14 DAY TRIAL // For all those of you who get warnings about the amount of time you spend at work browsing on sites such as YouTube, Facebook and MySpace, there may yet be hope. Some innovative guys have invented the KeepMeOut website, a pretty useful tool if you want to avoid unpleasant situations with your bosses in the future. Apparently, the site is free to use and can bring about benefits for those unable to stop watching videos or updating profiles during work hours.
Operating the service is not very complicated and can be easily mastered within a few minutes. First of all, you have to log onto the website and then type the address of the page you want to be kept out from in the specially-designed field on KeepMeOut. You can select the time interval from below the form. This feature determines if the site will warn you about going to the page you've just inserted in the URL box more than once in, say, 60 minutes.
If you feel that you belong to a specific website, for example YouTube, simply set the time limit to 2 hours or more. Then, if you indeed access YouTube more than once in 60 minutes, a warning message will be displayed, informing you of this. The next step is one in which you have to succeed in the very difficult task of deceiving yourself. Once you click the “Submit” button, a new URL will be generated on the tool's website. You will have to copy this link and bookmark it in your browser, while at the same time renaming it to YouTube or Facebook, or whatever other site you want to stay away from.
The part about the renaming is important, so that you forget the fact that KeepMeOut is now “on the wire” between your computer and the target site's servers. The first time you use the bookmark, no noticeable difference will be visible. However, if you try to visit it again a bit sooner than the time you've alloted yourself in step 1, then a warning message will appear, telling you to try again after a certain amount of time.
The good part about this website is that you can create as many bookmarks as possible. If you want to restrict your own access to various time-consuming sites, you are free to do so. Nevertheless, if you want to access those you've blocked, you can always do so directly, by typing their address in the address bar, or by replacing the KeepMeOut bookmarks with the real ones. As the saying on the website goes, “Reclaim Your Life!”