As JKOnTheRun is reporting, Asus president Jerry Shen has told DigiTimes that consumers can expect a $200 netbook in 2009. Asus, of course, was one of the pioneers of the now very fast-growing netbook category, with its diminutive Eee PCs, some of which now sell in the $300 range. At $200, some web workers and others may find these systems attractive.
While many web workers typically own full-powered notebooks without having to make compromises, I got one of the first Linux-based Eee PCs when it first came out and have been using it ever since. These things are not to be written off.
Read the rest of this entry »
Ever find that little tool and think, “where have you been all my life?”
We’re constantly talking about ways of dealing with information overload, so it’s a happy day when a tool can truly make a difference. Today, that tool is Idea Shower’s ReadItLater.
Along the same lines as InstaPaper, LaterLoop and others, ReadItNow is simply a Firefox add-on that helps you save a list of pages for later reading. Better than regular old bookmarks, it’s for those pages you want to read when you have a moment but maybe not keep around forever.
ReadItLater has been around for over a year, but this week with version .99, it got insanely useful. I understand why other sites have been talking about it so much.
Read the rest of this entry »
As a developer and some-time designer, I’m always on the lookout for tools to make communicating with customers easier. For many things, the textual tools that web workers reach for are sufficient: email, wikis, project management systems, instant messages, and so on. But sometimes you just need to draw a picture to get your point across. The latest tool I’ve run across for this is Balsamiq Mockups – and it’s a nice tool indeed.
When you run the desktop version, you get an empty window that looks like a notebook page (complete with spiral binding) and a menu bar of controls – everything from web browser shells to progress bars to charts to maps to all sorts of widgets. To construct a user interface mockup, you drag from the menu bar to the drawing area, then click and drag and resize things. Widgets that contain data – like a table or a textbox – make it easy to edit that data, so customizing the user interface for the application you’re showing off is trivial.
Read the rest of this entry »
Webware has an interesting post up today called “Prizefight: Battle of the Browsers.” It’s a slightly less than scientific comparison of Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer–and in the video Webware has posted, they admit that–but it still yields interesting results.
In Webware’s comparison, Google Chrome emerges as the fastest of the four browsers, and here are some of the other results.
Read the rest of this entry »
There’s never a shortage of applications to track your task list, from online choices like Remember the Milk to full-blown GTD applications like OmniFocus and Things to simple lists like Today or the built-in tasks in Mail.app on OS X. Lately, though, I’ve found myself looking for a middle ground: something on the client side, not just a simple list, but not as complex as the high-end applications. I’ve found two OS X choices that fit for me: What ToDo and ActionGear.
Both of these applications supply ample organizational tools for treating your tasks in strict GTD fashion or reducing them to a flat list: they both allow having a hierarchy of groups and tasks, they both support contexts and tagging. Either one can help you keep track of what you’re intending to do, and remind you when you’re lagging.
Read the rest of this entry »
The triplets are due any moment now, and that means so is your mother-in-law. Or your precious baby girl has just graduated from college and has no more of a clue than she did the day she started, so she wants to come home for “a while.” Or maybe you’re moving back in with mom and dad yourself…
You can kiss your home office good-bye (hopefully temporarily). So now what?
There may be co-working spaces near you, but they’re not quite as ubiquitous as Starbucks yet… You can dig (and dig and dig) through craigslist and hope it’s your lucky day and that your dream workspace will appear in the first 10 listings (because looking at any more than that is mind numbing and hazardous to your health) and that the people with the perfect space for rent that miraculously appears in listing number seven actually respond to you when you do contact them. (I have a very low tolerance for classifieds sites, can you tell?)
You can go to Regus, the slick, corporate rent-a-workspace/meeting room/virtual office people, and deal with “a representative” who will probably try to sell you a plan or a package or something. (That’s just the impression I get from looking at their site and knowing how American businesses operate… I could be wrong.)
Or… You can check out ShareYourOffice.com, a new project with a whole lot of potential. It’s a free service for people who need office space, or those who have extra space they’d like to fill with a warm, rent-paying body.
Wait! Before you say, “Not interested” and stop reading, think of this: it’s a French startup. Parisian. Which means most of the office spaces (at the moment) are in Paris. Ever dreamed of living and working in France?
Read the rest of this entry »
Are you trustworthy?
This is something we have to ask ourselves as web workers. In fact, our clients are probably asking us this very question through subtext, we just aren’t aware of it. Important as this question may be, there is another question that should be considered:
Do you appear trustworthy?
Online credibility is especially important for us, since it’s likely that our online presence is the only thing potential customers will see. In this increasingly searchable world, we need to use every means possible to establish that we are worthy of a client’s trust. Here are some ways in which we can do this:
Read the rest of this entry »
I love it when I come across several new apps or new features on old apps that just shout out “productivity” to me. First, the latest news that I received in my inbox is that FreshBooks now has a free time tracking app for the iPhone. I was excited about their desktop widget for the Mac way back when, but frankly, I haven’t used it. Even their pop out time tracker on their site is quite functional, but I have yet to develop the habit of bringing it up when I’m working.
But put it on the iPhone and suddenly the mundane and forgettable act of tracking time is fun and accessible and begging for me to use it. Kudos to any cool Web application who ups their cool – and usability – factor by making it work on my iPhone.
Read the rest of this entry »
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
