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This weekend I was enjoying some performance from Coachella via AT&T Blue Room and noticed something fun: their online video player has a Boss Button. Pressing the Boss Button pops up a fullscreen fake Excel spreadsheet (pictured at left), designed to fake out your boss or coworkers if they happen to walk by while you’re, uh, not being productive.
This feature brought me back to video games from the 80’s, where a Boss Key (often F10 or some other generally unused key) was a common feature. Where did the Boss Key go? Why haven’t we developed a modern equivalent — there are over 100 keys on my keyboard; surely they could have assigned one to the Boss Key function by now.
Wikipedia has some historical info about the Boss Key. One implementation I remember is from Leisure Suit Larry, where pressing Ctrl-B would bring up a fake word processing document.
Reading the Wikipedia article, they suggest some alternate mechanisms for implementing your own Boss Key — including the simple notion of hitting Alt-Tab (or Command-Tab for us Mac users) to switch to another application. In Mac OS X, you can also hit Command-M to minimize the current window. In the upcoming Mac OS X Leopard, Apple will implement Spaces, which allows you to quickly shift the entire contents of your screen to another set of applications — I look forward to having an entire Space just for goofing off.
Have you figured out your own version of the Boss Key? Let us know your strategies for keeping your nonproductivity a secret!
I believe that the ‘boss key’ disappeared along with computer interfaces that did not allow multi-tasking.
Now-a-days you can use Alt-Tab to toggle from your browser window to a window that has the actual work you are supposed to be doing (as opposed to a fake spreadsheet that is easily detected.)
Conveniently, you can keep a thumb and finger on these keys with your left hand while mousing with your right.
posted by n2y2 on 6-11-2007 at 11:39 am
Arrange windows of programs that you use in a very productive layout. Outlook, Excel, Word, whatever.
Find a space to position the icons on your desktop so that they will not sit behind any window that you’ve got open. Remove all icons from your desktop.
Take a screenshot.
Put your icons back in their pre-set locations. Set the screenshot as your wallpaper.
Your new bosskey is Windowskey+D. This will minimize all slackerwindows to your screenshot of your open “good” windows. Hitting Windowskey+D again will bring your slackerwindows back.
Icons in the wrong places can throw the illusion off, as can your boss actually asking you to show you something in a “program” that you’ve got screenshotted.
Additionally, if you’ve got money to burn, you can get one of these: www.stealthswitch.com
posted by Jess on 6-11-2007 at 11:41 am
I actually bought a stealth switch but never got around to installing it. Anyone want to buy it? lol
posted by JaneM on 6-11-2007 at 12:05 pm
Many multi-button (more than two) mice come with utilities that allow you to configure the purpose of the buttons. Most side buttons are forward and back to be used with IE. I changed one from forward to minimize. One click and the top-most window is hidden. (Much faster than moving the mouse to the minimize button)
posted by Patrick on 6-11-2007 at 2:06 pm
Umm, the Start Key + ‘m’ instantly minimizes every single window on a Windows machine unless you have something up that’s waiting for a response (such as a dialogue box saying ‘Please select where you’d like to save “HOT WASHING MACHINE LOVE XI”‘) And ‘alt-tab’ or ’shift-alt-tab’ will toggle to the next window. The first one is the one I always use for a ‘boss key.’
posted by CJ Casey on 6-11-2007 at 3:10 pm
A group of us here at the U.S. Dept. of *** (agency name redacted) watched the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament on our office computers (live streaming of EVERY game–better than on TV). CBSonline.com includes on the screen during the stream a Boss button, bringing up a fake spreadsheet. It didn’t do us any good, since we don’t deal with spreadsheets here, but it’s nice to know CBS has its viewers’ interests at heart.
posted by secret squirrel (I work for the govt) on 6-12-2007 at 6:48 am
I don’t yet have a boss, but I do have the prying eyes of parents. So, when I’m playing a game, I either hit Alt-F4, which completely closes the application, or I hit Alt-Tab. :)
posted by John on 6-12-2007 at 7:46 am
Get a 5 button mouse and assign the button next to your thumb to “show desktop”.
posted by Jerry on 6-12-2007 at 4:59 pm
Hey secret squirrel, I tried the CBSonline.com website, it’s nothing but a search engine with popup ads.
posted by skip tracer on 6-13-2007 at 7:38 am