For every roadblock to using social media at work, there is a workaround. Maybe you've been nervous to try these things because you're not sure of how much you're being monitored by I.T., your boss, or even your colleagues. You don't want to appear as if you're goofing off all day, do you? That being said, even the most diligent office drone deserves a break from time to time, and these days, those breaks often include a little brain candy in the form of social media.

If I.T. has your PC so locked down, you can't add or remove anything, you can't download anything from the internet, and you hit blocked pages all the time, then good! I.T.'s doing their job. But here's how to get around that.

Bring Your Own Browser

Just because your PC is locked down, your USB ports are probably still available. Only the most paranoid of companies use software to disable the optical drives and USB ports. If you can open files saved on a keychain USB drive, then you're in luck - you can use your ports.

At home, prepare a USB drive with the PortableApps suite. The standard edition offers a web office to go, featuring portable editions of OpenOffice, Sunbird, Thunderbird, and AV.

But most importantly, PortableApps offers portable Firefox, which we all know no social media lover can be without. Now, just like your were installing Firefox on a new computer, prepare your portable version with all the toolbars, bookmarklets, greasemonkey scripts, and add-ons that you can't live without. Once back at work, just pop in your USB drive and it will be like you've never left your home PC.

Dying for IM

If your I.T. department blocks you from installing IM, you can try Gaim Portable that came with the Portable apps you installed.

If that doesn't work, you might find that a web-based alternative like Meebo meets your needs. You can try their Firefox extension, too.

However, savvy I.T. personnel have heard of Meebo and block it on the firewall. But there are a few alternatives that they may not have blocked just yet. These include MSN Web Messenger, Yahoo! Web Messenger, AIM Express, Kool IM, ILoveIM, Mabber, Snimmer, Google Talk Gadget, ebuddy, and Robin Good lists a few more. Plus, you might want to check out Gmail's integrated Gtalk client to see if that works.

Just be warned, if your company policy states IM is not allowed, being caught doing so could be serious. For companies that deal in trade secrets or financial information, such a violation could even lead to termination. So for the uber-paranoid, just break out your phone. Most modern cell phones and PDAs ship with an IM client or two already installed. If not, go grab your favorites from the web: MSN Mobile, Mobile AIM, Google Talk (for some smartphones).

Sneaking in Your Tweets

Not comfortable with twitter.com loaded up on-screen for everyone to see? There are other ways to tweet undercover. Download Twhirl if you can. You may also want to check out OutTwit which lets you get your tweets via Outlook email.

If you can't download or install anything, just subscribe to your Twitter feeds via RSS instead, being sure to use an online reader.

Of course, for mobile users, tweeting by IM (see above section) is a possibility, as is tweeting via various mobile apps, like Blackberry's Twitterberry, ceTwit or Twobile for Windows Mobile, MoTwit for Palm OS, Tiny Twitter or jtwitter for Java-enabled phones, or, for anyone else, EmailTwitter, which lets you send tweets and retrieve your timeline via your phone.

Mindless Blog Surfing

RSS. RSS. RSS. If you're not already using an online feed reader, like Google Reader or Bloglines, now's the time to start. Too busy with that "work stuff" to do more than just scan articles? Set up a tag just for your "read it later" items or star them. Revisit them later when you're back at home.

Another option is to subscribe to blogs in Outlook. In many traditional companies, Microsoft Office is par for the course. If your company has revved to Outlook 2007, you can read your RSS feeds right there, no additional software needed. To kick it up a notch, Inbox 3.0 integrates with Outlook, too.

Want to actually go surfing outside of your feeds? Any web surfing at work has the possibility of interruptions. So save the things you come across for later reading at home. Using your portable Firefox, install Idea Shower's "Read It Later" extension for saving items you come across on the web.

Even better, the new ReadBag app built on Google's new apps engine, lets you save links for later reading too, but this tool also offers a daily digest that can be emailed to you at the time you specify. Readbag works via bookmarklet or Firefox extension and provides mobile access to your saved items.

