NET ART
Thomas Swiss & Motomichi Nakamura’s “Beautiful Portrait”
Animated heads in silhouetted portraits, speaking phrases of a poem, distribute the poem’s rhythm spatially.

LET’S GET ANIMATED
JibJab’s “Matzah”
From those masterful online animators at JibJab—hip-hop meets matzah, the unleavened bread featured at Passover.

NET STORIES
Daniel Merlin Goodbrey’s “Icarus Tangents”
Daniel Merlin Goodbrey’s Icarus character, in this interactive Webcomic, has brief encounters with the writer of his life, his girlfriend and the Devil.

NET MOVIES
Andre Matarazzo’s “Daddy”
Be sure to slide the control underneath the screen. It turns a short film of a man walking the streets, with his voice-over musing about something serious that has happened, into an animated drawing of the same man, and a voice-over by his young son, waiting for his father to get home after a visit to the doctor.

The PingRay Shop for April

GAMES ON THE NET
“ANTkendo”
Nothing clears the mind early in the morning better than trying to knock an opposing, ant-like Kendo master off a rope with a long stick, over water.

ONLINE GADGETS AND TOYS
Han Hoogerbrugge’s “Modern Living (Neurotica Series)”
Rotterdam-based artist Han Hoogerbrugge’s series of human characters neurotically repeat a series of odd behaviors.

LET’S GET ANIMATED
Kim Deitch and John Kuramoto’s “The Ship That Never Came In”
Based on his own graphic novel about the early days of the animation business, Kim Deitch’s cartoon ode to black-and-white cartoons is part epic, part Felix the Cat (here called Waldo) adventure.

LET’S GET ANIMATED
David Seezen’s “Bees (Lots of Bees)”
With a music track and visual style that might induce you to jump up and dance, this chase story about bees and a character who loves/hates them almost makes you want to bee-come one of them...not to mention other bee and visual puns.

The PingRay Shop for March

NET MOVIES
Craig Serling’s “Jam”
A traffic jam on Fathers’ Day, a gang of scruffy safe crackers in a stolen vehicle and a lesbian couple desperately needing a place for one of them to give birth.

NET STORIES
Tatu Digital’s “Rashomon Café”
A waiter, before seeing his lovely Lisa, must first navigate through choices during his shift.

NET STORIES
Submarine Amsterdam’s “The Killer”
In these 12 episodes of a film noir, interactive Web comic, a professional killer plies his trade without emotion, but with plenty of rationale.

LET’S GET ANIMATED
Simon Norton’s “Marzooq: A Folk Tale from Egypt”
In broad cartoon style, this tale of a poor cobbler and a rich tailor is part-morality tale and part-long form joke.

The PingRay Shop for ISSUE 21

LET'S GET ANIMATED
Chad Strawderman’s “Voted Off the Glacier”
In this homage to “Survivor” and other reality shows, Chad Strawderman expands on the idea of voting as a Darwinian tool.

NET ART
Andreas Gysin’s Works
These works by Swiss-based artist Andreas Gysin are elegant, fun and, in their quick responsiveness to rapid changes in perspective, startling.

NET STORIES
Maya Churi’s “Charlie’s Story”
Note: Parental discretion advised.
Using miniature houses, small figurines and a cinematic sensibility, “Charlie’s Story” is a boy’s journey through the backyard pools, neighbors’ lives and memories of a model neighborhood.

ONLINE GADGETS AND TOYS
“Virtual Bubble Wrap”
Nothing quite hits the spot like popping good ol’ bubble wrap. And what could be better than virtual bubble wrap?

The PingRay Shop for ISSUE 20

ONLINE GADGETS & TOYS
Art.com’s “Art Pad”
This art canvas and paintbrush lets you paints pictures online, post them in a gallery, add to others’ paintings, choose a frame, and replay your painting as a movie.

NET ART
Gicheol Lee’s “Typorganism”
Based on the “metaphorical notion” of “type as a lifeform,” “Typorganism” creates a playful laboratory of fonts, letters, keystrokes and letter art.

NET MOVIES
Meher Gourjian’s “Plug”
Carefree moments between a man and a woman in a field—dreams brewed by players in a huge virtual reality environment—become secondary to the real need: plugging in.

MIND BENDERS
“Emerald Nuts”
This animated entertainment box, inspired more by Monty Python than Madison Avenue, squeezes more imagination out of a little box of nuts than one had any right to expect.

The PingRay Shop for ISSUE 19

NET STORIES
Muttink’s “The Bird, The Mouse and the Sausage”
In this exquisite and macabre Brothers Grimm adaptation, a bird, a mouse and a sausage learn—too late—the dangers of overstepping one’s role.

GAMES ON THE NET
Cartmack’s “Cursor Thief: Amped”
This engaging game pits you, and your cursor, against a sneaky but adorable thief whose entire being is centered on taking your cursor from you.

