Freelancers are always encouraged to ask clients to refer them to others as a means of free advertising, but I don’t read much about cultivating peer referrals. In my experience as a freelance writer, this is a rich source of work leads, especially when you make friends with industry peers that are well-established and have to knock back work on a regular basis. If you play your cards right, any work they don’t have time to do can be offered to you instead.
It’s thanks to peer referrals that I went from having absolutely no work lined up when I left my full-time job as a magazine editor to having a full plate of regular work with relatively little effort on my part. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve had to consciously go out looking for work.
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In a bid to prove how robust and versatile Skype is, the company has embarked on a unique experiment that has a writer using Skype-enabled gadgets to stay in touch with the office, update her blog and keep in touch with friends and followers while traveling across 15 countries. The catch is that she has to remain in perpetual motion for the entire 33-day journey – even while she’s sleeping and eating!
The 26-year-old writer, Rebecca Campbell, is quoted in the press release:
I’m really excited about the trip but I am sure it will be hard to keep moving. The great thing is I have a whole online community to rely on who can guide me to make the right decisions on what I eat and how I keep moving in any of the 15 countries I will be in. I am sure I’ll need a holiday afterwards! Travelling can be a bit lonely but with Skype, I know I can stay in touch with my friends and family for free or very little and that’s very reassuring.
Rebecca’s blog can be found here, where she posts photos and travel tips, and bemoans the difficulty of finding Internet connections while constantly on the move.You also reach her via Skype (username: theskypenomad) and Twitter.
Reckon the Blackberry is only good for email? Maybe when it’s fresh out of the box. But if you want to bump it up a few notches, here are seven powerful applications that can transform the way you use and interact with your BlackBerry.
Jott for BlackBerry
In a previous article, I covered tips for getting more from BlackBerry email. One application I didn’t mention is Jott for BlackBerry, which is an extension of its main service that lets you reply to messages using your voice. Jott transcribes your verbal message to text before sending it on to the recipient and includes a link in the email to hear the voice recording in case of transcription errors. The Jott voice recognition engine is amazing – even my laid-back Aussie drawl, which is usually a challenge for anyone out of the country to understand, let alone a machine, was transcribed with 100% accuracy.
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BlackBerry is the smartphones du jour for web workers, and it’s not hard to see why. A straightforward interface, Fort Knox-like security and superb email handling make it the platform of choice for mobile email, but there’s a lot you can do to improve on the BlackBerry’s out-of-box functionality for email.
Note: this article is written for BIS users running BlackBerrys with OS 4.2.
How to Turn Email Off
One thing that’s irritated me about BlackBerrys from day one is the inability to turn off email delivery. No wonder there are so many ‘CrackBerry’ addicts out there!
But there are a few workarounds. To stop receiving email, turn off the data connection by going to Manage Connections > Mobile Network Options and switching Data Services off. Any email sent to your BlackBerry while this is turned off will be queued up and downloaded as soon as you turn data back on.
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A little over a year ago, I made a big mistake. I moved from Gmail to Yahoo Mail.
As a web worker, a large part of my day is spent in my inbox, so it wasn’t a decision I made willy-nilly. When the new version of Yahoo Mail was launched, I gave it a try and was won over by its resemblance to a desktop email client. Drag and drop actions, support for right-click context menus and a well-designed and attractive interface are all features that had me thinking the grass was greener on the Yahoo side.
I was also attracted by the promise of unlimited email storage and support for up to 20MB of attachments with the Yahoo Mail Plus subscription. And little things, like the prompt that appears after you email someone that isn’t in your addressbook that asks if you want to add them, and the ability to organize email into folders. So I made the jump to Yahoo Mail, and I’ve been ruing it ever since.
The biggest issue I have with Yahoo Mail is the poorly-implemented search feature. I’m one of those people that uses their inbox as the main repository of work-related information. Things like article commissions, meeting details and a never-ending stream of press releases are all stored in my email, and rather than tag them or put them into folders (the latter of which I do maybe once a month just to move everything out of my inbox), I rely heavily on the search function to find information that I’m looking for.
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A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how you could optimize a Windows Mobile 6 Professional smartphone for web workers.
This week I move onto the iPhone, which, according to research firm Canalys, accounted for 28% of the US smartphone market as of Q4 2007.
Right now, the iPhone is mostly a consumer-oriented cellphone, but that’s set to change in June when the iPhone 2.0 firmware is released. This will likely add business-friendly features like support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, Cisco IPsec VPN and remote IT configuration and security capabilities. More importantly, it’s going to give iPhone users the ability to download third-party application through the new Apple-run App Store.
In the run up to the new firmware, there are two ways to add new software to your iPhone: by adding web-based applications that are accessed through the iPhone’s Safari browser; and by “jail-breaking” or unlocking the iPhone to enable installation of third-party software.
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One of my favorite childhood authors, Roald Dahl, had a very specific work routine. “It suits me to start rather late,” he said in an interview with Todd McCormack. “I start at 10 o’clock and I stop at 12. Always.”
It may not sound particularly industrious, but with this routine, Ronald Dahl managed to carve out an amazing career for himself as one of the world’s best-selling writers, responsible for well-known books like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach and (my personal favorite) The BFG.
I’m certainly not advocating working for only two hours a day. But why not, if that’s your daily maximum? Why force yourself to labor away at times that don’t really suit you when, as a web worker, you’ve got the freedom to dictate your own hours?
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One of the best things about being a web worker is that you don’t have to sit at a desk to be productive. The always-on, always-connected nature of cell phones have revolutionized mobile working, and other portable technology like Blackberrys, thumb drives, laptops and UMPCs have given us the flexibility to work wherever we can get an Internet connection.
Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be covering the different gadgets you can use to get work done on the road and the software and services for maximizing their effectiveness.
Many functions that are a staple of web working, including email, Web browsing and VoIP, are all accessible on a mobile device, but the best tools for the task aren’t usually installed out of the box.
First cab off the rank is Windows Mobile 6 Professional, a powerful mobile platform that’s made all the more effective with some well-chosen software.
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