Facebook at Work

What's that? Facebook's blocked? How could they? Proxy sites come to the rescue. If you desperately need MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, YouTube, Digg, Mixx, or any other restricted site, you can try a proxy like: Access Facebook, Facebook Firewall, or VisitSitesAtWork. You can also check out the list at Proxy.org. Just be sure to clear your cookies, your history, and your cache when done. The domain names pretty much give away what you were up to there.

Another idea is, again, mobile access. Blackberry users have their own mobile Facebook app, iPhone users can go here, and, for others, you can visit the Facebook Mobile web site.

Fight FriendFeed Withdrawl

If you successfully installed Twhirl for tweeting at work, then you're in luck since it also lets you access FriendFeed. Other FriendFeed AIR apps you can try are AlertThingy, Feedalizr, or bTT.

If you are prevented from installing programs, consider FriendFeed access via RSS feeds. Just subscribe in your online reader. 

For mobile users, the moblf app can help. This app gives you access to FriendFeed, Twitter, Yelp, and LinkedIn updates via SMS on your mobile phone.

Other Tips

If you can't download files form the web but you can install them, just load the executables onto your USB key and bring them into the office. Another alternative is to zip them up and store them online at an online storage site like box.net or SkyDrive.

You also need to know how to quickly minimize your activities. On a Windows PC, Alt+Tab switches you from window to window. Have only two open - the web browser and the spreadsheet, for example. This way, you won't accidentally mess up and Alt+Tab too many times in haste as your boss approaches, and end up switching to yet another inappropriate window.

Why?

Having been in I.T. myself for years, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to subverting I.T. policy to goof off at work. Why would I share this with the world? Because any I.T. manager worth their salt should know all these things already and how to combat them (if that's what the company wants.)

And every company concerned with employee productivity needs to determine for themselves where they draw the line on non-worked related internet activities and take the appropriate measures they deem necessary for blocking, stopping, tracking, and monitoring employee web use.

Finally, remember: just because you can, doesn't mean you should. If you really are slacking at work, people know. I've honored more than one request throughout my years in I.T. to monitor an employee's activities on the DL and your I.T. guy probably will do the same. Proceed carefully.

From Monday through Wednesday you can read our unorthodox coverage of DEMO here, but for now we'd like to offer the ReadWriteWeb Toolkit for DEMO08.

If you're already familiar enough with DEMO you may or may not want to skip this part and go to the next section.

The just redesigned DEMO.com website includes a wide variety of media you can check out to get a feel for the event and a good about page. The event schedule is here. There's a lot of good stuff off-site too, though. Believe it or not, there's no Wikipedia entry for DEMO!

For an in-depth peek into the mind of DEMO Executive Producer Chris Shipley, check out our 20 minute podcast interview and transcript at ReadWriteTalk. You can see the RWW coverage of DEMO 2006 here. Our DEMO 2007 preview is here and DEMO Fall 2007 Top 10 Companies to Watch here.

John Cook's Venture Blog has a good series running about one Seattle area company's preparation to go to DEMO. The GigaOm network's blog for startup founders, FoundRead, has an interesting post called Presenting at DEMO: 12 do's and 5 don'ts. That's a fun read just to see how many of the "don'ts" get done on stage.

If you're interested in the Enterprise angle, WindowsITPro ran a good interview with DEMO's Chris Shipley about her thoughts on the Enterprise market and DEMO presenters.

Much of what goes on at DEMO is that startups seek an audience with big companies in the mood for acquisitions. Valleywag's got the names and faces of the three representatives from Google, Cisco and Microsoft who are believed to be headed for DEMO with an appetite for deals.

Blog coverage

We won't be providing a lot of product profiles, but many other top blogs around the web will be. For that type of coverage check out GigaOm, Webware, CenterNetworks, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, SomewhatFrank, the B5 Technology Channel and presumably Mashable.

We've created a spliced RSS feed from those blogs and RWW, filtered for DEMO coverage, that you can subscribe to here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/RWWDEMORoundUP. If you'd like to get notification of any of these big blogs writing about DEMO via Twitter, you can follow this user http://twitter.com/RWWBigBlogsDEMO.

