Surf the Web safely while at work

I think we've all at one point or another accidentally come across material online our boss wouldn't approve of, but that's part of using the Web at work. Most of you have probably seen those NSFW (not safe for work) tags on blog posts and forums, but not everyone is courteous enough to add one—which can be a bit embarrassing when you're at the office or at school. Parents, on the other hand, may not want their kids to see what their otherwise approved sites might be linking to, so for them there are plug-ins.

If you're a Firefox user, then you know plug-ins are small programs that add more functionality to a browser. I recently spotted two Firefox plug-ins that flag pages containing those NSFW links: one's called Work Safer and the other one is No-NSFW. Both plug-ins basically do the same thing, which is alert you when you're about to click on a page that contains adult material. One of the differences is No-NSFW displays a color-coded (red, yellow) warning on the lower right hand corner, and Work Safer displays a scoring system. Ratings are largely determined by votes gathered from its users, but if users haven't voted on a specific site, the ratings are then based on other things like how many similar URLs are considered NSFW by voters. Both sites are still very new, but I like the warning system, and can't wait to see how well this will work in the future now that NSFW links are everywhere.