So… you want to look at the Internet at work but with the open plan office it’s a bit obvious and you don’t want the boss to see.
Well, here’s a few tricks that’ll keep you out of trouble.
Turn off images
This takes away all the rich content from the sites you are viewing, and makes it look like you’re reading a boring work related document. It has the added advantage that it drastically cuts the amount of content downloaded by you so even if you browse a lot, you will be much further down the server lists for amount downloaded.
Sure it looks ugly at first, but once you’ve gone a few days you’ll barely notice anymore, and the real reason you’re on the site is to read the content anyway.
In Internet Explorer, it’s Tools, Options, Advanced, Page Down x3, Untick ‘Show Pictures’.
Read content in Notepad
As a programmer, I spend a lot of time working in Notepad, so it’s the obvious choice for reading articles and making them not appear to be the Internet. Typically I’ll bring up a news story, select the text of the article, copy then paste into Notepad, then close the Internet window and read from Notepad.
Write reply’s in Notepad
Any blog posts or forum replies that I author are typically written in Notepad, then pasted back into the browser. Again by limiting the time that Internet Explorer is open I limit the time that I appear to be browsing.
Win-D
Whenever anyone walks up behind you, the quickest way to minimise all your windows is to hold down the Windows key, then press D. Get into the habbit of doing this all the time so it doens’t look strange when people walk over as it’s part of your normal navigation routine. Press Win-D again and it’ll restore your windows as they were.
Use Firefox
If you can install Firefox (or IE7) then get it going for sure. The biggest advantage here is the tabbed browsing which appears like you have less windows open, hence must be browsing less
Window Size and Location
Have your screen dominated by a work window, such as Outlook etc. Then have your Browser using a smaller section, preferably at the bottom as it’ll be partly obscured by your torso. When someone glances at your screen they’ll see your work there, and of course they only get 1/2 a sec before it’s minimised anyway
Theme your own sites
If you happen to administer your own website, you could go and create a custom skin that looks like the program that you work on. Perhaps stick the products logo in the top corner then to the casual observer it’ll appear that you are in fact working.