How to Block Facebook, Twitter, Email for Few Hours Daily

So you want to block Facebook, Twitter, Email for a few hours so you can stop wasting time and do some productive work. Well it is a simple task if you want to block users on your computers, or want to save distraction time for yourself.

I was trying to access Facebook at a friend’s computer, and as I browsed to the website, I got this alert and Facebook was blocked.

I tried Twitter.com and same for Twitter! Same for email… my entire social interaction was blocked.

My friend chuckled and informed that he had manually blocked social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and all his email accounts so that he could concentrate on his work productivity and not waste time. The blocked urls were released after a few hours (as per his settings) when he was relaxed and free to interact on these sites.

I really like the idea. How many times do we get started to work, and get hooked to chat or Facebook on the way.

How to Block Facebook, Twitter, Email

I hope you are using the Google Chrome browser (its the best out there), and install the Website Blocker extension. Edit some settings and you can block any website for as many hours as you want.

Choose the settings wisely and the extension provides a simple interface to block websites, as many as you want and at custom times you want. You can also type an optional message.

For example, this code will block access to Facebook.com urls from 0900 to 1700 (9am-5 pm). I have been trying this for a few days and I assure you it is worth your time to use this – and get on Facebook, Twitter and email when you really want to.

How to Block Any Website for Employees / Users

This extension works well if you want to prevent access of social media sites by your employees. Simply block the sites during working hours and they will never know how to access them.

1. Hide the Website Blocker icon from the Chrome toolbar. Right click the icon and click “Hide button”

2. Disable the link from showing in the block message alert which can guide people to disable the options. Also disable the ability to edit settings from the popup alert options

Unless people really know how to browse around into Chrome settings, identify the website blocker, experiment with its settings and disable it – it should work to block websites for most people. Just keep Chrome as default and only browser on the computer.

5 Best Chrome Extensions for Google+ Power Users

Power Google+ users can install these best Google+ Chrome extensions and improve usage and navigation around Google+ social interactions for a richer experience. We believe these 5 extensions you must install on your Google chrome browser right now. Tested to work as intended.

Best Google+ Chrome Extensions

Replies and more for Google+– the most useful feature it will add is “Reply’ and “Reply to Author” links for easily replying and mentioning other users (hopefully these features will become default in Google+). It will also badges the favicon with a number when you have new messages. You can use shortcut like Ctrl+Enter and Shift+Enter to submit a comment or post. The header bar floats down as you scroll and a dropdown will allow you to share with additional sharing options (Twitter/Facebook/Email). Must get this.

Photo Zoom- provides fast zooming for photos inside your Google+ Stream. Just hover over the image you wish to zoom and +Photo Zoom will load the enlarged version of the picture. You can choose to zoom only when a key is pressed as well as decided the zoom delay time. Choose if you want to zoom profile images on Google+, Picassa images or all external images – all without clicking open any image!

Surplus- Will put the notification icon alongside other icon in the browser bar itself (instead of only the Google+ page), which allows you to see Google+ notification alerts while you are on any page and interact with your friends without visiting the Google+ profile page or stream. Not only can you post or respond from within the popup, but also get Desktop Notifications, notification sounds and switch between multiple Google accounts.

So though there are many Google+ chrome extensions, I hope you like our choice of these must have Google+ extensions.

Plus One Anything - It will let you +1 any page on the web, even if there is no +1 button installed on the page. The +1 icon is loaded in the browser bar along with all other extensions. Simply click on it and a new +1 icon loads with url. Click to confirm and you have shared the page on Google+ easily.

+Comment Toggle – is a simple extension that hides any comments to posts within your Google+ Stream and makes them available if and when you actually want to see them. If you have a crowded comment stream, it can give quite a cluttered look. It collapses all comments and make the stream clean, so that you can click to see comments.

Share some other useful Google+ Chrome extensions below and we might add them here.

Evidence Of A Facebook Music Service Surfaces

References to a product called “Vibes” have been found in Facebook’s code, and it could be related to the company’s rumored music service.

The social network launched its Skype-powered video chat service on Wednesday. Part of the process of getting started with the one-on-one video communication product is downloading and installing a program on the desktop.

Eagle-eyed software engineer and researcher Jeff Rose was curious about what he was installing and how it interacts with Skype, so he decided to look into the code of the desktop app. In it, he found that the installer supports not one but two applications. One is called “Peep,” which is related to the video chat client, and one is called “Vibes,” which is apparently related to a music downloading app.

It seems clear that Facebook has something related to music downloading up its sleeve. Could it be an app for downloading your music and uploading it to the cloud? Could it be powered by Spotify? Or could it just be code that refers to a defunct or discarded product?