Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Tony Wright, founder and CEO of RescueTime, a venture-backed software startup that helps businesses and individuals improve their time management through automated time tracking and reporting.

A few weeks ago I read this very interesting piece on WebWorkerDaily about the impact of corporate blocking policies on web working employees. The gist of the article was that blocking tends to throw away a lot of the good with the bad and, increasingly, the things that managers think of as “bad” (Twitter, Facebook, IM, etc.) are actually an important part of folks’ communication toolbox.

I’d like to pile on with more evidence that wholesale blocking is bad. The University of Melbourne found that workers who are allowed to surf the web for fun at work were actually nine percent more productive than those who weren’t. So what about monitoring? Well, it turns out that monitoring your employees (the way most employers do it) is similarly detrimental to productivity. It also tends to make life more stressful for employees.

At RescueTime, we are constantly thinking about the ethics and efficacy of blocking and monitoring for teams and individuals — it’s our mission to actually build software that does this in a way that increases productivity and isn’t evil. A huge, and sometimes daunting, part of our job as product developers is to educate employers on what works, what’s ethical and what kind of expectations are reasonable for web workers. Here’s some of what we’ve learned.

Blocking and Monitoring is Everywhere

As obvious as the faults of blocking and monitoring are, employers still do both. You can see why a manager might do it — excessive leisure surfing can have a huge cost, and abusive workers are exceptional at camouflaging their activities. A 2005 survey by the American Management Associated found that 75 percent of employers monitor their employees’ web site visits to prevent inappropriate usage, while 65 percent of them use software to block web sites entirely. The good news is that 80 percent of employers actually tell their employees about their monitoring practices.

How to Do Blocking Right (If You Care About Productivity)

Just because wholesale blocking of web sites can be evil and ineffective at improving productivity doesn’t mean that blocking should be kicked to the curb. Below are three guidelines for effective blocking:

1. Your goal should be to block excessive or abusive Internet usage, not block everything. Block using allowances. Decide as a team what an appropriate amount of leisure time is for a work day (or work week). Stop the “binge” leisure surfing and you’ve solved 95 percent of your productivity problem.
2. “Nudge” before you block. If you’ve set a limit of no more than eight hours a week of leisure surfing, alert the user when they are trending towards exceeding that. Blocking is a painful and limiting experience; a nudge may be all you need to avoid the excess.  If at all possible, give them some social context. Receiving a message that says, “Hey, you’re at 7 hours of leisure surfing so far this week, and 8 hours is the maximum. Your average teammate is at 3h and 21m” can be way more motivating.
3. Give as much control to your team as you can. The more top-down the solution is, the less effective it is.

How to Do Monitoring Right (If You Care About Productivity)

Monitoring can provide a business with critical data. Which applications are actually getting used? How does the new development methodology effect how people spend their time? How good is the new manager at making sure that people have enough work to do? How people spend their time is a leading indicator for business health and team engagement/morale, but it’s uncomfortable to introduce it to a team, even when done correctly. Below are some guidelines for effective — and minimally evil — monitoring:

1. Set reasonable expectations. Knowledge workers don’t work solidly for eight hours a day (in fact, if you’re doing productive computer work for five hours a day, you’re in the top 1 percent of our userbase!) Suggesting that they should is a disaster. Also, it should be clear to everyone involved that day-to-day scrutiny will not happen. A leisure-heavy day is not a problem. A leisure-heavy month might indicate that someone is undertasked or undermotivated. It’s also important for everyone to be aware that how you spend your time does not equal productivity.
2. If productivity matters, only monitor high-end teams. I’m not kidding. A study at Rutgers showed that monitoring high-ability individuals resulted in better performance. Monitoring lower-ability individuals actually lowered their performance.
3. Give your team the ability to control the monitoring process. Giving them a “pause” button gives them control over the process and actually results in increased task performance (source: University of Conneticut Study).
4. Monitor as little as you need to. If productivity is your goal, you don’t need to read people’s IM conversations — you just want to understand how they spend their time. Ideally, this should be no different (and no more evil!) than a timesheet, except that it’s more accurate and less effort-intensive.
5. Monitor everyone (managers included!). We all have the same fear. We know we only really work for a few hours per day  We also all have the same delusion– that somehow we’re more efficient than our peers and that’s how we manage to do eight hours of work in two or three hours. In reality, we’re all pretty similar.  The Rutgers study mentioned above also found that monitoring group-wide offered protection against the stress associated with the monitoring.
6. Show people their own data. If you’re chasing productivity, showing people how they spend their time can be very motivating, especially if you compare them to their average peer. If you wanted to have each department to be more disciplined about spending money, you wouldn’t monitor their spending in secret and then pounce on them when they spent money irresponsibly. Take the same attitude with time and get your team involved and interested.

What do you think of these guidelines? As a member of a team, what sort of blocking and monitoring rules do you think would actually help you be more productive without feeling too “overlordy”?

Image by stock,xchng user marcos1981.

A common concern among those of us in jobs that put us visible on the web is the challenge of balancing our personal and professional presence online.

To me, it’s about blended, dynamic reputation. Some may call it “personal branding” but that’s always felt a little stilted and contrived to me. The essence is that I have control over only one side of the equation: how I present myself to the world, both online and off. The judgment rests solely in the hands of the people with whom I interact, and they’re all going to see me differently.

Drawing Boundaries

I choose not to delineate between my personal and professional presence online, except on my blogs (more on that in a moment). That means I don’t have a separate Twitter account for my business presence — as Director of Community for Radian6 — and my personal presence, or separate Facebook profiles.

Why? To me, they’re one and the same. Who I am professionally is very much who I am personally. And my belief is that in order to deliver myself, my capabilities and my trustworthiness as obviously and clearly as possible to people, I don’t want the appearance that I’m acting differently in one world than I would in another.

It’s the WYSIWYG philosophy. I want to know that what people are seeing and feeling when they interact with me is “Amber” first and foremost. Whether I’m acting in my capacity as a Radian6 representative, a business adviser, a horse enthusiast or a friend, I want them to know that they’ll always get a consistent sense of “me.”

Filters

All this does not mean, however, that I don’t filter myself at all. I do, in a couple of ways.

