Looking for fun things to do online while you burn some hours at the office or kill some time at home? Looking for a list of websites to cure boredom?
Or do you have a bored kid and need some website ideas on how to challenge or occupy them?
Maybe you’re stuck inside for a couple of extra hours on rainy day, or to just get through this never ending pandemic?
Or maybe you just miss the Yahoo web directory and are frustrated with the “search engine” mentality of the world – where you need to know what you are looking for rather than just perusing an index to find something interesting to do on the Internet….
Then we have the ultimate “fun things to do on the Internet / Online when You’re bored” list for you! These are some fun & interesting websites that will help chase your boredom away!
The whole family contributed to this list – so you will find it covers a WIDE range of websites! We are continuing to add to this list – so please check back!
Take a look and please leave a comment to let us know if you are aware of other fun stuff to do online that we should add to our list!
111 Fun Things to Do On the Internet / Online!
| Culture | Nerdy |
| Science | Weird & Silly |
| Fun & Games | Directories |
| Cool & Helpful Tools | Exploring |
| Educational | Health & Safety |
| Beauty & Appearance | Government |
Fun & Interesting Websites!
Websites to go on when you are bored & looking for interesting things to do online:
Culture
- Google Arts – Explore different art museums! A way to explore, virtually & in 360°, some of the most fascinating museums in the world! Start with The British Museum!
- NightCafe – Create art with the help of Artificial intelligence! Here is my first creation – the “Sky Comma!” Also check out Dall-E-2 (part of the Open AI project) and Midjourney (but you need have a Discord account).
Music
- AccuRadio – Great online radio stations with music curated by actual humans – not computer algorithms! And you can skip as many songs as you want. Yes it is free! I love using this for classical music stations when I am writing & blogging.
- Typeatune – Create really simple tunes by just typing stuff like your name or even random keys on the keyboard. You can download & share your tunes.
Science
- Google Sky – Look @ the nighttime sky & the constellations right from your desktop! (I find the navigation on this site to be a little wonky – but that just seems to be a hallmark of Google…)
- Real-Time Satellite Tracker – Awesome! You can track various satellites and it imposes them over a realistic globe – so you are basically look at it from the satellite view!
- 100,000 Stars – A fascinating tour & way to explore some of the stars around us. This is an interactive experience. Complete with some eerie astral music….. I would suggest you star with the tour.
- Google Mars – See where various mission spacecraft have landed, and the canyons, dunes and craters of Mars!
- Google Moon – The moon – right from your browser…
- SpotTheStation – A NASA site devoted to helping you identify times you can spot the International Space Station (ISS) from your location. The site also allows you to see where the ISS is in orbit on a tracking map.
- NASA Virtual Tours & Augmented Reality – Tour the International Space Station, the Robotics Operation Center, or the Hubble Space Telescope Mission Operations Center. A Lot of the links are just to YouTube videos. HERE is a link to even more virtual tours.
- CERN – Explore CERN’s accelerator complex with 360° panoramic photos.
- LHC – Large Hadron Collider – live status
- Ocearch – Shark Tracker – Literally tracks 431 tagged animals (mostly sharks, but some turtles, whales & other animals too). And, yes, the sharks & animals have names! Ocearch is a non-profit organization that is trying to help restore balance in the ocean with regards to marine life.
- Track Earthquakes: USGS (United State Geological Survey), University California Berkeley Seismology Lab you can see the magnitude of earthquakes that are happening all around the world – in real time!
- Track Tornados & Severe Storms: NOAA National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center Hover over “Tornado” to see where there is presently the greatest probability of a tornado. You can also select to see how close to cities storms / tornados are predicted.
- Track Hurricanes: National Hurricane Center
Fun & Games
- Bing Fun – High quality & fun games to pass the time!
- (Sudoku, jigsaw puzzles, chess, crossword puzzles & quizzes)
- MSN Games – a WIDE range of free (but as supported) games for your pleasure!
- Solitaire, jewel, mahjongg, sudoku & even Battleship!)
- AOL Games – Oklahoma Gin, 10 x 10, 5 Roll, CodeWord, Bingo, Mahjongg, Backgammon & many more!
- LEGO Videos (LEGO Website) – Watch an assortment of interesting LEGO videos. Some really fascinating ones – like controlling a real excavator with a LEGO controller.
- The Internet Arcade – Miss the old arcade games of yesteryear – play them here! (Please note – you might have to read what keys to use to control/start the games.)
- Kahoot! – Make online quizzes of your own or take some of the pre-made ones that span various topics and areas of interest!
- Word Unscrambler – You type it in & the machine unscrambles it for you! You can also randomly scramble words from here and solve anagrams.
