Sleepless nights, it seems, are becoming a regular gig. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, about 60 million Americans suffer from insomnia each year. And such sleeplessness can have a devastating impact on our productivity.

Brent Scott, who headed up a sleep research project at the University of Florida, found that a poor night of sleep can actually impact how satisfied workers are with their jobs. And a poll by the National Sleep Foundation concluded that 40 percent of Americans are sleeping fewer than seven hours a night during the workweek. In addition, 75 percent of those surveyed reported problems sleeping a few nights a week, often resulting in missed workdays and errors on the job, among other things.

All this lack of zzzzs will be on the minds of scientists, psychologists and sleep experts this week, as it’s National Sleep Awareness Week, an annual public education and awareness campaign from the National Sleep Foundation that runs through March 13th and coincides with the release of its yearly report on sleep. Last year’s poll results showed that 30 percent of Americans were losing sleep over the U.S. economy.

This year, the report focuses on sleep and ethnicity in America, exploring the significant differences among the sleep habits and attitudes of Asians, Blacks/African-Americans, Hispanics and Whites. It’s the organization’s first poll dedicated to exploring the sleep practices of different ethnic groups; to that end it aimed to answer the following questions:

• Do different ethnic groups sleep differently?
• Do attitudes about sleep vary among African-Americans, Whites, Hispanics and Asian-Americans?
• Do work schedules and finances impact sleep equally in all groups?
• Do sleep habits affect marital satisfaction or job performance?

“The Sleep in America™ poll is a springboard for research,” says Thomas Balkin, Ph.D., Chairman of the National Sleep Foundation. “This year’s poll, in particular, will provide compelling insights into our current beliefs and behaviors regarding sleep, health and well-being.”

As for what a sleep-deprived individual can do, many of the tried and true sleep solutions offered by such organizations as the National Sleep Foundation seem to be just what the doctor ordered for a good night’s rest.

According to the experts, here are five ways you can perk up your productivity by getting a good night’s sleep.

1. Go to sleep the same time every night. Having an established routine of going to bed and waking up at the same time each day helps your body set a natural alarm clock for falling asleep.
2. Sleep in the dark. Nightlights, open curtains, bright blue alarm screens and even laptop lights can keep you up. Your body has the best chance of getting and staying asleep in relatively total darkness.
3. Don’t drink before bed. Drinking caffeinated coffee, tea or soft drinks late in the day can cause a delay in getting to sleep.
4. Avoid certain foods after 8 p.m. Stay away from sugary foods later in the evening and, instead, try foods that have the amino acid tryptophan in them, such as bananas, sunflower seeds and low-fat yogurt.
5. Try a little white noise or waterfalls. Many people find the sound of nature (waves lapping, birds singing, rain falling) a soothing way to fall asleep. White noise has also been known to lull many a cranky web worker into a restful state.

While the gremlins of your problems may have you tossing and turning from time to time, regular sound sleep can often be achieved by developing good habits both in and out of bed. Tonight, turn off the TV, grab yourself a glass of warm milk, listen to a soothing CD, close the curtains and get yourself a good night’s rest.

Share your tips for getting a better night’s sleep below.

Photo by Flickr user kaibara87, licensed under CC BY 2.0

There are many tools that will send a feed into Twitter, usually with the title of a post followed by a short URL. A short description is optional as is adding a few words as a preface to the tweet. I see this kind of automation as laying a nice foundation to a Twitter stream.

I’ve been using Twitterfeed to handle integrating my blog and podcast feeds into my Twitter stream, but I recently learned about competing service dlvr.it and was given a demo of the app the other day. First impressions? I like it, and here’s why.

Routes. Twitterfeed lets you take a single feed source and publish it to multiple destinations, so my Dashboard ends up listing each feed and then all the destinations where they publish. dlvr.it takes a different approach by letting you set up “routes” starting with multiple sources and ending up in multiple destinations. Suddenly, you’re not thinking in terms of “this feed goes to these places and then this feed goes to these places.” Instead, the thought process is “here are all these different feeds that I’d like to go to this destination or these destinations.” It’s the groupings of feeds that matter.

For example, I want all the feeds from my blog posts and podcasts each week to go to the Twitter account I set up for them (@alizamedia). With Twitterfeed, I have to set up each feed, one at a time, and then choose @alizamedia as the destination account. With dlvr.it, I can choose 10 different feeds as the sources and feed them to @alizamedia as one route. I could also feed my blog posts geared toward working moms into my motherhood-oriented Twitter account, so I’m pulling content from multiple sources in one fell swoop.

Stats. How you group and send feeds is just the tip of the iceberg with dlvr.it, though. You get stats, too. You can see the number of clicks, posts and clicks per post for each of your routes. Then you can see trends graphs for click volume and another for posts volume. You can also check out activity, and see which post got how many clicks per day.

