Web Worker Daily |
| Pixily Wants to Eat Your Paper Posted: 22 Aug 2008 04:00 PM CDT
Once they’re in Pixily, all of your documents become searchable PDFs. You can use their web interface to print, download, or view the documents in your account. You can also share them with others, on a limited-time basis (and those viewing a shared document don’t need a Pixily account). Pricing starts at $4.95 per month for 1000 pages stored, though you need to move up to the $14.95 per month to get the scanning service (50 pages per month; you can buy more). This may seem pricy, but they’re hoping you view it as a good tradeoff against the time it would take to do the scanning yourself.           |
| Clearing The Cache - Microsoft Posted: 22 Aug 2008 03:00 PM CDT Like many of us, I spend quite a lot of time on the web and come across a staggering number of interesting things. In Clearing The Cache I choose a theme, pull out some of my favorites and share them with you here. Some interesting stuff coming out of the Microsoft Office Labs Microsoft unleashes Photosynth, albeit with a bit of a stumble Kevin from jkOnTheRun wants XP on his Acer Aspire One And if you haven’t seen it, Bill’s Last Day is still an entertaining break for a Friday           |
| The Risks vs. Rewards of Cloud Computing Posted: 22 Aug 2008 02:00 PM CDT I was listening to a story on NPR by Laura Sydell called Computing in the Cloud: Who Owns Your Files? The story brought back all of the fears I’ve had about working in the clouds but have suppressed because: A. I want the convenience that cloud computing offers; B. I recently experienced the Computer Crash of Doom and want to know I have reliable backups; C. I want to get more work use out of my iPod Touch and cloud work is the way. So what was the bottom line of the NPR piece? Read the User Agreement. Yes, the gist of the story was that none of us are reading the user agreement with Google or Yahoo or any other company that is housing our emails, documents and files. We actually covered that subject last month, but hey, I’m one of those who never, ever reads the user agreement. Who has the time? Who has the brain capacity? Who likes sifting through pages and pages of legalese? This is a problem, according to Harry Lewis, a computer science professor at Harvard. All someone has to do is accuse you of something - unproven - and the company hosting your files can simply cut you off, close your account, no questions asked, rather than entering into a legal battle. There are no rules and more importantly - no laws - when it comes to hosting your files. Ever since I went to Gmail in the clouds from Apple’s Mail on my computer, I’ve wondered “what would happen if Gmail went down…forever?” The entire record of my work over the last three years would be gone. I tried backing up all of my historical Gmails onto my computer once but it was a major undertaking and never became a habit. If we aren’t reading the user agreements, how can we protect ourselves from major loss in the clouds? 1. Backups of backups? Does it make sense to have the copy on your harddrive along with the copy online? Lately, I’ve been composing my documents in Google Docs and only saving them back on my harddrive as needed. Should I do it as a rule? 2. Backups of backups of backups? Once I save my docs on my computer, my Time Capsule captures them every hour on the hour. But is there a way to get my Time Capsule to pull my cloud work into a backup drive? Or is that an app that is on the way because it is a critical process that is missing from cloud computing? 3. Distributed files. Does it make sense not to have all of your work and files on one system? Sure it seems convenient and integrated to use all of Google’s cloud working solutions, but should we put some of our work - or back up some of our work - on other sites? Like using Dropbox file storage as a repository for anything and everything from everywhere? 4. Being selective. Do we need to be more selective about what we are willing to put online, keep online, and work on in the clouds? Are we getting a little too careless and thoughtless about the ease of cloud computing or rushing to it without a security plan in place because it seems like the place we need to be? No technology is failsafe or foolproof. When we are using technology for “convenience,” but have to back up that technology “just in case,” are we losing some of that convenience that we are craving? It seems that, as usual, nothing is ultimately free and everything comes with a price. How much are you willing to spend - and risk - on cloud computing and how are you backing up your work?           |
| Posted: 22 Aug 2008 01:00 PM CDT
But as a longstanding contractor myself, there’s one rule of thumb that I try to keep in mind when choosing between potential jobs:
