A delightful little web something-or-other, Shanghai Express by Ma Chong, has been my onscreen companion for the past few days, even though I've had to turn off the spacey-spooky piano music after a while.

The flash experiment slowly builds a Shanghai skyline out of the modern and postmodern towers that crowd the city's flightpaths . . . and, somewhat oddly, allows you to gently say no to a building or two by clicking on it, and the building slowly fades away.

A message about overcrowding? A contest of architectural aesthetics? Or, in my case, a strange kind of companion on my screen. Something about the frame counting and slow statistics at the top of the screen makes it seem like we're keeping track of something, like the weather widgets elsewhere in my desktop universe.

I've put Shanghai Express on my desktop alongside Shanghai live webcams to great effect. But then, ever since my days in a windowless uber-cube I've liked putting webcam windows in my sightlines to dispel claustrophobia. Things get crowded here, but in a companionable way.