Under the “Social” category for stats, you can see the number of followers who shared a dlvr.it link from your Twitterstream into theirs i.e. retweeted it, but dlvr.it also calculates what it calls your “Direct Reach” and “Extended Reach.” Here’s how it defines those terms:

Direct Reach: Direct Reach looks for the dlvr.it short url generated that was posted to your stream, then counts any of your dlvr.it short urls that are outside of your stream plus the number of followers of anyone who retweeted your link. So Direct Reach is the number of people who have seen your content via other sources that have retweeted your dlvr.it short URL.

Extended Reach: In calculating extended reach, it looks for any use of your content item’s long URL. This is a great number to have, because it doesn’t matter if the URL to your content was shortened by dlvr.it or any other URL-shortening service, or was used in its original form. Each time dlvr.it finds a link somewhere to your content, it then calculates the follower count of the person who posted the link and adds it to the total, giving you a pretty good idea of how far reaching your content is.

I’m not much of a stats and numbers geek, but these numbers are actually interesting to me; I haven’t seen this kind of calculation to not only show how many people have retweeted you but the number of people who have seen your content before. I’m all for apps that build in robust and useful statistics in addition to providing valuable functionality.

dlvr.it has a number of other features such as the ability to post directly from dlvr.it, being able to add hashtags as well as a front-end message to tweets generated by the service, being able to filter feeds so only posts with certain keywords hit your Twitterstream, as well as setting feed pull frequency, maximum number of new items, and daily post limits. Many of these features can be found on services like Twitterfeed, too, but one that I didn’t recognize from elsewhere is the ability to “trickle” content over time into your stream, and in an upcoming version of dlvr.it, you’ll be able to set the frequency that content is trickled into your stream.

How do you deliver content from other content sources into your Twitter stream?

Related GigaOM Pro Research: Report: The Real-Time Enterprise

WiFi takeoff will encourage additional investment in this technology, which is cheap to roll out, and will tilt the competitive balance back toward fixed. Looking at the broader picture, if a good urban Wi-Fi network is thrown in for free with a fixed network rental, it’s hard at this stage to tell whether this will represent substitutional or additional telecoms spend.

Last week, I asked our readers what they most wanted as a perk from their ISP, and the most popular answer by far was Wi-Fi access while on the go. Wi-Fi access has become popular with users and with certain Internet Services Providers both as a way to reduce the data deluge on wireless networks but also to reduce churn among subscribers, as smartphones with Wi-Fi become more commonplace (see chart). But signing onto Wi-Fi is kind of  a pain for a consumer who may be obliviously surfing along on a 3G network.

So will ISPs take the consumer love of ubiquitous broadband and carriers’ need for offload to the next level and create the equivalent of roaming agreements for Wi-Fi? Greg Williams, the new SVP of corporate development at Bel Air Networks, thinks they might. Williams, a founder of Wayport, the hotspot aggregator purchased in 2008 by AT&T, recently joined BelAir, a company that builds carrier-grade Wi-Fi equipment for customers including Cablevision, Comcast  and AT&T.

He wonders if carriers will negotiate with each other and fixed-line ISPs to get access for their wireless subscribers, especially in congested cities such as New York or San Francisco. I’m kind of skeptical, simply because I think most carriers are not experiencing enough pain to want to cut into their data revenue inside big cities, but it’s an intriguing idea. Regardless, BelAir, Meraki, Tropos and Cisco will all likely continue to benefit from the buildout of carrier-quality Wi-Fi networks.

Another beneficiary of the iPad/Wi-Fi buildout could be the MiFi personal hotspot from Novatel, which offers users a Wi-Fi signal while using the cellular network for backhaul. I have gotten excited about  personal hot spots before, and Sharma namechecks the MiFi in his article as well. Either way, fixed broadband isn’t in danger of being subjugated by fixed-line broadband anytime soon. Few people will dump their wired networks for wireless given the high cost of mobile data. Rather we’ll demand more seamless coverage without caring what technology we’re using or who provides it.

Image courtesy Flickr user Adventures in Librarianship.

1. Lance Armstrong: Be disciplined. No business will succeed without a lot of hard work and discipline. Commit to it. Stick with it. Eventually, you’ll reach your destination.
2. Paula Deen: Be yourself (and be bold about it). You will naturally succeed if you build a base of followers who are naturally attracted to your personality. Don’t worry about being liked by everybody. Just let your own unique personality shine through.
3. Mr. Rogers: Be positive. I can’t imagine making it in business without a whole lot of optimism.
4. Ellen Degeneres: Have fun. The daily grind, even when you work for yourself, can be dull at times. Doing something you love, surrounding yourself with clients and connections that energize you, and taking time to appreciate the good things in life make it all worthwhile, and who doesn’t enjoy a good laugh every once in a while?
5. Bill Cosby: Keep learning. I used to be so intimidated by what I didn’t know. But I’ve come to realize that such a list is endless, so I just continue to work at it, and I learn more and more each day about how to build a successful business.
6. Carol Burnett: Be creative. Sometimes you have to improvise. You figure it out, and you come to enjoy the journey.
7. Oprah: Build a platform. To succeed in business, you have to have a group of people who believe in you, who want to hear what you have to say, and who want to support you in everything you do.
8. Jim Carrey & Steve Carell: Don’t take it all so seriously. You’re going to mess up, and you will look silly on occasion. Learn to be OK with that.
9. Maya Angelou: Be resilient. Things will not always be easy, but if you refuse to give up and keep bouncing back, they manage to work themselves out.

