Web Worker Daily

Posted: 23 Sep 2008 01:00 PM CDT

I don’t know how many different pointing devices I’ve gone through in the past 25 years, but it’s a lot. In part, this is because I find that one of the easiest ways to avoid RSI is to switch keyboards and pointing devices from time to time, giving new muscles a workout. Recently I switched to an Evoluent VerticalMouse, and after a couple of weeks of use, I give it a definite thumbs up.

The VerticalMouse is a rather large (the picture shows it next to an Apple mouse for comparison) device that communicates with the computer via a dedicated wireless USB receiver. It has to be large because of its one special feature: it’s designed to grip with your hand rotated 90 degrees from what you probably think of as normal mousing position. Your thumb goes on the left side of the mouse, and your fingers on the right side, as if you were reaching out to shake someone’s hand (sorry, lefties, they don’t have a model for you). Evoluent’s marketing talks about this being an arm-neutral position; I just know it’s a comfortable one.

The VerticalMouse has five buttons including a scroll wheel. Though its included drivers are for Windows only, I’m happily using it on a Mac Pro with USB Overdrive, which gives it plenty of programmability. The sensitivity is plenty high enough to use comfortably with a pair of high-resolution monitors as well.

At $120, the VerticalMouse is higher priced than much of its competition. But given how much time I spend moving the cursor around every day, I’m finding it a worthwhile investment.

Got a mouse of your own to recommend?

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Tatango and eMail Our Military Connect Us With Our Troops Abroad

Posted: 23 Sep 2008 11:26 AM CDT

img tatango emom Here at Web Worker Daily, we talk a lot about how we can use web technology to work more effectively and to be more productive. We think it is important work and and we hope that you find our insights and reviews helpful. Occasionally though, we come across an example of just how powerful the web can be, and how it can do even more.

Today, group text messaging provider Tatango is announcing a partnership with eMail Our Military (eMOM) that will allow United States troops deployed overseas to easily connect with and update their friends and family at home. By using a customized web interface, military personnel can send SMS messages directly to their contact group who will receive the updates on their mobile phones. Replies to their text will also be routed back to their web account for viewing.

eMOM is a volunteer organization that was created in response to the cutting of similar official programs, and this is just one of many ways that they are working to make sure that troops are able to stay in communication with people at home. By working with Tatango, who provide free group text messaging features, they are able to offer this service for no charge to troops and their families.

I think it is fantastic to see technology being used in this way and I applaud both of these groups for making this a reality.

Watch the Tatango Announcement:

Military service members can create a free Tatango account with a valid military email address at http://tatango.com/partners/military

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Surf Canyon Digs Deep for Relevant Results

Posted: 23 Sep 2008 11:00 AM CDT

There’s no doubt that the web can be a great resource. Whether you are doing serious research, shopping, or answering trivia, chances are there is relevant information out there somewhere.

While the search engines are getting better at serving results, the sheer volume of information available is growing as well. With Google recently announcing they index nearly 1 trillion unique URLs, it can be a challenge to find the information you are looking for.

Learning how to craft your queries can certainly help but wouldn’t it be nice to have a search assistant that could look ahead in your results and grab the ones that are most likely to be useful to you. That’s what Surf Canyon promises.

Surf Canyon is a browser extension for Firefox and IE that customizes and personalizes your search results on the fly. Currently compatible with Google, Yahoo!, MSN Live Search and Craigslist, Surf Canyon seamlessly integrates itself into your results pages. There are no sidebars, toolbars, or new windows required. Other than an unobtrusive bullseye added to your initial results, you’ll hardly even know it’s there.

Surf Canyon - Results

The bullseye is the key though. Click on it or the result that is most relevant and Surf Canyon automatically works to filter or refine your results, bringing more relevant items directly to the existing search page. Keep clicking to refine your results even further, up to 3 levels deep.

Surf Canyon - Forward Results

The example search term they use to demonstrate Surf Canyon is “Dolphins”, a term where the desired result could either mean the football team or the marine mammal. Selecting a preliminary result either way will bring forward results that are more appropriate for you.

While Surf Canyon does seem to work best for those queries that are somewhat ambiguous, overall I found the results generally useful, or easily ignored. Like any good assistant, it’s right there waiting if I need it but has the good sense to stay out of my way if I am managing on my own.

I guess the way I know that Surf Canyon is useful to me is that I notice the lack of the bullseye on machines where it isn’t installed. I don’t realize how much I use it, but in a short period of time it has become a part of my search process and I find I miss the functionality it brings when it isn’t available.

Surf Canyon is a free download - so if you use Firefox or Internet Explorer I recommend you give it a shot.

How do you find relevant results to your web queries? How would you rate the effectiveness of your searching?

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Filling the Connection Gaps with Konnects

Posted: 23 Sep 2008 09:00 AM CDT

When it comes to truly professional “social” networks, there are far less than general interest and entertainment-oriented networks. Ryze is virtually dead. Xing is more global. The old standby is LinkedIn although it still struggles with its Web 2.0 features. Facebook is still trying to overcome it’s school focus in some professionals’ minds. Plaxo has tried to capitalize on their previous incarnation as a contact management system. And hybrid online/offline communities such as BizNik tend to be more niche or regionally focused.

Enter Konnects. Konnects wants to fill in the gap between LinkedIn and Facebook, providing social tools for a younger professional who may not quite have enough contacts to make LinkedIn really work for them but want to focus on business more than Facebook promotes. Konnects wants to be not only the place where business professionals can find one another but also the place where they can transact business on the site, exchanging all of the information and documentation needed to solidify a working relationship.

