Web Worker Daily

Upcoming Event: Free Twitter Power Tips Webcast

Posted: 14 May 2009 04:00 PM PDT

If you, like so many of us these days, are trying to get more out of Twitter, you may want to register for next week’s free, hour-long O’Reilly “Twitter Power Tips” webcast, being held Thursday, May 21 at 10 a.m. PDT.

Hosted by Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milstein, co-authors of “The Twitter Book,” the webcast will feature key tips and real-life examples from power users. The presentation will be followed by an attendee Q&A session.

I’ve attended a couple of previous O’Reilly webcasts; they’re high-quality presentations with respected speakers that typically impart a good deal of useful information. There is an archive of previous webcasts on the O’Reilly web site if you’d like to check out past sessions, too.

Share your Twitter power tips in the comments.

A Comparison of Freshbooks vs. Harvest vs. Blinksale

Posted: 14 May 2009 01:00 PM PDT

Written by Simon Mackie.

logos With so many invoicing web apps available (many of them covered here on WebWorkerDaily), choosing one can be a daunting task. Even limiting your options to the most popular services doesn’t help that much, as the costs of the various plans vary so little. So we were excited to see that Stuart Bowness, of Victoria, B.C.-based design studio Simple Station, has posted a useful comparative review of three of the most popular invoicing apps: Freshbooks, Havest and Blinksale.

Bowness used the apps in his business for about a year each, and his in-depth, insightful observations of the merits and issues with each of the services are based on long-term, real-world usage and worth noting.

Especially interesting are his notes of problems or quirks with each of the apps, which could be very handy when it comes to picking the right service for your business. According to Bowness, Freshbooks’ time tracking is “difficult when you have multiple employees,” its project management is “dismal” and its reports “suck.” Blinksale, meanwhile, offers neither integrated time tracking nor the ability to integrate with a payment gateway, he says, and cannot create estimates. Harvest is similarly unable to create estimates or integrate with a payment gateway, according to Bowness, and recurring invoices are not handled that well. And he finds it “ridiculous” that SSL support is only available with the $90-per-month plan.

Freshbooks is the most feature-rich, Bowness notes, but while it does everything, he says that it “doesn't do anything particularly well” and its interface is not intuitive. And Blinksale is perfect if you are a freelancer, but not if you have staff. Bowness’ personal favorite is Harvest, which delivers simplicity while boasting a substantial feature set (although not as complete as Freshbooks’).

Which do you prefer: Harvest, Freshbooks or Blinksale?

Present.io: No Download, Simple Setup Presentations

Posted: 14 May 2009 11:00 AM PDT

Written by Aliza Sherman.

web-presentations made simple, present.io a service of drop.io We’ve raved about real-time free file-sharing service drop.io before. The company just unveiled a new free, no-download web presentation system called present.io.

The key to present.io is simplicity. First you make a “drop,” which is drop.io’s term for storage space, and add any required media in two clicks. You get a unique URL for your drop to share it with your participants. Then you activate a presentation, and everyone viewing your drop will be able to access your presentation.

Everything the admin of the presentation does is seen in real time by the participants. Open a picture, video or a document, everyone sees it. Participants can also see your cursor as you click through options. Like any web conferencing presentation software, participants cannot click on and affect your presentation, since it is not a collaborative space.

Present.io works well with document presentation, and you can open the document into full-screen mode for more detailed viewing. Audio and video presentations work in the same way. You can also open up a chat window at any time for real-time text chat. Or use present.io in conjunction with a free voice conferencing system to have a free, fast and easy web conferencing system at your fingertips.

While present.io can’t compete with the more robust paid web presentation systems out there like WebEx and Adobe Connect Pro, if you are looking for instant, free presentations that require zero software download and no complicated setup, this could be the solution for you.

What are you using — and spending– on your web conferencing systems?

Gmail Tip: Twitter Gadget

Posted: 14 May 2009 09:00 AM PDT

Written by Jenny Kortina.

gadget Twitter is has become a crucial part of my online life: I use it for my personal brand management, as a news source, and as a resource for answering any questions I might have. When I’m on the go, I use the popular Twitter client Tweetie on my iPhone,but when I’m sitting at my computer I use the Twitter Gadget for Gmail. I prefer using the web interface simply because it’s extremely lightweight — and I have yet to find a desktop client that I like.

