Web Worker Daily

OpenGoo: A Free, Open Source Productivity Suite Posted: 29 Dec 2008 04:00 PM PST Earlier today, a reader reminded me about OpenGoo, a free,  open source suite of web-hosted productivity applications. I’ve used OpenGoo in the past, but hadn’t checked back in on it for a while. It has a nicer interface than it did before, and delivers word processing, document management, contact management, e-mail, project management, and time management applications. If you like to use Google’s online applications, or Zoho’s, definitely take a look at each of the applications in OpenGoo, especially the information management features. You can try a demo of OpenGoo by clicking Demo atop the project’s home page. The first thing you’ll notice is that the OpenGoo suite is localized for a number of languages, including French and Japanese. You’ll initially see a time management application that allows you to see pending tasks, milestones, and events. You then switch to various applications in the suite via a tabbed toolbar atop the application. When you work with documents in OpenGoo, you can save notations about the revisions you’ve made, which is especially handy if you collaborate with others online. You can edit text and HTML documents and work with presentations. You can also collect contacts, make use of a good looking calendar, and track tasks. OpenGoo makes extensive use of “workspaces” which are especially useful for collaboration, and these are described here. Unlike Google’s and Zoho’s applications, OpenGoo is open source. There is fairly complete online documentation for it, which I recommend perusing before you download to make sure the suite will meet your needs. There also appear to be a few comedians in the community that develops OpenGoo. For example, I noticed that if you click on the “Web Links” choice in OpenGoo’s dashboard, one of the “personal” links stored there is named “porn.”  Hmm. If the idea of using open source online hosted applications brings up privacy concerns, you can download OpenGoo and run it securely as a local suite. The suite does have a few shortcomings. There is no spreadsheet, although one is in the works, and I like the hosted versions of several of the OpenOffice applications found at Ulteo.com better thana few of OpenGoo’s. However, OpenGoo is very strong at calendaring, tracking projects and tasks, and contact management. For jobs such as customer relationship management (CRM) or personal information management, it’s worth a look, and might keep you better organized in 2009. Concentric Hosted IT Solutions and Web Hosting Click here to save cost on your IT demands

RocketLawyer.com: DIY Legal Forms Posted: 29 Dec 2008 02:00 PM PST Last month’s SIAA OnDemand Conference saw the launch of RocketLawyer’s ‘web-based law office’ - a service that may prove to be a useful DIY legal utility for freelancers, web workers and startups. RocketLawyer is essentially a library of legal forms  - covering the spectrum of business and corporate law, ranging from wills, pre-nups and leases to NDAs, employment contracts and incorporation agreements - that enables legal advice and execution to be delivered just as web applications enabled software to be delivered as a service. At its heart, the forms are simply a vehicle for connecting lawyers to clients, but the self-service element allows for a large part of the costs incurred to be mimised as lawyers are only required for the final review stage. It’s this latter review stage that’s perhaps most intriguing. Most users wishing to execute legal agreements will take some time to research an area and perhaps understand many of the principles and necessary steps. However, selecting a lawyer for final completion is usually driven by word of mouth. In an online service such as RocketLawyer.com, selecting from the available lawyers is perhaps harder to accomplish. RocketLawyer’s offline equivalents - packs of legal forms - have been available for many years from major retailers, but perhaps simply transposing them to a digital environment is not enough. The real value of such a service isn’t availability of the forms, but the legal expertise behind them…the lawyers. Perhaps what’s necessary is an eBay feedback score style ‘reputation’ metric for digitally-available lawyers, maybe coupled with a social network, helping users find trusted attorneys and review testimonials, but also enabling lawyers to use successful clients for introductions. There’s some obvious, evident value in something like RocketLawyer, but perhaps a sprinkling of Web 2.0 magic could help deliver real, trusted value to lawyers and their clients. Concentric Hosted IT Solutions and Web Hosting Click here to save cost on your IT demands

