Web Worker Daily

Shout’Em: Roll your Own Microblogging Community Posted: 31 Dec 2008 02:00 PM PST Twitter is now rumored to have between four and five million users, varying from the inactive and curious, to hardcore life-streamers, though it still lacks some useful features like groups. The company appears to be pursuing growth over immediate revenue streams, such as the lucrative delivery of SMS notifications and the ability to ‘white-label’ the service with a company, group or organization’s own branding and features. It’s into this latter category that products such as laconi.ca and Folkstr as well as startups like Shout’Em are entering. The Croatian Shout’Em recently received €350′000 in seed funding to further develop its service, a tool to ‘roll your own microblogging networks. This essentially allows you to host and operate your own Twitter-like communites. I was prepared to be skeptical about a Twitter-clone, but have been pleasantly surprised by how sophisticated and powerful the Shout’Em user experience actually is. A VC recently told me that startups offering white-label options are generally a sign of an inability to capture a broad consumer audience along with the associated value and volume. However, there’s a place for non-venture funded startups to offer good quality services to thousands rather than millions of customers. Upon joining the service, users can operate multiple microblogging networks, picking a subdomain of shoutem.com for each and adding from a bunch of a la carte features such as file-sharing, photo-sharing, privacy levels, restricting membership by domain and even choosing feature sets modeled around Twitter and Pownce as templates. More adventurous users can tinker directly with CSS and template designs to bring in their own branding. Premium services starting at around $10/month allow networks to use private domains, increased storage and bandwidth, inline advertising to generate modest revenue. Upcoming features include SMS notification, Facebook/GoogleTalk integration and an Android application. It’s an impressive application, rolling up many features offered by Twitter add-ons into an integrated, brandable service. There’s certainly a modest demand for private Twitter-y networks. However, like Ning - the ‘roll your own social network’ platform - it remains to be seen whether white-label microblogging platforms are viable against their large consumer counterparts. Concentric Hosted IT Solutions and Web Hosting Click here to save cost on your IT demands

Social Task Management: The Next Generation Posted: 31 Dec 2008 12:00 PM PST Producteev is the new kid on the block in the collaborative task management arena, but this app puts the emphasis on the social and makes multi-tasking, our 21st-century way of life, a lot easier. Just to be clear, this is not another Basecamp-type application. It is a product of the less-is-more mentality, which often makes for the best applications. Producteev is for managing your activities and communicating with the other people involved in those activities. My sister-in-law could really use this. She’s a swim team president, an assistant den mother, and in charge of fundraising for a large muscular dystrophy group in Los Angeles. On top of that, she is the Project Queen, at any given moment managing more of them than I ever could; everything from putting solar panels on her roof to organizing a family reunion in Hawaii. All of our lives are like this to some degree, and web workers have to juggle not only home but also professional activities. We’re under particular pressure to be sure that nothing falls through the cracks. If you haven’t found a solution to that problem yet, read on. Task Management For each of your projects, you make a task box. With just a couple of clicks, you can name them, color code them and add tasks. In this image I have color coded work, home, leisure, and personal activities differently. You can drag the boxes around in your dashboard and drag the tasks up and down within the boxes. Producteev is much more than a multiple-project to-do list, however. You can click on a task and, in the callout on the left, enter a status, set reminders for yourself (which you can receive through any of several channels) and leave comments. Other members of the team can leave comments too. You can get an overview of all items in a task box by clicking the Overview button at the bottom right of each box. You can assign a task to other members just by dragging the task onto his or her avatar at the bottom of the page. An assigned task appears on your dashboard in the Imported Tasks box. From there, you can drag the task into the specific task box where it belongs. Note that you can give different people access to different activities so that they will only see activities they’re involved with. Communication The app has a new approach to the social aspect. The integrated Live Feed acts like Twitter or Facebook’s news feed (in the context of a project such a thing might actually be useful) so that you can easily stay on top of the actions and comments of team members. The Live Feed automatically displays new tasks, reminders, etc., and members can also use it to communicate. Another great thing about this app is that it’s already tied in to the most popular communications channels, allowing you to send yourself tasks and receive notifications in the ways that are most convenient for you. Your IM options are currently Twitter, Gtalk, Yahoo Messenger, AIM, MSN, and ICQ. Mobile options are on the way: Nokia (due next week), iPhone, and Blackberry. And there will soon be an Adobe Air app (also due next week) that will allow you to work with Producteev from your desktop. Other features You can import existing tasks from Microsoft Outlook or Remember the Milk. You have the ability to upload and share files, with versioning and comments by team members for each file. Producteev, one of 30 startups chosen to compete at LeWeb ‘08 in Paris, is still in private beta, but they’re planning to switch to public beta and launch the iPhone app in about three weeks. If you’re eager to get in and play with Producteev, you can request an invitation now to participate in beta testing and help them create the product you want. You could also develop for Producteev using their API! I’ll be sure to let you know when the app goes into public beta. Producteev is free to use during beta, but after that it will be available by subscription, which the founders assure me will be “very cheap.” Let me know what you think! Concentric Hosted IT Solutions and Web Hosting Click here to save cost on your IT demands