Just like certain words bring to mind certain products or companies, certain celebrities make me think of lessons or traits I hope to apply within my business.

Do any lessons or traits come to mind when you think of certain celebrities?

Image from Flickr by j a r r o d

• Six Revisions: “Collaboration Tips for Designers Working with Developers”
• iA: “What’s Next in Web Design?”
• ReadWriteWeb: “5 Web Apps To Keep Your Startup Organized”
• The Oatmeal: “Ten Things You Need to Stop Tweeting About”
• GigaOM: “How the Internet Changed Writing in the 2000s”
• Harvard Business Review: “Predictions for 2010: Five Changes in the Way We Work”
• jkOnTheRun: “CES Impressions: Tablets, Er Slates, Are Everywhere”

What are you reading this weekend?

While my client and I are still happily using Google Wave for project collaboration, I am seeing more rough gaps — albeit ones within my new technology tolerance as an early adopter — that I would like to see filled in future versions of the product.

Of course, as a technical writer, my Google Wave wish list is very document-centric:

• Table Support. Perhaps it is because I use tables a lot in my technical documentation, but I wish that Google Wave would support tables to the level that Google Docs does. Table support could be supplied natively or through a gadget or extension. The lack of table support in Google Wave is a real disadvantage for those of us who want to collaborate on moderately complex documents via Google Wave.
• Spell Checker. I’d like to see Google Wave include a spell checker in a future release either natively, as an extension, or as a gadget.
• Microsoft Word Compatibility or Integration. My first project with Google Wave started out with my client and I using it to pass Word documents back and forth. Then as our level of comments and opinions on the document and its content grew we tried to work on the drafts natively in Google Wave. My initial cut-and-paste experience from MS Word into Google Wave was not so favorable, because of how Google Wave treated the XML underlying the original Word document. While a better cut-and-paste experience that doesn’t mangle the copy would satisfy me for a bit, my more ambitious wish is a way to upload Word documents directly into the body of a new or existing Wave, so that I and other collaborators could edit and create new text in real-time with Google Wave’s editing tools.
• Document Version Control. While this wish is probably best fulfilled by a Google Wave extension, there needs to be a level of document version control where when if I attach a document to a Wave, it can store multiple versions of the same document, instead of me having to blow away the document each time before I attach a new version of it to my current Wave.
• Email and/or RSS Alerts. A web browser is the first thing I open after I login into my PC in the morning and it the last thing I close out of when I log off for the night. Still I would like to see Google Wave include some type of email and or RSS alerts so that when a Wave changes collaborators would be notified automatically. Email alerts would especially be handy for those times I am on a client site and may not have access to Google Wave because of security restrictions that the organization has in place.
• Access via the Google Mobile App. The Google Mobile App is popular on both the iPhone and BlackBerry. It would be good to see Google Wave access via the app at some point in the future. I am a big proponent of mobile access to collaboration applications. But mobile access to Google Wave — while well done on the Waveboard iPhone application — is much too limited at the current time for teams who need constant access to their collaboration platform in order to stay in sync with project information.

My wish list is drawn from my initial Google Wave experience. What’s on your Google Wave wish list?

We covered the release of the Office 2010 Technical Preview and the Office Web Apps Technical Preview. This beta smooths out some rough edges in the Technical Preview releases and adds some new features:

Changes across all Office applications. Once upon a time in the pre-Internet dark days, Microsoft Office was just four applications, with little integration between them and no consideration of the role the web would play in document authoring, collaboration, and management. In fact, it wasn’t until Office 2003’s integration with SharePoint that Microsoft Office become a full-blown communications and collaboration tool. Now with Office 2010, Microsoft has opened up the suite even further for more sharing of content across applications and there is further integration with SkyDrive. OneNote 2010. With every Microsoft Office release, I’ve noticed the Office development team pay special attention to one or two Office applications — OneNote has gotten a lot attention this time around. Besides joining the full Office suite (instead of being a separate purchase), there are many new improvements to the application (see my post about the OneNote 2010 Technical Preview for more detail).The biggest improvement is Microsoft offering up OneNote as a collaboration platform with its new coauthoring feature. With coauthoring, a project team can share and collaborate on OneNote pages and notebooks. As a longtime OneNote user, I can definitely see myself making use of the coauthoring and collaboration tools when I work on a team standardized on Office 2010.

PowerPoint 2010. PowerPoint 2010 enables you to edit video directly in the application, without the need for a third-party tool. While I am the last to call myself a “video person”, my limited testing of the feature showed it to be fine for video novices but those of you more video literate may find the feature to be a little lightweight. I was also happy to see the capability to put presentations online via SkyDrive or SharePoint 2010.

