Web Worker Daily |
| Three Top Windows Freeware Applications Posted: 02 Jan 2009 04:00 PM PST It’s one of my favorite pursuits to try out bushels of open source and freeware applications, looking for gems. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose on the hunt, but there are definitely a lot of applications out there that cost nothing but pack powerful punches. Here are three Windows freeware applications that rose to the top of my favorites list in 2008–ones that I use every week. Startup Delayer immediately struck me as a very useful Windows utility when I first wrote about it in early October. Indeed, I use it every day and love it. Startup Delayer is designed to do what its name implies: It lets you set delays for the various Windows applications you load when you boot your computer, so that they don't attempt to load all at once, slowing boot time down. You just drag applications around in a simple, shared white space to set the delays. If you load a lot of software all the time, as I do, and if you load a fair number of applications upon bootup, Startup Delayer will deliver its maximum benefit. After taking a look at the Top Downloads list at Download.com, I’m not suprised to see Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware on the top 20 list. I wrote about this utility here. It’s very common for Windows users to find their systems running slowly and inefficiently over time. Files get littered around hard drives in Windows, registries get mucked up, and more. While there are lots of free tools for task such as disk cleanup, this one consistently ferrets out gunk that other applications won’t. Finally, IrfanView is a fantastic freeware graphics application that I’ve written up a couple of times. Its latest version 4.23 adds lots uf useful features, including expanded history lists for slideshows, the ability to create multi-page PDF files and more. This application opens and closes like a snap, but is surprisingly powerful, especially in the latest version.    |
| Cogi: Capture, Transcribe and Share Phone Meetings Posted: 02 Jan 2009 02:00 PM PST Earlier December saw the launch of Cogi (pronounced co-jee), an audio recording and transcription service in the mould of QTech’s reQall and SkyDeck, bringing a potentially a valuable note taking tool for web workers. The US-based service enables users to capture the audio content of any phone call or conference calls in their entirety for later transcription to text by the service. Users can also markup parts of the call for particular emphasis during the transcription process. Apparently marking up such segments of a call is as simple as hitting a touchtone keypad to issue stop and start commands, though I’m sure a visual aid to this would be a welcome future addition. Indeed, the service derives its name from ‘cogent ideas’, the parts of conversations that seem to be the most important. Like reQall, the service is using a combination of speech-to-text technology and human assistance to produce accurate transcripts. However what’s probably more useful than the transcript itself are the implications of a digitized record of audio conversations. All of a sudden, a previously transitory and inert medium becomes searchable, sharable and intrinsically more valuable. Of course there are privacy implications in recording calls, but no more complex than existing issues in retaining phone calls. At $30/month for 1000 minutes it’s a pricey service, but perhaps the company has inadvertently developed a ‘Gmail for voice’. Regardless, additional price tiers may be neccessary to encourage casual use and wider adoption.   |
| Posted: 02 Jan 2009 12:00 PM PST Like many of us, I spend quite a lot of time on the web and come across a staggering number of interesting things. In Clearing The Cache I pull out some of my favorites and share them with you here. Congratulations to Garvin and the Serendipity team for a fantastic 1.4 release of their wonderful blogging platform. With the holidays here, and perhaps some free time available, jkOnTheRun points us to some Good Old Games for your netbook. Slash7 shares a Jump Start Credit Card Processing Cheat Sheet - thanks Amy. Andreas Gohr shows you how to Setup DokuWiki in <15 minutes. Wayne Smallman tells us Why we need a blogging code of conduct. What do you think?   |
| Campaign Monitor for Sending Pro E-mail Campaigns Posted: 02 Jan 2009 11:00 AM PST How do you deal with telling all your clients you’ll be on vacation, that you’re offering a new service or special rates, or any other important piece of news for that matter? What if you’d like to send out a regular e-newsletter? Without certain programming skills, it’s a challenge. And not all of us web workers are programmers. I have a new toy, and today is Show and Tell.
