For about 40 minutes this morning, Google searches were useless. Every result could “harm your computer” with no working link to result. It was, by Google’s explanation, a stupid human error. All is well now.
Less than an hour of inconvenience and the incident was over, but it did show me just how much I depend on Google search. Even though I’m aware of other search engines, I know little about them and rarely, if ever, use anything else in my everyday searching. Judging by the stats on all the sites I manage, I’m not alone.
As fate would have it, during that 40 minute downtime I had to find something. I switched over to Yahoo search. Why? It was the next one listed in my Firefox search box.
Because “it was there” is not a very good reason to use a search engine, so I ask you: If Google wasn’t available, which search engine would you use? Why?
WebWorkerDaily began in September 2006 as GigaOM founder Om Malik was building his new company from a table at Starbucks.
Now, just about everyone who earns income is a “web worker” at least for some part of their day.
To keep up with this ever-changing working world, and so we may continue to be a go-to resource for those who work in the cloud, we’ve got some staff changes to announce. We’ll be saying goodbye to Mike Gunderloy as Senior Writer, and hello to Simon Mackie as the new Editor of WWD. I’ll be stepping down as Editor to concentrate on writing for the site.
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“It’s all hype. Trust me, I gave it a shot. I worked with a virtual assistant and it was a complete waste of time. Wouldn’t do it again.”
This is what a friend of mine said when I was thinking about hiring a virtual assistant (VA) almost a year ago. Until I tried it myself, I didn’t realize that a great working relationship with a VA goes both ways. While they have to be efficient at executing your instructions, you also need to be good at the art of delegating if you want to make the most out of their services.
How exactly do you become good at getting the most out of your VA, thus freeing up much more of your own valuable time?
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In my post from earlier this week, Online Community Manager: Yes, It’s Really A Job, I talked about how online community manager jobs continue to be a hot position for web workers despite the current economic conditions. The Monday post was in preparation for a talk that I gave at Oregon State University yesterday to a mix of students and other people from the business community in Corvallis who were interested in learning more about community management careers. I wanted to follow up on Monday’s post with a few more details about community manager positions along with a copy of the presentation that I used for my talk. Read the rest of this entry »
I noted with interest the announcement of Measurement Lab, a partly Google-backed initiative to give Internet users and researchers free measurement tools that can help quantify what kinds of service they’re getting from ISPs, and much more. With all the arguments swirling about tiered broadband pricing, and ISPs throttling users’ bandwidth and performance, I’m all in favor of this idea. It doesn’t work quite as it’s supposed to yet, but you can still take a tour of what’s to come.
Here’s what I found.
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Maybe I’m biased towards writing-related topics because of my background and personal projects, but I also think good writing is one of the most important cornerstones of good business, and therefore useful in any line of web work. One of the best ways to improve any kind of writing is to read as much as possible. BookGlutton is a free (ad-supported) tool that can help you not only read more, but read better, in a context that emphasizes social interaction.
Any professional who uses writing in any capacity can benefit from getting another set of eyes on their work, and from looking critically at the work of others in similar fields.
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Depending on who you ask, Second Life is either an early pioneer in what promises to be a brave new virtual world of peer-to-peer interaction, rife with business opportunities, or a non-starter that got way too much hype way too early and won’t live up to any of it, no matter how long we wait. I believe my fellow WWD writer Aliza Sherman is very much on the former side of the fence. I’ll only say that Second Life’s rise hasn’t been as meteoric as Twitter’s, for instance, but that I still see potential for it to grow.
Yesterday, a couple of new tools were announced that made me stop and reconsider how much of that potential is actually being capitalized upon, how soon the virtual world’s appeal might broaden, and what that might mean for working on the web. The services in question are a Virtual Conference Centre and Real Time Research, joint venture projects by Second Life development vets Rivers Run Red and consulting group Futuresource. Read the rest of this entry »
Last fall I wrote about 
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