Outlook 2010. The Outlook beta offers improved conversation management tools, including the capability to ignore redundant email. A noteworthy addition to Outlook 2010 is the Outlook Social Connector (OSC), which appears to be a tool that ties into SharePoint 2010 and aggregates information on any user’s emails, phone conversations, and IM sessions with you, With OSC and its upcoming API development kit, Outlook could finally link directly into major social networks without the need for third-party add-ins (see my previous post entitled “Make Microsoft Outlook More Social”). While I wasn’t able to test out OSC fully, I do plan to keep it on my scope and test it further.

Word 2010. Outside of the suite-wide changes, Word 2010 is still pretty much the same feature-wise as it was in the technical preview.

Excel 2010. I like to leave the heavy spreadsheet work to my accounting-minded friends and colleagues but outside of the suite-wide changes, Excel 2010 is still pretty much the same feature  wise as it was in the technical preview.

Have you tried out the Office 2010 Beta? Share your experience below.

But working from home and having your home repaired can be a chaotic mix. It tends to destroy your routine, concentration and even the quality of your work. So what can we home office workers do to prevent that from happening?

Use noise canceling headphones or other protective gear. This is the most straightforward approach, particularly if noise is your biggest problem. In a previous post, WWD reader Mau recommended the earmuff hearing protectors typically found in shooting ranges. If the noise isn’t too loud, maybe ever a pair of earplugs is enough.

Play some music or other non-distracting background noise. I’ve also tried drowning out the noise with music, preferably something instrumental or with foreign language vocals so that I’m not distracted when I write. If you’re solving the noise issue this way, just stick to whatever kind of music allows you to work. Alternatively, you can play white noise or soothing nature sounds. (Here’s a good collection of nature sounds. The menu on the left also points to ambient sound downloads, including white noise.)

Watch out for more than just the noise. Apart from auditory distractions, there are a lot of other things you need to look out for to stay safe. It may depend on the types of repairs you’re having, but there’s usually a lot of dust particles flying around, especially if you’re working with wood. There may also be materials, tools and other equipment lying around your house during this time.

Change your location. The great thing about being a web worker is that we can take our work with us wherever we go. As much as possible, I would look for a room or area that won’t be repaired for that day. That room then becomes my temporary office.

But sometimes, this approach isn’t enough. If you can leave someone you trust to monitor the repairs, you can work outside your home. This is an important move if you need to be available via voice chatting or conference calls. Just make sure you can be easily contacted if you need to make certain decisions regarding the repairs.

Change your work hours. Another strategy that’s been successful for me is to change my working hours around the repair schedule. I take advantage of the handyman’s rest days by working more hours on those days. Also, during his workdays, I get up very early and start work before he does. Alternatively, you can work during the evenings. Make the effort to do routine home maintenance tasks. It might also help to take preventive measures by performing home maintenance tasks regularly. This may help you spot most potential problems along the way rather than force you to deal with one big problem that requires several noisy days or weeks to fix.

Have you ever worked from home during extensive repairs? What did you to do make sure your work got done despite the distractions?

Image by mihow from sxc.hu

Our impulse is usually to try to do everything. Opportunities present themselves, and we think, “If I turn this away, I may not get another shot. What if there’s nothing else coming down the pike?”

Early on in our careers, especially, it’s tempting to want to take on every job, collaborate with every potential strategic alliance, and never turn down anyone for anything. Sometimes, though, the best option is in the not doing.

But, how do you know when is a good time to hold and when is a good time to fold? Here are a few clues.

1. It’s not your passion. I’ve talked with a lot of successful entrepreneurs, and one common trait among them is that they follow their passion. They know what lights them up and what wears them down, and they stay true to themselves and their mission at all times.
2. Your gut is telling you something. Intuition is often a big influencing factor for successful entrepreneurs and small business owners. If they feel a strong pull one way or another, they learn to trust that instinct, and it rarely leads them astray.
3. It’s not in the plan. Although passion and gut instinct weigh heavily on the decision-making of those who are successful, it’s still important to have a vision and a plan. Goals and intentions should be a driving force behind your daily actions, which will help you stay the course when distractions and obstacles get in your way.
4. It’s draining you. There are clients and tasks that simply don’t match well with your own personality, strengths, weaknesses and working style. Instead of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, accept that (for whatever reason) you just aren’t the right fit for each other and move on.
5. You’re spinning your wheels. There are situations where no matter what you do, you just can’t make it work. For instance, you might have a client who never takes your advice, does things his own way, and then comes back to you to fix it after the fact. It can be frustrating and wastes your valuable time on someone who will probably never change.
6. You’re overextended. The more your business grows, the more selective you have to become with how you spend your time and energy. Although that should be the case from the very start, it’s not until things become increasingly demanding that you begin to feel the crunch and understand the importance of being so selective.
7. You’ve hit a plateau or are floundering. Most successful people know that failed attempts, ruts and slumps are part of the game, but they also know when to say enough. Doing more of the wrong thing isn’t going to make things right, so they learn to ask tough questions and get down to the truth of a situation, rather than have it continually wear away at their energy and progress.
8. You’re being undervalued. There are times when a client or a partner doesn’t acknowledge or appreciate the value you bring to the table, and when that’s the case, you simply have to get out of a toxic relationship. It’s not always easy, but is very necessary for your own success and peace of mind.