For my blogs, I have one that’s about my business — social media and community — and one that’s purely personal. I do that for the sake of my audience more than for me. People coming to my Altitude blog likely don’t want musings about my summer vacation muddying up the information on social media for business (they would probably just see it as noise).

I also contribute to our corporate blog, and I do that with my “community director and social media person in a corporate role” hat on. I don’t really write differently in terms of tone or personality, but I write with a specific focus.

By housing my personal blog separately, I’m setting the expectation for any visitors that they’re going to be reading more casual, personal thoughts and that they won’t necessarily find business value there.

The most important filter, though, is that of judgment. I know that the web is one big messy, interconnected mishmash of information. You can’t put up barriers very easily, or keep the peas from touching the mashed potatoes. It’s all out there in one big pile. And if people want it, they’re going to find it.

That means if there’s some bit of content — a blog post or a photo of my daughter or a snap from vacation — that I don’t want public for whatever reason, I don’t publish it. I think carefully about comments and responses that I post and the interactions I have, considering how they’ll be interpreted out of context, or after time has passed and the conversation isn’t as immediate. We all know by now that the web never forgets.

Personal Accountability

Balancing personal and professional presence online is a matter of choice and comfort level. Your mileage will and should vary, as your world is different than mine or anyone else’s.

But make no mistake: you’re driving. You choose what to publish, and where and when you do it. And you hold the responsibility of monitoring your own reputation through listening, so you know what other people are saying about you and where.

Being online shouldn’t be about being paranoid. It’s about being informed and aware, and conscious of your own choices. Consider how you’d like to be perceived. Do you want to be liked? Trusted? Known as the contrarian? Purely professional while keeping your personal life carefully hidden? On the web for fun and keeping work out of it? They’re all up to you.

Knowing your own values, boundaries and expectations for yourself are key to guiding your presence and participation, no matter where you choose to be.

Amber Naslund is Director of Community for Radian6, geek girl extraordinaire, and blogs over at AltitudeBranding.com.

Image by stock.xchng user topfer

In the past, syncing Google Calendar with your iPhone has been a pretty big hassle. After having tried just about every method in the book, I’ve found two solutions that are definitely worth checking out.

One is NuevaSync, which is completely free but requires registering for an account. The other is SaiSuke, which costs $10 but offers many more settings to set things up exactly how you need to. Read the complete review on TheAppleBlog.

By Justin Draeger

Teleworking has been gaining traction for years and now more than 2.44 million people spend at least part of their work week at home.

But recently some major employers have been pulling telecommuters back into the office. The goal of any would-be teleworker is to show your boss how working from home will benefit him and the company.

If you’re having trouble getting your point across, here are some possible reasons he wants you in the office.

He Doesn’t Know What It Means

Don’t make the mistake of proposing telecommuting to a manager who has no real idea what teleworking is or how it works. Just because they can navigate around in Microsoft Outlook and can operate a blackberry doesn’t make managers tech savvy. Even at the risk of insulting their intelligence, it helps to provide a clear definition of what you’re asking for.

Of course that means figuring out what you want before you broach the subject. Do you want to work from home once a week, a few times a week, or full-time? Good negotiators know their end-points (what they want) and their breaking points (their bottom line).

In fact, avoid using the word “telecommute.” Even though I do it full-time, I almost always use the word telework, because it focuses on work, not my commute or lack thereof. It might be better to not use the words telecommute or telework at all, and instead just say in plain and simple terms exactly what you want.

For example:

“I get so bogged down here at the office that I end up working nights and weekends away from the office. I believe my productivity would increase if I could work from home for two days a week. I’ll still be readily accessible by phone, IM, and email during those times. Do you have any concerns with allowing me to work from home two days a week for the next three months?”

He Thinks You’re Getting Preferential Treatment

Some managers buy into the idea that everyone should be treated equally. It’s egalitarianism management and it stinks. Managers who buy into this concept care more about what their employees think about them than productivity or effectiveness.

I could give you a pep talk about changing corporate culture and management styles, but I won’t bother. Instead of wasting time trying to change management styles, it’s better to work within their framework. That means getting the approval of your coworkers and team members first, the people who will be most affected by your departure, before going to your manager. If teleworking will put additional burdens on your coworkers, they’ll let you know.

Approaching your coworkers first will also require you to take a realistic look at whether your job is a good fit for the teleworking. A production manager at an assembly plant has very little chance of telecommuting if 90 percent of his job duties require him to be on-site.

Approaching egalitarian managers with your coworkers full support tells them there’s no need to fear unpopularity or repercussions from the masses and that it’s okay to give you the green light.

He’s Old School

Many managers prefer “seeing” how hard you’re working. That includes a lot of managing by walking around, which is pretty ineffective management. Good managers know that managing by results is better for the company, employees, and ultimately themselves.

If your manager doesn’t focus on results, it’s up to you to help him start. Start reporting simple management numbers that focus on your productivity. Productivity numbers don’t just show how much you’ve completed, but shows how quickly or efficiently you tackled them. That generally means including a time component to your statistics such as tasks competed per hour, income generated per day, or product per week.

When it comes time to propose teleworking, you’ll already have management measures in place for him to ensure that you’re working hard.

He Just Loves Your Pretty Face

Some managers could forget all about you if you’re not in the office. If your manager fits this description you’ll need to retrain him or her to show that even if you’re not in the office, you’re still accessible. These managers are also less likely to allow you to work from home even on a trial basis.

For those employees, I suggest finding a reason to work from home, even if that means using a vacation day, to show just how accessible you can be. Send emails, make phone calls, or ping your coworkers and manager with instant messages. Do whatever it takes to show your boss that he’s not missing much by you not being right there with him. Most importantly, be more productive outside of the office than inside!

He Doesn’t Trust You

Stop now. You’re in trouble. If your boss doesn’t trust you then forget it. Whether the mistrust is warranted or not is unimportant because you can’t make someone trust you. Without trust you’re left with two options: build or rebuild the trust that is missing or go work somewhere else. The latter is usually easier.

Justin Draeger has been teleworking full-time since March 2008.

By Jake Kuramoto

Back in 2003, I worked in a cube farm at Oracle’s corporate headquarters in Redwood Shores. I had been commuting an hour and a half each way, five days a week, since 2001, and I really wanted to work out a telecommuting arrangement with my manager. I started out working from home a couple days a week, and eventually, I grew into a permanent web worker.

