WIth the new year upon us, it’s a good time for web workers everywhere to brush up on new skills, get to know some new applications, and become more efficient. In this post, I’ll round up five ways to do better, more efficient work in 2008.
Get Better at E-Mail. Depending on whose market research you look at, the average worker spends between 90 minutes and three hours on e-mail every day. If you, like many a web worker live in Gmail all day, pick up some new skills. Likewise, if you are constantly in Microsoft Outlook, there are proven ways to work smarter.
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Are you writing resolutions for 2008? Even if you’re not, you probably have some goals or at the very least some projects that capture your dreams for the future. Here are 7 ways to keep track of the things you want to make happen in your life — which one suits you?
Sticky note on your mirror. Write your two or three most important goals or resolutions on a Post-It note, and put it on your bathroom mirror, where you’ll see it every morning and evening.
Social goal setting site. Try Goalmigo, 43 Things, or AimsVille. All these sites let you record, track, and share your goals with a supportive community of people going after their own goals.
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Last year, WWD then-Editor Anne Zelenka picked Gmail as her Best Web 2.0 Software of 2006. This year, I got to wondering what my best Web Worker Software of 2007 was. I’m using a rather different set of criteria this time around: which web site is essential to my online productivity? Put another way, what part of the web couldn’t I work without? That’s where I’ll find my winner.
For me, the answer ends up being a three-way tie. Maybe I’m just wishy-washy, but my online career actually depends on hundreds or thousands of web sites as I cruise around, absorb information, and deliver value to my customers. But out of all of them, I can pick three that have made the biggest bottom-line difference for me, though in three different ways.
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Better Amazon S3 Storage - Jungle Disk is one of several services out there offering off-site storage of your data via Amazon S3. Their recent versions have progressed to offering automated backups as well as access to your S3 account as just another mounted disk. Now they’ve rolled out Jungle Disk Plus, an option companion service that enhances S3 by putting a smart server of their own in the loop.
If you opt for Jungle Disk Plus, your local client will talk to the Plus servers to enable extra features. These include resumed uploads for large files and block-level file updates (neither of which is directly supported by S3) as well as a web client for accessing your S3 files from anywhere. The cost for the service is $1 per month plus bandwidth charges, but if you sign up today they’ll waive the monthly fee for a year.
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Do you need a new office chair for the new year? I do. My budget Office Max special has armrests that bump into my pullout keyboard tray. And the chair’s leather (okay, leatherette) upholstery is peeling off.
Last July, graphic designer Jason Santa Maria asked his blog readers for office chair recommendations, before buying a Humanscale Freedom. That chair can run almost $800. Wow.
Jason’s readers recommended a variety of chairs including the Steelcase Leap, Herman Miller Mirra, and, of course, the Aeron.
I’m eying a red Sprezzatura chair from Levenger to replace my old chair. I’ll get it without arms, though, to avoid that clash of armrest against keyboard tray. I like that it’s streamlined, so it won’t dominate my small home office.
Are you happy with your office chair, or do you wish for something better? Share your office chair recommendations and experiences here.
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In a syndication world we are often overwhelmed with information. It is incredible that information once far away has been brought near, but we need to find some order for the chaos. There are a few ways that I’ve learned to manage my reading material to be digested in an organized manner.
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Back in March we passed on some advice on safe air travel with batteries, courtesy of the Department of Transportation. Apparently not enough people have been listening to the advice, because as of January 1, there are formal rules dealing with lithium batteries on airplanes. If you’re planning air travel in the new year with electronics, here’s what you need to know:
- You may not pack spare lithium batteries in checked luggage
- You may pack devices with installed lithium batteries in checked luggage
- You may carry spare lithium batteries in carry-on luggage
- You may bring lithium batteries installed in a device
- You can bring lithium ion batteries installed in a device that are up to 8 grams of “equivalent lithium content”
- You can bring up to two spare lithium ion batteries with an aggregate of 25 grams of equivalent lithium content.
- Lithium metal batteries, whether installed or carried as spares, are limited to 2 grams of lithium each.
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Last year about this time, I offered 7 web worker wishes for 2007. None of my wishes came true, but that won’t stop me from wishing for more this year.
So here we go:
Web workers will revolt en masse against Vista and choose Linux instead. Readers tell me Vista ain’t that bad, even though it’s bloated and demands way too much hardware. Still, I’d love to see more people choose an open source alternative. But if web workers switch away from Windows, they’ll likely go with Mac OS X. Hey, at least that’s Unix!
If you make the switch from Windows to Mac in the new year, check out Sam’s tips for getting up to speed with OS X.
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