Open Thread: What’s Your New Year’s Resolution? Posted: 31 Dec 2008 11:00 AM PST I’m planning to have a good 2009 - and this is going to be the year that I actually plan that. I’ve managed to muddle through the past couple of years of web working without any major plans, but like many of you, the economy has me worried. So I’ve set myself some quarterly goals of how I want my business to be doing - in terms of income stream and diversification - and my main resolution is to actually keep those goals in front of me and work towards them. There’s plenty of debate about how useful resolutions are, or whether there’s some more productive way to spend the last or first day of the year. But they’re certainly traditional, and this is a good time to take stock. According to myGoals.com, you can increase you chances of following through by having a written plan - so why not share the resolution with the rest of us, as a first step towards writing it down? 2009 is the year you resolve to … Concentric Hosted IT Solutions and Web Hosting Click here to save cost on your IT demands

Maintaining Privacy as an Online Freelancer Posted: 31 Dec 2008 09:00 AM PST Can the internet public know more about you than you would like?  According to an article at New Scientist, there's a company that uses software to analyze blogs and forum posts to find out a blogger's age, gender, and interests.  Web workers who are avid users of Twitter also let the public know what they're up to most of the day.  Here at WWD, we also discussed the lack of privacy of the average web user when it comes to their browsing activity. How do we maintain privacy when we work on such a public platform? Separate your personal life and your work when it comes to online interaction. Any apps, blogs, or social networking accounts should be separate from your professional accounts.  Alternatively, you can categorize your contacts into separate groups, such as friends, family, business, and filter which types of updates are visible to each group. This might seem time consuming, but you don't want a diligent internet troll to start harassing your friends or playing with your holiday photos via Photoshop and sharing it with your clients.  You don't want your friends and family to be too informed about your work either (I remember my mother seeing one of my clients on Facebook and asking me if she could go out with him). That may be far-fetched, but it's not something I personally want to risk. I keep a personal blog on some free blogging platforms - intended for close friends and family only.  Most of my posts are visible only to contacts I have approved.  My professional blog, of course, is free for the rest of the web to read. Get a pseudonym. Web workers sometimes use nicknames, online screen names, or only their first names as their working name online.  This approach to getting more privacy seems to elicit a variety of reactions.  Some people are for it, while others don't think it's necessary, or they think it goes against the culture of transparency on the web.  Online workers such as Skellie, Adii Rockstar, and blogger John Cow (for a time) are just a few examples. You can also use an alias that sounds more like a "real name". A pseudonym can also be useful if you want to work on projects that aren't relevant to the personal brand you're building.  When I used to write about relationships and dating, it wasn't something I was passionate about pursuing, so I used a variety of aliases for my work.  Only my clients knew my real name. The downsides to working with a pseudonym, especially if it doesn't sound like a "real name", is that in some cases, it might lead to mistrust.  Still, this could be overcome once you've built a reputation on providing quality services. Monitor your digital footprint. You can do a regular search of your name, pseudonyms, and other nicknames you use on the web.  If you want to automate this, you can simply use Google Alerts to keep up with any new searchable items relevant to your name.  Twitter Search, BackType Alerts, and FriendFeed Search also allow you to search any keyword within their services. Check the privacy settings and privacy policy of every new app, social network, or online service you're using. This may sound like common sense, but it's something that many people neglect.  Call me paranoid, but I tend to check my privacy settings on social networking accounts every few months or so.  Sometimes they add new features or change something and it affects the initial settings I established. Mike Gunderloy also wrote about the terms and conditions of online office applications, which had interesting points about privacy.  On a related note, the Pew Internet Project conducted a survey on cloud computing with the following results: …cloud users show high levels of concern when presented with scenarios in which companies might use their data for purposes users may or may not fully understand ahead of time.  This suggests user worry over control of the information they store online.  For nearly all of the scenarios shown, most users of cloud applications say they would be very concerned if their data were sold, used in marketing campaigns, not deleted as requested, or used for targeted ads. Source: "Use of Cloud Computing Applications and Services", September 2008, Pew Internet & American Life Project How about you, how concerned are you with your privacy as a web worker?  How do you manage your digital footprints?  What experiences have you had with online privacy? Image by Dan Shirley from sxc.hu Concentric Hosted IT Solutions and Web Hosting Click here to save cost on your IT demands