After five years of working remotely, the one problem I’ve yet to solve is the conference call. Or more accurately, the conference call where I’m the only one on the phone. If you telecommute, you’re savvy to this problem, and even if you don’t, you can probably relate.

Here’s the scenario: it’s a handful of people sitting in a conference room and one person on the phone. The more people in the room and on the phone, the bigger the problem.

All typical meeting problems become amplified when you’re on the phone.

(Photo credit: Flickr user morecoffeeplease)

The Problem…

Suddenly, you no longer are privy to the visual cues or the side conversations. You may not even be able to hear everyone clearly. In most conference rooms, there’s a phone sitting in the middle of the table, allowing you hear maybe one or two people distinctly. If the acoustics are bad, you may not hear anyone clearly.

If you’re the only person calling into the meeting, you may find yourself listening to hold music on the call bridge for several minutes. You begin to wonder: Did they forget to dial in to the call? Are there issues with the room? Do I have the cell number of someone attending in person?

Once the calls starts, you’re not out of the woods. Let’s say they’re projecting some slides in the conference room. Inevitably, the phone ends up right by the projector, so all you can hear is the humming of its fan. Sometimes, it’s loud enough to drown you out too, so you’re stuck listening to white noise for the duration.

My favorite is a meeting where they jump on the whiteboard and neglect to tell you. The only way you know is people keep referring to “this” or “that” like they’re pointing.

When I started working from home, telecommuting wasn’t common among my peers. After a slew of acquisitions, we have a lot more people dialing in to calls now. But at the time, I was in a spot. On the one hand, I was expected to participate and contribute equally to these meetings. On the other, I had unique, self-imposed restrictions by attending on the phone. Complaining about the sound quality, asking people to repeat themselves, asking for a narrative of what’s on the whiteboard, these are all meeting flow killers. So, I generally just made do and muddled through the operational issues, contributing when I could.

…and How I’m Trying to Solve It.

After so many years, I have a few tips that might help if you’re that lone voice. Frankly, these apply to any conference call.

Before a call, request an agenda and any supporting materials, e.g. if the meeting is a design review, make sure you can get soft copy of the design in advance. If your colleagues are reviewing a hard copy in the conference room, ask them to cite page numbers or section titles so you can follow along on the phone. Even if there are no materials, an agenda will give you an idea of the content and an early chance to ask questions.

Getting questions asked before the meeting can help in a couple ways: first, it may help target meeting content more appropriately and second, it gives you a chance to ask the question before any of the distractions I listed above start.

When the meeting starts, make sure to announce yourself when you dial into the call bridge. Our conference system asks who you are before putting you into the call and then announces your arrival. While this is somewhat embarrassing if you’re late and can be disruptive to whomever is speaking, it lets everyone know that you’re on the phone. I sometimes also greet the virtual room to make sure everyone can hear me.

Since the conference room has to be on speaker phone, hearing will be tough. This is why I avoid listening with my phone on speaker mode. Since holding the phone to my head for an hour or more isn’t a picnic either, I frequently use a headset.

Sometimes the headset makes it tough to hear me on the other end, so I try to speak more loudly than I would normally. This can be a little jarring, since you may feel like you’re yelling. But that’s alright, unless you’re in a public place.

When a meeting is flowing, it’s common to have people interrupt each other as ideas come to them. If you’re on the phone, this makes for chaos. So, I will politely ask people to repeat themselves if this happens, and if I’m speaking, I’ll generally keep talking, even if someone breaks in with a thought. My goal isn’t to shout the other people down, just to make sure I finish my thought before listening. This may seem rude, but in the middle of a call, it helps to keep everyone’s thoughts and ideas organized. I’ve been in the conference room and on the phone, and this approach makes for more productive meetings.

This is a unique challenge for the web worker. Are you that lone voice on the phone? Do you feel like you have to stand out more because you’re not in the room? Are you in the room, and if so, what do you think about people on the phone? Sound off in comments.

Jake Kuramoto is a sometime product manager, software architect and technologist working for Oracle, currently on a small, disruptive team called the AppsLab. Jake serves as a community evangelist and product manager for AppsLab and its internal and external communities. The AppsLab runs like a startup within the giant entity that is Oracle, and pretty much anything that is not writing code makes Jake’s list of to-dos.

By Kyle West

Editor’s Note: Around here, “switching” isn’t just changing operating systems. It can also be about leaving a more traditional work environment behind and switching to web work. Kyle made the jump a couple of years ago and shares with us the lessons he learned along the way.

A little over 2 years ago my partner and I packed up our offices, sold all our office furniture and officially joined the full-time web-working crowd. Since then we’ve made plenty of mistakes, but we’ve also cleared our fair share of hurdles. The hardest part of the switch? Communicating effectively.

Communication is tough enough when everyone is in the same room. It’s exponentially more difficult after you end all physical interaction. Gone were the days of huddling around the whiteboard, brainstorming over carry-out and getting instant feedback on your work.

In the Beginning

As web-working greenhorns we decided we could just recreate our office virtually and everything would work itself out. We thought the easiest way to recreate the office was to promote as much real-time communication as possible. We all logged into IM every morning, checked in and then announced our every action to everyone in the team. After all, if we were in the office everyone would know what we were up to at any given moment, why should it be any different now?

Wow. That was a mess. Nobody cared what menial task I was up to and worse, it disrupted the entire team’s work. It was our safety blanket though. It felt good to know Bob didn’t pick up the phone because he was getting the mail or that Tom isn’t returning my critical IM because he was walking the dog. Despite that, the few occasions it did come in handy hardly made up for the daily barrage of garbage IMs. (ed: Had this been today, it would be an ideal use of Twitter, don’t you think?)

Tools?

After the massive failure of our first attempt we figured we needed to invest in some new Web 2.0 gadgetry to simplify our lives, give us a team collaboration space and centralize all our data. The market was much thinner 2 years ago but there were still no lack of companies vying for our attention and dollars. The promise was appealing: “We’ll facilitate easier team collaboration.” Great, just what we’re looking for.