In business, there are times when you have to be willing to walk away or risk paying an even bigger price down the line — your success and ultimate satisfaction with your life and work. While it’s not the easiest thing to do, it’s just as important to turn away the wrong opportunities as it is to jump on the right ones. What criteria do you use to weigh prospective opportunities and avoid taking on clients and work that isn’t well-suited for you, or that holds you back from success?

Image from Flickr by Tiago Rïbeiro

So how do you keep from “wasting” time on Twitter? Here’s my advice on how to spend no more than 15 minutes a day on your Twitter account but still reap the rewards, particularly for your work. This is not a good tactic for everyone, but if you or someone you know is very resistant to Twitter and simply needs a manageable plan for tweeting, you can try this at work or home.

First, determine how you’ll most likely access Twitter and interact with others. If you’re old school (like me) and want a large, straightforward interface, use Twitter.com. If you don’t mind downloading, installing and configuring applications on your computer, go for a tool like Tweetdeck or Seesmic Desktop. If you’re always on the go and love typing on your mobile device, try something like Tweetie for the iPhone or TwitterBerry for the BlackBerry.

Now here’s how to spend your time efficiently and effectively on Twitter:

5 Minutes: Listen, Retweet Start by “listening” on Twitter to get a sense of what people you’re following are talking about. Scroll down a page or two’s worth of tweets and skim until you see the ones that grab you. Then retweet them by copying their tweet being careful to give them credit. The tweet could be a compelling quote, a useful tip, or a link to a relevant blog post or article.

There are two “accepted” forms of retweeting, and they both seem to be used almost equally. You can put RT in front of the tweet you’ve copied and cite the originator of the tweet like this:

“RT @kellyecrane Great idea: PR consultants, let’s use the #soloprpro hashtag to share information! http://bit.ly/3wkIZu”

or you can credit them at the end of the tweet like this:

“PR consultants, let’s use the #soloprpro hashtag to share information! http://bit.ly/3wkIZu (via @kellyecrane)”

Personally, I much prefer the RT in front because of too many situations where people misread a retweet as a tweet from a person and confusion ensues. For example, one woman retweeted another who said her daughter was in the hospital and was suddenly barraged with messages ranging from “our prayers are with you” to “I didn’t know you had a daughter.”

Retweeting is a way of not only passing along valuable information but also giving kudos to the person tweeting — both great ways of building your following and strengthening Twitter relationships.

5 Minutes: Listen, Respond Next, listen to see who is speaking about something of interest to you or something you can respond to authoritatively. You should also check who has mentioned you or addressed you in their tweets in your client or by searching for @yourtwittername.

If you find someone tweeting something to you directly, a response is usually expected so reply to them either publicly using @ and their Twitter name, or privately using a direct message (or DM) if you are “friends” with them (meaning you follow them and they follow you back). If you don’t personally know the Twitterer, but you are following them and want to respond to something they’ve said, you can still @ them. While it is perfectly acceptable to @ strangers, be thoughtful about how you address or respond to someone you don’t know.

Here’s an example of a tweet and a response.

“@alizasherman Most of the Seattle neighborhoods have a Twitter account for the neighborhood blog (e.g., @wallyhood for wallyhood.org)”

“@pathable Oh, totally cool. Seattle is so on it! @wallyhood for wallyhood.org? Thanks for the tip.”

5 Minutes: Promote, with Care Let’s face it — many of us are using Twitter to promote who we are, what we’re doing, and even what we’re selling. There is nothing wrong with promotion on Twitter, but do it with context — think about how the information fits into your Twitter persona.

If you’re known as an SEO expert, you can promote your blog posts about search engine optimization. If you’re a finance expert, tweet regular personal finance tips with a link to articles you’ve written. If you’re a marketing expert, go ahead and tweet a link to your helpful marketing podcast each week. If your retail store is having a sale, that could be tweet-worthy to your followers.

Keep in mind that often the most effective self-promotion can happen when you promote others. As you promote your own articles, blog posts, products, etc., don’t hesitate to mention others that you’ve found worthy of promoting. By sharing the spotlight, you generate good will while still demonstrating your expertise.

After 15 minutes, walk away from the computer or shut down your Twitter application. Keeping your Twitter time under control doesn’t only mean having a plan. You have to exercise some self-discipline as well.

How do you keep your Twitter usage under control?

