them is sure to keep you from getting your work done.

Here's another one that's just there for fun. Click on any one of the Singing Horses to make them sing, then try mixing and matching them.

This one is just silly, but it can be a lot of fun as well. I think it's a great stress relief tool. You'll just have to Poke the Penguin yourself to find out. Be sure to do it more than once.

Ever wish you hand't upgraded that piece of software? If you don't like the features that have been added to your favorite software and want an older version oldversion.com might be able to help you out.

Ever hear a song in a TV commercial and wonder what it is? Songtitle.info can help find it. Its archives date back to 1996.

Something not working right with your internet connection? DNS Stuff can help you find the source of the problem.

If you're not satisified with listening to a traditional internet radio station, why not create your own? Yahoo's Launchcast let's you specify what your station plays. You begin by telling Yahoo what genres that you like, then as each song plays you can rate the song, artist and album and Yahoo will create a playlist for you based on your ratings. You can also listen to My radio station.