Need to beat that net addiction, but don’t have the willpower on your own? Consider these new free and cheap downloads that can help you keep yourself in check.
Freedom, which costs $10 to download but offers a five use free trial, blocks access to the Internet for up to eight hours. During that time, the only way to bypass the restriction is by restarting the computer.
Just download the program onto your computer from MacFreedom.com and set a limit - from 15 minutes to eight hours - and the Internet is off. If you can't resist and must get back online before your time is up, you have to fully reboot your computer. Grad student Fred Stutzman developed the program to help him finish his dissertation.
For the specific social time wasters, Stutzman also built Anti-Social. It costs $15 and blocks only social sites, from MySpace to Vimeo. For parents worried about the amount of time their teenagers spend posting updates to Facebook, this site will set timeouts to help get the homework done.
Another option, the StayFocusd program, offers up the chance to custom-design your self-imposed exile. Spend too much time on eBay but still need to access Gmail? This is the site for you.
Self Control is free and has a similar approach, though it also gives the user a “blacklist” or “whitelist” option, excluding or including access to specific sites.
While using Self Control, you can restart the computer, put it to sleep or jump up and down on it while screaming, but the program will not allow you to get online one millisecond before the allotted time period ends.
Do Nothing for 2 Minutes - drew 1 million unique visitors in its first five days and is a site that counts down for two minutes while showing you a pic of lovely nature scenes and you can’t do anything else until you’ve chilled for your two minutes.