After a couple days of research we ended up with a couple different tools, one a general intranet, one for project management, one for sharing documents and one for tracking bugs in our product. You’d think with all those resources we’d use one of them. Right? Wrong!

Documents got emailed, important messages were sent over IM, customer contact details could be in any one of 12 different places, bugs were scribbled on legal pads. We never fully invested in any one solution and consequently wasted our money on all of them.

Eureka!

We finally came to a solution that everyone is happy with and it only took us two years. Maybe I can spare you some of the trouble and let you in on our inside secrets.

After realizing all we’d done wrong we set out with a simple mission: use only web based services and use as few of them as possible. The payoff was immediate, nothing to install, troubleshoot or maintain. No huge upfront cost. Works for anyone, anywhere.

We use NetSuite for all our customer and vendor data. All emails to and from customers are stored in NetSuite, all our accounting is done in NetSuite, customers can create support requests in NetSuite. If it has to do with a customer it’s in NetSuite. NetSuite is an “enterprise” application so it is not cheap, but for our needs it is well worth the expense.

We use several different subversion repositories for the different files we need to keep track of and the different employees allowed to access them. For example, all our source code is in a repository called RPMWare.Development, all our marketing materials are in a repository named RPMWare.Marketing, we also have a general repository and one for sensitive information. We can quickly sync our computers (working copies in SVN terms) with the repository and stay on the same page. SVN also keeps track of each version of a file in case we make changes that need undone.

Unfuddle hosts our subversion repositories and provides project management and bug tracking. It’s working great because it’s all in one place. We don’t have 4 different services to login to, just one. Unfuddle messages have supplemented email and Unfuddle notebooks make a great place for quick document collaboration although it’s best to use something like Google Documents if you are going to publish your document.

If you’re not familiar with GMail or Google Docs it’s time to get with the times. We use both and have since we started “web working.” It’s been one of the very few things that worked since day one.

Although this exact setup may not work for you, the underlying ideas apply to anyone making the switch from office work to web work. Web work is fundamentally different than any other type of work and those differences must be taken into account when setting up your web workplace. Generally speaking, what worked in your “real” office is not going to work exactly the same in your new web office. Embrace the constraints and opportunities of web work and you’ll find a solution that works well for your needs.

Kyle West is a designer, developer and entrepreneur. He’s founded two internet based companies, has been self employed since 2000 and “web working” from sunny Florida, Washington DC and New York City for the past 2 years. His current company, RPMWare, is an ecommerce application developed specifically for the automotive aftermarket.

By Pete Johnson, HP.com Chief Architect

You don’t have to be in the work force too long before someone ultimately insults you in some way. Maybe it isn’t even intentional, but that doesn’t take the sting out of it. The most basic, knee jerk human reaction when we experience something like this is to get angry and hurl something similar right back at the offending party.

While natural, that perfectly understandable course of action tends to inflame the situation instead of improve it. Is there a better way?

Sometimes, there can be and you can get something much more than revenge of a such a situation, like a better relationship with someone that becomes more useful later.

It starts innocently enough

Last spring, I was asked to be part of a task force whose members were drawn from all over HP. Our mission was to define the key aspects of Web 2.0 that the company wanted to take advantage of, so our group was a mix of technologists like myself and people in charge of a variety of business initiatives for the company.

At the beginning of about our 3rd meeting, I was among the first people who dialed into the teleconference line. Some of the other attendees were discussing some of the topics we wrapped up the last meeting with as we were waiting for everybody to arrive, but I muted myself as I was finishing up something else.

As the meeting was about set to start, a rather influential individual came onto the call and joined in on the banter, let’s call him Ewan. The topic turned to which organization should write a particular piece of functionality. Rather quickly, Ewan emphatically chimed in with, “Nobody from <organization that Pete works for> knows how to write any code!” Then an awkward pause came followed by him timidly saying, “Uh, are any of those guys on the call?”

Turn around what could be an awkward moment

Now, my initial reaction was to completely jump down Ewan’s throat. It was bad enough that he’d insulted the entire organization of people I work regularly with, but he did it in front of a pretty wide cross section of people throughout the company. He’d impinged on the reputation of a lot of people and he deserved to hear about it.

But as I took myself off mute to fill the uncomfortable silence that filled the conference line, I realized that if I reacted how I wanted to I risked looking like an even bigger jerk myself. So I went the other way.

“I think what you meant to say,” I said calmly, “is that nobody from <organization that Pete works for> knows how to write any code . . . . except for Pete.”

That got a big laugh from everyone on the phone and completely diffused the tension that the Ewan’s comment created. Immediately after the meeting ended, Ewan called me directly and was incredibly apologetic. He had just come from another rather heated meeting, let his emotions from that call carry over to the next one, and said things he shouldn’t have. Ewan concluded the call by telling me that if there were anything he could do for me, to let him know.

This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship

Fast forward to the end of the summer and I was eligible to move up to the next pay grade in our salary structure. At this particular level, there was a review process I had to go through that included having to secure letters of recommendation from sources beyond the immediate organization I worked for. Much to my delight, Ewan wrote me the best letter I submitted and it made a huge difference in my getting approved.

Now, a lot of things could have gone wrong here. As our Web 2.0 project went on, Ewan and I developed a great working relationship and he was a big enough person to go out of his way to be nice to me after I let him off the hook for his poor behavior. As it turned out, he’s a good guy who had a bad moment and we have a great relationship now that was sparked by that one uncomfortable incident. A lesser person could have continued to be a jerk and likely not written me the letter of recommendation later.

But, by deflecting the insult, despite that not being my first reaction, I was able to kindle a relationship that I otherwise could not have. That insult got turned into a favor and the payoff was much, much better than getting even would have been.

How about you? Is there a time where you were able to take an awkward or insulting situation and use it to spark a relationship?

About the Author:
Between creating one of the first web applications ever built within Hewlett-Packard during the mid 1990’s and reaching his current position as HP.com’s Chief Architect, Pete Johnson has worked with over 400 engineers all over the world, written technical articles for publications, and presented at trade shows. He blogs about how improved non-technical skills can accelerate technical careers at http://blog.nerdguru.net.

