Web Worker Daily

While I’ve noted the advanced Twitter search operators in the past, but wanted to spend some quality time looking at them in more detail. The standard AND/OR operators are useful, but aren’t all that interesting. Below is a look at the standard operators, with a focus on uses for some very interesting operators that let you filter searches based on location, attitude, posts with links, dates and more, along with some limitations and cautions for each one.

Keep in mind that most of these same search queries work equally well in Twitter search and various other applications, like TweetDeck and Monitter. Spend some time in the Twitter search refining your results using the operators discussed below, and then take advantage of those advanced queries in your other monitoring applications. Read the rest of this entry »

I spend many of my working days (and nights) switching between Windows and Mac machines. Having my project notes available across all my machines is very important, making Evernote one of my most-used applications.

You can now use Evernote Web to collaborate on your notes using the new Shared Notebooks feature. This new feature opens up some new options for web workers who are collaborating with business partners and clients, and for employers who want a central repository for project notes and ideas that is accessible to every project member regardless of their location.

Read the rest of this entry »

When it comes to promotion, the two biggest problems for most small business owners are effective planning and maintaining a consistent marketing effort. After what seems like a lot of effort attempting to drum up new business, it’s easy to get discouraged when you aren’t seeing results. But with the right lead generation plan and some helpful tools, you’ll find your efforts will pay dividends.

Set Up Your Plan

First, you have to take the time to carefully consider your options for marketing and promoting your business, rather than just taking a scattergun approach. Read the rest of this entry »

Having studied branding very briefly in another life, I was curious about “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Branding Yourself,” by Sherry Beck Paprocki and Ray Paprocki. How would product and service brand theory be translated to the branding of people? And could a book set an ordinary human being on the path to being the next Steve Irwin/Oprah/Paris Hilton?

Despite that brief brush with brand theory years ago, I consider myself a personal branding novice, so I came to the book with an open mind. In terms of structure and coverage, it seemed well planned and comprehensive. It’s broken into four parts: “What is branding?”, “Launching your personal brand”, “Branding in the modern world” and “Brand extension and evolution.” So far, so good. There are 20 chapters in a total of 228 pages, so it’s obvious that they’re going to be pretty easy to get through.

Can you sense a “but” coming? Well, here it is.

Read the rest of this entry »

I have a singletasking tip for you, and it’s an important one: Work like you’re on vacation. Before you type up the smart-aleck response, “You mean don’t work at all?” let me explain. I mean work like you’re taking a working vacation. If you’re a full-time remote worker, you probably know the kind of focused working vacation I mean. Sometimes, you can pull one off without your employer even being aware that you’ve taken a vacation at all, if you’re experienced in the art.

The key to a successful working holiday? Good time management and prioritization skills. Having fun and distracting things, settings and activities all around you has a way of throwing what needs doing and what can be put off into sharp relief. The result, for me at least, is a kind of highly motivated tunnel vision that has me blowing through high-priority tasks in half the time I would normally take.

Since you’re not actually always on vacation, how do you replicate the effect in order to trigger task triage? The solution is to bring back the motivation, if not the exotic locales. Read the rest of this entry »

Blackberry Pearl Flip

Editor’s note: With this post we welcome Rachel Murray to the WebWorkerDaily team. Rachel has been building web sites for more than 10 years, and currently manages the online presence of a nonprofit in the Boston area.

I’ve only made the transition from a “regular” mobile phone to a smartphone recently. I had been able to hold off up until now, but then the trusty Razr that I had for three glorious years just gave up on me. After a heart-to-heart with the sales rep at T-Mobile, “we” agreed that perhaps I should try the BlackBerry Pearl Flip for the new contract price of $50 (as opposed to the Razr for $20). I didn’t want to be a slave to yet another device, but he showed it to me, and it actually looked like a regular phone. Read the rest of this entry »

I have definite workaholic tendencies that are starting to induce productivity-draining burnout. In addition to my freelance consulting practice, I am usually balancing a number of side projects, working on the board of a non-profit that I helped co-found, and attending various events around Portland to keep in touch with my freelancer peers and learn about new technologies. This isn’t the first time, I’ve had to deal with burnout. It usually creeps in slowly, and before I realize it, my work and technology hobbies have pushed everything else to the back burner. The feeling of burnout leaves me tired, stressed and less productive, so it’s time again for me to re-prioritize and take control to get my productivity back. Read the rest of this entry »

In the past I’ve been known to speak rashly. I actually declared the BlackBerry the victor in matters of mobile device web working, but a recent development in the iPhone world has me wanting to recant. Those of you familiar with my Apple  leanings will no doubt utter, “Hmph. Figures,” and wash your hands of me, but I beg you to bear with me and learn the reason for my latest team change.

iPhone OS 3.0 brings a lot of new features to the table, but I could’ve easily gone on living without all of them, copy and paste included, except for push notifications. Push is the killer feature that elevates the iPhone platform to a whole new level of usability, both as a standalone device, and as a piece of companion hardware to your existing workstation setup.

The iPhone has taken the place of an entire screen in my current home office configuration, freeing up a whole display for more productive use. Here’s a breakdown of the apps that make this possible, and how I use them. Read the rest of this entry »