Web Worker Daily

LeadVine: Targeted Business Networking Posted: 15 Aug 2008 01:00 PM CDT There’s a new fledgling business network in town: LeadVine, whose slogan is “the community is your sales force.” Currrently in public beta, it’s not trying to take on LinkedIn directly. Rather than try to build general-purpose business connections with no fixed purpose, LeadVine is directed specifically at hooking up businesses with sales leads. The site is basically driven by supply, rather than demand. If you’re a business or consultant with services to sell, you can post your listing: this will say what you’re looking for (”Businesses needing help keeping their computer network safe and secure”), when someone should refer you, and how much you’re willing to pay as a referral fee. Then visitors to LeadVine can scan through these requests for leads, and if they have something that fits, make the referral. Currently-posted fees range from $50 to $20,000. LeadVine does not get involved in the user-to-user transaction: they don’t take a fee, nor do they offer any sort of guarantee of good business dealings. If you have a referral to make, you’d be wise to get a contract in place to protect your rights. LeadVine takes good advantage of Web 2.0: you can sign up to receive new listings as they come in, via either RSS or Twitter. You can also use your OpenID to sign in to create your own listings (or you can build a dedicated LeadVine account if you’d rather). Will it work? That depends on how well the site manages to get attention, and on the ratio of serious vs. spammy businesses that go fishing here. Certainly for web workers there’s a fair amount of potential; not being limited to any particular geographic area, we can cast a wide net in our listings. And since LeadVine doesn’t charge any fee for a listing, the risk of trying it out is low. Share/Send

Use iPhone Optimized Web Sites On Your Desktop For Greater Productivity Posted: 15 Aug 2008 12:00 PM CDT We’ve talked about Site Specific Browsers like Bubbles in the past and while I have found them to be useful in some instances, it’s only with the proliferation of web applications with iPhone optimized interfaces that I have really started using them. I have found that setting up multiple SSB windows ,each containing the iPhone view of a web application, allows me to create a dashboard of sorts on my spare monitor. At a glance, I can view my stable of important apps in nice compact, consistent windows. For example, I am a big fan of the Toodledo task list application. For heavy duty task management or review, the full app view is better but the iPhone optimized interface is great for quick viewing and modifications. So while I do keep the full application open in a Firefox tab, I also keep the iPhone interface open in a Bubbles window on that secondary display. This allows me to view, add or complete tasks very quickly. The iPhone interfaces are typically very well done and these SSB windows work very much like desktop widgets, providing an excellent view of my data. BatchBook designer Adam Darowski just published a great instructional post on how to use Fluid.app to bring Google Reader for iPhone to your desktop, but these steps can be used for just about any application that has an iPhone optimized interface. The process for using Bubbles on Windows or the multi-platform Prism is comparable. Do you use Site Specific Browsers? Which iPhone interface would you find most useful? Share/Send

Clearing the Cache - The How & Where Edition Posted: 15 Aug 2008 11:00 AM CDT The Execupundit explores Work Patterns: Bursts versus Flow Om on Different IMs for Different Folks 43 Folders describes success with Outcome-Based Thinking Tony Wright crunches the numbers on Information Overload Freelance Switch tells us how to Get the Most out of our ubiquitous thumb drive Share/Send

Wisdomap: Simple Mind Maps Posted: 15 Aug 2008 10:00 AM CDT We’re fans of mind-mapping around WWD: simple diagrams that help your brainstorm or organize by taking advantage of visual and spatial memory. The latest Flash-based online mind-mapping tool to cross our paths is Wisdomap. They emphasize simplicity: you get nodes and links, without a lot of finicky controls for their appearance or even placement. Any node on your map can also have explanatory text associated with it, as well as videos, images, files, and sites - but those bits of extra information are clustered on the sides of the map, instead of being crammed into nodes. A free Wisdomap account lets you create and share up to three mind maps. The £10 Premium account holds unlimited maps, and adds download to PNG or PDF format as well as printing to the mix. Share/Send