Jonathan Lane worked side contract jobs as a web developer until he grew his business enough to freelance full-time. Then he moved to Mayne Island, a small island off of Canada’s west coast, a place he had visited as a child. Now he takes on diversified projects including web design and development, e-commerce, and textbook co-authoring.

Jonathan’s personal web site is located at www.flyingtroll.com and his business site is www.industryinteractive.net.

Describe your job/career/business

I do a bunch of things. I’m a strong believer in “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”, so I do some web design and development work for clients, I’m starting up an e-Commerce site, developing a “Web 2.0 app”, and starting up a locally targeted online/offline combo service. I’m also in the process of doing a graduate degree, co-authoring a textbook, and contributing a series of articles on web development.

How has the web changed your working life?

The web is the only professional life I’ve ever known. After I graduated with my Bachelor’s degree, I went to work as an “in-house” web developer for a small University in Canada. I did that for ten years, and did web development contract work on the side, until business grew enough for me to escape the 9 to 5, uproot, and move to a tiny little island off of Canada’s west coast (Mayne Island). I’ve lucked out, because where I’m living there’s cable Internet, whereas other parts of the island are stuck on dial-up.

It’s funny, when I first visited this island back when I was a kid, I thought at that point that it would be great to someday be able to live out here and work out of my home. Now I’m literally living my dream. Without the web, my industry wouldn’t exist, and I would probably still be living in a city somewhere.

Describe your working situation

I work at home with a pair of young kids running around the house (1 and 3). It’s tough some days, my wife and I have a schedule that we run daily with the kids so that I get about 6 hours of working time each day. It’s hard when you hear the kids yelling (even with the door closed, and headphones on). Sometimes I’ve got the flexibility to just say “forget this” and go be a dad, and sometimes I just have to turn up the volume on iTunes.

Occasionally, the office is the deck outside overlooking the ocean, or the back deck out in old growth temperate rain forest. It’s a big switch from the office with no opening windows that I inhabited for too long.

What are the key web and desktop tools you use?

For development work, I’m in the process of transitioning off of the big, expensive software (Photoshop, Dreamweaver) and trying out some alternatives like Coda, Textmate and Pixelmator. I can’t live without Adium to soften the isolation, and Gmail is my main depot for email. I just picked up an iPhone which has saved me a couple of times already. We had a big storm a few weeks ago that knocked out power for 3 days. I was able to fire off an e-mail to my clients letting them know that I’d be difficult to get in touch with.

I’ve developed a new love for Apple’s iWork applications because they produce great looking results with really little effort. I’m a big fan of using simple tools for my own purposes — my company web site is just a WordPress installation, somewhat customized. Flickr keeps the extended family happy as I post photos there somewhat regularly.

Blinksale is the best of invoicing clients. I’ve been using it since shortly after they launched.

Describe your productivity system

I was a big Highrise user, I kept just about everything in there, until recently when I decided to try to cut my monthly operating budget. The monthly subscription was an easy target, as I’ve never been able to get Highrise to fit perfectly into my workflow (it always felt like a chore keeping it updated). I’ve opted for OmniFocus from the OmniGroup for keeping track of to do stuff, and use iCal for tracking time-sensitive stuff.

Share your top tip for success as a web worker

I was scared to death of losing the my regular monthly paycheck. While I was miserable in my last job (near the end), I kept having visions of my family living under a bridge. It you hate where you are right now, take the plunge. It’s amazing how little you can live off of, and how well you can do once you have so much flexibility with your time.

Chuck Brotman is the Director of Sales Engineering for ON24, a webcasting and rich media marketing company based in San Francisco. He’s seen the web impact the sales organization in terms of convenience, speed and productivity.

Describe your job/career/business

I work as the director of sales engineering at ON24, a webcasting and rich media marketing solutions company. My responsibilities include running our proof-of-concept program, prototyping and building custom demonstrations for prospects and channel partners, and managing RFP and RFI responses. I also work as a liaison between sales and product management/engineering.

How has the web changed your working life?

How hasn’t it? My entire career path has followed the growth of Web-based applications that have changed the B2B sales landscape.

Describe your working situation

My office cube is near a window in our offices located on 4th and Market Streets in downtown San Francisco. This means I get some light, but even more street noise and music. So I often like working from home when the opportunity permits.

What are the key web and desktop tools you use?

Google desktop search is a wonderful application for retrieving bits of information I need quickly. Tinyurl is useful for creating readable URLs on the fly. I also do a lot with Photoshop, and my company’s web-based application for pre-sales purposes.

Describe your productivity system

I use Microsoft Outlook calendar as my primary tool for making and managing appointments, reminders and goals.

Share your top tip for success as a web worker

If you’re in sales, get a wireless headset. This allows me to take breaks during lengthy calls. Nothing is more important than getting up and walking around frequently when you’re in front of a PC all day.

As Chuck shows, working from a cubicle is no barrier to seeing your work life revolutionized by the web. How has the web changed your working life? Share your web workstyle with WWD readers by submitting a field report.

Lea Woodward, profiled in a recent WWD Field Report, suggested this open thread topic to start off the week:

One of the benefits of being a web worker – whether you work for yourself or for a company – is usually the autonomy to work without having an over-bearing boss breathing over your shoulder.

But it also means you have to be your own boss – and an effective one at that. If you’ve never had the good fortune to work for a good boss, then here are some of the things they can be good at…

• Giving you objective and constructive feedback on your work and performance.
• Setting performance goals and targets that stretch your capabilities and help you improve.
• Providing mentorship, career guidance and helping you manage your long term career.
• Giving you cover, taking the flak and enabling you to concentrate on getting things done.
• Talking over difficult decisions to give you a different perspective and help you see the bigger picture.

As a web worker, who gives you objective feedback? Who helps you raise your game? Do you seek out mentors and take an active role in planning your future career? Who can you turn to when you need to make a difficult decision and get an alternative perspective?

Just how effective are you at being your own boss?

Joshua Porter runs a design and consulting company that focuses on designing social web applications. He left full-time employment this summer to found Bokardo Design and now works out of his home office. Josh blogs at Bokardo.

