Webware

Trying to get work done is tough if you have an Internet connection. The constant urge to take a peek at a video on YouTube or check your personal e-mail is a siren song that for many simply cannot be ignored. Luckily, there are several sites and browser add-ons that can help keep us in line, be it with basic productivity or making sure we do not stumble in moments of weakness.

Gmail "e-mail goggles" and "take a break" labs add-ons

Don't drink and e-mail.

Want to send that e-mail at 4 a.m.? Unless you're up early, and getting a jump start on the work day, Google's Gmail thinks you're drunk and will wisely make you do the math problems to prove you're not. Of course, if you really want to outsmart the machine you can simply turn this Gmail labs add-on off from the settings menu, which requires no math whatsoever.

Likewise, the "take a break" labs add-on can make you stop whatever work you're doing to go enjoy the finer things in life. It keeps tabs on how long you've been working in Gmail and will give you a pop-up that requires doing something else for 15 minutes before coming back to your in-box. This is recommended if you don't want to install one of those ergonomic nag programs on your machine.

E-mail discipline

E-mail discipline bars you from using certain sites until you get work done.

(Credit: Mozilla)

Want to hop on Facebook or check your personal e-mail for a little while while drudging away at work? You'll need to earn it with E-mail discipline. This Firefox add-on keeps you from visiting nearly 20 different sites including MySpace, YouTube, and Twitter without doing a little bit of work between sessions. As long as you ignore these places for two hours at a time it lets you browse for a short while, before putting up a nag screen that tells you to get back to it. Users are able to override the nag screens at any time by clicking the "cheat" button.

Procrastato

Like E-mail discipline, Firefox add-on Procrastato works off a blacklist of sites you probably shouldn't be visiting. Once you're on one of these sites (which you add in manually) it starts a timer in the background. If you're there past your allotted amount it gives you a pop-up message telling you to get back to work.

MeeTimer

If pop-up nags aren't your thing, and you don't feel like being scolded for bad online behavior, worth checking out is MeeTimer. Once installed it simply keeps tabs on how long you're spending on each site and breaks it up into percentages--including how much of that was done during "work" time. Consider it the browser equivalent of parental guilt trip. It's not mad at you, just disappointed that you spend 29 percent of your working day on Facebook.

See how your daily browsing is broken down with MeeTimer. You might be shocked.

(Credit: Mozilla)

HassleMe

If you want the nagging features of Google or Yahoo calendar with some level of anonymity there's always HassleMe. The site will send you a friendly reminder e-mail to do something, be it to take out the trash, reply to a certain e-mail, or finish a project. You get to pick how often it sends these messages, and it promises to change up the times ever so slightly so you cannot anticipate when it will arrive.

ReminderFox

If clogging up your e-mail in-box with reminders sounds less than desirable, check out ReminderFox. This Firefox add-on puts a to-do list on the side of your browser. You can set deadlines for each task, along with reminders that will pop up, and can be acknowledged, ignored, or delayed, just like in Microsoft Outlook.

LeechBlock

Along the lines of MeeTimer and Email Discipline, LeechBlock lets you organize sites you probably shouldn't be going to in sets. You can prioritize each set, and block yourself out of using them down to certain times of day, or how much time you've already spent using them. Consider this something similar to the parental settings on a TV, keeping you from accessing content you shouldn't be looking at when you're supposed to be working.

Any we missed? Leave them in the comments.

He's coming to get you.

(Credit: JibJab)

I got a little bit obsessed with JibJab.com's "Starring You!" video creator when it allowed me to create videos of my co-workers dancing the Charleston in drag while horrifically bored on a slow news day. (Josh Lowensohn looks awesome in flapper garb.)

Now, as I've just learned, the site has created a politics-meets-Halloween gimmick so that you can edit a likeness of yourself into mini-movies called "Night of the Living Democrats" or "Night of the Living Republicans" and battle zombified versions of politicians from the political party you abhor the most. The new project, launched Tuesday, is in partnership with CNN Politics--why exactly, we're not sure. And zombies are a big deal, in case you couldn't tell.

Some of us are politically jaded enough so that we'd rather battle undead incarnations of our office-mates or in-laws (since we have to do that every day anyway), but hey, Bill Clinton and Trent Lott will have to do for now.

JibJab, created eight years ago by brothers Gregg and Evan Spiridellis, made a name for itself by Photoshopping the heads of world leaders onto cartoon bodies and turning it all into elaborate song-and-dance numbers. The original "Starring You!" mashups launched over the summer, and the Spiridellis brothers gleefully cite the statistic that over one million of the custom JibJab avatars have been created.

I guess there are more than a few of us who are inclined to procrastinate sometimes.

Trust me--I know procrastination. But this one really takes the cake.

JibJab, as you probably know already, made a name for itself by creating corny (yet socially relevant) musical skits that superimposed the heads of politicians and celebrities onto cartoon bodies. Now that user-generated content is nothing new, it almost seems overdue that JibJab would introduce a "make your own" feature. But now, at long last, here it is: "JibJab Starring You!"

The concept, at least according to the creators, is to JibJab yourself by uploading a photo, easily crop it with the Flash-based tools to make a bobblehead-like image, and then revel at the absurdity of watching yourself dance the Charleston.

But don't let that fool you. The real purpose of "Starring You!" is to dig up photos of your boss and put them into any number of the dorky dance videos. As a bonus, most of them require two dancers, so you can use the likenesses of multiple co-workers--or choose from a small library of celebrity heads that range from Donald Trump to Barack Obama.

As a demonstration, I present to you Josh Lowensohn, Hot Mamacita. (No, Josh isn't my boss, but he's more...photogenic.)