Web Worker Daily

Posted: 04 Sep 2008 04:00 PM CDT

Last month Mozilla introduced Ubiquity, a keyboard interface for entering commands to your browser - I covered it on our sister site OStatic. One of the big features of this command line for the web is that it can be extended by anyone who cares to write a Ubiquity command - and the list of such commands has been growing. Among the things you can do that may be of web worker interest:

Check whether a site is down
Look up whois information, or ping a URL
Save information to Instaper
Create a Remember the Milk reminder
Add pages to del.icio.us
Grab info from microformats

Useful though these things are, one caution: in the current version, there are well-documented ways that a command author could smuggle malicious code into your machine. So make sure you understand the consequences if you start down the road of adding this functionality.

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Dell Launches a Machine for the Nomad

Posted: 04 Sep 2008 01:00 PM CDT

As we noted last month, Dell is starting to target “digital nomads” heavily as a market. Today’s launch of the Inspiron Mini 9 shows a product aimed squarely at that market: an inexpensive, light, slick little machine optimized for on-the-go connectivity rather than heavy work.

The Mini 9 is available for order immediately, at a base price of $349 (though I suspect most interested web workers would go for options that put it in the four to five hundred dollar range). At that price, it’s practically an impulse buy (and I’ll admit to feeling impulsive myself - it might make a good tester for IE8 rendering, if you need an excuse). For that price, you get what appears to be a reasonably capable machine, though there are clearly compromises.

$349 gets you a box with an 8.9 inch 1024×600 display, an Intel Atom CPU, 512MB of RAM, and a 4GB solid state hard drive. 802.11g is standard, as is the black case - you pay extra for white, or for Bluetooth connectivity. The base price includes Ubuntu as the operating system, and this version is showing as ready for pre-order but not for ship. If you go up to $399, you get Windows XP and immediate availability, as well as an 8GB solid state drive. The top end of customization is 1GB of RAM and a 16GB SSD. The box weighs in at about 2 1/2 pounds, again depending on options.

In a move that should resonate with web workers, Dell has done a deal with online storage favorite Box.net - The Dell comes with 2GB of storage, and custom plans if you need more. That’s double the storage of the normal free Box.net account, and the 10 and 25GB plans are priced much lower than Box’s standard pricing as well.

Dell certainly isn’t the only one promoting small, easily connected boxes for the mobile worker. Nor is this by any means a computer you’d use to do offline work. But given their reach, it might end up being a “second device” for a great many web workers.

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Preparing to Live Blog an Event

Posted: 04 Sep 2008 11:00 AM CDT

Apple MacBook

I’ve been asked to live blog an event for a client and their members. Actually, I’ll be live blogging, podcasting, Twittering, Uttering, and live streaming an event.

I am putting together my equipment, securing accounts with all the online tools and services I need, and reviewing the schedule so I’m prepared. This will be a major undertaking that will include two 12 hour days as well as pre- and post-blogging.

Normally, live blogging a conference is done with a team, but this is a proof-of-concept so I’m on my own.

While I’ve live blogged and live tweeted conferences before, this is the first time I’ll be doing it formally for a client. The conference is not my usual fare - it is about philanthropy instead of Internet or technology. I’ve worked with many nonprofits over the last 15 years - including running a nonprofit in New York City in the mid-90s - so the issues aren’t foreign to me. Still, I’ll have to be on top of my game - with a healthy dose of caffeine - to keep up.

Here’s what I’ve put together so far for my Live Blogging Gear.

Keen Oswago Bag

The Bag
I almost attempted to make a bag that could handle my MacBook, assorted digital devices and a variety of accessories and that would keep everything at my hip, fairly ergonomically balanced, and extremely accessible. Luckily, I found something close to what I needed at REI. The Oswago Keen bag sits neatly on my hip, and I can quickly access my MacBook, a notebook and pen, my digital camera, my video camera, my iPod Touch, extra batteries, and all of my power cords and accessories.

The Computer
Black MacBook. Perfect size, weight, capabilities, sleek and good looking. Why use anything else?

The Digital Camera
I’m using a Nikon Coolpix L5 - 7.2 Megapixels, 5x Zoom. An older model but still going strong. I’m still on the fence about upgrading to a slimmer, lighter model. I’ve been using a variety of Nikon Coolpix for many years after graduating from an old digital Olympus. Any recommendations? Keep in mind I am not a professional photographer, and these photos are mostly for the Web.

Flip Mino

The Video Camera
I’ve got The Flip and love its self-contained utility. I’m upgrading from the original model to either an Ultra or a Mino. I should go for the Mino because in addition to the sleekness, it is rechargeable via USB port as well as power adapter. I’m planning to try live video streaming from Flip to Web.