Describe your job/career

In August of this year I founded a design and consulting company called Bokardo Design. I focus exclusively on designing social web applications doing interface design, evaluation, and strategic consulting. The types of problems I help clients with are things like:

1) “we launched our web app and nobody is using it” 2) “we see the promise of social features, but don’t know where to start”. 3) “we have a great feature set but are having trouble generating interest and motivation”

So, basically, I’m a social psychologist in designer clothing. :)

Describe your working situation

I work in my home office. It’s on the 3rd floor of our house, with our living quarters on the 2nd floor and an apartment that we rent out on the first. Thankfully, I have the ability to get the entire floor to myself during the work day, which helps cut down on distractions. Before I moved upstairs my 20 month old would constantly want to know what’s going on, and as much as I love her curiosity and enjoy seeing her it really wasn’t good for work. So I’ll go downstairs every hour or so and play with her. No matter what is going bad in the world, she makes it instantly alright.

I’m also starting to work at the library some half-days. This helps me get more exercise (a hard problem) and breaks up the day into 2 chunks. I find that just the act of walking downtown every day helps to keep my attitude more positive, as I’m seeing lots more people and participating in the community. This seems like something that lots of independent folks deal with, the loneliness of working by yourself. But I’ve found that simply getting out regularly helps a lot.

What are the key web and desktop tools you use?

I use a Mac, and live in the old standbys: Mail, Firefox, iCal, iTunes

I’m using Twitter all the time to stay loosely connected with people like me. It’s been a really big deal now that I think about it…just to see that other people are in the same boat that I am…working indepedently and remotely. Twitterrific is my desktop Twitter client of choice.

I use Google Reader and Google Docs, of course.

I use Dreamweaver and Fireworks religiously. Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, of course.

Twitter, Skype, and Adium

Writeroom for text. I find its super simplicity as the best text editor out there.

WordPress! I’ve been using wordpress for a few years, and it’s what I publish my blog with. Indispensable.

MS Word for interop with clients (less and less all the time) who use it.

Parallels for testing interfaces on windows-based browsers

I have a Highrise account but have found that it’s not quite what I need. It’s close, but not quite. So my client relationship software is an amalgamation of all of the above.

Describe your productivity system

Well, I manage my email according to how things need to be done. If there’s stuff in my inbox, then I need to attend to it at some point. It grows during the week but hopefully I can get to email zero by the end of it. I have tried GTD and other “all or nothing” type systems, but those don’t work for me. I find that I have spurts of efficiency, creativity, and productivity, and that trying to be those things all the time just doesn’t work for me. Some days I’ll get very little done, while the next I’ll be in super-efficient form. It’s a crapshoot, really. So I’m all over the place productivity-wise.

What advice do you have for people wanting to succeed in the profession or business you’re in?

Four things:

1) Passion. You have to love what you’re doing. If you don’t love what you’re doing, stop immediately and find something that you do love. This makes all the difference in the world. I know too many people doing work that they don’t love. Sure, you can be successful at it, but success is no substitute for happiness.

2) Differentiation. The more I focus on a particular field or topic, the more success I have. When I decided to focus on social design, there were very few people talking about it. Now, with MySpace and Facebook in the news *every* day, there’s a tremendous amount of talk.

3) Build a foundation. Success doesn’t happen overnight, so don’t get discouraged by bumps in the road. Stick to what you love, and chances are there just aren’t that many others who will stick to it as long as you do. There are tons of other folks talking about my topic of interest, social design, but few of them will be there in a year. I will, and I’ll be known for it in part as a result of simply sticking around long enough and being part of the conversation.

4) Actions, not words. This one has been tough for me because I love a good debate as well as the next guy. But refrain from entering frivolous debates, unless part of your business depends on it. For example, I’m a blogger and a consultant, so it makes sense for me to join conversations and talk about design *some* of the time. But if I wasn’t actually *doing* design, my ability to talk about it coherently would soon dissolve. So make sure you’re practicing what you’re preaching, and not just being a critic.

What would you do differently if you had the chance?

I would have started out on my own much earlier, like *before* I met my wife. When you have a family to support, the window of opportunity for going out on your own feels a lot smaller because you need a steady (higher) income. When you have a steady income, the tendency to keep it and the comfort it brings is a huge deterrent to any risky move. I wrestled with this for *years*.

I’m not sure if I would have gone out on my own without the support of my wife. She knew that it was best for me in the long run…it just took a lot of time for both of us to come to that conclusion. And now that I’ve done it, I’m happier *and* just as successful.

If you want to share how you use the web to work better, submit a field report. Whether you work in an office, cafe, or out of your house, we want to hear from you.

By Chris Poteet

Everyone, especially computer people, love lists of resources. I do as well, and I decided it’s time to share many of the resources that have helped me in my career. All of these resources (except for the print books) are either freeware, open source, or the application offers a free version.

Firefox

• Firebug – Essential tool for CSS/JavaScript debugging.
• YSlow – Firebug add-on to help determine performance bottlenecks.
• Web Developer Toolbar – Provides tools to compliment Firebug.
• Fireftp – The best FTP client and in a browser no less!
• Dust-Me Selectors – Scans the page against your current style sheet to determine extraneous styles.
• Server Spy – See the server technology for current page.
• Colorzilla – Awesome color picker.
• HTML Validator – Validate pages and clean them with this tool.
• IE Tab – View pages in IE inside Firefox.
• Selenium IDE – Record and playback end-user testing.
• X-Ray – Bookmarklet to examine elements in DOM.

Web Worker Applications

• Box.net – Backup your files with this tremendous tool.
• Harvest – Time tracking utility.
• Jott – Record messages from your phone and add them to various applications.
• Gliffy – MS Visio replacement for diagramming.
• Yugma – Free video conferencing.
• 101 Essential Freelancing Resources – Need more than we’ve got here?

Print Books

• Designing with Web Standards – A great introduction to web standards design by Jeffrey Zeldman.
• CSS: A Definitive Guide – Eric Meyer’s magnum opus on CSS.
• Don’t Make Me Think! – The acclaimed introduction to usability.
• Codin’ For the Web – Great book to teach application development to designers.
• Web Design in a Nutshell – Invaluable desktop reference.

