Glassdoor.com, a new online startup, is trying to become the newest pimp for all your voyeuristic salary snooping desires. Now you can find out how much your loser brother-in-law is making over at his big accounting firm job.

Will this lead to anyone with an internet connection being well informed enough to know to hit you up for money? Some are calling it the next best thing for job hunters, while others pass it off as useless 'salary porn'. Which begs the question, are porn salaries a part of this site too? Sadly, the answer is no, but it's a useful site anyway.

The site is currently in a free trial stage and is allowing all visitors to view salary info for employees at Microsoft and Google free of charge. You may have seen this earlier when we linked some info this morning in the 'Funny and Money Thursday Daily Links' post.

According to Julia Bornstein of CNBC, there is one big catch that will deter the salary peeper inside all of us:

As much as I'd love to voyeuristically read all about the employment landscape, I can't say I'd feel comfortable about offering my own info. I'm sure [my employer-] NBC Universal wouldn't want to encourage such behavior, to say the least. Glassdoor checks your e-mail address and its staffers contact you if there are any questions of authenticity. If you don't mind sharing, you can peruse all sorts of data, and when it comes to salary info, you can graph and sort by employee function.

Although Julia seems to have used the word 'peruse' incorrectly in that quote (Sorry, a pet peeve of mine. It's the most misused word in the English language. Really means to study in great detail, not skim through casually), she does raise an interesting point.

Glassdoor works on the 'I'll show you mine if you show me yours' concept and requires all would-be salary peekers to first give in-depth information about their own job's salary. Of course this wouldn't be an issue for an unhappy employee already looking for another job, but it does hinder the ideal of having all salary information out in the open with Wikipedia-like access.

What if some jobless deadbeat guy wants to start looking up salaries? He wouldn't be able to use Glassdoor due to his lack of experience in the working world. I suppose jobless deadbeats aren't really the revenue driving target audience that Glassdoor is afraid to miss out on.

I am contemplating making up some 'authentic salary information' so that I can check out a few of these entries though. How much does a Starbucks manager make?!

Feel free to post your own salary info in the comments section!

CNBC: New Web Startup Makes Salaries Transparent, June 12, 2008

We are big believers in the perpetual pursuit of your perfect dream job.

And although superhero and astronaut might be out of your league, there are plenty of cool jobs out there you may be uniquely qualified for.

CareerBuilder first assembled the big list of interesting jobs and interviewed these fine gentlemen, but now after careful analysis and prolonged meditation we present to you the 6 coolest dream jobs:

1. Brew Master - Salary: $30,000-$60,000 per year

Jonathan Cutler creates recipes and brews the restaurant’s beer selection at Piece Pizza, a Chicago-based pizzeria. He is the resident brewmaster.

Cutler started home brewing back in college, and completed a brewer training program after graduation. He refined his skills by going to as many beer tastings as he could. It’s not all drinking delicious beers and getting drunk though.

"Right now I'm drenched in sweat, I've got malt all over me and I'm wearing coveralls -- and the brewery is about 100 degrees," Cutler said.

Every guy has his own favorite beer and the world can never have too much of God’s nectar, so why not start on your path to becoming a legendary brew-Master of the Universe?

2. Casino Host - Salary: $15 per hour and up

The casino host is one of the few guys you actually like at a casino. He’s there to make the guest feel comfortable and will ‘comp’ a few drinks and maybe a few rooms. He’ll book your hotel reservations and probably collect some big tips.

At Connecticut's Mohegan Sun casino, there is a casino host on duty 24 hours per day. Eleftherios "Lefty" Mastorakis, executive host at Mohegan Sun, comes in at noon each day and spends the next eight hours or so checking messages from patrons and monitoring the gambling floor to deal with any requests that come up.

Mastorakis entered the casino business after high school and has held a variety of roles over the last 10 years. Lefty smartly does not himself indulge in gambling.

3. Ice Cream Creator - Salary: Food scientists average $56,600 a year

Derek Spors is one of those noble men who laid down his tastebuds to bring you the finest of Ben and Jerry’s. He refers to himself as an "ice cream scientologist" and senior product developer for Ben and Jerry's, where he is responsible for creating (and tasting) new flavors.

To be honest, he should probably drop that scientologist thing to avoid any confusion.

Spors will go around sampling ice cream flavors at many local restaurants and combines them in the lab.

And don’t worry about turning into a huge fat-ass on the job too. You only really have to taste a spoonful. It’s way better than being involved in those dreaded ice cream truck wars.

4. Toy Creator - Salary: Commercial and industrial designers earn an average salary of about $57,000 a year

Toy designers, also known as industrial designers, are the only single guys who can have a roomful of kid’s toys in their bedroom without being considered a pedophile.

This job entails combining your artistic talent with research to create the most appealing, fun and functional toys possible.

Fraser Campbell designs Hot Wheels toy cars. Sometimes he's creating control drawings or designing the vehicles, and other times involve administrative work like e-mails, commenting on designs and scheduling meetings.

Campbell said he always knew he wanted to be a car designer, and he planned his educational path accordingly -- attending an art foundation, getting a bachelor's degree in product design and earning a master's degree in industrial design.

Imagine getting paid to build sick car ramps and see how well they can hold up to an impromptu ‘Godzilla’ attack.

5. Video Game Designer - Salary: Starts around $25,000 with high growth potential

Jon Paquette is in the business of video games: He's the design director and writer for the Medal of Honor Airborne game for EA Los Angeles.

Paquette works with the company's development team, overseeing all design ideas and implementation. Sometimes this means days of meetings. Other days, he'll be at a desk reviewing level designs.

Seems like there is bureaucracy at every job. How bad could it be if you’re wearing one of those motion-capture suits and diving onto a stunt mat?