Having Twitter inside Gmail is awesome. It’s a simple text box that sits in the lower left-hand corner of my Gmail window. I keep Gmail open in a tab all day, so whenever I want to tweet something, I simply pop over to my Gmail tab, scroll down and type in my message. I end up using other computers a lot, and it’s much easier to log into just one account, Gmail, instead of two separate accounts, Gmail and Twitter.

I also have a URL-shortening gadget installed in my Gmail that resides directly above my Twitter gadget, which makes tweeting even more dreamy. I can shorten a link and post it without ever navigating to a new window.

The gadget’s feature set is everything you need (from its site):

OAuth authentication, your Twitter account password is not required.
Supports multiple Twitter accounts*
Mark all as read (like Google Reader)*
Automatically refresh
Reply, Re-tweet inline
View reply to inline
Gmail look and feel
SSL support*
Share tweets with your friends(your Gmail friends group’ contacts)*
Twitter Search

(*These features are awesome!)

To install the Twitter Gmail Gadget:

Navigate to the “Settings” section of your Gmail
Click the “Labs” tab
Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page to the “Add any gadget by URL” and click the “Enable” radio button
Click “Save Changes” at the bottom of the page
In the “Settings” of your Gmail you should now have a “Gadget” tab. Click on it.
In the “Add Gadgets by URL” box paste: “https://twittergadget.appspot.com/gadget-gmail.xml” and then click the “Add” button.
You should now have a Twitter gadget on the left-hand side of your Gmail. Enter your Twitter username and password, let it authenticate, and you’re good to go.

What Gmail gadgets do you use?

Paid Subscriptions: The Next Great Trend In Online Advertising?

Posted: 14 May 2009 07:00 AM PDT

Written by Eric Berlin.

As respected online publications such as Salon.com, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal removed all or most of their paid subscription models over the course of the decade, conventional wisdom formed that holding print content intended for a mainstream audience behind a pay wall was a noble but failed experiment.

But are paid subscriptions on the Internet poised to make a comeback, albeit in a different form?

There are several standard ways to make money in the highly competitive online publishing space. The dominant one for years has been free content supported by advertising, but the massive amount of supply (even of the high-quality stuff) coupled with a worldwide recession have pushed down rates that advertisers are willing to pay for ad space, squeezing profit margins for most online publishers.

TechCrunch’s MG Siegler points out a not-so-little secret about online display ads: most people couldn’t care less about them:

The web is increasingly filling up with ads. Many sites, including this one, have a bunch of them all around with the hopes that you'll find one relevant to you, and click on it. Of course, most of you don't. And if you do, it may be by accident.

While there are a number of other ways to make money at the online content game, such as using content to sell products and services, there are a few factors at play that could pave the way for online paid subscriptions to make major headway over the next few years.

An Anti-ad Network?
Siegler discussed online advertising while covering Contenture, an “anti-ad network” that allows publishers to group themselves together with the idea that Contenture members can pay a subscription fee to gain access to a group of member sites that have the ads removed.

contenture

Think about what the future of online browsing might look like when you take this idea to scale. For example, what if you could one day pay Contenture (or Facebook Connect, perhaps) $5 a month — a fee I’m grabbing out of the ether — with the blessed result of being able to visit thousands of high-quality web sites, absolutely ad-free? That could theoretically provide both an important revenue stream for publishers while improving the user experience at the same time.

Subscriptions For Mobile Content
Amazon, with its handheld content reader Kindle, is steadily moving forward — using a similar strategy as Apple in terms of monetizing the sale and distribution of MP3s to iPod devices — with the creation of a massive and sustainable business in getting people to pay for digital content.

While the Kindle is best known for selling books available from the Amazon.com catalog, there’s a growing number of magazine, newspaper and blog subscriptions that can be paid for using an existing Amazon account. Importantly, the Kindle is “training” a mainstream marketplace to pay for digital content, including a subscription component.

kindle_dx

While an announcement on Wednesday (again covered by Siegler on TechCrunch) that Amazon is opening all blogs to become part of the Kindle Publishing for Blogs Beta program was not front-page news, it could be another notable step toward building the importance of online subscriptions for online publishers.

Consider, too, that the Kindle’s forthcoming DX release, with its 9.7-inch screen, has the opportunity to further challenge both the computer monitor and print for the attention of readers across the planet. Therefore “training” people to pay for content in the form of subscriptions on the Kindle may have vast repercussions for the future of digital content.

What is your take on the future of the online paid subscription model for online content?