CoLab Orlando is located in the historic Angebilt building in downtown Orlando, Fla. Originally occupying part of the sixth floor when it opened, CoLab expanded last year to include half of the eighth floor as well by taking over space previously occupied by a local university business incubator that had lost its funding. CoLab is now in the process of expanding again, by adding space on the building’s ninth floor in the near future.

Two distinctly different types of membership are offered at CoLab Orlando. First there are more traditional coworking membership arrangements, where members pay to have access for a certain amount of time during the month to CoLab’s common work area, conference rooms and business equipment. These members also get the use of CoLab’s address for their business. Prices for these memberships start at $50 per month for four visits, and go up to $199 for a full-time membership.

The second type of membership at CoLab involves full-time dedicated suite rentals. Prices for these memberships depends on the size and type of suite included in them (corner suites with more windows cost extra, for instance). Dedicated suite prices start at $375 per month for a 10ft x 14ft suite and go to $1500 per month for a 500 sq. ft. suite.

All CoLab members get access to the facility’s high-speed Internet service, printer/fax/ copier/scanner, conference rooms and coffee facilities. CoLab also hosts one or two free events per month for its members, along with a “Free Friday” coworking event for non-members.

The coworking common area at CoLab is definitely underutilized. It was virtually deserted on the Monday afternoon that I visited, although I was told a few members use it on a regular basis. This is likely because CoLab’s suites are so affordable that they are packed to the rafters with small businesses. If you have someone to share a suite with you can have dedicated space for around the same cost as using the common area full-time.

Not unexpectedly, most of the companies occupying suite space at CoLab Orlando seem to be tech companies. I visited with developers at Envy Labs and with Internet advertising specialists Enjoy Taste. The suites I toured were all occupied by multiple people. Despite the full-time suite rentals, CoLab’s population shifts on a daily basis. Many suite occupants said they work from home some days and come to the office when they need to collaborate with others or meet with clients.

The prevalent decor aesthetic in the facility’s suites seems to be Ikea furniture and bright color. Unlike in many office rentals, personalizing suite spaces through the use of paint and decor is encouraged. The results are far-from-usual office spaces with lots of evident personality. For instance, when I visited the suite of Envy Labs, I was treated to their collection of handmade robots.

Overall, CoLab’s suites — and the people in them — give an impression of being bright, welcoming and fun. The feeling of positive energy in CoLab was palpable, and co-founder John Todero stressed, “Energy is what sells the place.” Doors of many of the occupied suites were open as I walked around, inviting contact with other residents. Many of the resident companies, I was told, work with each other on projects.

Because so many of the residents aren’t solo coworkers, but are instead small start-up companies, CoLab is almost more of a business incubator than a coworking space. Whatever you want to call it, the energy and enthusiasm within its walls is contagious.

Does the idea of an incubator-style suite appeal to you more than traditional office space might?

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Enabling the Web Work Revolution

On Friday, reMail founder Gabor Cselle made a second announcement with some good news for reMail’s fans: reMail’s code is being made open source. It’s being distributed under an Apache 2.0 license via Google Code.

Cselle indicated in the announcement that he hopes reMail’s code can serve as a building block for other mobile email apps. He also indicated that he has provided some documentation of the code and started a Google Group to encourage development of projects using the code.

But even the best OCR business card reader technology has limitations. And while adding over 100 business cards to my contact files this week using my NeatReceipts for Mac, I discovered many of them. Cards with certain design features simply didn’t scan well. And as scanning becomes more common, this is something that business card designers should keep in mind. That contact was important enough for you to give your business card to; you need to make sure you make it easy for them to accurately add you to their contacts list — or you risk your card ending up in the trash.

Here’s my list of do’s and don’ts for creating a scannable business card.

Don’t:

• Use fancy fonts. These easily confuse OCR software, especially on letters like “c” and “e”. A clean font like Helvetica may seem boring, but it is easy for OCR to translate.
• Combine your name and title. Names and titles separated by a comma on a single line (such as “Nancy Nally, Editor”) didn’t translate correctly in the OCR I was using.
• Overlay text on a pattern. This is too confusing for OCR.
• Angle text. My scanner’s OCR couldn’t translate text that wasn’t parallel to the edges of the card.
• Mix orientations. Keep all the text oriented in the same direction (preferably horizontally, since my scanner had trouble reading vertically-oriented cards).

Do:

• Keep it big. If you get squinty looking at your card, so will OCR software.
• Give text breathing room. Keep letters nicely spaced so that the OCR can distinguish them easily from each other.
• Keep it light. Cards with dark backgrounds seem impossible to scan (even those with high-contrast white text).
• Put your company name somewhere in text. OCR can’t translate stylized logos, so make sure the company’s name is in text somewhere too.
• Keep it on one side. Scanners only read one side of a card, so keep all the critical contact information on one side.

This last issue was a very common problem with the batch of cards I just scanned. Double-sided printing is becoming very affordable so more people are creating business cards that are printed on both sides. This creates the temptation to spread the critical contact information on both sides of the card, which makes it inaccessible to card reading technology. Ideally, you should have contact information on only one side of the card, and then use the other side for a logo or mini sales brochure. A printer like Moo.com, with its ability to print a different back on each card in a set, offers the ability to get very creative with a card back’s promotional uses. Meanwhile, the front of the card can hold all of the traditional contact information in a clean and simple (scannable) format.

