

My Chrome Extension DistractionBlocker - csouth
http://goo.gl/9Ghq

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Locke1689
Seriously, no URL shorteners on HN -- even Google's.

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chaosmachine
On the other hand, the stats are kind of interesting.

<http://goo.gl/info/9Ghq#day>

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csouth
That was my main reason for doing it. I was wanted to see what kind of
interest it generated without having to wait for analytics to update.

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iheartmemcache
Nice effort! Though, it seems like this extension's functionality greatly
overlaps that of StayFocusd's (1). Is there any "killer" feature to get me
(and other StayFocusd users) to switch over?

(1)
[https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/laankejkbhbdhmip...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/laankejkbhbdhmipfmgcngdelahlfoji)

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csouth
To be honest I wasn't aware that this existed. It seems that a lot of the
stuff they are down is all the stuff I had planned so its going to be back to
the drawing board to come up with ideas that will make this plugin a contender
to this one. Currently DistractionBlocker is very much a work in progress and
hopefully it will continue to grow with feedback from the people that use it.

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thingsilearned
I was a co-founder of 8aweek.com (YCW08) which was a similar concept for
firefox.

See screen shots: <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6562/>

The trouble about doing it for one browser is that your other browsers quickly
come into use.

One system wide fix is to edit your hosts file:
[http://thingsilearned.com/2007/05/04/combating-internet-
addi...](http://thingsilearned.com/2007/05/04/combating-internet-addiction/)

but it only blocks you from sites instead of giving you nice time limits. And
it becomes too easy to change back.

I wish there was something that offered the limit functionality but for all
browsers/access but currently i know of nothing.

RescueTime (YC W08)'s Get Focused app is the best implementation of this I've
seen.

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csouth
You sparked off an interesting conversation with myself and a developer friend
about just how to do this and I think we have the answer... Stay tuned.

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rbarooah
You've just inspired me to mention my Safari Extension MindfulBrowsing - that
does a similar thing. It's been up for a few weeks now, but I hadn't posted it
here. Perhaps thanks to you, I don't need to do a chrome port now!

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1745790>

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csouth
Any thoughts on this / ideas for expansion would be awesome

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brianwillis
Suggestions:

1) The icon needs some work. Not sure what you're trying to represent.

2) When you click enable/disable in the popup menu, the menu should
automatically disappear. You shouldn't have to click again to dismiss it.

3) If while you have the extension disabled you load a page in your blocked
list, then enable the extension, then refresh the page, the page doesn't get
blocked.

~~~
csouth
Awesome feedback. I know the over all design (including the icon) needs a lot
of work, and an upcoming update should include that. In this update I will
work on the automatic disappear.

The refresh thing has to do with the way chrome handles this event. I'm
working on a work around for it right now.