To be honest, I’ve never been so thrilled by a web app. With my new toy I can send beautiful HTML e-mails to a bunch of people at once. They have 28 templates to choose from if you can’t do the HTML yourself, but you do have to be able to do basic editing of an HTML file in the editor of your choice. I can create different subscriber lists for different purposes. Then, once I’ve sent my e-mail, I can see who unsubscribed, who opened, who forwarded, which links within the e-mail were clicked and how many times, which e-mails bounced, and lots more. Not only is it tons of fun, it is an extraordinarily useful professional tool. Plus, it could be a revenue stream in itself; you can brand the app and offer mass-mailing services to your own clients. I created a free account with CampaignMonitor and imported all the members’ e-mail addresses from a csv file I’d created. I then uploaded the HTML e-mail I had. CampaignMonitor let me do a test to see what the e-mail would look like in the top 18 web, desktop and mobile e-mail clients: Once I sent the e-mail, I had access to a Reports tab that instantly showed me how my subscribers had reacted to the e-mail (and continues to provide stats today, three weeks later). I was enlightened by the results. I found out a former grad school classmate unsubscribed (to my surprise and annoyance) and I learned just how many people were interested in the contest I’d advertised; they’d clicked on the link to learn more about the prize. I stopped sending Christmas cards several years ago, and decided to make a personal website with an annual review of what my family has done every year. Beats a form letter and I can include lots of pictures. At the end of the year, I send an e-mail to all my closest friends and family with a link pointing them to the new page. I’ve just created a kitschy, tongue-in-cheek “announcement” that I’m sending through CampaignMonitor this year instead. (I told you it was fun!) I’m sure I’ll also be using it to send pro e-mail updates to clients, like the people I translate for, and sub-contractors, like the people who translate for me. Given the interest in branding these days, including personal branding, CampaignMonitor offers an elegant way to publicize your personal or corporate brand. CampaignMonitor subjects every new subscriber list to their approval process in order to prevent people from using the service to send spam. They also offer incredible security so that your subscribers’ contact info is as safe as it can be. I nearly forgot about the pricing! You pay only $5.00 per mailing plus $0.01 per recipient. By far the most reasonable option I found. The UI is clean and intuitive, the organization of content is pretty much flawless. I could go on and on, but I suggest you just go and try it for yourself! You won’t be disappointed. (Thanks for the tip, Demian!)   |
| Setting Your Rates: Another Approach Posted: 02 Jan 2009 11:00 AM PST We’ve given some advice for setting freelance hourly rates before, including a rough rule of thumb for those leaving more traditional employment (multiple your hourly pay as an employee by 2.5 to 3.0). But a new blog post from Pat Allan offers another way to think about this, and one worth running through if you’re new to freelancing. There are basically three variables to juggle: your total income for the year, the number of hours you’re going to work, and your hourly rate. If you know what any two of them are, you can figure out the third. So, if the goal is to come up with an hourly rate, you need to determine your target total income and work hours. Start with your target income. A good starting point (if you’re considering leaving full-time work) is your current annual salary - but that’s not the end of the story. If you want to stay on an economic even keel, you need to add in all of the expenses that your employer currently covers. This might include: Basically, if you become your own employer, you’re responsible for paying for “fringe benefits” (or doing without). You might find that you need to bring in $90,000 per year to have the equivalent of a $60,000 salary. Now think about how many hours per year you’re going to work. 52 x 40 - That’s 2080 hours, right? Not by a long stretch. Consider: A more realistic estimate is probably 40 working weeks per year (if you’re lucky finding work your first year!) and 6 hours per day. If you’re taking weekends off, that means 6 x 5 x 40 = 1200 working hours per year. Do the math, and in this simple example you’d need to set your freelance rate at $75 per hour to match your current salary. That’s not the end of the story, of course - you need to think about what terms you’re going to bill people on and what the market will bear, among other factors - but it’s a good way to sanity check any plans you have to go freelance.   |
| 4 Online Freelancing Jobs You Should Approach with Caution Posted: 02 Jan 2009 10:00 AM PST First time freelancers make the mistake of accepting every single job that comes their way. I made this mistake, and there’s a good chance that you did too. Who can blame us? Freelance income isn’t stable, especially when you’re starting out. We tend to think that we should accept all the job offers we can get today - because there might be none tomorrow. Sometimes, however, the jobs we take end up costing us instead of giving us profits. What we intended as another step in our career only becomes a lesson we shouldn’t have learned the hard way. How do we identify these problematic jobs and what can we do about them?