Cyn.in: More Open Source Group Collaboration Posted: 31 Dec 2008 08:00 AM PST Last week I wrote an article about Liferay, an open source portal app. Today, I’ll be looking at another option, Cyn.in, from Cynapse, an enterprise software solution provider. Cyn.in is an open source collaboration app, and as such only offers a portion of the functionality of Liferay, but those looking for a more pure collaboration platform, and not a full-fledged intranet, may find it more tailored to their specific needs. Cyn.in is centralized software that collects all of your basic collaboration software, like blogs, wikis, discussion boards, etc. It also supports file sharing and repositories. I tried the live demo to get a sense of what Cyn.in has to offer, with a special focus on how it might compare to Liferay regarding my specific goal of using it to help organize and grow my collaborative writing blog. The demo allows you to log in to an enterprise edition install of Cyn.in, using one of the dummy accounts they’ve set up for their demo corporations, Widgets Inc. Different accounts are attached to different levels of employee, from junior management to executives. For my test run, I signed on using a Senior Managment account. Immediately, you’re greeted with a mind map which breaks down your company’s spaces and views. This map was an interactive flash element, which I found buggy and not necessarily intuitive. Cynapse does warn that performance might be unusual since many people could be logged on to the demo at the same time using the same accounts. Underneath the mind map is a notification area, broken down into subsections. Here you can see all recent updates, your own items, view the boss’s blog and status log, and see recently active discussions. Overall, it feels a tad cluttered, but it’s a good snapshot of what’s going on across the company. On the right-hand side of the screen, you have your personal control toolbar. From there, you can update your status, view/change your profile and preference, and log out of cyn.in. You can also subscribe to email notifications and view upcoming events. I’m still not entirely sure how the email subscription system works. It looks like you can subscribe to the content of whatever page you happen to be viewing, which, if true, would come in handy. Creating spaces was easy enough. I created one called “Disaster Control”, to see what options were available. One nice feature was the ability to postpone the publication date of any particular space, so that you can plan project streams and lines of business that are not yet active beforehand, and have them go live automatically whenever others are meant to have access to them. Building a wiki for the space was also not too much trouble, although I found it far less intuitive than Liferay’s interface. I had to create a new wiki page from the top menu in order to set a home page in the Disaster Recovery area. A simple link in the wiki tab would’ve made things a lot more clear. Overall, Cyn.in seems like a fairly powerful tool, especially if your users are knowledgeable and experienced in customized enterprise collaboration software. It lacks the pick-up-and-play feel of Liferay, in my opinion, but does offer an SaaS option and an Enterprise license that takes all of the setup footwork out of the equation for you, if you’re looking to spend a good amount of cash. There’s also the free open source software, but you have to run it on your own server. I’d recommend Cyn.in for consultants working with larger, established companies looking for an alternative to their current collaboration solution. DIYers on the other hand will probably want to stick with Liferay or something similar. Concentric Hosted IT Solutions and Web Hosting Click here to save cost on your IT demands

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