Free Rice - all in one timewaster, vocab builder and feeder of the poor

As you take advantage of your four hour work week (ok, that's your New Year's resolution) you've got to love efficiency. Free Rice is a site that lets you build your English vocabulary, and while doing so, it donates grains of rice to the United Nations to help stop world hunger. The donation of rice is made possible by the unobtrusive ads that line the bottom of the screen.

We like to think of this as a three-fer - you help end world hunger, build your vocabulary all the while, and waste time in an efficient and productive manner since you are using some brain cells to advance to the next vocabulary word. According to Free Rice, there are 50 levels of difficulty, however, it is rare for people to advance past level 48.

Since launching on October 7, Free Rice has donated 2,098,280,280 grains of rice. All proceeds from the advertising revenue goes directly to the UN's World Food Program.

FreeRice is a sister site of the world poverty site, Poverty.com. The founder is John Breen, a computer programmer, with a keen interest in global poverty issues.