Even if a low paying job were legitimate, accepting it has disadvantages. This job will take hours away from your work week, hours that could be better spent on boosting your marketing efforts to get the well-paying jobs. Plus, it will lower your average hourly income overall. Ideally, you should be increasing your rates as the years go by and not the other way around. Unless you’re just starting out and looking to build your web working experience, there should be no reason to take this job. The Job You Can’t Learn From. In a previous post, Mike Gunderloy talked about how he only takes jobs that will allow him to learn something new. While I believe there’s something to be learned out of every experience, I would rather take Mike’s advice than accept a repetitive copy & pasting job. Take this kind of job only if you’re low on cash or if you plan to outsource or delegate it, otherwise, you won’t be getting much else apart from the money. The Audition Job. You know those jobs where you have to “audition” by doing a design mock up or a draft and if your client likes it, they’ll pay you. If not, well, that’s too bad. This approach to job applications is also known as speculative work (or simply “spec work”). While it’s true that not all people who ask for spec work are out to scam you, it’s not the best way to conduct business - both for the freelancer and the client. The “Easy” Job. Some jobs seems simple enough when you look at your client’s initial specifications, but once you get deep into the project you realize how big the scope actually is. It’s hard to identify this kind of job at first. What usually gives it away is when your client tells you “It’s easy!” or “It will only take 10 minutes of your time!” Think about it, if the job were really easy, shouldn’t they be able to do it themselves? Also, while there are clients who are appreciative of a freelancer’s skills and efforts, there are always those who will undervalue your work. Do you know this client well enough to trust that the job is truly easy? One way to work through the “easy” job is to assess the project yourself, discuss it with your client, and define the deliverables before you start working. This protects you from “surprise” tasks that suddenly creep in when you realize that the scope of the project is much larger than what your client initially thought. In some way, you’ll risk looking like you’re out to milk your client for every penny, but if you give them all the information and references they need, they’ll know that you’re only doing what’s best for them in the long run. What other jobs should online freelancers be cautious about? What was your experience with these kinds of jobs?   |
| Why I Love My iPod (Yes, This Is Work-Related) Posted: 02 Jan 2009 08:00 AM PST  Photo by Josh Bancroft I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I never listen to music on my iPod. Seriously. I keep a playlist of 25 songs on it just in case I get the urge to listen to music, but I never do. And yet, I listen to my iPod for a minimum of 30 minutes every day and often for several hours. Instead of music, I fill my iPod with audio podcasts. I don’t watch the news on TV or listen to the radio, so I rely on podcasts as my primary way to consume some types of news (blogs and feeds are also a big part of how I consume information). I use iTunes subscriptions, which allow my podcasts to automagically appear on my computer every day, and I sync my iPod first thing in the morning so that it is ready at all times. Most of my regular subscriptions fall into a couple of categories. General News. NPR 7am News Summary and New York Times Front Page. Tech News. TWiT, net@night, FLOSS Weekly, Buzz Out Loud, WSJ Tech News Briefing, IFW Daily, CNET News Daily, Strange Love Live, BBC Digital Planet, PRI The World Special Topics. NPR Science Friday and TEDTalks. Like most of you, I am incredibly busy, so how can I possibly consume so much content? The secret lies in multi-tasking. Here is my quick criteria for whether I am doing an activity that is iPod friendly. I can listen to podcasts if I am doing a task that
For me, this means: getting ready in the morning, riding the bus, shopping, putting away groceries, running errands, working out (see above caveat about tangling), walking between meetings, doing dishes, laundry, cooking, cleaning, organizing and more. Maybe I’m not as “hip” as the cool people in the iPod commercials, but I am a more productive web worker as a result. What’s on your mp3 player? How do you use it to increase your productivity?   |
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