Digital Signatures: The Facts

A digitally signed contract is just as legitimate as one signed by hand in most countries. There is plenty of precedent dating from the time when people were first signing and returning contracts by fax. If you ever need to, you can take someone to court to enforce a contract signed electronically. However, policies on accepting digital signatures can vary from company to company. Where one company will be perfectly comfortable accepting all your paperwork by email, another may want you to fax or mail in signed documents. We’re moving towards being able to do business without hard copies of our documents, but we’re not quite there.

The Strength of a Signature

There are several different ways that you can sign a document electronically. The big difference is in how the signature is verified:

• Your computer: Some software timestamps your signature and records the computer you used.
• Your IP address: Especially common with online services, your signature is recorded along with your IP address
• Public Key Infrastructure: Your signature is verified with a certificate issued by a trusted third party.

There’s a trade-off between the options: It’s harder to verify the first two options than PKI, but it can be difficult for an individual to get the required certificate for PKI. There are some online applications that use their own certificates in order to verify your signature, such as RightSignature. In comparison, Adobe Acrobat Professional allows you to create a digital signature that is verified based on the computer used. It can also use a certificate, but if you do not provide it with one, Adobe Acrobat will rely on your computer for verification.

Choosing a Signature Solution

Assuming that your employer or client doesn’t have an online application or a software package that they’d prefer you to use for your digital signatures, you’ll have to decide which option works best for you. It’s hard to find an option that is free as well as trustworthy. As long as you’re willing to spend a little bit of money, though, you can manage your contracts inexpensively. Personally, since I already have Adobe Acrobat on my computer, I rely on it, although I do not have a certificate to use with the software. While this is considered to be a less secure system than PKI, I haven’t had any problems with any document I’ve signed (even my 1099s). The downside is that Adobe Acrobat does not manage the entire signature process in the way that many online applications can — some will even send out emails reminding people to sign contracts.

What app do you use for digital signatures?

Image by Flickr user jk5854

I recently reviewed Yojimbo 2.0, an excellent information organizer for the Mac that can help keep track of bits of information you might like to use later. But what if you use Windows? One option is iKnow from PpcSoft. It’s a productivity tool that targets information management and productivity. It uses notes that connect automatically to other notes within the application — sort of like your own personal World Wide Web, but residing in the safety and security of your local hard drive. I decided to take the trial version of the Standard Edition of iKnow for a spin.

Inside iKnow Standard Edition

iKnow includes a menu bar that follows Office 2007 menu standards. However, when you open features, the dialog boxes while consistent don’t quite follow the Office 2007 standard.

Create Notes. Creating notes in iKnow is a simple process. By default, iKnow creates notes with current date and time as the title.. I liked the capability of being able to create note templates, as even though the notes in iKnow Standard Edition are in text format, templates can help with formatting and consistency.

Search Notes. The Search Notes feature is also easy to use. However, it’s important to point out that during my testing, I didn’t create the huge number of notes that you’d be likely to generate during use, so I haven’t really put the search feature in this application through its paces.

Link Notes. PpcSoft touts the hyperlinking of notes as one of the application’s strengths. Linking to another note in iKnow is as simple as typing in the full name of the note and hitting return.

User Support. One disappointment I have with iKnow Standard Edition is the lack of online help and/or user documentation. While the application has a Help menu, there is only a sullen attempt at a “Getting Started” multimedia presentation that slogs along with all the grace of a poorly-done PowerPoint slide show, without any significant technical content. Additionally, the “Ask for Help” option is unavailable in my trial version. There are many low cost options today available for online help and user support, and for the application not to provide even a simple help page accessible from the application is a definite strike against it. There is some help content on the web site, but I found no links to it from the application. Some of the dialog boxes also have a help button but the help text is a bit on the light side.

iKnow Availability

iKnow is compatible with Windows XP SP2+, Windows Vista and Windows 7 and available for download from www.ppcsoft.com. It comes in three different versions:

• iKnow Professional Edition ($249.00)
• iKnow Standard Edition ($79.00)
• iKnow Lite (free for personal, non-commercial use)

Final Thoughts

The design of iKnow Standard Edition  is intuitive. However, the application could benefit from losing the multimedia “enhancements” because they hamper application performance in what is otherwise a very usable application. If you are a Windows user seeking a better solution to manage the bits and bytes of important text information you accumulate on your hard drive, I suggest checking out the trial version of iKnow Standard for yourself, because despite some rough edges the application shows signs of promise. Another nice touch is that the “30-day trial” is for thirty days of trying out the product, not thirty calendar days from registering the trial software.

What application(s) are you using to manage information overload on your Windows PC? Have you tried out iKnow Standard Edition?

Even with a schedule meant to let me proceed with a project at a comfortable pace, more immediate concerns can make it much harder to finish a project on time. And if the project is one that you don’t have a client or employer expecting you to finish, sticking to a schedule is just that much harder.

It’s OK to Say No

I think email has doubled the amount of work people ask me to do. When clients had to pick up the phone to ask me to handle some small detail, I think they were a little more reluctant to try to find me and add to my work load. But sending an email is just a matter of a moment and doesn’t require a whole lot of worry on the part of a client or a manager.