NET ART
Victoria Change and Renato Lopez’ “Seven Reasons for Divorce”
This poetic meditation about a breakup moves through a space of half-seen photos, like pieces of memory trying to reconcile themselves.

MIND BENDERS
Burger King’s “The Sith Sense”
Darth Vader returns from “Star Wars” to scan your mind, in this updated version of “20 Questions.”

The PingRay Shop for ISSUE 18

NET MOVIES
Tony Roche’s “How To Tell When A Relationship Is Over”
As a public service for Valentine’s Day, this 90-second, humorous film shows you how to recognize the signs that your relationship is past tense.

NET MOVIES
Ze Frank’s “Valentine’s Day”
Ze Frank, Web humorist/artist, wittily dissects the holiday of valentines, hearts and formal greetings of “I love you.”

KID STUFF
Discovery Kid’s “Chomp and the Temple of Puzzles”
An ancient temple of puzzles will only reveal its mysteries if you can figure out the challenges created by a tribe of temple monkeys.

SCIENCE & SCI FI
National Geographic’s “Planetary Investigation Lab”
It’s 2020, and National Geographic, in a TV special and in this Web companion, scientifically speculated about what alien life might be like.

The PingRay Shop for ISSUE 17

NET MOVIES
Paul Middleditch’s “Big Ad”
The sweeping panorama shots, the hundreds of extras—some ads, like this one from Australia, are becoming more like epic movies.

ALTERNATE WORLDS
“99rooms”
Based on “apocalyptically charming” images by German artist Kim Köster of industrial locations in East Berlin, these hauntingly beautiful rooms offer subtle navigation to the next spooky space.

LET'S GET ANIMATED
Bruno Bozzetto’s “Apartment Life”
From master Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto, whose line-drawn characters have populated witty, often wordless cartoons for decades, comes this tale of urban life and desperate measures.

ONLINE GADGETS & TOYS
Widro.com’s “Throw Paper”
Just when you thought this new year would enable you to reach new heights of productivity, we feature the easiest way to practice throwing wadded paper into the trash-can.

The PingRay Shop for ISSUE 16

LET'S GET ANIMATED
Hybridworks’ “The iCorn Project”
From the Japanese design studio Hybridworks comes this athletic adventure of agile traffic cones and their corn-on-the-cob relatives.

ALTERNATE WORLDS
National Geographic’s “Crittercam”
The animal point-of-view revealed by Crittercam represents not only a new chapter in natural sciences but also a new era in programming.

ONLINE GADGETS & TOYS
Leo Burnett’s “Big Ideas Come Out of Big Pencils”
The Leo Burnett ad agency’s Canadian site embodies their position that sketching can create great ideas.

KID STUFF
“Bembo’s Zoo”
In an updated twist on the alphabet-as-animals tradition, this animation shows each letter recombining with itself to create animated counterparts, with appropriate sounds.

The PingRay Shop for ISSUE 15

NET MOVIES
FeelGoodAnyway’s “National Dress Up Your Pet Day”
It’s that time again—“National Dress Up Your Pet Day” (January 14), a date that is certainly circled in your pet’s calendar.

NET ART
fastspot’s “Road to Memory”
In this explorable landscape of scenes, you might find story-like connections between these memories, or they may seem like leftover pieces of dreams.

LET'S GET ANIMATED
“Craig Frazier Movies”
Resembling moving paper-cutouts, Craig Frazier’s wordless allegories glide through inventive visual transformations.

GAMES ON THE NET
2dPlay’s “Bowling”
Why should you have to listen to your bowling teammates howl at your gutter balls, when you can privately practice your technique in this online alley?

The PingRay Shop for ISSUE 14

MIND-BENDERS
Sofake and Billy Harvey’s “Billy Harvey Music”
In one of the most original uses of virtual space ever, a collaged Billy Harvey presents a tour-de-force tour.

LET'S GET ANIMATED
Nathan Jurevicius’ “I Love You to Bits”
This retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice features a modern, sad-eyed, headphones-wearing Orpheus, hoping to charm the black-and-white world of squiggly creatures in Hades.

ONLINE GADGETS & TOYS
ZanyFun.com’s “Piano Animal”
Create ordered harmony from cat, bird, dog and fish sounds with this piano keyboard.

NET ART
“Blueball Machine”
Visit “Blueball Machine”—part-Rube Goldberg, part-pinball, part-madcap toy—and, some unknown time later, you’ll find your synapses cleaned and your mood refreshed.

The PingRay Shop for ISSUE 13

NET MOVIES
TheTruth.com’s “Fair Enough”
Actual, formerly-secret Big Tobacco internal memos are staged as sitcom episodes, complete with
laugh-tracks.

