The deal is this… Aspiring developers and game creators sign up at 2BeeGames – then submit their app through a form on the site’s members area.

The games themselves are fantastic. The site offers a mix of both downloadable games and flash games and the developers submit their apps as part of regular competitions, for small prizes – for fame and glory – for the chance of seeing their concept published.

After somehow managing to steal 95 minutes of my life away from me, I can whole-heartedly recommend you try Auditorium. A crazy music-based puzzle game. (For the record I couldn’t for the life of me get past Act 3 Stage 5). Update: 23rd July – I beat the game.

Back to the point, however… and why I write this… (This is a supposed business blog afterall.)

From a business perspective, 2BeeGames is total genius. Get a ton of absolutely awesome ideas submitted to your doorstep at no cost to you (besides a small prize, whether that be a Nintendo DS, a few hundred dollars or something of the ilk) – then get a community, your audience, the people who will eventually buy the product – to vote on what they like best. The idea-makers do it for fame and glory. The company running the contest gets a royalty-free license to do whatever they want with the content.

In this case “you grant to Zoo Games, and its successors in business and assigns, a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, distribute, modify, edit, display, adapt, create derivative works from and market and promote the content, for any commercial purposes, and in any medium now existing or hereinafter developed, and to use your name, likeness, voice, performance, and any personal information you submit with or contained within the content, without your prior approval or the payment of any compensation and without notice”

If you’re just wanting games, 2BeeGames has some of the most interesting, addictive and innovative around. Heck – even as a developer it’s worth it for the exposure (this isn’t some basement-version of Miniclip, people). An interesting marketing concept executed to perfection. Even enough to distract us marketers for an afternoon. Or two. Or three.

You Know You’re A Geek When…

1 – You find yourself consoling friends by saying “When there’s a widget, there’s a way!”

2 – Your friends are sat around talking about how they’ve gotta get home for the “big game”, and you ask if they’re watching “Fatal1ty take on Sir n00binator” as well. Oh dear. Oh dear.

3 – You sell out your real friends for those on Xfire, and miss your best-friends birthday party due to a “long-scheduled scrim”. Me figures he was born before the scrim was arranged. Pitiful.

4 – You know the price of the Optimus Maximus keyboard, know that it’s also Shakespeare’s birthyear, and worst of all… think that dropping $1,564 on it is money well spent.

5 – You’re more likely to give a girl your Twitter name than your phone number. Worse, you think that makes you incredibly cool.

6 – You give a crap what people think about you in forums, but not in real life.

7 – When people ask you about your accomplishments in life, you’re more likely to tell them you’re a level 70 on Warcraft, than the fact… well. Rather than anything else. I mean, nothing can compare, right?

8 – When people ask for your address, you assume they want your IP address, or website address – rather than… you know. Your address.

9 – You have SERIOUSLY accused people during sport (when you actually get round to playing it) of using aimbots, cheats and speedhacks. Not cool.

10 – It’s not unknown for you to give dirty looks to little kids asking silly questions. Once or twice, you might have even screamed “RTFMNOOB!” (particularly if you’re a Linux user).

11 – It’s easier for you to count in binary, and like so… 1. 2. 4. 8. 16. 32. 64. 128. 256. 512. 1024. 2048. 4096. 10192. 20384. 40768. And no… of course I didn’t just type that off by heart. *shifty eyes*

12 – You refuse point blank to use computers other than your own – knowing you’ll end up in a state of mental distress by the end. The speed, the way they’re administered, and the mofoing fact that they all use Internet Explorer tip you over the edge.

13 – You build your own computesr (and hackintoshes), but point-blank refuse to buy the 10-quid “guarantee” that Scan offers on your parts – even when they cost £10k, knowing that nothing will go wrong with you in charge.

14 – When you make a comment in class, or to a fellow employee – you always start it with “rem”, which you find more pronouncable than “//”.  You also “talk\ like\ this”.

15 – Dual-booting is for sissies. Your thing octi-poople-boots.

16 – Your USB-stick pen-drive (whatever the fruitcake you wanna call it) is larger than most people’s primary hard-drives.

17 – You discover yourself laughing at, nodding along to and enjoying this post. You also understood it all. Shame on you.

I wrote this myself. Rip them off without credit and I’ll kick yo’ ass. Rip ‘em off and linkback to this post… that’s cool. Claim them as your own and hell. If you aint paranoid, you’re dead already.

Method #1 – The Age-Old “Proxy” Trick

The most obvious way to circumvent website blocking, is simply to use a proxy.

Here are a few proxies to get you started (some of these carry ads – some popups, both annoying – some more than others):

http://www.spysurfing.com/ (SpySurfing)

http://www.hrmovie.com/ (Unipeak)

A lot of proxies struggle to handle cookies correctly additionally – meaning despite finding the proxy – you can’t login to check your MySpace, Facebook, GMail or Live account. Yet more problematic is the issues that arises when the proxy, heck… every proxy your ISP/school/company/organization is aware of… is also blocked. All hope is not lost, however!

.

Method #2 - USB Browsing

If you’ve tried it all before, proxies, socksies – secure-layer-moxies, then fear not… If you have access to a USB port and a spare, cheap 1GB USB key… you can load it with your own “portable” version of Firefox, with the “Tor” plugin pre-installed (also a portable version).

Very simply, Tor connects to a network of “proxy computers”, not proxy websites – through which your request for a webpage is loaded. These computers load the page first and then pass on what they see to you.

You browse the internet as usual from within the browser and they do all the hard work. No ads at all. This sort of method is much harder to block than simply blocking a group of proxy websites and can be much faster for you as a user – as well.

So where can one get ahold of this ultimate portable version of Firefox? If you’ve tried a few Google searches and turned up nothing but blanks, it’s no surprise.

The secure-version of Firefox is produced by a third-party under the “XeroBank Browser” brand. There is some debate as to whether this product is correctly licensed (see: Wikipedia) and if you’re worried or simply wish to do things yourself – you can download the versions of both Portable Tor and Portable Firefox separately.

Virtually unstoppable, is you have a USB key lying around – make use of it by doing the exact thing your boss/teacher is trying to prevent you from doing. In my case, accessing my GMail.

Conclusion

Sure – a list of 37 different silly, unworkable tactics to tricking your web-filter probably would have landed us on the Digg homepage, but let’s face it. Google cache is lame and not everyone wants to hack their employer’s servers.

This is all you need. A proxy-list if your bosses are dumb, or if they’re slightly more clued-up than a seventh century scientist, a USB key. As Aleksandr teh meerkat vould say (what d’you mean you don’t go out your way to watch British car insurance TV adverts?)… “Simplez.”