Often we find ourselves trapped in the net of addictive websites like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and many more. Instead of finishing our work, we keep wasting one hour after another on such sites without realizing that time is money. If you are finding difficulty in finishing your work due to the addiction of these time wasters, then you can force yourself away from them using free Cold Turkey. Cold Turkey is a freeware for Windows that allows you to block time wasting sites for a specified period of time.
You can download Cold Turkey from the its website. The download is around 1 megabytes in size. The downloaded file a setup program using which you can install it on your Windows system. After the installation, you can run it from its desktop shortcut. In the Cold Turkey window, you have to select websites that you want to block, time duration of block and then click on the Go Cold Turkey button to activate the block.
You can select the popular sites like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Youtube etc. by selecting the respective checkboxes. If you also want to block custom sites, then you can add them in the Custom Sites section. You have to select a time duration from the second section. You can select upto 7 days in the free edition of Cold Turkey, while in the paid edtion you can block upto a maximum of 30 days. When you click on the Go Cold Turkey button to activate the block, you are shown a final warning after which the block is applied.
After the block is applied you cannot visit the blocked sites. If you try to access them, your browser shows server error. The block settings are applied computer wide, so you cannot open the blocked sites in any web browser on your computer. If Cold Turkey finds that you were trying to circumvent the block, then it may punish you by blocking sites for one more week.
Cold Turkey works by adding the blocked sites to the HOSTS file of Windows. This is an effective and easy method of blocking sites. We have discussed it before on TrishTech in how to block/redirect sites using HOSTS file. Although this method is effective for almost all the applications in Windows, yet some applications might not respect the HOSTS file when resolving the DNS servers and can still access the blocked sites. But still Cold Turkey is easy, simple and fast solution to block time wasting websites.
You can download Cold Turkey from http://getcoldturkey.com/.