Web Worker Daily

The folks at Ribbit Mobile are offering 100 invitations to WebWorkerDaily readers for the beta of their new communication service. Just sign up on the reservations page, and enter the invite code “wwd09″ in the appropriate box.

Ribbit Mobile has more features than Google Voice, and reminds me a bit of VoxOx, which I wrote about a few days ago. This service looks very promising, but, like VoxOx, it isn’t finished yet. I’ve been unable to test it fully, because it doesn’t yet support Sprint cellphones. I also can’t get my contact list to import, either from a CSV file or through Plaxo (the only options Ribbit Mobile supports). I hope to post a fuller review soon.

Try it out, and let us know how Ribbit Mobile works for you.

Internet-based communication is changing so quickly these days that there seems to be an endless stream of beta releases. Yesterday, Simon wrote about some of the latest browser betas; let’s look at a few products and services for interacting with social networks, Twitter and instant messaging.

I don’t generally like living on the bleeding edge, but some betas are very usable, and I’ve already incorporated them into my daily workflow. Others look promising, but are not stable or are lacking too many features right now. But all of the following are worth trying, and watching as they develop. We’ll review them more thoroughly as they mature. Read the rest of this entry »

While trying to log into Facebook a few days ago, I got the message, “Your account is temporarily unavailable due to site maintenance. It should be available again within a few hours. We apologize for the inconvenience.” I checked with friends, and they were able to access their accounts, so the problem seemed to be limited.

It turns out that there have been widespread complaints about this issue, which Facebook has acknowledged on its Help page: Read the rest of this entry »

Google Wave has generated a lot of interest in the past few months, despite most people I’ve talked to being unclear about what the service is, and how to use it. I confess that after I finally got an invitation, I was somewhat perplexed when faced with Google Wave’s minimal interface.

Tech writers Gina Trapani and Adam Pash have created an online e-book, “The Complete Guide to Google Wave,” which does an excellent job of explaining what Google Wave is and how it can be used. The book provides step-by-step instructions on how to get invited to the service, what to do when you get there, and how to make the most of it. Read the rest of this entry »

I spend a lot of time each day communicating with colleagues and clients, by phone, email, on social networks, and via the occasional fax. But when I need to have a short conversation and get an answer right away, instant messaging is hard to beat. Unfortunately, there are several IM protocols, and most of them don’t talk to each other. That’s why I use the multi-protocol IM software Adium on the Mac and Pidgin on the PC. I can also use a web-based alternative like Meebo or the new Imo.im.

VoxOx wants to take multi-system communication several steps further. In addition to the various IM protocols, it supports social networks (Facebook, MySpace and Twitter); SMS texting; faxing; private email; file sharing; video conversations; and voice connections. VoxOx also supports Skype messaging, although you have to have the Skype software running, which sort of defeats its purpose. Read the rest of this entry »

A few days ago, Aliza provided some excellent planning advice on how to pick a company phone system. I’ve written in the past about three options for incoming service: Google Voice (which now lets you use some of its features with your existing number), 3jam, and Grasshopper (which is now reportedly profitable.)

This time, let’s look at a business phone system that provides both incoming and outgoing service, plus actual phones. The folks at RingCentral have kindly set me up with one of their packages, the RingCentral Office. They also offer RingCentral Online, an inbound service similar to those listed above, but we’ll focus on the Office package for simplicity. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the reasons that I recently upgraded to Snow Leopard was the new ability to sync the Mac OS X Address Book with Gmail’s or Google Apps’ Contacts. This function has been around for a while, but for some reason, it was previously available only to iPhone users.

I really appreciate well-produced synchronization, because I’ve experienced firsthand how difficult it is to get right. It seems that software developers can never quite agree on how to organize contact information, so everyone’s databases are different. For a long time, for instance, one of the major makers of financial management software didn’t even create city, state and ZIP/postal code fields, opting instead for an address field where all of that information was run together, making the data very difficult to parse.

So I’ve been pleasantly surprised with Snow Leopard’s “sync with Google” function, especially because I have a fairly large address book, and most of its entries have photos associated with them, something that very few sync solutions even try to support. Read the rest of this entry »

Now that Bing and Google will be displaying tweets from Twitter and status messages from Facebook, web workers will need to consider how much, and how publicly, we wish to interact with these two social networks.

Twitter

If you’re like I am, your Twitter stream is probably public. For me, the value of Twitter is its ability to let me share news and comments that current and potential clients may find useful. I also use it as a way of interacting with clients if our regular communication channels are down.

So I certainly don’t say anything using @chcs (my company Twitter account) that can’t be public. I also have a personal Twitter feed, @HamiltonChas, that mostly focuses on my comments regarding local politics. I also tweet using @GrowTrains, an account that reflects my interest in improving passenger train service. Read the rest of this entry »