Accessing Blocked Sites in Office

We all know that companies usually block access to certain websites so that people can concentrate on work rather than on some obscure websites. There is an added advantage that it reduces bandwidth usage as well as minimizing the chances of a virus attack. The ones that usually gets the stop sign are webmail, social networking, download centers, porn, music and file sharing websites. But every now and then the filters that our friendly network guy uses goes a step ahead and blocks some "innocent" sites also. Like they do it in my office with the news sites and one particular technology blog (www.labnol.org) that I read regularly. And today I re-discovered one old trick to access these sites :D. The trick is to use the Google cache.

I subscribe to RSS feeds of most of the sites I need to browse as Bookmark Toolbar in my Firefox. The RSS feeds will list down in a drop down fashion. I right clicked on one of the recently updated article and clicked copy to copy that article link. Then, I typed cache: in the Google search bar on the right hand corner of Firefox and pressed enter. Magic!!.. the article was there in the cache mode!!.. This method has some limitations. Major one being you can't view those webpages that has not been cached yet. But take heart, last time I checked an IBN Live article at 2:45 pm, it was updated at 12:15 pm. Also, the cache was also showing a latest article on www.labnol.org which wasn't visible in the Toolbar. So, cache is somewhat reliable and updates faster and is latest compared to the time mentioned on the top of the cache frame which might indicate an earlier time. And of course, you can't click on links to navigate. You have to copy the link and then do a cache: to get going. And no, you can't check Orkut.