Do you scan business cards? What problems have you come up against?

Google (GigaOM Pro profile) has a long history of buying companies for their talent, and that appears to be the case here. reMail’s founder and CEO Gabor Cselle will now become a product manager for Gmail. Unfortunately for reMail’s fans, that means that the app is being retired; it’s no longer available in the App Store, and after the end of the March there will be no support for it. Until then, the company is making all of the app’s paid features available to all of its users.

The company stressed in its announcement that it has no private customer data for users to be concerned about the retention of, since email downloads used in the app are transferred directly from the service provider to the customer’s phone.

Will you miss reMail?

However, at some point, a business gets too big (hopefully) for one person to do it all. Choices have to be made about starting to delegate tasks to other people. Which areas of responsibility should an entrepreneur hand over to others, and at what point in their business’s growth? Those can be hard calls to make.

I’m currently at the point of having to make some of those decisions myself. My business, which up until recently I’ve been running basically by myself, has grown exponentially in the past 12 months. I have come to the reluctant conclusion that I need help, but I’ve been struggling with how to best go about getting it.

I did make one recent change, which means I’m not doing absolutely everything myself. I brought a contributing writer onto my web site to help me produce content. But that decision was more the result of happening upon the perfect opportunity than of strategic planning, and now I need to figure out how to move forward with more delegating of responsibilities.

As I’ve weighed how to go about this, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are several prime factors to consider in deciding what tasks to offload and how to do it.

• Know your value. Remember to focus on what your true value is to the company. In my company’s case, my personal brand is closely tied to the brand of my company. Readers equate me with Scrapbook Update. It would be counter-productive to the success of the company for me to hire writers to be the visible face of the company while retiring into a behind-the-scenes editorial role. (The writer I recently added expanded the site’s offerings rather than taking burden off of me.)
• Know the true cost. Some types of help will cost more to bring in than others. But these costs must be weighed in relation to how much time will be freed up for you to expend on income-producing activities. Help that seems expensive but which provides you a lot more income-producing time that you are able to take full advantage of may actually be very cost-effective. Also, don’t forget that paying for an expert to take on certain responsibilities could lead to those tasks being done in a way that saves the company money (for instance, an accountant might be able to find tax savings for the company that would offset the costs of accounting services).
• Know your abilities. As our businesses grow, some of our company’s functions may get complex enough that we really have no choice as a smart business person but to call in experts to perform them. There might be other tasks that you could more cost-effectively outsource, but if your needs in a certain area are getting too complex for your DIY skills, then you need to make getting help in that area a priority. Experts that you may need to hand off responsibilities to might include accountants, lawyers, web designers and sales people.

Don’t forget to factor personal tasks in your evaluation as well. There are only 24 hours in a day. Since time spent on non-work related tasks can’t be spent elsewhere, examine everywhere that you are spending your time and consider whether responsibilities can be delegated. Perhaps it would be cost-effective to outsource cleaning your house, or mowing your lawn. (And I’ll bet you wouldn’t miss doing those tasks, either.)

At some point, we have to admit we can’t run every function of our business ourselves. Even a control freak like Steve Jobs has help. Admit you need help, then go about getting the right help for you and your company.

What responsibilities would it be a good idea for you to delegate?

Photo by Flickr user ralphbijker, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Atlanta Hartsfield’s Minute Suites is located on Concourse B in a space that was formerly a business center, and bills itself as a “traveler’s retreat”. Minute Suites offered me the chance to give them a try during a layover on a recent cross-country trip.

Although my flights were not arriving or departing from Concourse B, the location was convenient to reach. Minute Suites is close to the intersection at the center of Concourse B, where passengers can board the train that shuttles people between Hartsfield’s concourses. It was a two- to three-minute trip each way from Concourse A where my flights were arriving and departing.

The Minute Suites host on duty when I arrived, Michael, was cheery and welcoming despite the extremely early hour and my jet-lagged, exhausted demeanor. He lead me to my suite and gave me a tour of its amenities.

Minute Suites are 7ft x 8ft units that are entered through a sliding door. I was told the five suites are sanitized between each use. Each suite is furnished with a sofa that pulls out into a bed, and a desk with a chair. The suites could easily accommodate three adults or two adults and two children.

The only amenity that Minute Suites doesn’t have is plumbing. If you are looking for the restroom, you’ll have to step about 100 feet down the concourse to find one.

In the wall next to the desk is an HDTV that serves as the unit’s entertainment system and Internet terminal; the television service offered is DirecTV with the NFL package. The TV can also be used to check on the status of your flight, since it can display the airport’s Flight Tracking system.

If you have your own computer along, Minute Suites offers ethernet and Wi-Fi internet access included in your suite rental in addition to the provided Internet terminals. I used my MacBook to try out the Wi-Fi access. Getting on was as easy as entering the password I was provided, and the connection felt snappy enough (at least for the web surfing and email that I was trying it out on).

There is very nice attention to detail in the Minute Suites. There is a hook with two hangers for hanging up jackets, and each unit has its own thermostat so each visitor can set their own comfortable temperature. The desk chair rolls and is nicely cushioned. There are controls for the lights and sound system in the wall at one end of the bed.