With all these little requests piling up in my inbox, it quickly becomes impossible to find time to work on a project not immediately due. But just because those small requests are in my inbox doesn’t mean that I have to take care of them. When possible, I hand them off to someone who is better able to take care of them. I’ve even been known to tell a client that I can’t handle a particular task. It’s important to minimize the number of little items that make it out of your inbox and onto your task list.

Schedule Big Projects First

I’ve been writing e-books on top of my normal work load lately. At first, I had the hardest time just finding a few hours to work on them. I had them on my task list, but they kept getting bumped in favor of closer deadlines — and client work with a more definite payout. Day after day, one of my e-books would be first on my desk, until I glanced through my email and saw some fires that I just had to put out first.

While there’s no easy solution to all those little problems, I found a surprisingly simple way to get my bigger projects done:I worked on them for an hour or two before I opened my email in the morning. Sure, I still had plenty of requests waiting for me when I did get around to my email — but they weren’t distracting me during the time I had allotted to my longer projects. And, amazingly enough, the world didn’t end because I wasn’t able to get to quite every little problem that someone had notified me about.

How do you avoid distractions to focus on your long-term projects?

Image by Flickr user Chris Campbell

RSS Feed Bundles

Google has unveiled a slick way to create what they call “bundles” of RSS feeds. These are actually just collections of related RSS feeds that you pick. For example, here’s a bundle that I created in a couple of minutes which aggregates all of the sites from the GigaOM Network:

In order to create a bundle, you just have to login to your Google Reader account, click “Browse for stuff” and then click the “Create a bundle” button. You then simply drag and drop the RSS feeds you want to include in this bundle, give it a name and description, and save it. After that you can share the bundle many different ways. You can email it, share the bundle’s URL on a social network or create a “bundle clip,” which is like a widget you can embed on your web site. Here’s an example of this bundle as it would appear as a bundle clip:

Create RSS Feeds of Site Collections with Delicious

The social bookmarking service Delicious offers a quick and easy way to share a collections of web sites, similar to the Google bundle method, except that this collection can contain links that are not RSS feeds. This means you can collect any type of web site in your Delicious collection and share them with individuals or groups (or even make them public for all the world to see.) The cool part about this is the fact that Delicious automatically creates an RSS feed for each and every tag that you create. This means people can subscribe to your tag, and automatically see new bookmarks that you add to that tag whenever you add to the collection. This is a powerful collaboration tool and something that could prove useful for clients and projects. Here’s an example of a new tag for a collection I created called GigaOm_Network, using the actual URLs for each site. I also included Om Malik’s Twitter account.

Firefox Collections of Add-ons If you’re a Firefox user, then you know how useful add-ons can be in enhancing your browsing experience. Well, you can now share your favorite Firefox add-ons thanks to the Firefox Collector which allows you to create any kind of collection you want.

There are a great range of Firefox Add-on collections in the Editor’s picks. You’ll see a wide variety of collections ranging from the best add-ons for web developers to the best ones for travelers. There’s also a WebWorkerDaily collection available. If you can’t find a collection on something you want, then simply create one yourself. Just add the Firefox Collector add-on and browse the Firefox Add-ons library to find the items you want to assemble and share in your collection.

Share Groups of Firefox Tabs

Simon recently covered the Firefox add-on ClusterTabs, which includes a screencast that demonstrates how easy it is to create a group of tabs that you can share with others.

Create Document Collections With Thinkfree Portfolios

ThinkFree is an online office suite of products, similar to Google Docs. ThinkFree offers a unique feature called Portfolio, which allows you to create bundles with different types of documents. For example, you can create and share a Portfolio for a client or project that involves Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations and even PDF files. If this sounds familiar, then you probably remember Microsoft Binder, which did the same thing on the desktop.

Share Collections of Twitter Users TweepML is a new site that lets you create collections of Twitter users that you can share with others. People can select to pick and choose who to follow on Twitter from your list, or they can elect to follow them all with the click of one button. This is an excellent solution for organizations that want to share a list of all their Twitter users. Here’s an example:

We all create and share lists of our favorite things online these days thanks to services like Last.fm (music), Flickr (photos), YouTube (videos), etc.  It thus seems like a natural progression to use the same collective mindset and technology to share other things such as documents, software and bookmarks. The list of items we can share as collections is limitless.

What tools do you use to create collections of useful things to share online?

Photo credit: stock.xchng user Onatos

The basic idea behind WorkScore is that anyone with a company email address can review their workplace and colleagues. Furthermore, they can do it anonymously, leaving a little more freedom to be truthful about what they think. When reviewing a colleague on WorkScore, a person can document skills, write “thank you” notes and point to specific confirmations on the part of that colleague. Assessments are confidential, meaning that the subject of the assessment does not actually see it, although the information does contribute to an overall “WorkScore.”

While your first reaction to the idea of anonymous assessment may be concern, the subject of any review is able to choose whose assessments count. If you receive an assessment from someone who may not be perfectly objective about your abilities, you can instruct WorkScore to ignore that information.