So, What Do You Do? Posted: 29 Dec 2008 12:00 PM PST This is the question that I dread more than any other over the holidays, which is saying quite a bit, since my vegan diet also tends to generate another set of awkward questions. During the rest of the year, my life is filled mostly with other technology workers and freelancers who easily understand what I do for a living. However, the holidays can be a different story when I’m faced with people who know little about what it means to be a web worker. Over the past few years, I’ve held a number of jobs involving various types of web work. While at Intel, I managed teams of people spread out over several states. I’ve telecommuted from Portland to a company in California. I’ve managed online communities of people with members located around the world. Currently, I work out of my house and coffee shops as an online community and social media consultant. Here are a few of the scenarios I have encountered as a result of the “What do you do?” question: Scenario 1: The goof off Me: I work for Company X managing their online community. Them: Never heard of Company X. Where is the office? Me: In California. Them: Are you moving to California? Me: No, I work out of my home office over the phone and email mostly. Them: Cool, I wish I had a job where I could goof off all day. Me: Sigh Scenario 2: I can help you get a “real” job Me: I’m a freelance consultant helping companies with online communities & social media strategies. Them: Oh, so you’re between jobs. I have a friend over at Sprockets, Inc. He might be able to find you a real job. Me: Sigh Scenario 3: Avoidance Me: I work with computers. Them: Eyes glazed over Me: Sigh (subject change) or Them: Me, too Me: Great! (Safe to continue conversation without running away screaming). I suspect that I’m not the only telecommuter or freelancer dreading this question. What creative ways have you found to response to the question? What is your funniest, “What do you do?” story? Photo used with permission from Aaron Hockley. Concentric Hosted IT Solutions and Web Hosting Click here to save cost on your IT demands

Ending the Year Right Posted: 29 Dec 2008 11:00 AM PST 2008 is almost gone, and for most of us, this is a slack week at work - whether we’re self-employed or working for someone else (you may even be on voluntary or enforced vacation in the latter case). Traditionally, that makes it a good time for reflection, as well as catching up on some things you’ve just been too busy to do in recent months. Here are some suggestions as to what you should do this week: 1. Call your accountant. While some things (like HSA contributions) can be done after January 1, there are some serious tax deadlines at midnight on Wednesday. If you’re self-employed or have a complex tax situation, this may be your last chance to make course corrections that will affect your tax bill in April. 2. Back up your data. Of course, you should be backing up your data regularly. But this is a good time to evaluate and, if necessary, fine-tune your backup strategy. Are you backing up everything that counts (what about all that stuff on your fancy-schmancy phone)? Are you taking the most critical backups offsite? Do you know how you’d restore your data in case of disaster? 3. Change your passwords. How’s your password management strategy? Are you still using the same password everywhere, instead of using a password manager? How many people know that password? This is a good time to work through switching to new, strong passwords on the most critical services that you use. 4. Reflect. Did you get everything done that you wanted to this year, personally and professionally? What are your goals for 2009? If you enter the new year with a concrete plan, you raise your chances of success. What about you? What are you doing to end the year and start the new one on the right foot? Concentric Hosted IT Solutions and Web Hosting Click here to save cost on your IT demands

