Too much YouTube? Lock it up

February 18, 2009 By Etan Horowitz

We all love to waste time at work checking out a YouTube video or updating our Facebook profiles, but if you can't control yourself, there's keepmeout.com, a free service that lets you set limits on your Web browsing.

1. Go to keepmeout.com and enter the address of a site you want to make sure you aren't visiting too much. Then decide when you want to be warned that you are visiting too often (i.e., when you visit more than three times in 60 minutes) and fill out the time field. Click "Submit."

2. You will now see a new URL that contains the name of the site you entered toward the end of it. Bookmark this URL in your browser and click on it to go to your time-wasting site instead of using the real address. Name your bookmark "Facebook" or "YouTube" so you forget that it's a special keepmeout.com link.

3. The first time you use the bookmark to visit your site, you won't notice any difference, but when you attempt to visit your site more often than you have allotted, you will see a warning page with a suggestion to visit your site again in a certain amount of time.

4. You can create multiple bookmarks for all of your favorite time-wasting sites.

5. If you really need to visit your favorite time-wasting site, you can always just type in the real address in your browser. When you create a bookmark, you can also uncheck the box next to "Don't link to the Web site on the warning page." Doing so will display a link to your favorite site when you see the warning.

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(Etan Horowitz is the technology columnist for the Orlando Sentinel. He can be reached at ehorowitz(at)orlandosentinel.com.)

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