Web Worker Daily

New Drawing Features in Google Docs, Plus Two Free Alternatives

Posted: 26 Mar 2009 04:00 PM PDT

If you’re a regular user of Google Docs, note that you can now take advantage of drawing tools accessible from directly within your documents, presentations and spreadsheets. You can view the announcement of the Insert Drawing tools here. The tools aren’t as rich as the ones you’ll find in products such as Microsoft’s Visio, but they are free and good enough for doing flowcharts, annotating images, collaborating on drawings and lots of other useful things.

Here’s what you’ll find, and a couple of other good, free tools for drawing online.

After you sign into Google Docs and open a new or existing document, select the Insert menu and choose Drawing to open up drawing space and a collection of tools and pull-down options up top. For the simple flowchart of project milestones seen below, I just selected an Oval shape from a built-in palette of shapes and deposited it in my drawing space. Then, I added text boxes with milestones and resized the contours of my ovals to fit around the text.

The Google team adds the following about how it acquired the drawing tools, and more:

“The team and technology behind Insert Drawing originally came from the startup Tonic Systems, which Google acquired in 2007. The drawing feature that we’ve built relies heavily on a relatively new capability in browsers: the ability to render vector graphics. We use the SVG (scalable vector graphics) standard to accomplish this in most browsers and VML (vector markup language) where SVG is not available. Only recently has the performance and ubiquity of such technology enabled us to deliver what we hope is a delightful feature.”

I recently covered Pencil, a very rich drawing tool that Firefox users can load and use as an extension. Pencil is good enough that I would probably reach for it before the Insert Drawing tools in Google Docs, partly because I’m familiar with it, but it also won an award from Mozilla (the developer of Firefox) itself for being an outstanding extension.

On the OStatic blog, we’ve also covered the free, open source Visio-competitor Dia. It has a homelier interface than many other tools, but is powerful and flexible. It exports drawings to tons of popular file formats, ranging from .EPS, to .WMF, to .DXF (AutoCAD’s Drawing Interchange format). It also has good options for printing large drawings. With both Pencil and Dia, you can do sophisticated drawings that you can drop into Google Docs documents. For simple drawings, flowcharts and the like, the tools now in Google Docs will suffice, but consider these other options if you want more flexibility.

Clearing the Cache

Posted: 26 Mar 2009 03:00 PM PDT

Written by Scott Blitstein.

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.

Allbizanswers offers some useful advice if you’re bogged down in details.

The guys over at TwoGuysTech will be celebrating the one year anniversary of their informative and entertaining podcast next week. Don’t listen? You should.

Our jkOnTheRun friends share their Kindle 2: First Impressions.

The launch of Internet Explorer 8 brings with it Microsoft’s History of the Internet.

While we’ve discussed Dealing With Distractions here, The Execupundit shares some likely obstacles to getting things done in What’s Your Wall?

If you’re a Microsoft OneNote user – head over to iheartonenote, a new community for users of the all-purpose organizational tool.

How Do You Respond to Requests?

Posted: 26 Mar 2009 01:00 PM PDT

Written by Dawn Foster.

580773_dont_be_late I am in a constant state of “meeting avoidance mode,” especially for those meeting requests that don’t directly relate to revenue generation. However, I just finished an interesting IM conversation with a friend of mine. It went something like this:

Him: “What are you doing on Friday afternoon? We want to bounce some ideas off of you before you go to Beer and Blog at 4pm.”

Me: “Sure, let’s meet for lunch”

After we disconnected from IM, I noticed that I never even bothered to ask him what he wanted to talk about, and I realized that this is a recurring pattern with this person. He has introduced me to so many great people and projects over the years that I’ve stopped asking what and why and started skipping right to when.

Maybe this is how some people handle requests for meetings, but it’s not my usual strategy. I get many requests for meetings, ranging from people wanting to discuss my consulting services, to people wanting to pick my brain about some online community topic, to those who want to talk to me about one of my many side projects. I get more requests than I can reasonably handle, as I have a chronic calendar problem of having too many events, meetups and meetings with random people, while not having enough time for paying client work. As a result, I normally try to avoid extra meetings, and I have a few meeting avoidance techniques that I use.

I combine efforts whenever I can. I try to get people to meet me at existing events that I am planning to attend anyway, and this works great for those first meetings where someone just wants to talk to me about a new project. If we are going to need a little more time, I schedule meetings with people for right before or after events like Beer and Blog to combine activities into blocks of time.

