Web Worker Daily

Ask most people which search engine they use and they’ll say Google, but there are mountains of searchable information online that you can get to with alternative engines. In a previous post I rounded up 11 general alternative search engines for web workers. In this post, I’ll gather some of my favorite targeted types of alternative search engines. They can often get you straight to the information you need.

Everyzing is one of my favorite sites for searching for audio- and video-based information found on the web. It actually indexes the words spoken in podcasts and videocasts, and then it displays excerpts as text when you search for something, so you know exactly what is in the podcast or videocast. For example, type in Obama and hit Zing It! When your results show up, you’ll see several “Play here” citations that let you go right to the point in the audio or video where your search topic shows up. Also give Blinx a try.

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Euan Semple writes at The Obvious that the Christmas season could be a good time to get your workplace to try out social software because of the surplus of time people have:

One of the most common reasons given for not becoming engaged online is time. Many people feel that time spent on blogs or forums is time wasted… But during the Christmas season, even in the busiest of offices, there tends to be more down time and people are more relaxed about how they use it. People on shift over the Christmas period have more time to “play” when the office is quiet and often surf their way towards blogs, wikis or forums and get involved for the first time.

While this may be the case in some workplaces, I’d imagine many web workers, especially those who freelance or otherwise run their own businesses, may not find much time to rest and relax during the holiday season. I’m looking forward to a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, but not expecting much downtime between preparing for holiday celebrations and getting regular work done.

What about you? Will you find some downtime in December?

When we talk about insurance for web workers, we’re usually worrying about health insurance - and with good reason, considering how expensive health care and the associated insurance can be these days. But if you’re an independent web worker, that’s just the tip of the insurance iceberg. Depending on your business structure, your field, and even where you’re located, there are plenty of other types of insurance you should at least think about.

As with legal and accounting advice, you should be sure to talk to an appropriate professional before making decisions - in this case, your own insurance agent. Here’s what should be on your list to chat about: Read the rest of this entry »

Get More Done by 5pm - That’s the pitch of 5pm, a new web-based project management tool. They feature a rather spiffy user interface with things like rollover hints and a timeline view, as well as a good mix of other features.  14-day trial and handy demo available on their site.

Widget Developers Unite - Widgetplus is an open XML database (with associated code) designed to let widgets collaborate and share with each other, as well as to save persistent data and resources.

 Manage Those Virtual Assistants - Virtual Assistant Manager is web-based software to allow virtual assistants and personal assistants to communicate with their clients and effectively get things done on their behalf. It’s sort of a task and project manager where everything is delegated, with email and text messaging built in.

Web 2.0 Gift Lists - That’s the latest from MyThings, a site that helps you organize your stuff. Create a list of potential gifts and they’ll forward it anonymously to the recipient, who can rate your ideas or make their own suggestions, all without knowing who you are. Well, unless your ideas are a dead giveaway.

3G iPhones are Coming - That’s according to the CEO of AT&T, who ought to know. The question now is whether anyone will buy the current EDGE model for Christmas,  knowing that a model with better connectivity is slated for early next year. Seems like pretty poor timing for a leak.

Send us your own quick links for WWD Coffee Break to tips@webworkerdaily.com.

Are we winning the war on spam? It depends on how you define “spam.” If you mean those messages you got because a marketer bought your email address and thinks you want cheap software, larger private parts or special deals on medication, a Google engineer says YES! Quoted in an article on Wired.com, Google software engineer Brad Taylor says “the number of spam attempts — that is, the number of junk messages sent out by spammers — is flat, and may even be declining for the first time in years.”

True or not, most of us are much less bothered by spam than we used to be. We shield ourselves from the volume that actually hits our inbox with server-level filters such as the one employed by Google, client-side filtering and other means.

The article goes on to call out the next great inbox nuisance…email from that store you ordered from once or twice, but now think they have a right to solicit your business every single day. I’ve lost count at how many times I’ve unsubscribed from email from 1-800-Flowers and Kohl’s. David Daniels, A VP at Jupiter Research:

“We expect people to spend as much time on e-mail as they have, but we think people will receive more e-mail from legitimate marketers. So there will be more competition to get consumers’ attention in the inbox, but it will be more like competition between The Gap and J.C. Penney as opposed to The Gap and a Viagra salesman.”

At least he didn’t call it Bacn.

Sometimes when you have a question, you don’t just need an answer, you need a consensus. If you can relate to that, definitely give Ask500People a try. Unlike Yahoo! Answers and some of the more specialized question answering sites on the web, Ask500People seeks group approval of interesting questions before they are asked, through online voting that causes the most intriguing questions to rise to the top. The result is that you get a very large group of people around the globe providing answers to a concentrated set of questions, rather than a few, dubious answers in each case to less interesting ones.

Tech questions pop up frequently at Ask500People. However, I stick by a point I made in a previous post about online sites where you can get reasonably quick tech questions answered, which is ask your question at more than one site. So where else can you ask your tech questions and get good answers?

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Stephanie M. Cockerl enjoys the freedom the web allows her to build things fast while keeping an eye on her grandma. She’s a great example of how the web can help you blend the professional and the personal.

Stephanie’s company next STEPH offers services including blog design and development, search engine optimization, and website design, development, and maintenance.

Describe your job/career/business

It depends on the day. Today I’m a freelance web analyst and SEM specialist. Another day, I’m a blog consultant or a SEO manager.

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Now that Amazon’s Kindle e-book device has started to move out of the headlines and into the hands of actual users, we’re starting to see some consumer feedback on it. (Actually, there was feedback the moment it was announced - there are nearly 800 consumer reviews on the product page as I write this - but as much of the early feedback was from people who hadn’t actually used one, it’s not worth much). For many web workers, the notion of a universal portable library, if only as a way to cart around endless reams of technical reference material in a briefcase, is an attractive one. So how’s the device doing on that front?

Not all that well, apparently. Here are some highlight - and lowlights - from the early Kindle reportage that’s crossed our path. Read the rest of this entry »