- Wordle – The New York Times word game that seems to be sweeping the nation!
- Wordle Solver – Yes – for those of you that just HATE to lose!
- Play Diplomacy Online – Web based version of the classic board game – & it’s FREE!
- puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.com – Make your own word search puzzles, crossword puzzles & more! Also try puzzle-maker.com
Cool & Helpful Tools
- LunaPic – Edit & manipulate photos. Free & very powerful. It could be more intuitive…
- Great Quotes: Goodreads, BrainyQuote, & A-Z Quotes
- Google Translate (Bing Translate) – Translate from one language to another! Grata tua!
- Hieroglyphics Translator – Translate a word, phrase or your name into hieroglyphics! There are also some other fun translators like:
- Google Trends – See what the world is searching!
- Track Planes in The Air: FlightRadar24
- The WayBack Machine – See what specific websites looked like in the past or ones that no longer exist!
- Ninite – Install & update all of your software at once. It has an impressive collection of free & opensource software!
- Remove.bg – Remove the background of an image (make the background transparent) – like magic! You can then overlay or insert the image on another. Great way to fake those vacation pictures!
- AutoDraw – AI (Artificial Intelligence) assisted drawing. Your start – and it guesses what you are trying to draw. You can then select some clipart to replace your sketch – or just keep drawing.
- Calculator.net – As you might expect, this website has a lot of tools to calculate specific things in specific areas of interest like finances, health & fitness, math and date & Time. It also has some less common ones like a stair calculator, a mulch calculator and a golf handicap calculator! Some fun & interesting things are here!
Online/Internet Privacy Tools
- The Onion Router – A browser devoted to ensuring your privacy! Private access to an uncensored web.
- Send Anonymous Email – How to do it so no one can track you.
- What Every Browser Knows About You – This website SHOWS you everything your browser knows about you and might be passing onto the websites you surf!
Educational
- PhET Interactive Simulations – I REALLY like this site. This is free and there are some GREAT simulations on this site. there are simulations for static electricity, Ph (Acids & Bases), sound waves, and optics to name just a few. The simulations cover earth science, biology, chemistry, physics, etc. There are 159 interactive simulations in total. These are great to help you explain to a kid (or for your own understanding of) important concepts that can really help you in everyday life. The site is hosted by the University of Colorado (Boulder).
- SIMPOP – Science Simulations & Games. Developed by students for students. convex lens, concave lens, & buoyancy simulations to name a few. the site & simulations cover physics, chemistry & biology. There is also a virtual microscope – which is pretty cool!
- JavaLab – Simulations covering time everything from special relativity time dilation, average velocity versus instantaneous velocity, ionic bonding, to moment of inertia. Fascinating stuff!
- SciJinks.gov – Simulate a tornado or a hurricane! Make lightning in a cloud! Check out the games and simulations for an interactive way to learn how weather works.
- TED.com – Ideas Worth Spreading! You’ve probably heard about TED Talks on YouTube. This is the website to the organization that sponsors those. Videos and animations can be found here. The “11 Must See” TED Talks. “Most Popular” TED Talks of all time.
- MathPlayground – Free online math & logic games.
- PubChem – Interactive periodic table of the elements! You can change the information displayed with a simple drop-down menu – and even play a game to help you more quickly identify where the elements are located on the table.
- HowStuffWorks – This is a great site that has a wide variety of short articles on many topics spanning from science & technology to gardening, cultural and even money!
- Instructables – Another website that covers a broad range of topics – but is oriented to, duh, instructing you on how to actually do various things!
- WikiHow – Their mission – to help everyone in the world learn how to do anything! Another How-To website.
- Kahn Academy – Free world-class educational resources for anyone, anywhere! An amazing resource with a wide variety of classes for every level of schooling. There is even a FREE SAT Prep course – which you can find HERE!
- National Geographic – Explore Animals, History & Culture, Environment, Science & Travel.
- Virtual Instruments – Learn how to play guitar, piano, drums, etc. online!
- Chrome Music Lab – Make you own songs online!
- Wolfram Alpha Demonstrations – 12,000+ Interactive Wolfram Notebooks for education, research, recreation & more. You can learn about everything from Modern Portfolio Theory (for investing), to UPC Codes, to Music Theory! Some of the models can be slow loading – so be patient. You might want to also download the Wolfram Player to actually run the model directly on your computer.
Beauty & Appearance
- Maybelline Virtual Beauty Studio – See what you would look like, in real time, with different makeup treatments. Try different styles, colors & techniques. I have a couple of daughters who really like this site!
Nerdy
- DistroTest – Try various Linux distros right from your web browser!