Diversion is another good strategy. I tend to grill people with requests for details about why they want to meet while secretly hoping that I can make an introduction to a better person for them to meet with about their topic. I avoid the meeting, and they still get to talk to someone about their project. It’s not that I don’t want to meet with interesting people, but I can only allocate a certain amount of time to meetings and business development activities without jeopardizing my client work.

Just say no. This one is the hardest, but sometimes you just need to tell someone that you can’t make the time to meet with them. If the topic isn’t interesting to you or if you can’t make the time, sometimes you just have to let people know that a meeting isn’t going to work. In this case, honesty really is the best policy. Let them know that you aren’t passionate about the topic or that you don’t work on the type of projects that they want to talk to you about. If you don’t have any time to spare and are on a tight timeline, you are better off letting them know rather than avoiding their email or phone calls, which can make you seem unresponsive or unprofessional. I don’t use the “just say no” option often enough.

I suspect that this is a common problem for many web workers, especially those of us who rely on consulting or other freelance work as our primary source of income. I love meeting with smart people where we can both share information and learn from each other, and it’s a great feeling to walk out of a good meeting with a potential new client. Spending time meeting with new people is an important step toward finding new clients, and it is a fantastic way to stay energized with new ideas.

How do you handle requests for meetings? How do you “just say no”?

Image by sxc.hu user Avolore

Setting Up The Web Working Day

Posted: 26 Mar 2009 09:00 AM PDT

Written by Eric Berlin.

Image by sxc.hu user blu_arim

A piece by Chris Brogan called “Why Bookstores Are My Office” made me think about how web workers and telecommuters have an enormous amount of discretion in setting up, organizing and utilizing their time. Web working is an enormous opportunity to thrive under an ideal environment and an ideal schedule, yet it’s also a little bit scary for many to figure out how to be productive outside the walls (and cube farms!) of the traditional office workplace.

The “best way” to set up one’s web working day is greatly particular to individual tastes, strengths and needs. Brogan, for example, enjoys working at bookstores and coffee shops to be close to books full of new ideas, being near people who will serve him food so that he doesn’t have to “worry about the sustenance part,” being able to easily meet with small groups of people to chat and brainstorm in a casual environment, and because “…[b]ookstores are actually fun. How many people's offices are fun?”

Here are some tips on how to set up the best web working day for you.

What Time of Day Do You Work Best?
Many web workers have the relative luxury of setting their own schedule. Therefore it makes sense to really think about a work schedule that puts you in front of a monitor during the hours when you are most perky and most productive. For some it’s the early morning, and for others it’s late at night!

For example, I usually try to get several hours of work and research done in the morning. Then I’ll typically have lunch, take a break to clear my head, and then do another session of lighter and more administratively-minded tasks like e-mail and correspondence. Then after dinner I’m ready to go again for a hardcore session related to a major project that I’m working on. So by stretching out the workday and setting a pace that works best for me I’m able to get the most out of each working day.

Location, Location, Location
Brogan likes bookstores and coffee shops. For many, a home office of some sort works best as it's the most convenient and comfortable solution (and hey, no commute!). Wherever you work, make sure that it’s an environment that’s most conducive to being productive.

Again, the best environment is highly dependent on individual needs. Some people need to get up early, take a shower, put on “work clothes,” and then sit down behind a desk that mimics a traditional workplace office in some way. Others prefer to get up “whenever,” flip open the laptop while the coffee’s brewing, and therein their workday begins. Personally, I love the flexibility of working on my laptop on my home’s Wi-Fi network, allowing me to work from different rooms in my little house throughout the day.

Coworking
Coworking is a relatively new buzzword in web working circles, but essentially it just reflects a desire for likeminded people to get together while battling away at one’s craft. So if you’re a PHP developer, for example, working side-by-side with a fellow developer can be both motivational and helpful as day-to-day work-related questions come up. And the camaraderie of being around others plying away at their craft can give a motivational boost to the workday.

“Real Life Stuff”
Office workers often like to fantasize about living on the “other side,” latte in one hand, iPhone in the other, an easy life of working from home and not having a boss breathing down your neck. Real life, though, is more… real. Significant others, children, dogs barking, errands and other responsibilities are only the more typical potential challenges to fully concentrating on web work. And that’s to say nothing of the constant lure of distractions away from work – online and off – when that neck-breathing boss isn’t around to keep you on point.