Does Teleworking Offer More Equal Opportunities? Posted: 15 Aug 2008 09:00 AM CDT Almost anyone with competent communication skills and internet access can become a web worker. The degree of success, however, depends on one’s abilities, range of expertise, and even luck. Does it follow that equal opportunities are given to web workers, regardless of where they are and what they look like? Freelancing Teleworkers In most web working ads I see, there is rarely an indication that a business cares where you live, unless physical meetings are an absolute necessity. Most of the time, there isn’t a requirement for tertiary education either - although it can help (the US Census Bureau notes that only 27% to 37% of teleworkers are college graduates). I also rarely hear of web workers who are asked to come in for a face-to-face interview. Just send in some samples or your portfolio and let your work speak for itself. Because of this, it’s entirely possible that teleworking greatly reduces the chances of an online freelancer or entrepreneur being discriminated against or having less opportunities due to their race, educational background, location, and physical appearance. Suddenly, these things matter much less for web workers than it does for traditional office applicants. Today, a twenty-something college dropout from the UK, a middle-aged man in India, and a work-at-home mom from California all find themselves competing for the same job or selling competing services - and they don’t even have to come in wearing business attire for an interview. However, this doesn’t mean that prejudices are completely done away with. When I was first applying for online writing work in 2003, some of my applications were turned down once the leads found out that I was Filipino. According to them, I “should of” not applied since I probably can’t write in English as “good” as they can. Right. I’m hoping that things have changed since then and, with teleworking becoming more and more prevalent internationally, there’s a good possibility that it has. Teleworking Employees For companies that allow their employees to telework, they see it as an opportunity to hire skilled workers in remote places, and give equal opportunities to disabled workers. Telecommuting can assist employers in meeting government regulations relating to employing persons with disabilities, who may find daily commuting difficult. Telecommuting provides companies the opportunity to successfully integrate workers with disabilities and pregnant associates into the workplace. Source: UF/IFAS EDIS document HR 021 Published April 2003 Despite this, discrimination still occurs, albeit differently - especially if some employees are allowed to telework, while others aren’t. In 1997, an employee filed a charge against her company, claiming that discrimination was the reason why she wasn’t allowed to telecommute. Although she did not win the case, the court ruled that the denial of telecommuting opportunities is equal to denial of a promotion. If this is so, it’s possible that other employees succeed in proving similar cases. Do you think that online work allows for more equal opportunities and levels the playing field? Or is it the opposite? What has your experience been like? Share/Send

LinkedIn: Old-School Social Network Isn’t Short of Fans Posted: 14 Aug 2008 06:00 PM CDT Many of us web workers participate in more than one social network, and it’s well-known that beyond the simple social connections you can make, social networks can also be career safety nets. This was the subject of a New York Times piece from yesterday. In it, a Jupiter Research analyst asserts that LinkedIn, “though it lacks the glamour of more popular sites like MySpace and Facebook, is the place to be.” The article offers up a few interesting statistics. “LinkedIn has more than 25 million members, and it is adding new ones at the rate of 1.2 million a month — or about one new networker every two seconds,” the article reports. It also reports that the average user of LinkedIn is a 41-year-old white-collar professional with an income of $109,000 a year. Is LinkedIn where the grownups are on social networks? The New York Times piece cites several examples of people who have had great success in wing-walking from one job to the next using LinkedIn. In one example, a 32-year old employee found out his division was going to be eliminated in 45 days. Reportedly, within hours of updating his profile on LinkedIn, the employee got four job interviews resulting in two offers. There are also some interesting observations from the folks at LinkedIn. They advise not to be too promiscuous in expanding a LinkedIn network, because “too many people can weaken your network.” There is also the advice to keep listed recommendations from people you have previously worked with up-to-date. And, there is the advice to promptly give recommendations to people who ask you for them. LinkedIn gets talked about much less than the other social networks these days, but it is one of the oldest networks. What have your experiences been with it? Is LinkedIn still vital? Share/Send

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