Your WorkScore provides a clear picture of your skills when you’ve received a little information from your colleagues. You’ll have an overall numerical score that draws on how your co-workers have ranked you in different skills. You can also add any major contributions you’ve made to your employer — a viewer will be able to see whether or not your co-workers have confirmed your contributions.

WorkScore goes beyond just reviewing colleagues, however. You can also review the company you work for, and look through potential companies during your search for a job. All reviews of workplaces are anonymous — although you can’t add a review without an email address from that company — and they’re public. WorkScore focuses on providing information about the values of a particular company, as well as finding a good fit for yourself. You can also review a company as a client, business partner, supplier or other professional who doesn’t actually work for the company.

For web workers, the ability to add confirmation of your skills may be particularly useful. It offers an opportunity to not only tell a prospective employer that you’ve already worked as a telecommuter or independently, but to have your colleagues — perhaps a manager or team lead as well — describe how well you do when you work remotely, and can provide a shortcut to proving that you can work independently in a way that a traditional resume can’t.

It is necessary to get your co-workers on board with using WorkScore to document accomplishments and skills: a social resume just isn’t that useful if other people aren’t involved. Depending on your workplace, getting your colleagues and management on board with using WorkScore to rank each other could be a tough sell. Overall, however, the information that WorkScore could be just what employers need to better judge potential employees.

What do you think of the “social resume” concept?

It’s not just about building a business, though. Going beyond your comfort zone in any work setting can be intimidating, but I think it can be especially difficult if you work remotely. We’re all sitting happily in our nice remote-work bubbles, insulated from The Office (or The Client), peak-hour gridlock, water cooler babble and the vagaries of the weather. We’re able to do whatever we want, whenever we want — within reason.

Working remotely can become a very comfortable experience very quickly. So what happens when you’re needed for a three-day on-site work conference? Do you curse your CEO and start making a list of all the home comforts you’ll take with you, or are you cool as a cucumber? And what if (horror of horrors) you’re asked to do a presentation at the conference?

From Little Things…

We all have our comfort zones — boundaries that we’re hesitant to cross. Often, these boundaries are subconscious, but they can have a huge impact on the way we operate. Amber mentioned one in her post: she decided before she’d even called a contact that they would be too busy to be interested in her new venture. But there are other equally insidious ways in which our working comfort zones can limit us every day:

• You need to arrange a meeting with a team member in your timezone. You’re more of “an email person” than “a phone person” so you send them an email rather than just picking up the phone and calling them.
• You need to prepare a presentation, and a colleague has offered her help. You haven’t worked with her before, and when you call her, she’s away from her desk. As you hang up without leaving a message, you decide that maybe it’s just easier to go it alone.
• A friend recommends a handy piece of free software that might help you track your time — a task you’ve always had trouble with. You tell him you’ll take a look at it, knowing all the while that you won’t — you can’t be bothered trying to get your head around a new invoicing process right now.
• An associate invites you to a freshly-launched regular industry meet-up. The last time you went to a “networking event” was about three years ago, and it was really boring, so you decline on the spot.

You can probably find a justification for each one of these scenarios; I know I can. But in each case, you’re declining an opportunity to interact, to experiment, or to try something new. And each of those opportunities could lead to other things: greater work satisfaction, stronger working relationships and friendships, new life experiences, and so on.

Comfort or Confidence?

Often we decline opportunities because, at heart, we’re not confident about how we’ll respond to them. But although we feel most confident within our comfort zone, it’s when we stop being so comfortable that we can actually build confidence. And the more frequently we go beyond our boundaries, the easier it becomes not just in one area — such as work — but in other areas of life as well.

Sometimes, the boundaries are so subtle and ingrained that we might not even be aware of them. They do have a few telltale signs, though. Imagine yourself in any of the above situations. If you feel, even subtly, a sense of:

• unease
• boredom or disinterest
• frustration or exasperation
• a desire to escape the situation

…you may have discovered the edge of your comfort zone. Once you know how the prospect of stepping out of your comfort zone makes you feel, you’ll be able to identify those situations quickly and easily — and do something about them.

The good news is that you don’t need to jump out of a plane or swim with sharks to start expanding those boundaries. The simple act of actually trialling that new piece of software your friend recommended, or — yes — calling your colleague rather than emailing, can start to erode your boundaries and boost your sense of capability.

This can be especially helpful for those times when you feel isolated, or more responsive than proactive in your work. Something as simple as initiating a meeting about a problem you’ve perceived with your project, or committing yourself to actually speak with each team member on a regular basis, can make a valuable difference. It may well help you reestablish your sense of involvement and contribution, and it’s sure to build your confidence, too.

Perhaps, like a friend of mine, you’ll find you enjoy the challenge — and its benefits — so much that you’ll make a plan to do at least one thing that’s outside of your working comfort zone every week.

How about it? What could you try to expand your working comfort zone this week?

(photo courtesy of Neja)