NET ART
SystemSoular’s “Life Program”
“Life Program” uses universally-recognized symbols to present evolution as, in its way, the ultimate in “intelligent design.”

ONLINE GADGETS AND TOYS
Wireframe Studio’s “Wireframe Skeleton”
Practice some dance steps…or even walking…with this lively, fluid skeletal puppet, from Wireframe Studios in South Africa.

GAMES ON THE NET
On the Rail’s “Whack a Waiter”
In what must be the only game ever designed for “intrepid waitpersons,” the lively “Whack a Waiter” shows what you need to succeed: food for customers, tips for bussers, and alcohol for the cook.

The PingRay Shop for ISSUE 12

NET MOVIES
Blur Studio’s “Rockfish”
A regular day of “fishing” on another planet, but a hard-nosed worker—and his alien pet—manage to stir up a mess o’ trouble.

NET STORIES
Ze Frank’s “New Years”
Wide-eyed and chock-full of observations, Ze Frank, an artist and monologist, humorously reflects on the New Year’s holiday.

GAMES ON THE NET
The Falk Group’s “Plane Crazy”
This paper airplane game is a fun exercise in skillful unproductiveness...with little electric fans to guide your choice of aircraft.

MIND-BENDERS
Jook Leung’s “New Year’s at Times Square”
Want that feeling of being in New York’s Times Square on New Year’s Eve? Virtual reality to the rescue, in this QuickTime VR 360-degree panorama with sound, from 2005.

The PingRay Shop for ISSUE 11

NET MOVIES
Alex Jovy’s “Holiday Romance”
Randomly, a young woman entices a stranger to enter her home, where, for several days, she toys with him... remotely.

NET ART
Jared Tarbell’s “Organic Machinery 2002”
Click on the beautiful, hand-drawn walking insects, and their parts pop apart and randomly reassemble into new walking insects.

GAMES ON THE NET
KewlBox’s “Attack of the Mutant Christmas Trees”
From the National Christmas Tree Association (even trees are organized) comes this snowball-throwing game in support of the natural approach to indoor forestry.

NET STORIES
Ellis Weiner’s “Santa Lives”
This “vidlit”—an animated trailer for the book version—asks rarely-asked questions as it makes “Five Conclusive Arguments for the Existence of Santa Claus.”

The PingRay Shop for ISSUE 10

NET MOVIES
Jimmy Zeilinger’s “Damned If You Do”
A newly-dead man, frustrated by a life of good intentions but bad results, tries to get into Hell.

ONLINE GADGETS AND TOYS
Yariv Alter Fin's “Inter-Face”
Sunk into a blank, white page, a woman’s highly expressive face is under your control, like some kind of cooperative android.

NET ART
Farah Marklevits and Rob Corradi's “How They Sleep”
The fires in this elegant, interactive poem are dream-actions by a man and a woman, whose "heads are tuned to different pitches, like glasses of water."

GAMES ON THE NET
Shockwave.com’s “3-D Pool”
An amazingly realistic game of table pool in a paneled parlor. Watching the simulated physics of independently-moving billiard balls is, by itself, a joy to behold.

The PingRay Shop for ISSUE 9

NET MOVIES
Jason Reitman’s "In God We Trust"
Suddenly dead, Robert finds himself at the Central Office in the Sky, lacking enough points to enter Heaven. And then he gets a second chance.

LET’S GET ANIMATED
Trevor Van Meter’s “Fly Guy”
In this witty, line-drawn interactive animation, a graceful bald guy flies through sky and space, controlled by your cursor keys, and meets intriguing characters.

NET STORIES
Scott McCloud’s “Mimi's Last Coffee”
Using the Hypercomics technique, this interactive comic reveals the cinematic and, ultimately, tragic story of a waitress and her customer.

GAMES ON THE NET
Grant Robinson’s “Guess-the-Google”
Twenty images generated from a hidden search term appear in a grid, and you, on a timer, must guess the search word that was used to find them.

The PingRay Shop for ISSUE 8

KID STUFF
The Lemelson Center’s "Invention Playhouse"
Four colorful games from the Smithsonian Institution celebrate imaginative problem-solving.

MIND-BENDERS
Seven Up’s “Think Clear”
Mind-reading on the Net? Sounds like science-fiction, but this effervescent teenager will surprise you with his ability.

ALTERNATE WORLDS
Wada Che Nanahiro’s “Things Came Up to My Brain Museum”
The line-drawn scenes and loopy music deliver a gothic whimsy as you search inside a mysterious, door-full museum.

NET ART
“Thinking Machine 4” by Martin Wattenberg, with Marek Walczak
A computer lets you see its thought patterns during a chess game. Like a ghostly presence, the colorful waves of possible moves emerge.