The Digital Recorder
While I’d love to get the Marantz 660 because I also do radio (you remember radio, right?) in addition to audio podcasting, I’ve decided to be a little more frugal at the moment and get the Edirol / Roland R-09HR Portable High-Resolution Audio Recorder. Both were recommended to me by radio producers, although the latter choice was focused more on podcasting so that definitely works for the live blogging. I’ll be interviewing panelists and speakers before or after their sessions.

The Blog
At the moment, the client is setting up the blog. I’ll be consulting to make sure it is “social media ready.”

Ustream.tv

Ustream.tv
I’m planning on using Ustream.tv to live stream parts of the conference. I’m still checking with the client about whether to keep all of this private (for their members only) or public.

Utterz
In a pinch, I’ll post some Utterz when I don’t want to mess with the digital recorder and want to have some audio up on the organization’s blog quickly.

Flickr
There will be a private collection of photos uploaded each day from the event on Flickr. These will also be posted on the blog along with additional cross-posting.

Twitter
But of course I’ll do a little live Twittering on Twitter. It will be private though, only accessible by my client’s members.

Other Miscellany
I’m packing all the powercords and chargers including a slew of rechargeable batteries and a multi-battery recharger. Rule of live blogging: Never run out of power. And of course I am packing a notebook and pens to give my wrists a break. I’m pretty sure there is no way I can type notes on that many sessions without some repetitive stress injury.

As I look over my list, I wonder about overkill. However, even though there is some crossover of functionality, every device can serve a backup function in one way or another so I feel like I’m covered for everything.

What am I forgetting? What do YOU use when you live blog an event?

[photos from Apple.com, REI.com, TheFlip.com, Ustream.tv]

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Yotify: Baby Steps Towards Software Agents

Posted: 04 Sep 2008 10:30 AM CDT

The promise of intelligent software agents has been floating around for a long time. Yotify is the latest to try to deliver on this promise. The idea is fairly simple: you tell Yotify what you’re interested in, and it scours the web and sends you daily updates. For example, you could tell Yotify to instantiate a “scout” that follows Craigslist job postings on your behalf, or one that updates you on the latest search results for a particular term. Results are delivered by email or through the Yotify interface. There are also some social features - you can invite friends and share scouts, or make them public.

Though the idea is sound, I find myself wanting scouts with more smarts than the ones they’ve supplied so far. For example, on the Craigslist scout I’d love to be able to do a search of ALL the Craigslist sites for Rails telecommuting jobs - something you can’t easily do in the Craigslist UI. But the scout requires you to pick a particular city to watch. The search results doesn’t seem to offer any advantage over subscribing to a Google search RSS feed. So, I have to mark this one as “promising”, but I don’t think they’ve delivered yet. The service is in closed beta, but it didn’t take me long to get an invitation after requesting one.

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LimeExchange: A Social Network for Freelancers and Entrepreneurs

Posted: 04 Sep 2008 09:00 AM CDT

A few weeks ago, LimeExchange launched its online outsourcing marketplace to the world. The service is essentially a social network for freelancers, service providers and entrepreneurs that helps service providers matchmake themselves to buyers looking to outsource activities within those service categories.

Though marketplace services such as Guru and eLance have ably served freelancers and web workers for some time, LimeExchange seeks to differentiate itself from its predecessors by moving service marketplaces beyond simple matchmaking of buyers and sellers, to eBay-like reputation and feedback metrics that help users understand the prior reputability of their collaborators.

Like other marketplaces, LimeExchange takes a cut of a successfully completed project - quoted up frong at a hefty 8%. One curious feature enables buyers to ‘trial’ sellers with a demonstration of their abilities through a pilot project - the marketplace equivalent of paid pitching?

In other areas, LimeExchange is aping the Q&A and business networking features of LinkedIn, raising questions as to why business networks such as LinkedIn aren’t already offering this?

LimeExchange is part of a new wave of service marketplaces that’re all exploring post-Guru/eLance and post-LinkedIn opportunities that all seek to exploit advances in social networks and social media.

Marketplaces such as Kluster and Cambrian House, seek to aggregate sellers into startup opportunities with shared equity in new ventures, with varying degrees of success. Interestingly, marketplaces like New Zealand’s forthcoming Creative Federation and the UK’s bmedi@ operate tendering models which aggregate members around specific projects or tendering opportunities; bmedi@ in particular is using its position to help freelancers ‘club together’ to tackle larger tenders and promote its region’s members.

