Open-office floor plans can be great for fostering communication and creative brainstorms, but sometimes sitting in a busy office for hours on end can sap the productivity right out of you. Blocking out the distracting, unpredictable noise around you is integral to actually getting work done, and the website A Soft Murmur [1] has made this ridiculously simple.

Using dials under an assortment of 10 sound options, you can customize exactly what kind of sonic environment you'd like to create inside your head. Rain, thunder, waves, crickets, and white noise are probably familiar sounds to anyone with a white noise machine in their bedroom, but the singing bowl, wind, birds, fire, and coffee shop really take things to a new and interesting level. By adjusting the dials underneath the sound categories, you can have a little bit of this and a little bit of that — resulting in an aural landscape entirely of your own making. You know what beats listening to your officemate shout through her sales call? Sitting by the fireplace inside a coffee shop filled with birds. Virtually speaking, that is.