Since I had just gotten off a red-eye flight, I was particularly interested in trying out the daybed for a nap — something that I would normally never do in an airport. Pillows and blankets are provided. The suite contains an alarm clock on a ledge behind the bed, or the Minute Suites staff will provide you a wake-up call (or actually, knock). Michael was extremely prompt with my wake-up knock, although I had set my iPhone alarm as a back-up.

The bed was very comfortable. I tried out the Nap26 program that is built into the entertainment system, which is supposed to make you feel as though you’ve had three hours of sleep in only 26 minutes. I found the program soundtrack so annoying that it actually kept me awake instead of putting me to sleep even though I’d had only two hours of sleep in the previous 24. I turned it off after only a few minutes and promptly fell asleep.

A key component in my ability to sleep was the suite’s sound masking system. Essentially a giant white noise machine, the masking system’s volume is adjustable by the suite’s occupant. Thanks to this system, I was able to sleep completely unaware that I was in the heart of one of the world’s busiest airports, in a suite 10 feet away from a congested concourse. The only sounds I heard were a few loud bangs that I believe originated in the service area below the concourse.

If all of this sounds like a wonderful way to spend your airport layover, it is. But there’s a catch to this luxury: the luxury price. Minute Suites rent for $30/hr, with a one hour minimum. Eight hours costs $180, since at eight hours a rate decrease of 25 percent takes effect.

But if you aren’t turned off by the price, Minute Suites can be a great place to recharge or get some privacy to do some business on the go.

Would you try a “traveler’s retreat” if there was one available ton your trip?

I work as editor of the trade journal Scrapbook Update, and travel several times per year to attend trade shows and other events to report on them for my readers. When I’m on the road I need to be able to access email; keep up with news and do research on the web; update and maintain my site; and upload content to various platforms such as Flickr and Facebook.

I currently haul a 13” MacBook and an iPhone, along with a dSLR, a Flip camera and various peripherals with me when I travel. After closely examining the specs on the Apple iPad, I believe that I could probably function fairly effectively on the road using the iPad as a MacBook substitute. Here’s how I reached that conclusion, and why I like the idea.

Weight: One of the biggest appeals of the iPad is how lightweight it is. While the iPad weighs only 1.6 lbs, my current white 13” Macbook weighs in at 4.7 lbs. I could save 3 lbs — or a whole two-thirds — of the weight I’ve been toting around by using the iPad while traveling instead of my MacBook. True, a protective case would add some weight to the iPad, but I already use a neoprene sleeve on my MacBook now.

Battery: According to Apple, the battery life on the iPad is ten hours when it is being used on Wi-Fi. My MacBook is rated by Apple for seven hours, but in reality is good for about four. Outlets are still hard to come by, especially on aircraft, and more battery life for my mobile computing would be useful.

3G: As I wrote recently, I have been looking for a back-up system that will give me a way to bypass our local cable company to access the Internet in emergencies. I’ve been shopping around, looking at various types of tethering and access cards for my laptop, but the price seems prohibitive for the amount of use I would get from it. The iPad’s built-in 3G at a reasonable price point with no contract seems like a great backup solution.

The 3G would have another benefit as well, in saving me money on Internet access while I’m traveling. On a trip like the one I just took, I encountered Internet access fees everywhere I went: at airports, in flight, in my hotel, and at the convention center. I had to make hard decisions about when to limit my activities to what was possible to achieve on my phone and when to pay as much as $12.95 for a “day” of access to spend possibly just a few minutes doing what I needed to do. Obviously a 3G device doesn’t help at 30,000 feet, but purchasing Wi-Fi on this most recent trip for all the places I could have used 3G would have cost me $120. Those savings add up quickly, and the always-on access would make my workflow easier while traveling. No more having to make hard decisions about where and when to pay to connect, and no more having to wrestle with connecting to unfamiliar networks.

Form Factor: This particular trip I just got home from was transcontinental, involving a five-hour flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles. A trip like that provides plenty of time to work in transit, but anyone who has ever tried to open a laptop on an airplane tray table knows that is easier said than done. With the seat in front reclined, even my 13” MacBook doesn’t want to open to a comfortable viewing angle and feels claustrophobic as I try to type with your hands trapped between the keyboard and the angled screen. The iPad’s tablet form would sit flat on the tray for typing (or at a slight angle on the accessory case) or could be propped directly on my legs.

There were admittedly a few sticking points for me in the initial description of the iPad as it applied to making it my mobile computing device. Initially, the lack of a camera seemed like a deal-breaker. Then after thinking about it, I realized that when I am mobile I only use a camera for two things: taking pictures, and to make video calls. For taking pictures, I have my iPhone and my dSLR. As for the video calls, more times than not, it seems that the bandwidth in the locations I am using WiFi at won’t support a video Skype call. So having the camera or not is moot, since I don’t have the services available to utilize it very often.

Another sticking point, initially, was the seeming lack of a way to get pictures from my camera into the device, since a major activity of mine on the road is often taking pictures and uploading them to my web site. This was solved with the announcement that one of the accessories will be a Camera Connection Kit that includes two components: an SD card reader that plugs into the iPad’s dock connector; and a Camera Connector that attaches to the dock connector, designed to let users connect their camera via USB cable. Despite its camera-specific name, it appears to be simply a USB adaptor for the dock connector, not necessarily camera-specific. If that is the case, it raises questions about what else might be able to be plugged into it, such as thumb drives containing iWork files to edit or a Flip camera to upload videos to YouTube.