This rule of thumb has worked well for me, and it has resulted in some of my most-saleable skills - things I might not have gotten around to on my own were I not getting paid to learn. But the strategy for doing this can be a bit tricky. Here are the most common objections that I hear: Clients want to pay for the things I already know, not the things I want to learn. It’s certainly true that most contractors are in the business of selling their current expertise, not their availability as trainees. But there are ways to make this palatable to customers (current or future). One way to do that it to emphasize the parts of the job that you already know, and your track record of learning quickly. Another is to have a good stable of past reference clients who can help put new clients into their comfort zone. A third is to negotiate on rate - agreeing to put in hours at a lower rate or even entirely “off the books” as you’re coming up to speed on new things. There isn’t any work with learning to be had. That may be true, and if you’re looking a rent payment in the eye, you may have no choice but to take a completely boring, routine piece of work. But don’t make the mistake of thinking too narrowly about what you can learn. Often I don’t know going into a job where my growth areas will be - it could be experience with a bug-tracking or source code management system I haven’t used before, it could be finding out about new ways to handle videoconferencing, it could be picking up details of useful tools by reading the source code that was written before I got there. Don’t think in terms of “what new skill will I add from this job?” but rather “what can I take away from this job to make me a better contractor on the next one?” I already know everything in this field. Really? Congratulations. If you’re that much on top of your current game, I’d suggest taking a job that’s outside of your current field so that your prospects for employment will be that much better in the future. That doesn’t mean that you need to move from coding to, say, online translation. But it does mean that you might move from one web language to another. The more you know, the less chance you’ll find yourself out of a job due to lowered demand or competition from others who also know it all. As an independent web worker, you probably already use your down time to make yourself more marketable. By staying attuned to the possibility of using your “up” time for learning too, you can enhance your career prospects that much more quickly. photo credit: stock.xchng user jusstas           |
| SpiderOak: Another Take on Online Backups Posted: 22 Aug 2008 10:00 AM CDT
This security is under your control - you can also take portions of your backed-up data and make them shareable. So, for example, you could have a folder of photos on your computer that was backed up on a continuous basis, and any time you add a new photo, it’s instantly shared with all of your friends and family (or at least the ones you’ve opened the share to). Your first 2GB of SpiderOak storage is free; after that, you can buy storage in 100GB increments for $10 per month. You can use the client from as many devices as you like for that price.           |
| Ididwork Shoots for Simplicity in Time/Task Tracking Posted: 21 Aug 2008 06:00 PM CDT We’ve covered a number of free online invoicing sites in the past, but of the ones I’ve tried that even have integrated time- and task-tracking, I’ve never been happy with the implementation. For tracking jobs I’ve done and time spent, I want something quick-in and quick-out, with some reasonable reporting features. Ididwork.com is a new entrant that I’ve been experimenting with, and it definitely meets the “quick” test, although it could offer a few extra reporting features. Ididwork gets you started tracking tasks as soon as you sign up. Just below a series of tabs in the application, you are asked “What did you do?” Simply enter the first task you did, and you’re started. You can choose to add time spent on your tasks by clicking a link below the “What did you do?” question. The simplicity of the “What did you do?” approach is seen here: Ididwork keeps a running list of tasks you’ve done and when they were completed, along with time spent if you’ve chosen to track that. So you can track billable hours, or simply track tasks alone. The application is also designed to cater to workgroups. Through a Feed tab atop Ididwork’s home page, you can create a feed by entering co-workers’ e-mail addresses as seen here: The feeds let co-workers and collaborators know who has done what, so they can either be used to keep an eye on things like billable hours, or they can be used to check up on which components of a shared job have been completed. Ididwork also provides charting of tasks completed, showing simple views of tasks completed over given time frames. The application could build in a few more reporting features, though–especially graphical ones–which is where some of the larger invoicing applications usually have strengths. Overall, though, for quick-in and quick-out time and task tracking Ididwork is worth trying. What do you use to track time and tasks?           |
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