Forbidden land

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: You are not allowed to check your personal email accounts. Tonnes of websites are banned becausethe management is worried about worker productivity. You cannot store music in your office computer (because people think all MP3s are illegal); you do not have permissions to install any new software, YouTube videos are prohibited and almost all instant messaging software are blocked.

There are two options here—either you stick to the official rule book (and stay safe) or if you are adventurous and willing to take risks, read the following guide that shows how to do everything inside office that you otherwise thought was impossible.

Watch YouTube videos at work: Your friend has sent you a link to some funny YouTube video clip but you cannot watch it in office since YouTube is banned. The easy workaround is vixy.net—just copy-paste the YouTube URL and you can save that video locally as an AVI file. And if it’s a music video, Vixy will let you save that YouTube video into an MP3 file. A similar service that you may also bookmark is zamzar.com/url.

Instant messaging inside office: IM software, like Yahoo! Messenger or Google Talk, are probably the worst nightmare of any IT department and therefore they are blocked in most workplaces. If you are finding it extremely tough to stay out-of-touch with your IM buddies during Office hours, try meebo.com—it requires no installation and runs inside your web browser. Google Talk and Yahoo! Messenger also provide web-based version of their IM software.

Read your favourite blogs: If you are working in a BPO or financial services company that has imposed a blanket ban on all websites, citing security reasons, you can still keep in touch with your favourite blogs and websites through email. Services like SendMeRSS (of NBC Universal) or FeedBlitz will send you RSS feeds straight in your email inbox—the moment there’s a new blog post, you can read it just like any other email message.

When a web page is inaccessible: This is another common problem—the email message contains a link to some article on a website but you cannot read the full story as access to that website is restricted at work. No worries as you can still read that article through email.