I currently use Lightroom and Photoshop Elements on my MacBook to deal with photos and create web site thumbnails while I travel. But I could probably live without those by dealing only with the JPG files of my photos in iPad apps (I shoot RAW+JPG when working on the road to save time processing hundreds of RAW files when I am rushed to write a story), and by using something like the online version of Photoshop to edit the pictures.

One of the reasons that I’ve stuck with a 13” MacBook is that I need my computing to be very portable. I can barely imagine hauling a 15” MacBook around an event like I attended this past week, and could never take a 17” on the road. Yet my laptop is my primary computer, and having a larger screen would be nice. Leaving a bigger laptop at home in favor of toting an iPad when I travel would let me get that larger screen without having to worry about how portable it was.

The iPad is tempting because, looking at it, I can see the day where my computing line-up consists of three devices: iPhone, iPad and 15-17″MacBook Pro. My iPhone would be always with me. My MacBook Pro would be my primary heavy computing machine, with a large screen but still portable to move around to various places in my house or to other places in town (like for coworking). Then for being ultra-mobile, such as going to trade shows, I would have my iPad to use alongside my iPhone.

Would the iPad solve your mobile computing needs?

Related GigaOM Pro Research:

• Web Tablet Survey: Apple’s iPad Hits Right Notes
• 5 Tips for Developers Targeting the iPad
• How AT&T Will Deal with iPad Data Traffic

There are a couple of ways to get out and find other people. Some workers congregate in locations that offer WiFi, like cafes. Unfortunately, where I live, there aren’t a lot of options like that. Pretty much the only places to go are a single small Starbucks and a McDonald’s.

Another option in some areas is coworking. For those unfamiliar with the concept, Imran has provided a good primer of WebWorkerDaily’s articles on coworking.

The concept of coworking spaces has always appealed to me, but at the same time left me conflicted. The thought of a nice big and well-equipped space with other people around sounds very inspiring. But then I think “Why would I pay for someplace to work when I have a perfectly good place to work at home? Isn’t avoiding hauling myself to an office part of the reason I like my job in the first place?” Although it does sound nice to be around other professional people semi-regularly, it’s always seemed like it would be an expensive luxury that my budget could do without.

Until now coworking hasn’t actually been an option in my town, anyway, so I didn’t have to make a real choice about it. But for the month of January, a local office rental space is holding a “coworking open house” on Thursday afternoons in its lounge (which are perhaps a little like the Jelly casual cowoking events that Simon has written about previously). Renting a solo office space doesn’t interest me since I can sit and work alone at home. But the coworking open houses finally gave me a chance to find out if coworking was for me or not.

After spending two afternoons at Office Divvy’s lounge with my laptop, I have decided that I like coworking and think that it could have a useful place in my work life. But not, it turned out, for the reasons that I originally imagined.

My coworking experiment definitely was a good social experience. I enjoyed talking about my work with people and learning about what they are doing. To be in a professional environment and being treated like a professional by other professionals was a nice change from being at home in my sweats being rudely interrupted by home security system salesmen.

What I didn’t expect, especially in a small group and with my work being so specialized in the scrapbook industry, was that I actually made helpful business contacts via the people I met. I got the name of an attorney recommended to help me with some business contracts, and met some other people that may be business resources in the future. I had a lengthy conversation with someone knowledgeable about the local scrapbook business scene. And I even got a lead on someone interested in having me do some copywriting work.

I definitely hope to have the opportunity to cowork regularly in the future. I think it would be good for my mental health — and for my business.

Have you tried coworking? How did it work out for you?

Gear

I accumulated a lot of new gear in 2009, but that doesn’t stop me from still having some gear goals for 2010. One of those goals I already fulfilled by purchasing a Canon 270ex flash for my Canon XS last week. I can now avoid the recurring expense of renting a 430ex ii when I attend trade shows, and the 270 will do the job with less weight to carry.

Like Simon, I’m looking forward to an upgrade to my iPhone 3G when I’m eligible this summer, right after the traditional new model rollout time. I’ve also been shopping for EVDO card options after our Christmas week Internet outage (and another one caused by our cold snap this week in Florida) made me realize I needed a better Internet access back-up plan. So far, I’m leaning toward a MiFi from Verizon.

I’d also like a 15” MacBook Pro to upgrade the MacBook I bought as a refurb last April. I didn’t anticipate that machine becoming my primary computer (it waved goodbye to my Vista desktop once I got my hands on that MacBook) and the 13” screen gets a little cramped. But that may have to wait until 2011.

Work

My business and career were expanded greatly in 2009. I aim to continue to carry that momentum into 2010 in several ways.

The first goal was already met, with the successful relaunch a few days ago of the scrapbook audio show that I co-host online called Paperclipping Roundtable. I also am working on constructing a brand web site for my media company, and plan on rolling out some additional web properties for the company during 2010. Unlike previous properties the company has experimented with, these properties will offer content somewhat related to the main Scrapbook Update topic, part of a move toward a more cohesive vision for the company.

My goals also include making progress toward becoming an established speaker in the areas that I work in. I also hope to have the opportunity to travel more so that I can do more in-person professional networking.

