Web Worker Daily |
| 5 Additional Contacts Every Web Worker Should Have Posted: 04 Nov 2008 02:00 PM CST In a previous post here at WWD, I gave a list of four essential contacts for web workers. The list included a mentor, a newbie, the walking social network, and the non-techie. While those contacts will help you enrich your career, there are other contacts you’ll need if you want to have more opportunities, or if you need help in establishing the businesses side of your web working practice. The lawyer. Contracts and legal documents are part of every web worker’s life. We often need to sign non-disclosure agreements, independent contractor documents, and telecommuting agreements. Having a lawyer as a contact can be handy, especially if you want to start a business, translate legalese, or draft your own contracts when templates just won’t do. The financial expert. Whether it’s managing your own money, finding stable investments, or computing yoru home office as a tax deduction, you’ll need a go-to person for your financial questions. This could be a hired accountant, financial advisor, or simply a friend who is wise about money. Even if they might not be able to answer all your questions, they can certainly point you to the resources and experts you need. The website network owner. This contact is probably more important to freelancers than telecommuting employees. Basically, this person owns or manages several websites and blogs. Having a contact like this can prove to be useful, whether you’re a designer, writer, SEO practitioner, or programmer. The most obvious reason is that there’s a good chance that this contact will give you extra opportunities for work, since she has several web projects that need maintenance and updates. Also, if she really likes your work, you might be tapped for any new projects that come along. The colleague. Web working is like a rat race where you don’t get to meet the other rats. No matter how much you love solitude and independence, you’ll need to network with others who are doing the kind of work that you do. Why is this important? First of all, it’s always good to have someone who faces the same challenges as you do. You get to exchange ideas and help each other out when facing problems that are unique to teleworking. Also, it allows for opportunities to collaborate in the future. For telecommuting employees, you can establish rapport with other telecommuters in your department. For freelancers, you could get in touch with the people you work with on a regular basis, or hang out in online communities where freelancers talk about the issues that matter to them. The popular blogger. Blogs are fast becoming one of the most common resources that people turn to for current events and expert opinions. Their position gives bloggers some amount of authority when recommending a product or service. This makes it good to have blogger contacts from a marketing perspective, especially if you work with them and they blog about how happy they are with your work. I think that kind of recommendation beats a regular testimonial. While having these five contacts is beneficial to your career, you shouldn’t depend on them for everything. After all, the quality of your work is still up to you. These contacts will just add to the work, opportunities, and know how that you already have. Which of these contacts do you have? What value do they bring to your career?    |
| Yuuguu Inside: Screensharing Comes to AIM, ICQ, MSN & Yahoo Posted: 04 Nov 2008 12:00 PM CST
Earlier today the company rounded out its ‘Yuuguu Inside’ strategy by extending its integration of Google Talk buddies to users from AIM, ICQ, MSN and Yahoo’s instant messaging networks, bringing cross-platform and cross-network support to the company’s ‘Yuuniverse’. With a reach extending into hundreds of millions now, its easier than ever for users of the service to invite participants to a Yuuguu session, though it remains to be seen if removing previous barriers actually makes a difference in adoption of screensharing over face-to-face meetings. Regardless, Yuuguu remains a useful free tool for web workers and one that now extends a little further. UPDATE: Yuuguu CEO Anish Kapoor assures me that a bug in the acceptance of .Mac-based AIM screennames will shortly be resolved.    |
| Posted: 04 Nov 2008 10:00 AM CST When the benefits of teleworking are discussed, one of the major points raised is that teleworking is better for the environment. One of the more obvious causes of this is that if more people work from home, lesser people drive to work, reducing petrol consumption and the emissions that result from it. A recent survey by the US Consumer Electronics Association found that although the carbon emissions from home offices increased because of telecommuting, the saved petrol consumption more than makes up for it:
Despite these claims, there are still some skeptics. In an article at Forbes.com entitled "Telecommuting is Bad for the Environment", Klaus Kneale wrote that "telecommuting is often worse for the planet than driving to work each and every day". He cited the following reasons:
As the comments following the article suggest, most telecommuters disagreed with Kneale, especially since some of his ideas were hasty generalizations (that telecommuters faced cabin fever and needed to drive around), or lacked ample research. Other environmental benefits of telecommuting, such as lessening the need for paper and higher productivity measured against electricity consumption were not mentioned. Also, even if commuting to work only accounts for 20% of car travel, that 20% is still a big deal. Less car travel to work also lessens traffic congestion, which, in turn, lessens the need for highway expansion and the addition of new parking lots. With these things left out, it’s no wonder that the readers felt like the article was an exaggeration. Exaggeration or not, opposing views to teleworking’s green benefits remind us of one thing – that teleworking and being environment friendly don’t automatically go hand in hand. Unless we make educated, conscious efforts to reduce waste and lower energy consumption, teleworking won’t be as green as the theorists and studies hoped it will be. Do you think that teleworking is more environment friendly than full-time office work? Why or why not?    |
| BlackBerry Bold: Upgrading Your Mobile Experience Posted: 04 Nov 2008 08:03 AM CST As a Canadian I have been in the fortunate position of having experienced a BlackBerry Bold since its launch on Rogers in late August. It’s not simply a new smartphone or “replacement” for an older BlackBerry. The Bold, finally available at AT&T, is a game changer when it comes to not only exchanging information but also its role in both your personal and business life. So what drives this new mobile life? The BlackBerry Bold’s screen must be seen to truly appreciate how stunning it is. As I worked with emails, web pages, Google Maps, Twitter and other applications, the screen’s text fonts and photo and video renderings “grow” on you. For example, Wall Street Journal for Mobile and New York Times have a quality that extends their renowned website visual branding as a quality publication to the BlackBerry. Crisp, often small, fonts and vibrant colors make the reading experience just as good as, if not easier than, a newspaper. Google Maps satellite views distinguish buildings while showing street names in small, yet sharp, fonts.