If you watch a lot of day-time or late-night TV you know that every DeVry or ITT Tech ad is trying to get you to enroll in one of their video game design programs. And although you probably won’t do much designing without a 4-year degree, it’ll still be cool to be so close to ‘the magic’.

6. Comic Book Guru – Salary: Entry-level pay starts around $20,000

Not all adult comic book gurus are as pretentious and overweight as the Simpson’s ‘Comic Book Guy’.

Josh Blaylock, for example, seems like a totally decent guy. He is the founder and president of comics publisher Devil's Due Publishing. He was always a big comic book fan and decided as a teenager to go to art school to pursue that dream.

After working as a comic book writer and artist, Blaylock started Devil's Due Publishing in 1999 and put the company on the map two years later when he resurrected the GI Joe comic series. Now he spends his days managing the day-to-day operations of his company, traveling to acquire new licenses, and reading plenty of comics.

Obviously with such mega-blockbusters as Spiderman, Ironman, and the much anticipated Dark Knight, the world of comic books is proving to be more profitable than ever. And, to be honest, we need more decent superhero characters to capture our imaginations. The days of weird anime and creepy Manga cartoons have gone on long enough.

So if these dream jobs seem like your cup of tea, then go for it. You’ll only have yourself to blame when 10 years from now your neighbor’s name is plastered all over Grand Theft Auto 9.

From Laura Morsch, CareerBuilder writer Dream Jobs, February 2008

Are you sick of working minimum wage at fast food places, or stocking shelves for measly pennies? Does Zoo Curator, Animator, or Loan Officer sound like a better career move? Yes it does, especially if the pay is good.

59% of employees in the United States are paid by an hourly rate. Think of how far you could make a pre-tax $800-a-week salary go from working 40 hours.

Check out this list compiled by CNN of jobs, where you don't have to take your clothes off, and can get paid more than $20 an hour:

1. Subway and streetcar operators - Annual = $46,180. Hourly = $22.20. I'm not sure where these 'streetcars' are located outside of San Francisco, but subway operator sounds doable. Press a few buttons, babble incoherently over a loud speaker, yell at people for holding the doors open. Don't forget about the intense responsibility of operating a high speed transport vehicle... and the cool hat. (not pictured)

2. Gaming Supervisors - Annual= $42,390. Hourly = $20.38. These are guys sometimes known as the pit bosses at casinos. The guy brooding and pacing around the casino floor making sure none of the dealers are losing too much. This sounds like a sweet job too. How much education and training do you really need to shake down and break the legs of a card-counting cheat in the back room?

3. Multimedia artists and animators - Annual = $58,030. Hourly = $27.90. Toy Story, Shrek, Bee Movie and Finding Nemo were all great movies that took years of painstaking digital animation and countless artists to create. Everyone's seen the 'making of' for these movies, and you know they need a guy to run around in a weird black suit with motion capture sensors. That could be you! Besides, wouldn't it be fun to start sneaking hidden sex messages into Disney movies again?

4. Respiratory therapists - Annual = $46,610. Hourly = $23.37. Teaching people how to breathe?! You're kidding me. These guys bring home this salary for helping doctors treat patients with breathing disorders. Squeeze a plastic bag here, blow a few rescue breaths there and then call it a day. Done and done, pay me.

5. Curators - Annual = $49,980. Hourly = $24.03. Everyone loves museums. According to the writeup on this, these salaries also include zoos, aquariums, nature centers and botanical gardens. These are places you would love to spend your free time. Imagine having a career hanging out at the zoo all day? And don't tell me it would smell bad, because you know training monkeys to give high-fives and explaining to little kids why two peacocks are climbing on each other are priceless opportunities that lend themselves to great personal amusement.

6. Health educators - Annual = $43,370. Hourly = $21.81. Remember Mr. Smithsburg, the health class teacher in high school? He passed around that prosthetic phallus with the silicone testicles showing everyone how to give themselves a testicular cancer self-exam? Well you could do what that guy does and earn a decent salary! Come on, who doesn't want to be an old creepy guy talking about STDs and prostate exams with young, impressionable, and mortified high school students?

7. Cartographers and photogrammetrists - Annual = $52,600. Hourly = $25.29. These guys make maps and analyze photographs. Seems simple enough, I mean come on, there isn't really any heavy duty cartography going on these days. Those days of traveling the globe on a ship to sketch landscapes are over. Most of the earth has been Google mapped to oblivion. We can even pinpoint where on a map a kid fell off his bike.

8. Arbitrators, mediators and reconcilers - Annual = $58,790. Hourly = $28.27. I think one of the best examples of this profession is from the opening scene in Wedding Crashers where Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn are mitigating a divorce settlement. If everything were just like in the movies, real life would be great. And if hearing people argue about money and squabble about child custody, isn't up your alley you could always go into buried treasure mitigation hearings. I demand 40 gold doubloons and 3 pirate skulls.

9. Urban and regional planners - Annual = $58,940. Hourly = $28.33. There are people who get their Masters and Doctorate degrees in studying this kind of stuff for city planning, but I'm gonna sum it all up for your so you can start making money in this career. Don't put the paper mill next to the tire fire yard, and keep the sex offender prison away from the elementary school. Now get planning, we need New New Jersey mapped out by Tuesday.

10. Loan officers - Annual = $61,930. Hourly = $29.77. Want to feel like you're making a difference with a career? Well jump on the bandwagon and continue to worsen the credit and housing markets by tricking people into high-interest loans they can't afford. At least you will be able to make your monthly payments, with this sweet new job.

Any other professions that do surprisingly well for themselves? Let us hear it in the comments section.

CNN: Ten jobs that pay $20 an hour, April 23, 2008