5 Questions that Freelancers Often Forget to Ask Their Clients Posted: 29 Dec 2008 10:00 AM PST Sometimes, the cause of freelancing mistakes lies in forgetting to ask the right questions. I know this because it has often happened to me, whether I’m applying as a contractor for a project or I’m the one hiring others to work with me.  Asking these questions, no matter how simple or common they might be, makes you better prepared to take on a project.  Plus, they show your client that you go the extra mile. So what are these questions and why should we ask them? What is this for? A few years ago, I made the mistake of accepting a seemingly simple request from a client to write articles about bathroom cleaning tips.  I did the project with a slant on using homemade cleansers, not knowing that what the client wanted was to incorporate the use of commercially available products into the article.  In the end I had to redo the entire job. Some projects only look simple on the surface, but they turn out to be more layered than you think once you ask your client what they intend to accomplish with your work. Will we be working together on this project? I’ve had a couple of instances where a contractor would assume that we’ve sealed the deal even without mutually signing a contract or me giving them the “Go!” signal.  One of them even got angry because he cleared his entire schedule for two weeks expecting that I would hire him for the project. Most clients would be looking at the portfolios, resumes, and applications of several freelancers before committing to one.  Unless it is stated clearly, you cannot be sure that you will be chosen.  Other ways to phrase this would be “Would you like me to start this project?” or “Do we have a deal?”.  Of course, don’t get started on anything without the actual contracts signed. On a scale of 1 to 10, how did I do? It’s best to ask this for each aspect of the services you provide including the quality of your final output, customer support, and an overall rating.  This gives you an idea of how successful you were at meeting a client’s expectations. If you didn’t get a perfect 10 in some areas, it’s best to follow this up with “What could I have done to get a 10?”  This shows your client that you are constantly pushing yourself to improve with each project. Is there anything else I can do for you? I make this question a mandatory part of my final email once I’ve sent in my final output and I’ve received full payment.  It never hurts to ask this, and it might even give you a few unexpected projects from satisfied clients. How has my output affected your business so far? You should ask this question a week or a month after you’ve completed the project. In fact, if you’ve provided services that have long term effect (such as a website design, online ad design, or an ebook) you might want to contact your clients every few months to ask this very question. If your work had very little effect on your client’s business, propose to find alternative or added solutions that will help them reach their goal.  This isn’t necessarily about upselling, it’s about caring for your clients enough to provide them with solutions that truly work. What has your experience been like when it comes to asking - or forgetting to ask - these questions?  Do you have any questions to add to this list? Concentric Hosted IT Solutions and Web Hosting Click here to save cost on your IT demands

Cellity: Another Contender for Address Book 2.0 Posted: 29 Dec 2008 08:00 AM PST The creation of Address Book 2.0 - the evolution of contacts applications into something more distributed, social and elegant - is a prize being hotly contested by many startups. Just recently, Web Worker Daily has examined Soocial, ContactHero and some of the privacy pitfalls of web-based contact books. The latest to join the fray is Cellity’s Address Book 2.0, launched earlier this month, at the LeWeb’08 conference in Paris. The service promises to centralize and synchronize a user’s communication points from sources as diverse as Outlook, Twitter, cellphones and social networks. The service provides a single view of all your contact information, from their various origins,  then presents the user with various communication tasks that can be invoked for each contact - sending email, SMS, conference calls, status messages and other activities. Interestingly, even if the link to the origin service is severed, Cellity maintains its own copy of contacts from that source. Like many similar contact aggregation services, services like Twitter and Facebook are plumbed into Cellity’s by entering your account details for those services - something I’m becoming very uncomfortable with as startups building on those networks begin to proliferate. Not only are you handing off your credentials to others, but contact points for hundreds, if not thousands, of your valued relationships - an issue explored more fully by Pamela just over a month ago. I’m beginning to think the current approach of aggregating contact from various services and then making them viewable on multiple platforms is not enough…no service can support every device, every social network and every contact source. Even the mighty Google sees Contacts as no more than an adjunct feature of email, rather than a valuable stand-alone service that can service many other applications. Perhaps we need a WordPress-like approach to this problem space… A freely available open-source service along the lines of WordPress.org or laconi.ca that users and organisations can deploy on their own servers to host their own contact information -  based on open-standards like FOAF, SyncML and vCard/hCard - this could be as simple as a web page embedded with microformatted contact information and suitable permissions. A freemium hosted equivalent (such as identi.ca or WordPress.com) for less-sophisticated users to host their contact information on public servers. Address books are simply the connections, relationships and permissions between those contact hosts. Encourage developer communities to provide plugins and support for analytics, phones, social networks, desktop address books etc. We’ve seen how open source blogging platforms have evolved quickly to support almost every niche - perhaps harnessing the same structures can help bring about the mythical Address Book 2.0. Concentric Hosted IT Solutions and Web Hosting Click here to save cost on your IT demands

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