Q: Sitting in the office all day, I sometimes get the urge to just spend a minute or two checking my Facebook. But it feels unprofessional, and I'd be mortified if the boss -- or even one of my coworkers -- called me out for it. What can I do?
A: It must be summer. Nobody wants to work anymore. They don't mind going in to the office, but once there, all they want to do is surf Facebook. That's what you would think, anyway, if you paid attention to this space last week, when we highlighted Excellbook, an application for both Macs and PCs that turns your Facebook News Feed into an Excel spreadsheet so that, should the boss walk by, you won't get busted.
Around the same time, Bay Gross, a Yale undergrad studying computer science, was developing a similar program. HardlyWork.in was released at the wrong time, missing out on the wave of coverage that Excellbook, which came out just a few days earlier, received on tech blogs, but it looks better than its predecessor. If you're going to use a program like this (and we're not advocating that; don't blame us when you get fired), you should use this one.
"Long hours at the new summer job? Feeling unprofessional when you check your Facebook profile at the office?" HardlyWork.in's introductory page reads. "Well there's nothing more professional than a nice spreadsheet. Sign in with Facebook below, and see your news feed rendered into an innocuous corporate form."
Gross, who maintains a website showcasing some of this other development projects, including a sublet sharing application for use at Yale University and a cab sharing app for the Harvard community, clearly knows what he's doing. Check out the screenshots for HardlWork.in before syncing the program with your Facebook and you'll see what I'm talking about. The integration with Excel is seamless and HardlyWork.in is able to display comments, likes, names, links, photos and more. And the bonus feature that really sets this program apart from the others? A bosskey. Press space at any time while you're in the spreadsheet and it will automatically close.
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Image: HardlyWork.in.
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