8aweek.com - More Productive Surfing

Do you feel that you are wasting a lot of time surfing the web but are unsure of how to change your surfing habits to use your time more productively? If your answer is yes, then you may want to take a look at 8aweek. 8aweek takes its name from recently published research which shows that the average person wastes 8-hours each week on sites that are not productive. 8aweek is a Firefox toolbar that allows you to track how you surf and then wean yourself off the sites that you deem to be unproductive. Just download the toolbar and then see the sites you visit everyday in graph form. Once you’ve detected where you are wasting your time, choose to either completely block the sites or to gradually use them less.

“The first step is discovering where your time actually goes. After installing the toolbar, you'll immediately be able to view graphs of your browsing habits. If you notice you spend way too long on some site, add it to your restricted list to let 8aweek limit your time spent on those sites.”

Internet addiction is a real problem and a tool like 8aweek can allow people to recognize exactly how they are using the internet and adjust their habits. This could also be a very popular enterprise level solution as there will be no shortage of companies that will use it to monitor employee productiveness.

The business model appears to be based on the collection of non-personally identifiable information. Will people feel comfortable disclosing their browsing history to a company that they don’t know? How exactly will they monetize this without causing concern amongst users?