Online Books

• Version Control with Subversion – Introduction to the precepts of Subversion.
• Getting Real – 37 Signals famous work on design.
• O’Reilly Library – Various O’Reilly books you can read online.
• The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web

Tutorials

• W3Schools.com – XHTML, CSS, PHP, SQL, XML, etc.
• Good Tutorials – Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator, PHP, HTML, etc.
• PHP for the Absolute Beginner
• ASP.NET 2.0 Quickstart Tutorial
• Learn CSS Positioning in 10 Easy Steps

Editors

• CSS Vista = Neat CSS editor.
• PSPad – Simple, fast editor that I used for a long time.
• Aptana – Editor built on Eclipse that, I think, is the best out there.
• Microsoft Visual Web Developer – Free MS editor to create ASP.NET applications.
• SQLYog – GUI interface to MySQL.
• SQL Server Management Studio Express – The free edition of the GUI to SQL Server.

Templates

• Open Source Web Design
• Themebot – Themes for Drupal, WordPress, Joomla, and phpBB among others.
• Open Web Design
• The Open Design Community
• The CSS Tinderbox – CSS layouts.
• Little Boxes – CSS layouts.

Project Management/Version Control

• Assembla – Free TRAC/Subversion workspaces.
• TRAC – Slim, extensible SDLC tool.
• Subversion – The great open source source control.
• TortoiseSVN – GUI interface into Subversion via Windows shell.
• AnkhSVN – Browse Subversion repositories inside Visual Studio.

Testing/Validators

• UITest.com
• The Scrutinizer – SEO validators and analysis.
• Test Everything!
• Web Site Tools
• WAMP - Apache, MySQL, and PHP on Windows

Application Comparison

• Wiki Matrix – Compare wiki applications.
• Forum Matrix – Compare forum applications.
• WebBlog Matrix – Compare blog applications.
• The CMS Matrix – Compare CMS applications.
• OpenSourceCMS – Demo various CMS’.

Web Designer Blogs/News Aggregation

• Design Float – Digg style site for designers.
• Web Developer’s Handbook – More resources then you could ever need.
• CSS Juice – CSS tips and utilities.
• Smashing Magazine – The best resource for resources.
• .net Develop – Cutting-edge articles on web technology best practices.

Chris Poteet is a web application developer under his company name, Siolon.

Stephanie M. Cockerl enjoys the freedom the web allows her to build things fast while keeping an eye on her grandma. She’s a great example of how the web can help you blend the professional and the personal.

Stephanie’s company next STEPH offers services including blog design and development, search engine optimization, and website design, development, and maintenance.

Describe your job/career/business

It depends on the day. Today I’m a freelance web analyst and SEM specialist. Another day, I’m a blog consultant or a SEO manager.

How has the web changed your working life?

The web has changed my working life because it doesn’t take as long to build a website, as opposed to a building (I studied architecture in college). It also allows me the flexibility to keep an eye on my grandmother.

Describe your working situation

Home most of the time, on-site office one day a week and my Grandma’s kitchen table at times. If I have to contact someone, I ask Grandma if I can make a call on her line if its local; if it’s not, I use my Treo.

What are the key web and desktop tools you use?

Gmail, Google Calendar, BaseCamp

Describe your productivity system

My to do list is on my Treo. I also write reminders and ideas while I’m commuting.

Share your top tip for success as a web worker

I always tell people there is always a method behind my madness. Find your own method and make it work for you.

You can read more about Stephanie on her blog. Thanks for the field report, Steph!

Do you want to share how you use the web to work better? Whether you’re an office worker, a freelancer, or an entrepreneur, we want to hear from you. Send in your field report today.

Alex Harris of Alex Designs runs a 100%-online web consulting and design business.

Describe your job/career/business

Interactive creative director managing an agency (AlexDesigns.com) that is focused on Web Based Customer Acquisition and Conversion of eCommerce, Lead Generation and Traffic Building. Our team delivers effective creative that is tested to improve customer acquisition and increase retention while decreasing advertising costs and improving (long/short term) ROI.

How has the web changed your working life?

Alex Designs LLC is a 100% online business. I never travel to visit clients or give demos and we have client around the world. We don’t even have an office. All of my designers and developers are in different states. Plus, I have never met 99% of my clients. This cuts my overhead costs and streamlines everything into a nice productive system. We use web based SAS programs for accounting, project management and CRM. Everything is web based. Now we even work from our iPhones.

Describe your working situation

I work from home and so do the people who work for me. Every once in a while, I will go to a book store or cafe to change up the atmosphere. We create our own hours and work is part of our lifestyle. So some weeks it may be 3 days a week, while others it is 6 days a week.

What are the key web and desktop tools you use?
#1 – Gmail
#2 – Firefox
#3 – Dreamweaver
#4 – Photoshop
#5 – NetSuite (ecommerce, project mgt, crm and account)
#6 – EFax

Describe your productivity system (to do list, goal setting, reminders, etc.)

We have tried several different ways to keep all of our projects in sync, using different project management tools, invoicing tools and to-do list tools. The bottom line is: we use Gmail. Gmail has totally transformed how we organize projects, clients information and other relationships. It’s a pretty simple and very easy to find previous projects with Gmail’s giant storage.

Pre-Project Process: Client visits website and fills out contact form (RFP), client information is automatically entered into CRM (NetSuite), Project Questionnaire and Estimate sent to client via NetSuite and ‘labeled’ in gmail. Client accepts project and invoice is automatically sent from NetSuite requesting deposit payment. Client faxes contract to eFax and is labeled and archived to that client.

Project Completion Process: New project is sent using Gmail with client and designer labeled. Yea, we use labels a lot. Client then reviews projects and sends back changes in a word doc form. We upload the word document to Google shared documents (designer and clients make changes there) and that is our to-do list in each phase. Client approves project and Gmail delivered the files in .zip format. Project marked as complete and the NetSuite will then send the final invoice.

Share your top tip for success as a web worker

Everyone has their own way to work, so there is no need to micromanage employees, as long as deadlines are completed, our virtual workers can use their own system or the one we use. It is tough to find reliable people you can trust, so when you find the right fit for your company treat them well. I never say my employees work for me; they work with me. We trust each other, work hard and play hard. Business and client management can be tough, so my best advice is to learn from each project and learn from your mistakes. Never repeat a bad habit in your business process.

If you want to share how you use the web to work effectively and successfully, send your field report to tips@webworkerdaily.com.