Konnects focuses less on email and much more on chat, instant messaging, video conferencing and Twitter integration. The site has the usual social networking features such as Your Network News which is similar to the status updates of you and your contacts on many other networks.

You also get recommended communities on your Konnects home page although I’m not sure why some are being recommended to me. The “Women’s Resources” made sense since I’m a woman. But “Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber”? I live in Alaska. And “Accounting?” I hate accounting.

What Konnects has that LinkedIn doesn’t have is an integration of Communities - not Groups - that are essentially white label networks a la Ning. Maybe I’ll create my own community.

Also on your home page, you are fed videos from your communities but if you don’t belong to a community yet, you get a plain icon that says “Join More Communities. Get More News.” And you can blog.

While Konnects claims to have over 350,000 members so far, my interactions on the site have felt a little lonely even though I am connected to the CEO of Konnects and one of their publicists. I’ve poked around at some of the communities and put out a few invitations to connect (with a free account you are limited to three). I’ve put out a bulletin to my contact list of two. I’ve updated my profile. I’ve tried to connect with people I know who are supposed on Konnects (as per the site culling through my Gmail address book) but never heard from anyone. And I’ve watched the paint dry.

Konnects is still in beta but it is more visible now so perhaps the community will start buzzing. Additional features are for premier users only such as unlimited messages, profile advertising (so you can market yourself to others), and free Internet calls to members. Monthly membership is $14.99 or $89.99 for a year.

With paid membership, you can also view the profiles of the people who have viewed your profile. Despite the creepy aspect of this, it does give you an advantage to see who is curious about you although getting in touch with them after they viewed your profile could also seem pretty creepy.

A nice feature of Konnects is aggregation of your community content. If you join a number of communities, you can actually get an aggregated view of, say, the classifieds from all communities, and you can access all you communities with one login, one password (unlike Ning). Another useful feature is that you can list certain people in your contact list but make others private - a smart way to protect your higher profile contacts.

More features, productivity tools and other third party tools are in the works.

As an avid user of many social networks, I know that especially with professional ones, you get out of them what you put into them so I am reserving judgment for now and will keep plugging away at upping my Konnects connectivity.

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WWD Meets TechCrunch in Paris

Posted: 23 Sep 2008 05:30 AM CDT

I get to go to the first TechCrunch Meetup in Paris today!

I’ll be wearing two hats there (hopefully neither of them a lampshade, but there will be an open bar, so we’ll see…). One is my entrepreneur hat; of course I’m hoping somebody who hasn’t lost all his or her wealth in the crash will dig my elevator pitch to the tune of several million Euros. But aren’t we all? I’m sure there will be lots of talk about the Wall Street fiasco and what it means for the tech industry and entrepreneurs looking for funding. Should be interesting.

The other hat is my web worker hat.

I’m very curious to talk to the other entrepreneurs who will be there. I have a hunch that a high proportion of startup founders are web workers. We live outside of the box. We march to the beat of our own drums. And similar metaphors. Right?

We tend to be early adopters and know more about new trends and technologies than the average Joe. Because of that, I imagine we get some really good ideas. Just about all the web workers I know put their energy and skills and creative minds into side projects, whether for fun or profit. Do you? I’ll be testing my hypothesis at the Meetup and hopefully meeting some local web workers.

The other thing I’m curious about is what Mike Gunderloy asked a couple of weeks ago in his post Where are the exciting startups? He said he hadn’t seen anything come out of recent startup conferences that struck him as particularly innovative or useful for web workers. I haven’t either. I’ll be looking to see if there are any at this soirée that might get Mike and the rest of us web workers excited. Rumor has it that innovation in the Old World is on the rise.

Lastly, if you are planning to be at the Paris Meetup, please let me know in the comments! And if you don’t make it to this one, maybe I’ll catch you next time!

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Combining Online Meetings and Skype

Posted: 22 Sep 2008 06:00 PM CDT

I’ve written before about my favorite, free online meeting and collaboration application: Yugma. Mac, Windows and Linux users will find this application to be a very slick solution. Recently, I’ve been experimenting with some features in Yugma that I hadn’t been using before. A couple of these may be very helpful for anyone doing meeting or screen sharing online.

Yugma has worked with Skype for a long time, but now users of Skype who just want to add conferencing and screen sharing features, can tack it on with one download for Windows, or for the Mac. This is an excellent way to combine visual and audio collaboration without incurring fees, and a good way to get the Skype community going with Yugma.

I’ve never been the hugest fan of Skype on its own, but the integration with Yugma is good, especially for anyone who sits in long phone meetings. This YouTube video provides a good demo of how Yugma works as a plug-in for Skype. And, as Lifehacker notes, Skype users who already have their contact lists fleshed out can get going with Yugma without setup hassles.

Yugma also now lets users join a conferencing session even if they haven’t downloaded and installed the application. The “Join a Session” link atop Yugma’s home page is all participants need, although users who haven’t downloaded the application do stay in View Only mode. It’s a good way to try Yugma out, though.

Yugma comes in a Premium Edition for $9.95 a month, and one of the features you get in that edition is the ability to record online conferences. I’ve considered upgrading to that edition solely for that feature, and it would be smart for one of the free conferencing solutions out there to add that capability on. Then, I could mail conference recordings around with ease, similar to sharing SightSpeed videos by e-mail.

Do you have a lot of people you want to be on the same online meeting? If so, the free version of Yugma only allows 10 participants. However, the open source, free conferencing application DimDim allows 20 participants, and I’m also a fan of it.

What online meeting solution do you use?

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