You’re probably used to bookmarking your favourite sites for easy access, but the web goes much deeper than the top domains you’re familiar with—from your social networks to your email box, having the right URL to hand can enable you to jump right into the page, feature, setting, or search you need. Here are 10 of the most useful ones.

The deep web and its inner recess, the dark web -- those less well-trodden parts of the internet beyond the reach of Google and Bing -- are not for the faint-hearted or untrained. With the right tools, however, there's little to fear and plenty to discover. Here's how you can start exploring the deep web without having to worry about your digital well-being.

This weekend, the Neopets forums got very active. Perhaps, the most active in a long time.

I've never been a big fan of sharks in massively multiplayer online role-playing games, something to do with the giant, deadly bastard that used to swim in the harbour outside Freeport in EverQuest. I've never really warmed to pirates either, falling on the ninja side of that age-old debate.

I had completely forgotten how much fun the classic strategy board game Stratego was until I played the online multiplayer version launched today by Keesing Games on Facebook, Stratego.com and the iPad.

While I love LEGO in general, the Hero Factory lines and Bionicle before it never appealed to me. I'm a brick man. Still, a new LEGO game coming in January to mobile devices and web platform is a wonderful thing, even if it isn't as square as I'd like.

When I first loaded up Michael P. Consoli's Against the Wall I felt the early onset of panic. In front of me, stretching out in all four directions was a vertical wall made of blocks of varying sizes.

Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure hit game and toy store shelves, resulting in thousands of children and adults learning a new way to play together. There are many different ways to squeeze fun out of these shiny lumps of plastic; let's take a look at three of them.

The colourful, imaginative online game from the team behind Flickr and the man behind Katamari Damacy goes live today.

If you ever wanted to control where American dollars go, now's your chance. American Public Media, known mostly for their expansive public radio work, recently updated Budget Hero, a free web-based game where the player has the future of the nation's budget in their hands.

Star Trek - Infinite Space gets its first trailer today, giving us a glimpse of what the free-to-play game hopes to deliver.

After a little over four months on the job, Google's "game developer advocate" is no longer with the company. The development follows his discussion at GDC-Europe of Google's revenue plans for games sold over its Chrome Web Store

The maker of FarmVille, shedding users by the millions, got a jolt of good news on Tuesday when the game's parent company reached an agreement with Facebook, settling a standoff over the handling of virtual currency transactions.

Caught in an apparent pissing match with Facebook, Farmville creators Zynga seems to be losing. Two weeks ago Zynga lost 3.1 million monthly active users. Last week they lost 4.2 million of them.

Wii owners can look forward to some slightly-more-adequate web browsing real soon now if this rumoured upgrade to Opera is on the money.

Edmund McMillen (of Aether, Gish, and the game that shall not be named) is back with Meat Boy, a challenging little game that involves the titular blob of meat trying to rescue Bandaid Girl in a variety of levels. It took me a while to actually look at the game, since the designer woke me up a few nights in a row via IM asking me to take a look at it — I hold a grudge when it comes to my sleep being interrupted — but I've spent some time with it and it's worth a looksee if you're in the mood for a challenge on a Sunday afternoon. Controls are simple, the game is difficult, but you can skip two levels per group — so if you really get stuck, don't despair.

Meat Boy

Simon Carless, publisher of Gamasutra and one of my favourite people in the world of gaming journalism, contents that LittleBigPlanet is Web 2.0 for games fulfilled — and makes a pretty persuasive argument for why it may be so. Of course, he's basing this on access to the beta version and admits that we'll have to wait until release to see how this will all pan out with a big community attached, but it looks promising:

Now, I'm sure some might accuse me of hyperbole in the face of relatively little evidence. And it's true that I can't tell what's going to happen to the community based around the game, when the full weight (and, hopefully, ingenuity) of the PS3 masses are brought to bear on it.

But the game has managed to do what console titles have thus far shuddered to provide - an open, easy to use creation system that lets the community make the magic, while the creators stand back and marvel.

Here's Karoshi Suicide Salaryman, a frighteningly addictive puzzler in which the object is to kill yourself. Of course, only that part of the game's concept is backward, the actual means to kill yourself are obscured or protected from you, as you are a danger to yourself and others (and you have access to firearms). I made it to level 7 (it counts down from 49) in about 20 minutes. For a flash game, that's a pretty good gameplay experience. The game remembers your progress if you want to come back to it later, so don't delete your cookies. I really dig the soundtrack, but there's no explanation of why you're so desperate to end your own life. My guess is the global financial meltdown armageddon panic has something to do with it.

Karoshi Suicide Salaryman

The next step in the evolution of the MMO species? Or just a gimmick? Eurogamer has noted Turbine's Jim Crowley is talking about the launch of a genuine social networking site for LOTRO players before year's end. Live news from the game world, character profiles, friends lists, and sharing screens and videos from the game."Turbine believes that a closed eco-system will have to become an open eco-system," he said. "The MMO needs to learn... to adapt itself to the 'born digital' generation. The MMO needs to step out of its shell and start reaching a much broader and deeper audience."I think this is a great idea. Virtual worlds need to move beyond the game client, particularly if it can let players do their MMO chores during convenient downtime during the day. If WoW had a mobile phone version of the auction house, for example, I don't think I'd have left when I did. I'd have just kept playing that market to gain some gold between the times I could actually jump in and spend more genuine time playing the game. Allowing friends and guilds to interact as part of a world-specific social network can only be a good thing. Anyone see a downside?

LOTRO to get social network site this year