Bookworms have a new weapon in their arsenal of ways to appear to be working when they’re actually reading their favorite authors.
Read at Work displays a Web browser window that is a dead ringer for a Windows launch page.

Hear the boss coming into your cubicle farm? No problem. You just carry on as if you’ve spent the entire morning working on that hopeless project they’ve dumped on you. No need to click to another page or, in a panic, shut off your screen and reboot the computer — a sure sign of guilt that even the most obtuse boss is likely to spot.
Books are organized in desktop folders that look like any other folder, only more literate.
It’s subversion in the name of literacy. The site, designed by Colenso BBDO, Auckland, is an effort by the New Zealand Book Council to get people to read.

To see for yourself, CLICK HERE.

http://www.readatwork.com/

And now we’re running with the big dogs! That Peter Gabriel tune “Big Time” is bouncing through my head. We have a deal to produce content for MSN.com’s shopping pages. We’re in the Ask the Expert section. There are some T’s to cross and an i or two to dot, but it’s basically a done deal. It’s already online. All we need is to get paid. This was a long time in the making — not as long as some others, but long enough. You have to first contact the right people, negotiate the labyrinthine bureaucracy (we’re talking Microsoft here) , wait for the lawyers to dissect the deal, make an appealing pitch and (sales talk time) overcome objections. And now, I ask you , dear and humble blog reader, to visit that site (see link below) and maybe purchase a product advertised on the site. Why? So that we can continue to exist as a Microsoft vendor. Crass commercialism? It’s the American way, baby! Thank you, thank you.

http://shopping.msn.com/content/shp/?ctid=4695