It means you can follow most web pages without horizontal scrolling. It eliminates the constant urge to boot up a laptop while on the road to keep current with not only email but also time sensitive documents, Skype chat sessions via iSkoot and Twitter message streams as well as blog activity and news. Combining the enhanced keyboard with BlackBerry’s reputation for robust, secure and reliable email is just the start. Entries for Twitter feeds, document editing, instant messaging, website URLs and application purchases at the CrackBerry.com application store all benefit from the speed and accuracy associated with having a keyboard. The trackball pointer is a valuable assistant for precisely accessing text insertion points; a magnifier icon assists zooming. But two way communications is more that text and media exchange. During recent neighborhood cable outages, I was able to access a daily one hour Calliflower conference call via iSkoot and its support for Skype-based calling with the only cost being local wireless minutes. I quickly realized that it was actually more convenient to have the device mobility when interrupted by activities that took me away from my desk. The Bold’s 3G mobile connectivity is complemented by its support for WiFi when in an accessible WiFi zone. It means faster download of web pages and multimedia, eliminating or reducing buffering of streaming video, such as available on YouTube. One example demonstrates the power of the combination of display quality, connection speed and processor performance. Previously I mentioned the quality of Google Maps satellite views; however, recently Google Maps Street View became available for the BlackBerry (for U.S. locations only). Stroll down a street or rotate about an address, the Bold’s connectivity and processor come into play for downloading and rendering the resulting images. The result is not only high quality images of the surrounding buildings and scenery but also rapid image updating with minimum pixelating as you move about. The Bold also includes a media player supporting both stereo audio and video; its support of microSD memory cards allows easy memory upgrades as your media collection builds. Music can be synchronized from iTunes via BlackBerry MediaSync. During a recent flight I was able to transcribe an interview, recorded from a Skype call as an MP3 file via Pamela (and added to iTunes), where the Bold’s trackball pointer provided the required precision to easily access and replay segments of the interview with an accuracy no touch screen can approach. So what’s the downside? While the display provides the ability to keep up with much more information than via email exchanges, the browser still needs some work to come up to the quality of the iPhone browsing experience. But it never prevented me from executing time sensitive work activity. While the Bold readily switches between WiFi and 3G when entering and leaving registered WiFi access points, registering those WiFi access points is not quite the single step stress-free iPhone process. There are many features left to try out; I am constantly downloading applications and shortcuts. But the overall experience is best summed up by a business professional aquaintance who, after six weeks with the Bold, reported that “I’m beginning to think my Bold is more powerful than my notebook.” A sentiment I started to feel during a recent trip to California where all these factors came into play and I found I was ignoring my laptop, yet keeping fully current. But BlackBerry Bold is a device you have to see to truly appreciate its full potential.    |
| Update to Google Chrome Eases Plug-In Woes Posted: 03 Nov 2008 06:00 PM CST With the third update to Google’s open source Chrome browser out, many people, including us, have been writing about the speed improvements. Various tests around the web show its JavaScript performance at close to 40 percent faster than when it was first released. However, there are a number of other enhancements in the latest version (which pushes to you automatically if you’re already running Chrome). In a Google blog post today, Chrome developers are confirming that plug-ins now work much better, and more. To be clear, Chrome still does not have support for the many extensions that Firefox has. What Google means by plug-ins is under-the-hood helper tools that do things like play videos and display PDF files. In early feedback on the Chrome browser, some users were having trouble with video and PDF files. The latest, third update to the Chrome beta contains many fixes for plug-ins. As discussed in this post, the new beta solves problems that many users were having with YouTube videos, and with working with charts. Thanks to the free availability of its open source core, Chromium, Chrome is also being taken in some new directions. There is privacy-enhanced version of the browser called Iron, and a lightweight version appropriate for portable use: Portable Chrome.    |
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