So whether it takes posting an “Office Hours” sign to let others in your home know that you’re “at work,” wearing earplugs or headphones, getting out of the house to work, or simply finding a quiet spot in the backyard (go Wi-Fi!), make sure that your setup can contend with real-life stuff.

Schedule: Varied Vs. Static
Some people do better with having a set schedule, while others enjoy the freedom to get work done on a flexible schedule. This ties into the “real life stuff” section to an extent – real life responsibilities can force changes to a daily schedule. Therefore it’s important to know what works best for you and to try to set up your schedule accordingly.

Wind Down
Another thing to consider is to make sure that you have proper downtime scheduled in. When web working it can be tempting to simply work a lot of hours on your schedule each and every day. While this is great for getting a lot done, it can also lead to burn out. So scheduling days off – whether it’s the weekend or weekdays if that fits your schedule – is important to recharge your batteries.

What are your tips for setting up the web working day?

GigaOM iPhone-on-AT&T Customer Satisfaction Survey

Posted: 26 Mar 2009 08:25 AM PDT

Written by Simon Mackie.

You might have been following Om Malik’s trials and tribulations with AT&T over on GigaOM, which culminated in a very public breakup with his iPhone last month. AT&T is refusing to admit that it has problems with its 3G network.

After several people at the Green:Net conference shared with Om their frustration over the iPhone/AT&T 3G network, we’ve created a customer satisfaction survey to get an idea of how widespread these problems are. Please help by filling out the survey.

<a href="https://gigaom.wufoo.com/forms/z7p8x7/">Fill out the iPhone/AT&T Network Satisfaction Survey</a>

Inkd: A New Marketplace for Print Design

Posted: 26 Mar 2009 07:00 AM PDT

Written by Darrell Etherington.

inkdlogo You may be a great designer, illustrator, or just a generally creative person, but that doesn’t automatically translate to profitable enterprise, as we’re all probably painfully aware. However, there are a variety of services that provide an avenue to sell your services and make it easier to find customers.

Inkd is one such service provider, aimed at print designers. Like Threadless and Cafepress before it, it offers users the chance to use their own original designs to earn revenue. Indk’s model is slightly different, but will be familiar to people who’ve used either of those older services. People who contribute to stock image libraries like iStockPhoto will also recognize how this system works.

Basically, you sign up, choose a specific product to design (for example, letterhead), download one of Inkd’s pre-made templates, upload your own design once you’re ready, and, pending a quality control review by Inkd staff, you’ll start earning sales-based commission for your creation.

Obviously, the model isn’t perfect, and depending on your stance on spec work, you may strongly disagree with what Inkd is offering. But for people just getting started, who have no connections and no idea how to break into the print design industry, it might be the right solution for getting started.

Inkd also offers a lot of free resources that could be useful for novice and experienced designers alike, even if you aren’t looking to actually sell your material through them. For instance, you can download free starter kits — basically Adobe Illustrator files with pre-set layouts that you can play with, adjusting fonts, colours, images, etc. These could be useful in jump-starting your own creative process if you’re feeling stuck or you’ve never designed the type of product in question before.

The pay structure is decent, if not ideal. You take home 20 percent commission on any sale, and if a customer wants to enlist your help directly to polish or customize a design, you get all of the revenue, with Inkd making no claim on any of that business. I think this is better than the competition-based system Threadless is running.

On the other side, if you’re looking for some original design work for your business or company, you can request a design from Inkd. Of course, your results may be hit or miss, but you have the advantage of being able to look without commitment, and of ultimately buying only what you like or need. This opens the can of worms that is the spec work debate, but if you’re a real estate professional working on your own, for example, you might not have the budget to hire a design firm, or even know where to start looking for one.

Personally, I think Inkd is a nice resource for the beginner, but I do worry about yet another site that could encourage spec work, speaking as a freelance professional. There will also be concerns over Inkd’s marketplace devaluing print design as there have been over stock photography sites, like iStockPhoto, devaluing professional photography. As with most online marketplaces like this, I’d say “use, but don’t abuse,” is the best rule of thumb when it comes to Inkd. Basically, that means that if you can actually afford to hire a professional directly, you should do so, as you’ll likely get a better result and it will be better for the industry as a whole.

Will you consider selling print design work through Inkd?