LimeExchange is currently orienting its services around design, development, media production, blogging, networking, consulting, writing, legal work, accounting, market research and administration - all areas which appear to correlate closely with our audience here.

I’m curious to hear from readers of Web Worker Daily on their experiences with such services…

do they contribute a steady pipeline of work for you?
what proportion of your works originates from such marketplaces?
do you find most transactions and collaborations to be reputable?
are the fees reasonable?
what is lacking?

If we get enough interest responses, I’ll aim to put together a follow up post summarising people’s views.

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Searching Google and Yahoo! Concurrently

Posted: 03 Sep 2008 06:00 PM CDT

I’ve written about alternative search engines here before, and because I spend so much time searching, I always keep my eye out for good new search ideas to try. Recently, I’ve been using SearchBoth, which has an interesting spin on the concept of searching multiple sites at once.

SearchBoth lets you search a few different types of sites concurrently, but the one web workers may find most useful is searching Google and Yahoo at the same time. At the site’s home page, you can enter your search term once, hit Search, and get back a dual-paned view of the results from both sites. For some kinds of searches, your results won’t differ all that much between the two views, but for others they will.

In particular, I have found SearchBoth to be good for searching for images. For example, if I enter Linus Torvalds as my search term and toggle SearchBoth to find images, I’ll get back two completely different views of Torvalds images–both scrollable as they would be when using the sites on a standalone basis–and I get a mixed bag of photos that I might want to use.

SearchBoth can also be useful for comparing prices for technology products you may be in the market for. I entered Asus Eee PC as my search term in SearchBoth, and found the lowest prices on the Google pane on the left of my screen, but for other products, Yahoo! pulled up the lowest prices.

You can also use SearchBoth to pull up news stories and blog posts that both Google and Yahoo! find. This is useful when a particular piece of news is breaking and I want to see who may have picked it up.

If you like the idea of seeing your search results in ways that you’re not used to, and you haven’t tried it yet, you may also like Redzee. Redzee returns thumbnail graphical images of your results, and lets you drag to cycle through them. They cycle by very much like the Cover Flow feature works on an iPod, and this can be useful if what you’re looking for is an image or graphic rather than text.

Do you use any alternative search engines?

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First Look: Drive Backup 9 Express

Posted: 03 Sep 2008 05:00 PM CDT

Backup! Backup! Backup! This should be the mantra of all web workers! Our ability to earn and work is of course dependent on the digital infrastructure around us, but more importantly, the sphere of our personal and professional data that’s our digital DNA.

Today sees the public launch of Paragon Software’s Drive Backup 9.0 Express, designed for novice users to replicate and backup their entire PC - from OS and apps to preferences, settings and data…a little like Apple’s Time Capsule + Time Machine combo, but for Windows PCs and not quite as pretty.

What’s really interesting about Paragon’s software is that users can create emergency bootable media (CD, DVD, Flash drive) to recover an imaged machine quickly…something I could really have done with when I dropped my MacBook in San Diego earlier this year… Oh, Drive Backup 9 Express is also free and users are provided with an upgrade path to more sophisticated Personal and Professional editions that provide backup schedules, the ability to image individual files as well as drives, along with the ability to directly mount a backup image prior to re-installation.

Backup seems to be a perennially failure-ridden activity for most users- wavering between fatalist, zero-backup strategies and replicating data on multiple drives at home as well as at online services.

I have the feeling that no, one service provider is getting this right for users - do we need something with the ease-of use of Time Capsule+Machine, coupled with the distributed resilience of Amazon’s S3 Simple Storage Service. Come to think of it, why can’t a Time Capsule replicate itself to S3?

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The Boxless Laptop

Posted: 03 Sep 2008 04:00 PM CDT

Here’s an interesting idea for the ecologically-conscious web worker: buy a laptop without any packaging. That’s not as far-fetched as it used to be, thanks to the introduction by HP of the Pavilion dv6929 laptop, sold only through Walmart and Sam’s Club stores. The trick? They’re packaging the laptop in its own protective messenger bag, displaying it that way on the shelf, and when you buy one you can just put it over your shoulder and take it home - without foam, bubble wrap, or cardboard.

The plan doesn’t eliminate all packaging; the laptops still get to Walmart in large cardboard cartons, 3 to a box. But they do say it saves 97% of the packaging, the equivalent of eliminating the CO2 from 1/4 of the delivery trucks that bring them to the stores. While web workers aren’t the core market for this “entertainment notebook,” if it sells we can expect to see this approach spread.

Does the amount of packaging influence your own computer-buying decisions?

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