Personal

Like several other WebWorkerDaily folk, one of my 2010 goals is to get a lot of reading done. I also wish to spend more time on my scrapbook hobby, instead of just on my scrapbook job. Another goal is to simplify our home to more easily accommodate our busy schedules. And perhaps most important of all is my goal for my autistic six-year-old daughter, which is to finish the process of toilet training her. We’ve made major progress on that in the past six weeks and fully achieving that would be a major milestone in her development.

If a few of these sound suspiciously like the resolutions I’ve said I abhor, then I’ll tell you that I think of them as projects. And my Things is loaded down with projects for 2010. It’s going to be a busy year, but I think it’s going to be a really good one.

Does using the term “project” make a goal seem less intimidating to you?

For a long time I thought of trade shows as specialized shopping malls, with dealers in booths trying to sell their wares to a sea of customers. But recent experiences have taught me that trade shows aren’t just shopping malls.They are the business equivalent of speed dating.

Technology has changed what most businesses need to get out of a trade show. Thanks to the ability of the web to spread information, a trade show isn’t a customer’s only way to learn about products that they need. Vendors can educate customers via the web, and make sales contacts via email.

That almost sounds like there isn’t a need for trade shows any more. But on a day-to-day level, for many of the things that we do conducting business, we don’t do business with companies. We do business with people. That is where the real value still is in trade shows. “Networking” is a buzzword we hear all the time, but at trade shows it really has become the primary value. It just isn’t worth it to go to most shows anymore only to do a “look-see”. You only get true value if you go with the intent of interacting, meeting people and furthering relationships.

That is why  it’s a good way to think about trade shows as speed dating. In speed dating, you rotate around a room and spend a few minutes each with different people before deciding if you connected with any of them and want a more extended interaction. At a trade show, you run around a trade show floor chatting for a few minutes at a time with a variety of people, trading business cards and then extending an invitation to follow-up with someone you think you might be able to establish a relationship with. Both are about spending a few minutes to get a first impression and decide whether there might be anything in a future relationship between you.

So how do you succeed at trade show speed dating?

• Make a good first impression. Pay attention to the details, just like you would if you were trying to impress someone to get a date. What you wear, how you carry yourself, and what you say all contribute to that first impression. Make sure you correctly gauge the vibe of the event. Over-dressing can be just as bad as under-dressing.

• Think outside the box. Don’t dismiss someone as a business connection because it seems like what they do isn’t useful to you. Talk to everyone. If you meet someone you find yourself feeling in step with professionally, don’t walk away from that. Maybe one or both of you will change positions at a future point. Or maybe you can work together in some ground-breaking new way.

• Have good radar. This takes practice. It really is an art. But learning how to spot the people who are fake, or putting on a show, will save you a lot of trouble down the line. And it will save you networking time because you can move on to the next prospect faster, and maybe find that next fabulous business connection all the sooner.

What is your best trade show networking tip?

Brighthouse is the major cable and high-speed Internet provider for most of Central Florida. In the area where I live, they are actually the only high-speed provider. Web workers, of course, usually need the fastest and best quality connection we can get.

About a week before Christmas, I started noticing trouble connecting to several sites. I blamed the DNS errors on vacation traffic clogging the sites. But by Christmas Eve the issue had spread to almost all the sites I used, making my Internet connection virtually unusable. Extensive troubleshooting determined the problem was outside the house on the cable connection.

I decided to wait until after the holiday weekend to complain. But over the weekend I began seeing reports on Twitter from people I knew in the area experiencing the same problem. They did call — and the customer service people wouldn’t believe or admit that the company had a service problem.

Customer service reps told complaining customers that the problem was their personal router was broken. The offered solution was to plug directly into the cable modem to bypass the router. This was despite the fact that many of the callers were computer professionals who assured the reps that they had done extensive troubleshooting before calling to complain and they knew that the trouble was outside their homes (and some even knew roughly where it was through tracing packet loss). They got nowhere.

This situation highlighted something that can cause frustration for web workers. We are in the top echelon of computer users. We push things to their technical limits. We know ten times more than the typical user that the technical support script is written to help. We frequently know more than the “support” person on the other end of the phone. But convincing them of that can be difficult. How do we manage that?

In this case, the solution to being told there was no service problem was to prove that everyone had a problem. So the affected customers organized ourselves using social media. We started sharing info via Twitter so that we could tell customer service that it wasn’t just an isolated problem because we knew other of their customers that had the same problem. Using this information, some people were able to get customer service to acknowledge there might be an issue.

The biggest help, however, was when the media started reporting the problem. A local TV station and the Orlando Sentinel both picked up the story. Within only a couple hours, the problem that supposedly didn’t even exist was magically solved, after having dragged on for at least a week.

The lesson I came away with was that fighting as a group is more powerful than going it alone — and even better is having a reporter or two in that group.

After my Internet was back to normal, I realized that besides learning a valuable lesson about how to fight back as a consumer against a recalcitrant utility, the experience had also exposed a major flaw in my business emergency plan.

My “Internet outage” emergency plan has always called for going to family members’ homes, the library, Starbucks or McDonald’s to work. With Brighthouse being the only high-speed Internet provider in this area, all of those locations are likely customers of Brighthouse also and thus in a situation like this would have been as useless as my home service. I am going to have to do some research into alternative options in case of another emergency that renders the cable company’s service inoperable area-wide.

