I asked our group what techniques they use for disguising their non-work-related blogging and web browsing. Among them were:
Minimizing - This one is very old-school, it’s where you make the actual window you are reading or looking at very small and the more acceptable spreadsheet or word document very large. “Surely they wouldn’t be looking at that tiny little screen in the corner”.
Codifying - This one is from the programmers in the group who are constantly doing research on other websites. Whatever site it is they are looking at that may not be smiled upon as relevant; they will grab the code and open it out to the side. Voila, research!
Wordifying - This requires a web portal that will ‘translate’ your website into a screen that looks just like a word document. Does anyone have this link? Please include in the comments!
Split-Screening - This suggestion is for those of you who are fortunate enough to have dual monitors. One monitor contains an active spreadsheet or document and the other has the latest video reaction to the Star Wars girl. And all you have to do is turn your head when the enemy approaches.
Justifying - We had a reporter and some advertising folks in the group who have to look at all sorts of websites for market research, trend spotting and story ideas. Therefore, most any website is potentially justifiable.
and of course the classic..
Alt-Tabbing - This is a standby for anyone who has ever surfed the Internet at work (Cmd-Tab if you’re on an Apple). This little function takes you to the last seen window, hopefully that one was work-related.
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1 Tracksuit CEO talk at SXSWi // Mar 17, 2008 at 10:04 am
[…] Everyone has been asking me how the session went. Blog on Company Time Without Getting Dooced was a huge success in my opinion. I see it as a success because of the turnout and most importantly because of the audience participation. The Core Conversations were set up to be just that: conversations. This was not just me giving a speech and asking for questions at the end. And I was absolutely amazed at the level of participation we got from this group. It was a group of people from varied industries and this made for a lively discussion.At one point I asked the group what techniques they use for disguising their non-work-related blogging and web browsing. The ideas ranged from the old standby: Alt-Tab, to the more sophisticated: a service that converts web pages into Word documents. These were too good not to record so I’ve actually compiled them into a full list here. […]
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