By Alistair Croll

The $1.3B bulk mailing industry suffers from channel conflicts and a conflicted triumvirate of “white label” mailing services, web designers, and campaign clients. Today’s web designers can’t build truly custom front-ends for their clients or add features (such as Google Earth mappings of campaign progress.)

Montreal startup incubator The Code Kitchen launched a new bulk mailing platform, Cakemail, to try and address this. Cakemail aims to let web designers and agencies build their own mailing service front-ends, without the heavy lifting of running the platform themselves.

To achieve this, the company has separated the entire UI from the back-end platform. This means that rather than going through a retail mailing list manager, agencies can custom-build list management tools for their clients.

To understand Cakemail’s angle, it helps to look at how this works today.

Small- and mid-sized Web design agencies follow a pretty familiar model. Web designers offer packages to their clients that include not only site creation, but also hosting and monitoring. Usually, this is done by white-labelling the offerings of a managed hosting company. The designer focuses on design, and the web hosting firm deals with operating the site.

Now switch to e-mail. In the early days, there were three players involved: The Client, who managed the campaign; the Designer, who built the mail; and the Mailing Service, who sent the mails and dealt with opt-out management, bounce rates, and so on.

There are lots of mailing services that started with this traditional model, such as Constant Contact, Exact Target, and GOT.

Having clients, designers, and mailers all involved had a downside. Mails tended to look the same. In response to this, many of the mailing companies released higher-end services that allowed greater customization. But this wasn’t the root of the problem.

There are thousands of independent web designers who want to be a one-stop-shop for their clients. They started to offer mailing and campaign management services for their clients, since campaigns required design and customers wound up on the website anyway.

As with managed hosting, running campaigns became a marked-up source of revenue. But with clients able to buy directly from the Mailing Services, it was hard for designers to build “custom” interfaces for their clients.

Web designers started asking for a mailing platform they could white-label. In other words, something that would allow them to re-sell their newsletter mailing offering to clients and make it look like their own.

Several vendors responded by introducing white-label e-mail newsletter tools (such as campaign management company Freshview’s MailBuild) that let designers build “personalized” mailing list management applications for their clients.

This is where Cakemail comes in.

The problem — as Cakemail sees it — is that these offerings are simply the same interface, skinned for each client. There’s no room for innovation. What if, for example, you want to extend the client interface with a Google Earth mash-up that shows where campaign recipients live? Unless the white-label portal has that feature, you’re stuck.

CakeMail addresses this by completely separating the back-end mailing list platform from the front-end user interface. In fact, they publish their PHP-based interface code, which runs separately from the back-end. Designers are free to modify it completely — or even write an entirely new one in Java, Ruby, or whatever they choose.

Another advantage of this separation of UI from platform is globalization. The company claims that by using a similar model to WordPress, translation and localization of their application is far easier, with several foreign-language versions already underway by clients.

CakeMail runs the back-end and publishes the API. They’re betting that the innovation of an open front-end will generate new features quickly, and give web designers much more control over the mailing list and campaign management offerings they create for their clients.

Alistair Croll is a co-founder of Coradiant. He writes about online user performance on Coradiant’s corporate blog and tries to out-guess the future at bitcurrent.com

By Chris Poteet

As a web developer how we retain, organize, and use information is a high priority. One web application that has revolutionized the way I retain information is del.icio.us.

I originally used it just to save the occasional link. I realized that it’s much more than that.

Here are a few power tips to make the most of the social bookmarking application.

Tag, Tag, and Tag Some More. Tagging your links is one of the most important things you can do. Tagging gives semantic value to your bookmarks, and it also helps make retrieving your bookmarks a painless process. Remember to use tags that are as specific as possible. If you wanted to tag Web Worker Daily you would do well to use: freelancing, tutorials, webdesign, contracting, and collaboration. All of those tags associate the site with its content and make it easily retrievable.

Power Tip: Create a “review” tag so information doesn’t get lost in the shuffle, and be sure to occasionally review those links.

Bundle Your Tags. One feature I see a lot of del.icio.us users missing out on is bundling tags. It helps to provide taxonomy to your folksonomy. I find it invaluable to see the semantic relationship between the tags at a glance.

Power Tip: Don’t use more than a handful of bundles, and try to keep a 1-1 bundle/tag arrangement.

Use the Browser Add-on. Del.icio.us has official browser add-ons for both Internet Explorer and Firefox, or you can use their bookmarklets. This is a great way to instantly add your bookmarks while getting tag suggestions (preventing using both “plugin” and “plugins” as tags), suggested tags from other users, and you can easily search and organize your bookmarks inside a browser sidebar.

Power Tip: If you have more than one del.icio.us account (like I do) then login to each on in each browser, or you can download another add-on for the same browser.

Prune the Plant. For those in horticulture, you know that you have to prune the dead twigs of the plant so the living twigs can flourish. This also applies to knowledge management. Take a few moments to review your links occasionally to ensure that they are still relevant. You can add more tags as time goes on to improve organization.

Power Tip: You can also use the Fresh del.icio.us application to check for broken links in your repository.

Build Your Network. Although del.icio.us isn’t primarily aimed at social networking, it does help a lot to learn of other sites by “connecting” with other del.icio.us users that share your interests. You can also share links with other users with the for:[username] tag. I put all my RSS feeds together from the site using Yahoo! Pipes, and you can use it as a model to build a single feed.

Power Tip: Be prudent in the amount of RSS feeds you subscribe to so as to avoid RSS overload.

Use Subscriptions to Find More Links. You can also subscribe at a tag level and see when anyone adds that tag to a bookmark. It’s a great way to see how the community is using content you’re interested in.

Power Tip: Subscribing to one tag can get overwhelming so try and combine them to narrow your results (i.e. design+css).

Some Final Tips

When you search for tags you can narrow down tags by using the “+” sign. For instance, search your bookmarks for freelance+webdesign and find your link to Web Worker Daily.

Check out the absolutely del.icio.us collection for more application built on the del.icio.us API.

Share your links on your blog using a plugin such as these for WordPress, and/or you can set up del.icio.us to post links to your blog as posts through the del.icio.us admin panel.

Chris Poteet is a web application developer under his company name, Siolon. Add him to your del.icio.us network here.