Web Worker Daily

There are a multitude of invoicing options available for the web worker, and we have covered our share of them. A new entry that just crossed my desk is the oddly named CurdBee.

I gave CurdBee a quick run through and found that it covers the basics of invoicing and payment reasonably well. I was able to get up and running quickly and found it easy to get test clients and service items entered for my first invoices. It hooks into Paypal Standard and Google Checkout for payment processing and also supports multiple currencies.

Be aware that there are no time tracking features and the overall functionality is sparse compared to more fully featured services like FreshBooks or Cashboard. It is also missing a lot of the nice “usability touches” that a more established product will typically have.

But if your needs are simple and you just need to send out quick invoices to your clients, CurdBee might be a good option for you. Accounts are currently free with no apparent limitations.

Are you using an online service for your billing? Could CurdBee work for you?

Monitoring the Internet for people discussing your product or brand can be invaluable to help understand how the public views you. Tools like Google Alerts or Filtrbox can handle news, blogs and web pages while Summize keeps tabs on Twitter. For forums and message boards there is Twing.

The last time we looked at Twing, Mike found the forum friendly search engine to be a useful tool in the search arsenal, particularly for finding help from others who may be experiencing similar issues.  A recent Twing update now adds functionality to make this process even easier for those looking to monitor forum discussions for their brands or products.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the pre Web Worker era, many of us looked to professional organizations for networking, support and a chance to establish ourselves as experts in our community. As we have moved to more virtual work environments in our professions, we have tried to fill this same need using networking sites like Twitter, Linkedin or FaceBook.

But did you know that there are also professional associations available for many for us? For example, the International Virtual Assistants Association (IVAA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to education and development of those in the Virtual Assistance profession.

Read the rest of this entry »

When talking mobile platforms, we tend to consider Symbian a separate platform along the lines of Palm, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and iPhone. Now it’s official:

Nokia, already a stakeholder in mobile OS maker Symbian, has announced that it will buy the remainder of the company and throw all the assets into a new platform called the Symbian Foundation, which will unite all the flavors of Symbian into a single, common software platform that will go open source in two years. Major mobile players such as Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, AT&T, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone have all signed on.

Om Malik offers considerable analysis of what the new Symbian Foundation means to the industry and its stakeholders. What do you think it means, if anything, to the mobile web worker?

Have you had to settle for an email address that you just don’t like? Perhaps one incorporating your name or nickname with a string of random numbers at the end. If so, Yahoo! comes to your rescue as they announce the availability of two new domain choices for your email needs.

Actually it’s one new domain at @ymail.com, and the resurrection of an old classic with the renewed availability of @rocketmail.com addresses. For those unfamiliar, Rocketmail was a leader in the web based email market before being acquired by Yahoo in the late 90’s.  An @rocketmail.com address might hold sentimental value for some users and it’s great to see them being released back to general availability.

In conjunction with this announcement, Yahoo! also released some interesting statistics from a survey they commissioned. It seems that having a personalized and meaningful email address is important to many folks.

“Of online adults who indicated that they are not currently using their first choice email address, over half (54%) agree that they want their email address to reflect who they are, and about half (48%) would be at least somewhat likely to change addresses should their preferred choice become available.”

If that sounds like you, head on over to ymail.com or rocketmail.com later today to register your new address.  Accounts are free and give you all the same features and access to Yahoo! services that you would get with a yahoo.com address or ID.

Are you happy with your email address? Would you trade up if you could get the address you really wanted.

Coworking continues to evolve and mold to the increasingly blurred boundaries between domestic and professional life. An area often overlooked is that of childcare for remote workers and home workers.

I have colleagues and collaborators who, despite the fact they’re self-employed and work largely from a home office, still need to employ childcare. Some may see this as an unnecessary overhead, but it’s actually desperately needed in order to provide focus whilst working from home.

Enter Cubes & Crayons in Menlo Park, CA, self-described as ‘full-time childcare and office space’; think of it as coworking + creche! Cube & Crayons was profiled recently (along with New York’s TwoRooms) in a Springwise article exploring emerging trends in ‘More Work Spaces for Parents‘. Read the rest of this entry »

Gasoline approaching $4 per gallon in the USA. Airlines and the TSA putting new limits on carry-on luggage. Baggage-handling disasters. Concerns over the environmental impact of airplanes. It seems as if every day there’s a new reason out there not to travel - and that’s not even counting the efficiency benefits of a schedule without travel time.

But meanwhile, some web workers are attracted to a lifestyle that lets them work anywhere - which means traveling from place to place. Others of us have commitments that require attending meetings or conferences in far-away cities. And of course there are plenty of office-based web workers who commute in the physical, rather than the tele-, sense. Read the rest of this entry »

Running your business usually involves tasks that fall into two major categories - the stuff that you want to do and the stuff you have to do. Administrative tasks like invoicing and payroll are likely to fall in the latter category.

While there an abundance of time tracking and invoicing solutions available, choices for online payroll processing have seemingly been sparse. Most businesses use a manual process to trudge through the task or delegate a portion out to their accountant with mixed results. If you are looking to streamline your payroll process, you may want to check out PayCycle as an alternative.

Read the rest of this entry »