The PingRay Shop for ISSUE 7

NET MOVIES
"Save the Antelope"
At this American Thanksgiving holiday season, it is time to give thanks...especially if you are a galloping antelope in danger.

ONLINE GADGETS & TOYS
Burger King’s “Subservient Chicken”
Ok, we couldn’t find a subservient turkey. We thought a person-in-a-chicken-suit-who-does-what-you-
type would be the next best thing for the American Thanksgiving holiday.

GAMES ON THE NET
Ferry Halim’s “Orisinal Games”
These 56 exquisite, finely-detailed games, most resembling delicate children’s books, are among the most beautiful, imaginative and fun on the Net.

KID STUFF
Ragdoll’s “Boohbah Zone”
From the British production company behind the “Teletubbies” TV series, comes this magical, otherworldly plaything, a kind of pre-verbal musical toy with odd, colorful characters.

The PingRay Shop for ISSUE 6

SCIENCE & SCI FI
Discovery's "Alien Planet"
In a detailed imagining of a 2077 scientific exploration to Darwin IV, a habitable planet 6.5 light years from Earth, you join the search for alien life.

MIND-BENDERS
Kitaoka Akiyoshi’s “Rotsnake”
Just keep in mind that this optical illusion is, in fact, illusory. The picture is not actually moving. (Note: It works best in a darkened room.)

LET'S GET ANIMATED
Patrik and Amila Puhala’s “107.6 Degrees”
For these adorable, 3-D cartoon creatures, struggling for a few degrees of comfort is their main day job.

ONLINE GADGETS & TOYS
Soda Creative Ltd.’s “Soda Constructor”
Like mechanical insects, these charming creatures seemingly display basic survival intelligence. You can play with existing creatures, or create new ones.

The PingRay Shop for ISSUE 5

NET MOVIES
Alex Jovy’s “White Bits”
Director Alex Jovy has made a nearly-perfect short film about the price of a few, memorable moments between a lovely woman and her husband's friend.

ALTERNATE WORLDS
Patrick Smith’s “Vector Park”
Delightful and wordless, this elegantly interactive environment has its own logic, as if it were residing in another universe.

ONLINE GADGETS & TOYS
Pekka’s “Freefall”
Is George W. Bush in freefall, or is he agile and able to bounce back? Thanks to this extraordinarily kinetic animated toy, decide for yourself.

SMART FUN
Tony Buzan’s “World Memory Challenge”
In this well-designed challenge, you'll need to remember cards, pair images and…as prep for your next party…match names to faces.

The PingRay Shop for ISSUE 4

NET MOVIES
The DAVE School’s “Batman: New Times”
With a style based on Lego blocks, this amazing featurette is a perfect parody. Voices by Adam West, Mark Hamill, Courtney Thorne-Smith & Dick Van Dyke.

ALTERNATE WORLDS
Uniaid’s “Student Survivor”
Build your own student, and use typed commands to keep it "happy, fed, watered, studious and solvent"...for at least a week of in-game time.

ONLINE GADGETS & TOYS
Erik Neumann’s “My Physics Lab”
Colorful and elastic, these line-drawn toys bounce, stretch and vibrate through the laws of physics. And you get to tweak things, like gravity.

LET’S GET ANIMATED
Jonti Picking’s “Badger Badger Badger”
This delightful … and hypnotic … animated piece is already a Net classic, spawning imitations and sequels.

The PingRay Shop for ISSUE 3

NET MOVIES
John Coven’s “Repossessed”
This taut and scary short film stars JoBeth Willams ("Poltergeist") and Juliet Landau ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer").

KID STUFF
“Garfield’s Scary Scavenger Hunt”
Celebrated cartoon cat Garfield needs to find 7 goodies in the Haunted House--but don't let him get TOO scared.

ONLINE GADGETS & TOYS
Chad Strawderman’s “Voodoo Boss”
Ah, Halloween — time to stick pins into a voodoo doll of a boss.

E-CARDS
Oddcast’s “Halloween Card Creator”
A new kind of e-card — a virtual monster speaks your script. Our favorites: the alien, the vampire and the Devil.

The PingRay Shop for ISSUE 2

LET’S GET ANIMATED
Jennifer Shiman’s “The 30-Second Bunnies Theatre”
Classic movies, re-told in 30 seconds by earnest cartoon bunnies.

e-CARDS
Hallmark’s “No Ordinary Hi”
From Hallmark's terrific "Hoops & Yoyo" series: even e-cards have to deal with quirky actors.

GAMES ON THE NET
Bloc Games’ “Stackopolis”
A beautiful, beat-the-clock race of stacking blocks that is just a few blocks short of addictive.

MIND-BENDERS
“The Zoomquilt”
An infinite zoom into scene after detailed scene, inspiring a giddy sense of unknown stories.

The PingRay Shop for ISSUE 1