CHICAGO – The new office suite OfficePretend is aimed at employees faking they're working.

The software was presented to the public yesterday at the SoftCon 2004 computer convention in Chigaco. We spoke to EasySoft CEO Bob Chromsey, inventor of the application.

"How much time do you spend at your office job, sitting in front of the computer pretending to work? You create fake flow charts, meaningless presentations, and serious looking nonsense diagrams. But this takes hours and hours of your precious time which could be spent surfing the net."

Bob feels comfortable his software hits on a commercial niche.

"It's all about making life easy for the user. We present you with a list of half a dozen work-related words to customize. After that you can create colorful diagrams with the click of the mouse. They all make it look like you're doing a great job."

Sounds like a killer app, but what about competitor Microsoft Office?

"[Microsoft] Office is certainly the market leader in what we do. PowerPoint and Excel are fantastic tools to pretend you are busy. But," Bob told FakeToday, "OfficePretend takes laziness a step further. We give back control over the load bar. You can enter, say, 5 minutes, and the computer will look like it's number crunching for just that time – allowing you to get out with coffee and cigarettes without the boss giving you the looks."

And the work which actually needs to get done?

"Don't worry. We support 8 programming languages, and nearly 50 different file formats from PDF to Word. With OfficePretend you will have something which looks professional even on print, yet nobody could ever decipher its meaning. It's basically boss-proof. Even the customers are happy."

We asked Bob what's next for EasySoft. Rocking back and forth on his chair in true entrepeneur fashion, he lets us in on his secret. "We're working on EmailPretend, which sends out emails to your boss to tell him what a great job he's doing, in random intervals. Flattery always passes the Turing Test."

By FakeToday correspondent Philipp Lenssen (8/26/2004).