That's still a fair amount of content to keep up with, so if you want only the "best of" coverage from the above top blogs, here's a feed of just the 25% most popular items in that spliced and filtered feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/RwwsDemoCoverageRoundUp-BestOf Thanks to the good folks at AideRSS for offering a popularity filtering service that's so useful at times like this.

Search the DEMO presenters' sites

There are 77 companies presenting at DEMO and no one but Chris Shipley is likely capable of keeping track of them all. If you find yourself wondering, "who here does enterprise software?" or "which of these companies are releasing mobile software?" then here's what you can do - just go to the ReadWriteWeb DEMO08 custom search engine and all your questions will be answered. It's a Google CSE that searches just the 77 sites belonging to DEMO08 presenters. I've added that link to my toolbar favorites and to my mobile browser bookmarks. Feel free to do the same.

Twitter

In addition to the above automatic feed of top blogs covering DEMO, I'll be tweeting my little heart out throughout the event and you can search to see who else is doing the same using a search engine like Tweetscan or Terraminds.

Live multi-media

I expect that there will be people at DEMO doing live video and audio reporting. Some may use Mogulus, which despite its otherwise excellent service does not offer an RSS feed for live shows. Other places worth checking out are UStream.tv, QIK and BlogTalkRadio.

If you'd like to sign up for automatic email or IM notification of any live DEMO08 coverage on UStream, click here and for BlogTalkRadio live audio click here. Some Nokia users have been using QIK to do live mobile video broadcasting and though QIK doesn't publish an RSS feed of recent live shows - I scraped one using Dapper that you can sign up for automatic email or IM notification of DEMO coverage on via this link. You'll be told when the words DEMO OR DEMO08 show up in the title of a show and you'll see who the producer of the show is. Notifications are provided via Zaptxt.

In all likelihood you'd probably want to monitor all three of those at once. You can get email or IM notifications for any DEMO media on any of the above services here.

Participating companies

Graeme Thickins of GT&A Strategic Marketing has put up another of his annual posts listing all the DEMO participants, their locations and links to their sites. Graeme also summarizes some of the most interesting looking products on his blog, but I'll leave that for readers to click through and check out. Thanks to Graeme, below is a list of names and links to the 77 presenting companies with links to see who will be there.

See you there!

I'll be at DEMO starting Monday night and look forward to meeting some of you there. In the meantime, if you've got any thoughts about how the above resources could be improved, please let us know.

And now, a list of the companies ready to launch their products next week.

