Later on this year, when my lease expires, I’m going to move to a bigger place with a bigger home office. I’ll be building an office that suits me perfectly. Ideally, I am looking to build an office that has plenty of desk space for me to work on, lots of light, plenty of storage (both shelves and drawers) and I’d like a place to work that looks nice, too.
With that in mind, I’ve been collecting some great workspaces from the web to use as inspiration for when I build mine, and I thought I would share some of them.
7301 Ava Ln’s Minimal Desk and Storage
7301 Ava Ln Workspace
This loft workspace has been put together using some Ikea components, but the end result is nothing like a common Ikea desk. I especially like the large desk, clean lines and the little under-desk storage shelf. The style really suits the loft, too. This probably doesn’t have enough storage for me, though. Read the rest of this entry »
Just in case you missed any of them, here are the five most popular posts on WebWorkerDaily this week:
In this post, Dawn shares some great tips on how to get more out of your RSS feeds, while spending less time reading them.
Darrell takes a look at MindView 3, the newest version of MatchWare’s nifty mind mapping tool.
Samuel reviews the updated Pencil, a Firefox drawing extension.
A perennial WWD favorite, Anne lists 10 ways that you can make money from the web.
Part of the Web Work 101 series, Darrell discusses three things that are critical to the success of any new web worker: planning, budgeting and goal-setting.
Looking for an alternative CRM and email solution? It can get kind of tricky trying to keep track of all that information using Outlook or Gmail, in combination with other third party customer relationship management software. Try as you might, you’ll probably lose track of some things once in a while. Relenta, a new CRM solution that combines email, contacts and tasking in one place, aims to help minimize those dropped threads.
Relenta aims to replace your web-based email and popular CRM apps like Salesforce and SugarCRM, all in one convenient package. It offers the same features as these apps, but with tight integration with your email and task management software as well, since it’s all managed from the same central location. That kind of streamlining is priceless in the web working world, when keeping tabs on so many different apps can quickly become an overwhelming chore.
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As web workers, we like to feel that we can sit down just about anywhere and be connected and productive. Armed with our laptops and Wi-Fi, or mobile broadband, that is usually the case.
But just because we can work anywhere, doesn’t mean that we should. Our work environment is a critical part of our work process and can have tremendous influence on our productivity.
So what are our options?
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Talk about a non-starter.
Back in April of last year HP decided to reinvent the online storage wheel by introducing their own backup service, named HP Upline. It came. It never quite got off the ground. And now, it’s officially joining the deadpool.
Just in case there is anyone out there who actually put data on Upline and didn’t get the email from HP announcing its departure, it says in part:
HP continually evaluates product lines and has decided to discontinue the HP Upline service on March 31, 2009.
HP will no longer be backing up your files to the HP Upline servers as of Feb 26, 2009 at 8 am Pacific time. HP will keep the file restore feature of the Upline service operational through March 31, 2009 Pacific time in order for you to download any files you have backed up to Upline.
If you have a paid subscription to HP Upline, you will be refunded the full amount of the fees you paid for the service. That refund will be credited to the credit card account or PayPal account that you used to subscribe to the Upline service. If you do not receive the refund prior to March 31, 2009, please contact our customer service team at https://www.upline.com/support/email.aspx.
HP looks forward to offering you additional technology products and services in the future.
Mind maps are useful for visualizing ideas and problem solving. Professionally, I have occasionally had to produce mind maps for clients and stakeholders while working as a desktop publisher and later as a production specialist at a consulting firm. I wouldn’t say that I find the task fun, exactly, but it is a nice break from the usual drudgery of PowerPoint presentations and meeting agendas. MatchWare’s third installment of MindView makes the process of producing mind maps much less painful, with a significant redesign and some great new features.
First, let me clarify that I’m looking at the Windows version for the purposes of this post. For more info on the Mac version, check out this post over at TheAppleBlog by Matthew Bookspan.
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Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
