Behold, the best invention since the introduction of the amazingly distracting Web2.0: 8aweek. Those familiar with Mozilla’s Firefox extensions will have most likely seen this extension already. Here’s a breakdown of a few terms, and 8aweek:
Mozilla Firefox: The better version of Internet Explorer. Firefox allows the user a more secure and exciting online browsing experience. Why is it better than IE? Well, it was the first to allow for tabbed browsing, customizable browser interface, and extensions.
Extensions: Extensions are similar to Mac widgets. Essentially, extensions can perform neat tricks within your Mozilla Firefox browser. An example of an extension is the “IE tab browsing” widget. This extension transforms a tab in Firefox to Internet Explorer. Why is this helpful? Many web designers need to test their creations in both formats, as many users across the world are split between the two and Safari.
8aweek.com: 8aweek.com is one of these extensions for Mozilla Firefox. It’s main purpose? To save you time. Here’s how it operates:
When you browse the internet, it logs the time that you spend at each site. Spend an entire Saturday afternoon on Facebook? It logs that. Waste time browsing the ridiculous YouTube virals? It logs that. Where 8aweek is most helpful is what it can do with this log.
Essentially, with 8aweek, users can create a list of “Forbidden sites”. My top two are, you guessed it, Facebook and YouTube. With this list, 8aweek can forbid you from visiting these sites when you don’t want to be distracted. It allows the user to allot a specific amount of time each day that she/he wants to visit those sites.
Here’s an example: My restricted browsing time is set to 30 minutes each day. This means that I can only visit Facebook, YouTube, GoogleVideo, and Digg for a maximum of 30 minutes each day. After 30 minutes, a message pops up that tells me to NOT browse these sites anymore. It even blacks out the page so I can’t avoid it.
If you are in the middle of something very important, and are mad at 8aweek for cutting you off the site, you are allowed to hit snooze for a maximum of 10 minutes (the default).
What’s in store for next week? Another recommendation. Until then, check out www.babsonfreepress.com. There’s news, games, and babsonTV, all brought to you by the Babson Free Press Staff.
Also, I’d be happy to host your pick, if you find something cool. Send it over to dbarner@gmail.com and I’ll make sure you get credit for it. Until next time, enjoy this brand new, exciting web experience!
