Fake Progress Bar

I wasn't really sure how to present this little oddity, but I figure it'll be fun for some of you, so here goes. Fake Progress Bar allows you to run a tiny little application that shows an almost never-ending progress bar (the delay is configurable) on your screen. You can customize the window caption, as well as other text on the window, and notably you can configure a multi-step process so that different messages display in succession, thus giving you multiple progress bars. This can be useful for times when you want a moment to be catching up on your offline reading, such as trade journals or industry news, without looking like you're slacking off. Another good use for it would be to give yourself a set amount of time to tidy up your desk – that task that seems to never get done because there's always something more important to be doing.

Of course, if you simply want to slack without being caught, it could be used for that too. In that case, you might want to check out Lifehacker's tip to use a screenshot of a true productivity application as your desktop background.

Tags: fake progress bar, FakeProgressBar, freeware, progress bar, ProgressBar, time waster, TimeWaster, timewasters