- Some suggestions: elementary OS, Linux Mint, Pop! OS, Puppy Linux & Deepin.
- DistroWatch – Keep up on, or discover the most popular flavors of Linux.
- Morse Code Translator – Convert text to morse code – with either sound or light. There are also plenty of resources here to help you learn or even decode morse code messages.
- Cryptii – A virtual enigma machine for encrypting & decrypting coded messages!
Ridiculous, Silly & Downright Stupid!
- Museum of Endangered Sounds – Hear some of the sounds from the past – that aren’t in your everyday life anymore! For when you’ve just got to hear that dial up AOL modem connection one more time!
- Windows93 – A website OS that “runs” through your browser and is a nostalgic journey back to the 90’s era of computing. Fun & quirky!
- People of Walmart – An awful site – but there are some funny pictures on it!
- Find the Invisible Cow – One of the dumbest websites on the Internet! Click around a blank screen until you find the invisible cow….
- FutureMe – Write a letter to yourself – to be delivered some day in the future.
- FakeYou.com – Use this website to have something you type spoken to you in any number of voices. There are voices from famous people, musicians, superheroes, anime, etc that you can use. You can have Einstein tell you that you are smarter than him – or have Tom Cruise give you a little pep talk!
Directories & Lists of Interesting/Useful Websites
- CEO Express – The self-proclaimed “Executive’s Internet”.
- Curlie – a pretty extensive collection, or directory, of websites. Not as easy to navigate or as high-quality websites as you would find when Yahoo was still maintaining a directory…
Exploring
- Radio Garden – Explore radio stations from all over the world – by just picking locations on virtual globe. This is one of my favorites!
- Broadcastify: Listen Live to Police, Fire, EMS, Aviation, and Rail Audio Feeds.
- TrafficView – live traffic, incidents & video camera feeds.
- EarthCam – Explore live streaming web cams located all over the world!
- Google Earth – Explore our wonderful planet & famous landmarks virtually!
- The Vatican – Explore St. Peter’s Basilica in 3D!
- Vatican Museums – 360° virtual tour of various rooms, including the Sistine Chapel & Raphael’s Room, in the Vatican. The amount of detail you can see is amazing! Very ornate rooms!
- The Louvre in France – Learn about some of the collections and famous pieces there (like the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, Great Sphinx of Tanis, Coronation of Napoleon & many others). A little virtual museum strolling!
- National Aquarium – Virtual tour of the national Aquarium in Baltimore Maryland. You can actually visit the exhibits and even the souvenir shop! If you have VR googles – you can use those.
- The Metropolitan Museum of New York (The Met) – The death of Socrates, Washington Crossing the Delaware…
- Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam – Rembrandt’s Van Rijn’s Night Watch & Johannes Vermeer’s The Milkmaid…
- Smithsonian – The world’s largest museum, education, & research complex. Learn online & explore their vast digital resources.
- US White House – Virtual tour of the US White House. This is NOT the official page for the White House – which is whitehouse.gov
- Botanical Gardens – Google Earth tour some of the most impressive botanical gardens in the world. The “Stop & Smell The Flowers Tour”!
- Thunder Bay Wrecks – Explore some shipwrecks in the Thunder Bay area of Lake Huron in 3D.
- The Eiffel Tower – The view from the Eiffel Tower – A virtual experience. You can move and look from all vantage points.
- Google Expeditions – Where do you want to go and what do you want to see today? Google Expeditions spans History, Natural History, Geography, Arts and Science & Technology. IT is a wonderful and immersive way to explore these areas of interest!
- Cool Interesting Stuff – A collection of unexplained, strange & odd mysteries.
Health & Safety
- MuscleWiki – Need help in identifying what exercises to do to work a particular muscle group? MuscleWiki is like a virtual trainer that can help you do just that! It has videos for each recommended exercise as well as guidelines for performing the exercise. There are also other tools on the website like a calorie counter to help you figure out the number of calories you can consume and maintain your weight – based on your age, gender, height & level of activity. Great way to help you stay in shape – especially during pandemic times when you are inclined to interact with fewer people!
Government
- USA.gov – Online portal to US government resources & services.
- Whitehouse.gov – The official website of the White House & the current administration. Interesting fact – it is built using WordPress!
- Library of Congress – The largest library in the world, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps and manuscripts! HERE are some fascinating facts about the Library of Congress!
We hope you enjoyed our list of websites and found some fun & interesting stuff to do online in your hour(s) of boredom. If you know of any websites we should consider adding to our list – please leave us a comment below. Thank you!
Sincerely,
- Cool & Interesting things to do on the Internet.
- List of websites to visit when you are bored.
