Get paid to surf (at work)

Aside from not having to show up at all, it's every office worker's dream to be able to loaf around all day surfing the web, sending personal emails, managing online accounts and so on. Based on entirely unreasonable grounds (something to do with productivity I imagine) most bosses object to this. That's the end of that guilty pleasure then, or is it?

Ghostzilla provides one possible work (ha ha) around. It's a web browser with a difference - an 'invisible' web browser - invisible in that it operates covertly within more business-like applications such as Word, Excel and Outlook without initiating a task bar or task tray presence of any kind. The Mozilla-inspired application takes any web page and strips it of its garish, attention-grabbing images, tones down the text and presents it in the least conspicuous application of your choice. Performing a couple of sweeping mouse gestures brings the forbidden web page into view, while moving your cursor away from the page makes it vanish again.

More interesting than the time-wasting potential Ghostzilla exerts is the anonymous author's admonition of its use. Apparently one day he was struck by a sudden epiphany after reading Michael Crichton's novel, Prey, and decided that switching jobs - rather than meandering aimlessly throughout the web - was the road to salvation.

If you do choose to use it - which you certainly shouldn't for your own sake - keep in mind that Ghostzilla cannot conceal the addresses of the sites you visit from your company's network administrator, and you could be publicly flogged if caught. So feel free to read about it - but don't download it. Look at the screen shots - but don't install it. If you do, don't, because it's wrong. In fact if you wouldn't mind un-reading this post entirely, it would be much appreciated.