2Win Solutions, Ltd.; Raanana, Israel; www.2win-solutions.com
800 PBX, Inc.; Fremont, CA; www.800genie.800pbx.com
Acesis, Inc.; Mountain View, CA; www.acesis.com
Asankya, Inc.; Atlanta, GA; www.asankya.com
Aternity, Inc.; Westborough, MA; www.aternity.com
atlaspost.com; Taipei City, Taiwan; www.atlaspost.com
Avistar Communications Corp.; San Mateo, CA; www.avistar.com
BitGravity, Inc.; Burlingame, CA; www.bitgravity.com
blist, Inc.; Seattle, WA; www.blist.com
Buzka, Pty Ltd.; Subiaco, Australia; www.buzka.com
Capzles, Inc.; Culver City, CA; www.capzles.com
Catalyst Web Services, LLC; Alexandria, VA; www.catalystweb.com
CellSpinSoft, Inc.; San Jose, CA; www.cellspin.net
Celsias, Ltd.; Wellington, New Zealand; www.celsias.com
CHALEX Corp.; Grasonville, MD; www.chalexcorp.com
Circos.com, Inc.; San Mateo, CA; www.circos.com
Citiport, Inc.; Taipei City, Taiwan; www.citiport.net
Citrix Systems, Inc.; Ft. Lauderdale, FL; www.citrix.com
Cozimo.com, Inc.; Berkeley, CA; www.cozimo.com
Delver, Inc.; Herzliya Pituach, Israel; www.delver.com
Ecrio, Inc.; Cupertino, CA; www.ecrio.com
Education.com; Redwood City, CA; www.education.com
Eyealike, Inc.; Bellevue, WA; www.eyealike.com
Fabrik, Inc.; San Mateo, CA; www.fabrik.com
Flypaper, Inc.; Phoenix, CA; www.freshbrew.com
GoldMail, Inc.; San Francisco, CA; www.goldmail.com
good2gether, Inc.; Melrose, MA; www.good2gether.com
Green Plug, Inc.; San Ramon, CA; www.greenplug.us
HealthPricer Interactive, Ltd.; Vancouver, BC; www.healthpricer.com
Hubdub, Ltd.; Edinburgh, Scotland; www.hubdub.com
Huddle.net; London, England; www.Huddle.net
Iterasi, Inc.; Vancouver, WA; www.iterasi.com
iVideosongs; Alpharetta, GA; www.ivideosongs.com
Jodange, LLP; Yonkers, NY; www.jodange.com
Kaazing Corp.; Mountain View, CA; www.kaazing.com
LeapFrog Enterprises, Inc.; Emeryville, CA; www.leapfrog.com
LegiTime Technologies, Inc.; Westport, CT; www.legitext.com
LiquidPlanner, Inc.; Bellevue, WA; www.liquidplanner.com
LiquidTalk, Inc.; Chicago, IL; www.liquidtalk.com
Liquidus Corp.; Chicago, IL; www.liquidusmedia.com
Livescribe, Inc.; Oakland, CA; www.livescribe.com
MANDIANT; Alexandria, VA; www.mandiant.com
MOLI, LLC; West Palm Beach, FL; www.moli.com
Movial; Helsinki, Finland; www.movial.com
Nirvanix; San Diego, CA; www.nirvanix.com
NotchUp, Inc.; Los Altos Hills, CA; www.notchup.com
Notebookz.com, Inc.; Berkeley, CA; www.ileonardo.com
Pathworks Software Corp.; Mountain View, CA; www.pathworkssoftware.com
Redux, Inc.; Berkeley, CA; www.redux.com
Review2Buy, Inc.; San Francisco, CA; www.review2buy.com
Ribbit Corp.; Stanford, CA; www.goribbit.com
Rove Mobile, Inc.; Ottawa, Ontario; www.rovemobile.com
Santrum Networks, Inc.; Taipei, Taiwan; www.santrum.com
SceneCaster; Richmond Hill, Ontario; www.scenecaster.com
Seesmic; San Francisco, CA; www.seesmic.com
Silobreaker, Ltd.; London; England; www.silobreaker.com
Skyfire; San Jose, CA; www.dvclabs.com
SpeakLike, LLC; New York, NY; www.speaklike.com
Sprout, Inc.; Honolulu; HI; www.sproutfusion.com
Squidcast; San Francisco, CA; www.squidcast.com
StackSafe, Inc.; Vienna, VA; www.stacksafe.com
Standout Jobs, Inc.; Montreal, Quebec; www.standoutjobs.com
STEP Labs; San Jose, CA; www.steplabs.com
Sterna Technologies, Inc.; San Mateo, CA; www.friend-ltd.com
support.com; Redwood City, CA; www.support.com
SupportSpace, Inc.; Redwood Shores, CA; www.supportspace.com
Symantec Corp.; Cupertino, CA; www.symantec.com
TimeTrade Systems, Inc.; Bedford, MA; www.timetrade.com
Toktumi, Inc.; San Francisco, CA; www.toktumi.com
TubeMogul, Inc.; Berkeley; CA; www.tubemogul.com
Vidyo™, Inc.; Hackensack; NJ; www.vidyo.com
Visible Measures Corp.; Boston, MA; www.visiblemeasures.com
Voyant, Inc.; Austin, TX; www.planwithvoyant.com
xtranormal, Inc.; Montreal, Quebec; www.xtranormal.com
Yoics, Inc.; Palo Alto, CA; www.yoics.com
YouChoose, LLC; Thornton, PA; www.youchoose.net
Zodiac Interactive; Valley Stream NY; www.zodiac.tv