As web workers, you’ve probably had to purchase domain names, or been asked to get them by clients. Most people prefer a name ending in .com, since that’s the “top-level domain,” or TLD, that everybody knows. But that also means it can be hard to get the name you want.
From a couple of years ago on WWD: “You must get the dot-com: It doesn’t matter how great the name is, if you can’t get name.com, it’s not worth having. People will look for you at the dot-com even if you’re registered at one of the other top-level domains, no matter how often you emphasize the difference.” And from last year: “For most web workers .com is still the place to be. That’s because no matter how Internet-savvy you are, it’s fairly likely that your customers still hear ‘Internet’ and think ‘dot-com.’ If you want to be found, put your site where the clicks will go.”
So, what do you do if you (or your clients) find that the dot-com domain you want isn’t available? Here are a few suggestions. Read the rest of this entry »
I read about a study over the weekend that suggests the number of competitors can impact our motivation to compete. The researchers found that with a small number of competitors, people had increased motivation to compete, but even with equal chances of success, our motivation can drop when we are faced with large numbers of competitors.
“The simple act of comparing yourself against someone else can stoke the fires of competition. When there are just a few competitors around, making such comparisons is easy but they become more difficult when challengers are plentiful. As a result, the presence of extra contenders, far from spurring us on by adding extra challenge, can actually have the opposite effect. Garcia and Avishalom call this the “N-effect” and they demonstrated it through a number of experiments.” – Ed Yong
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I’ve been struck by the recent proliferation of audio microblogging or micropodcasting (or micro audioblogging?) apps out there. In addition to Jott (read one of our reviews) and Utterli, there is now Trottr, Chirbit and AudioBoo, just to name a few. While micropodcasting hasn’t yet taken off in the way Twitter has (what has?), I really do see the value in having the ease of both picking up a telephone and the automation of the upload of your recording as a mini podcast on the Web.
A quick rundown of the ones we haven’t mentioned before on WWD:
AudioBoo – Using an iPhone app, you can easily record a message or podcast. The sound quality is good. Ease of use, check. Upload time — not too bad, but keep in mind this is eating your data plan, so make sure you have a good one. Listen to a sample recording. Read the rest of this entry »
Editor’s note: With this post we wecome Doriano Carta to the WWD team. Doriano, better known as “Paisano” on Twitter and everywhere else online, has written for several blogs including Mashable, SarahLacy.com, PistachioConsulting and Chris Brogan’s Dadomatic.com where he is also the Editor-in-Chief.
How much are you willing to pay for your favorite web apps and services? That’s the key question to which every app developer wants an answer. It seems as if the provider of every once-free service is now pondering ways to make money and extract revenue from their members, which makes sense when you consider that they are, after all, businesses.
Remember that old adage, you get what you pay for? Will we continue to see more of our favorite free services following this model of offering stripped down freemium accounts along with feature-rich premium plans? Will online advertising ever allow these sites to generate enough revenue to avoid going this route?
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Tags: box.net, dropbox, evernote, flickr, free, hulu, jott, paid, Services, subscription, twitter
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It seems so alluring — you, your computer, your home office, and all the silence/Bach/Led Zeppelin you can handle. A potted palm! A lava lamp! This is the home office ideal, right? Right.
But what happens when you put someone else in the picture? What if, right next to the potted palm in your home office, your partner or work-from-home housemate materialized?
With more and more people working remotely at least some of the time, this is a very real question that many of us face. What should you consider if you’re about to embark on a multi-person home workplace?
There are definitely pros as well as cons. First up, let’s look at the cons. These are the main sticking points I’ve encountered when working from home with another in close proximity. Read the rest of this entry »
In college, and grad school, I mostly hung with a crowd in which everybody shared the same interests, hobbies and field of study. I know that a lot of college faculties are beginning to move towards a more interdisciplinary approach, because it more accurately reflects what students can expect their post-school life to be like. College professors tend to be somewhat protective of their disciplines, however, so progress is moving faster in some areas and at some schools than others. The result is that a lot of people in the workforce have a pretty narrow view of what the word “colleague” means. It’s important to broaden that definition and cultivate relationships with people in other fields. Here’s why.
Who Do You Consider a Colleague?
Especially for freelance web workers, defining a “colleague” can be a complicated matter. Is your stakeholder a colleague? How about the project sponsor for the contract you’re working on? More likely, you consider people doing similar work in similar fields to you colleagues, over and above people that you work with directly, who are responsible for entirely different aspects of a given project. Read the rest of this entry »
Though the demise of Portland, Ore.’s Cubespace coworking community represents a sad development in the nascent history of coworking, the region’s vibrant Silicon Forest will give rise to other coworking options in due course.
In the meantime, there are ongoing successes elsewhere, notably in Italy, with Rome, Milan and Genoa playing host to no less than eight coworking communities.
Last week, I got the chance to speak with Massimo Carraro, one of the leading Italian evangelists for coworking and a phenomenal source of experience and expertise in bootstrapping multiple coworking communities. Read the rest of this entry »