As a web worker, my Internet provider has me over a barrel. I am dependent on them and since they are effectively a monopoly, I have very little leverage with them. This weekend, I got a taste of how that can affect more than just my bill.

Does it worry you to be so dependent on your Internet provider?

Yes, I know I said in an earlier article that the New Year is a bad time to set arbitrary goals about changing your life. But while it may not be the best time to start a successful diet, it can actually be the perfect time to do certain resolution-related things for your business.

• Accounting: Jan. 1 isn’t just the start of a new calendar year. For most of us, it is also the start of a new fiscal year for our business. So if we’d like to improve on our methods of accounting or record keeping from the past, Jan. 1 is the time to start implementing those improvements so that any new systems we implement cover the whole fiscal year. Many of us don’t get really motivated to make these changes until we have to deal in-depth with the previous year’s mess as tax time approaches in April. By then, at least a quarter of the new fiscal year may have passed and we have missed a prime chance to start improving our systems from the beginning.
• Statistics & Goals: The calendar/fiscal year is also the natural time frame that most businesses use to set financial and other goals by. As Jan. 1 approaches, it’s a good time to evaluate how you did against your current year’s goals and create a new set of goals (or resolutions) for the new year. Then, put in place a plan that will allow you to make progress towards meeting those goals.
• Projects: We all have a traditional resolution-type project that has been sitting uncompleted: the file cabinet that needs archiving and shredding, an out-of-control inbox, or computer files that really should have an off-site backup. Take advantage of all that social programming that says you should be making a resolution and use it convince yourself to set aside the time to do some of those projects. Don’t bother trying to convince yourself that your file cabinet will be in that pristine condition three months from now. But at least you’ll start out 2010 in better shape than you ended 2009.
• Organizing: Some of the pressure for New Year’s resolutions in January comes from retailers as they spend the month pushing sales on products that are targeted at “traditional” resolutions such as organization and weight loss. So if you have any organizing projects that need to be done, now is the time to do them, because you can save money on any supplies you’ll need to complete them. Everything from labelers and fire safes to closet shelving goes on sale in January. Who isn’t motivated to get things done by saving money?

Don’t expect to change your whole life overnight just because the date on the calendar changed. But if you are realistic about your expectations and make the best of the arrival of Jan. 1, you can use it to start off your business year on the right foot.

What will you be doing to start off 2010 better than you ended 2009?

Freelancers typically have difficulty securing access to a comparable range of benefits to what they’d have in an employment situation. This is especially true of health benefits, as I’ve written previously.

How is oDesk trying to fix this? oDesk Staffing extends its existing 1099 system by letting you elect to have a W-2 employed relationship status with the company.

Workers who opt for a W-2 status and who complete 30 hours per week of billable work through the oDesk system are eligible for benefits from oDesk Staffing. The benefits include group health benefits with no pre-existing condition limitations, retirement benefits and even unemployment benefits. oDesk also guarantees payment from clients for work, but the trade-off for that guarantee is that the oDesk system requires that you use monitoring software during work hours that some freelancers might consider intrusive (including the use of webcam shots).

Eligibility for benefits relies on an hourly calculation, so workers who get paid using other measures, such as writers getting paid by the piece, won’t be eligible for the oDesk Staffing benefits system. Workers become eligible for benefits on the first day of the month following a month where they they have worked 30 hours a week. This means workers have to wait between 31-61 days to become eligible for benefits under the oDesk Staffing system.

What will all of this cost? For existing oDesk users, oDesk Staffing’s examples say that after taxes and their fees, the take-home pay of the producer will be the same under a W-2 relationship as under the existing oDesk 1099 system. Freelancers considering porting their existing client relationships to oDesk to take advantage of the benefits should know that oDesk Staffing charges a 20 percent fee for their services that includes the worker’s tax withholding. For a worker who can’t secure insurance any other way, that may be a necessary premium to pay.

oDesk Staffing isn’t publishing information on the cost of the health insurance premium buy-in itself. It is available via email from getbenefits@odesk.com, though. There are nine different plans. On the web site, sample rates are quoted for the Basic PPO plan at $135 per month for an individual 35-year-old, or $400 per month for a family.

Would you bill all your clients through a service in order to get health insurance?

Some Monsanto executives learned the value of safeguarding their data the hard way when they couldn’t access key information they needed during the chaos after 9/11. So in 2003 they founded Morgan Street Document Services to help individuals and businesses protect their important documents from disasters. Orggit was launched recently to bring this service to a wider consumer audience through a user-friendly interface.

Unlike storage and sync services such as Dropbox and Sugarsync that are just storage space for files, Orggit has a user interface that allows for organizing various types of information records.

After logging in, users are greeted by four tabs across the top of their Orggit home page:

Wallet: This section stores information about all the cards you might carry in your wallet. It is organized using tabs down the left size for various types of cards, and each tab’s contents appear in the main area of the screen when selected. Each card type’s fields are customized to hold standard data types for those cards, including customer service numbers. Images of the cards can even be added. A “wallet report” can be printed containing details of all of the stored cards to use as an offline back-up or for reference in filing a police report or canceling stolen cards. This section of Orggit is similar to a Palm app that I used to have that is now available for a variety of mobile phones called SplashID. However, SplashID syncs only between a desktop and mobile device with no cloud backup of data; that redundancy is a key feature of Orggit.

Medical: This section contains a service I’ve never seen offered by any other back-up or storage service: 24/7/365 ICE (in case of emergency) medical record forwarding. It allows a user to create and store a complete medical history for themselves, including scanned documents. This history can then be downloaded in a nicely formatted PDF form for sharing with healthcare providers. Orggit will also fax or email it 24/7 to healthcare providers that request it in an emergency if they provide Orggit the member ID number found on the ICE wallet card that is mailed to every Orggit member. The card provides instructions on how to call and retrieve the records, or report a lost wallet.

As someone with a complicated medical history involving several chronic conditions, I love the idea of healthcare providers being able to access a comprehensive healthcare record for me if I have a problem away from home. My one complaint about this section is that the date fields for items require complete MM/DD/YY date entries and it can be hard to be that specific about things that were a long time ago. It would be helpful to be able to enter an incomplete date, such as just the year, or just month/year. What I’d like to see added would be more fields for recording routine doctors’ visits, and events such as routine illnesses or symptoms. Perhaps a calendar or journal function in this section could serve for those purposes.

Accounts & Codes: Designed to store logins, this is the least robust of all the service’s sections. It keeps a single alphabetized list of your logins. Clicking on the item will take you to an entered URL but won’t log you in. For day-to-day password retrieval, this can’t compete with applications like 1Password for Mac or even Firefox’s built-in password manager. But it has some advantages those sorts of programs don’t, such as the cloud storage of the data and being able to make it visible to other family members in case of emergency.

Filing Cabinet: The filing cabinet is designed to store scanned copies of important documents, similar to Dropbox and other storage services. However, unlike Dropbox, it doesn’t sync files with edits in another location. This lack of file syncing to an offline source in Orggit’s filing cabinet is not as big a deal as it might seem. Most of the files that Orggit is intended to store are scans or PDF’s of static files such as legal documents that would require creation of a whole new file if they were changed. They also aren’t documents that are typically updated that often.

Using the filing cabinet is simple. There are buttons for its drawers across the top of the page. Six drawers are already named and come configured with pre-named folders to suggest contents for them. Users can add a seventh drawer or tailor the existing ones to meet their needs. Basically, the drawers and folders are just a user-friendly way of representing a file storage structure to users.

The iPhone app is a nice addition to the service but not a key component of it. It has the ability to trigger the faxing or mailing of medical reports from its emergency section. The iPhone app also gives you the ability to use your phone’s camera to take pictures of your ID cards rather than having to scan them or use your camera. The camera can also be used to update family members’ profile pictures. You can also create a custom home screen for your phone using one of your pictures that includes a banner with instructions for accessing the Orggit ICE service.

The app is very limited in function beyond those nice features, however. Information cannot be added or edited (besides adding the photos), only read. And there is no access at all to the filing cabinet.

Orggit has the capability of holding virtually the entire identity of a user if they use the service to its full potential. The site obviously requires a high level of security. So before I commit a large volume of my data to the site, I wanted to know what security measures are in place to protect my data — and me.

The Orggit’s representatives that I contacted say that the site uses the same standards of security as the National Security Agency to secure customers’ data. They have servers in multiple locations, and those servers are behind a firewall and use the highest-grade Extended Validation SSL Certificates from VeriSign. Orggit also says it encrypts all member passwords, security questions and phishing images with AES 256 bit encryption, “rendering brute force attacks unfeasible.” They also use the VeriSign Extended Validation green address bar to signify to users that they are connected to a legal web site.

Although at first glance Orggit may seem oriented towards personal use, it can have several important business applications. The wallet tab and the ICE service can provide extra security for road warriors. One of the filing cabinet drawers can be configured to hold work documents (an especially critical mission if you are self-employed and have documents like tax returns and articles of incorporation to protect).

Orggit costs $49.99 for an annual subscription. The subscription includes the company’s free iPhone app ; the addition of up to nine family members on the account; auto-reminder service for expiration dates of credit cards, drivers license and passport; 24/7/365 ICE medical records forwarding service; and 5GB of storage space. Added family members must have an email address and get their own “wallet,” medical and accounts/codes section; the filing cabinet is shared between all users. The primary member controls whether family members can see each other’s data or not, and whether they can see the shared file cabinet.

It does take time to enter all of your critical data into an application like Orggit. But in an emergency, having access to that data via Orggit will make the investment of that time seem like a tiny price to have paid.

Do you keep important documents safe with off-site backups?

Well, this web worker has a grown up Christmas list, too. And if your jaded heart is overloaded on holiday peace and love this season already, I promise you there isn’t an altruistic wish in the bunch.

Time

Especially because I own my own business, it feels like I always have more ideas than I have time to execute them. There are so many avenues and possibilities to explore in my business. It feels like even if each day were 48 hours long I still wouldn’t have enough time to do everything I want to do.

If you could somehow figure out how to put more hours in a day or days in a week, Santa, it would be greatly appreciated. Maybe then I’d even have time to write you a thank you note.

Clairvoyance

Since I have so many more ideas than I could ever execute, it would be nice if I could devote my time to only the ones that are sure-fire winners. But to do that, I’d need to see the future (or be Warren Buffett).

What I could really use, Santa, are psychic powers or a time machine. Or maybe you could lend me your reindeer Lightning, the one in “Elmo Saves Christmas” who can fly so fast he can skip through time?

Understanding

Many of us who are web workers are working at jobs that didn’t exist ten, or even five, years ago. That can lead to some blank stares and awkward silences in response when we try to tell someone what we do. “You do what using what?”

Perhaps worse, it can cause a lack of respect for our jobs since many people don’t respect what they don’t understand. Our families ask when we are going to get a “real job”  (meaning one they can understand that will impress their friends) even while we are earning six-figure incomes.

So, dear Santa, could you please give the world a crash course in Web 2.0 business and economics?

Cool

I keep hearing how geeks are cool, but I’ve seen little real evidence of it in my interaction with the world (see the above wish). Sure, Jimmy Fallon had the Diggnation guys on his show and Gary Vaynerchuk is crushing it, but what about the rest of us? Most of the non-geek world really just thinks of Twitter as an interactive pocket protector.

Real geek cool would be getting invited to velvet rope parties, not just to people’s houses when they need free tech support. Or how about a reality show on Bravo called “The Real Social Media Consultants of San Fran?” Figure out a way to make geeks truly cool, Santa, and I’ll get you set up with your own blog and iPhone app. Then you’ll be cool, too.

I stopped believing in Santa long ago (she should have done a better job at disguising her handwriting, is all I’m saying). But that doesn’t stop me from having wishes this time of year. Maybe, with the passage of time, some of them might even come true someday.

What are your grown-up holiday wishes?

In the past 18 months, I’ve had to take time off of work for a variety of not-so-fun reasons. There’s been emergency trips to visit sick relatives, funeral travel, surgery for my mom, and surgery of my own. Plus, although we’ve been fortunate to not have serious disruptions from tropical weather here recently, that has happened before and will certainly happen again.

Here’s the lessons I’ve learned from those experiences about how being a web worker affects you during a personal crisis.

Good: Have Laptop, Will Travel

Being able to do your work via the web means you can probably pack it up and be productive (at least somewhat) while dealing with your crisis. If you have to travel, you don’t have to wrap everything up before you can run out the door. You can arrange for your time off after you’ve already left, or even get some work done anywhere that you need to be.

Many medical facilities even have Wi-Fi now for families to use while visiting with patients. Pulling out your laptop to do some work in these situations may sound more insensitive than it really is. Often patients feel they have to entertain people who are sitting with them. Working on a laptop can provide the perfect excuse to disengage yourself so the patient can rest or have some privacy, and it can alleviate a patient’s guilt over pulling you away from your usual routine if they see you are still being productive. If you are part of a group of visitors, excusing yourself to work elsewhere can be a good way to provide someone a private visit with the patient.

Good: Routine Is Therapeutic

A crisis by its very nature is stressful. Routine is comforting to most people. The familiar activity of being able to maintain at least some of your normal work routine via the web (even if it’s just checking and answering work email) can be a very helpful coping mechanism when something stressful is happening. The distraction of work can also be very helpful to some people by giving them something else besides their crisis situation to focus on for awhile.

Good: Reducing the Post-crisis Disaster

One of the reasons that I wrote that I don’t like to take vacations is that they are too much work to prepare for and catch up from. The same is true of a crisis break, but since it often isn’t planned, the work would all be done by playing catch-up. If you can do some of that work during the crisis itself, your post-crisis work stress will be reduced.

Bad: Working Under Stress

Remember that point about how a crisis is stressful? While a web worker may have the technical ability to work during a crisis, you need to be aware that your mental ability to do so may be compromised due to extreme stress. The quality of your work may not be up to your usual standards. You may make bad decisions that you later regret. You may say (or type) things that you normally wouldn’t because you are feeling emotional. Being aware of your limitations while working under stress is important. Postpone things that you aren’t sure you can handle correctly at that time until later.

One important limitation to consider: If the crisis is your own medical situation, and there are heavy medications involved, you may want to consider whether you should limit your phone and laptop use to playing Farmville. WWI (working while impaired) could cost you your reputation, a client, or your job if you aren’t careful.

Bad: Everyone Knows Your (Personal) Business

Even if you are working during it, a crisis will still mean some change in your capacity or schedule to do your work. This will need to be explained, especially to any associates and clients who are affected. In a traditional corporate environment, someone else would probably just step in for you, explain that you are on medical or family leave, and take care of business. But especially if you are freelancer, you will have to do the explaining yourself and probably to some people who feel they know you well enough to be concerned. Explanations will need to be somewhat specific (“My grandmother is very ill”) and as a result, everyone ends up knowing your personal business. This also makes it harder to use work as an escape from stress since well-meaning concerned co-workers may ask how you are coping.

Bad: Pressure to Limit Time Off

Web workers can feel pressure from both within and without to limit time off in a crisis situation. Freelancers feel financial pressure because they aren’t getting paid, and may be incurring unusual expenses as well. There’s also concern that clients may look elsewhere if put off too long. Outside pressure can come from clients who think that since you web work (and probably from home) that you can do more during a crisis than is really practical or wise. Juggling these needs can make it tempting to limit your time away. Make sure you take what you truly need.

The flexibility of web work can be wonderful in a crisis but it has pitfalls too. Being aware of them means being able to navigate your work through a personal crisis as smoothly as possible.

Has being a web worker helped you navigate a personal crisis?