Web Worker Daily

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.

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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.

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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.

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If you’d like to see a bit of your future as a mobile worker, you could do much worse than a quick read of a new report just out with a title that doesn’t do it justice: Wireless Technology for Social Change: Trends in NGO Mobile Use (PDF).

The report, a joint effort by the United Nations Foundation and The Vodafone Group Foundation, cites example after example of how the most ubiquitous electronic device on the planet - the mobile phone - is changing your future.

Non governmental organizations across the planet are tapping mobile technology to do things that may come as a surprise to you or your company, and they are doing it for pennies on the dollar compared to past efforts. Whether it’s monitoring elections in Kenya, or air pollution in Ghana, mobile phones are reshaping what non-profit organizations can and will do.

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Whether you are billing by the hour or verifying your job time estimates, accurate time tracking is critical for most web workers. Despite this importance, it also tends to be one of the most oft ignored functions. While there are a multitude of widgets and services available, I think the issue with most of them is that time tracking is just so terribly unexciting and the tools designed for this purpose typically do nothing to overcome that.

Enter Klok - Personal Time Tracking Made Easy. It has all the capabilities one would look for in such an app including the ability to track your work by client and project as well as a seemingly unlimited level of sub-projects or tasks. It has a built in start - stop timer and capable reporting options.

The killer feature, though, is that it’s drop dead sexy and brilliantly easy to use.

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It’s almost a cliché to talk about how important it is for the Web Worker to keep track of time worked, client billing and invoice status; but we’re going to cover it one more time with this roundup of some of the leading online invoicing services available to you.

Choosing an invoicing and billing service can be overwhelming, not only because of the sheer number of options available but because each of us works differently and has different needs. The key is to turn that into a positive and examine the services based upon your working style and your goals. Each service has their own strengths and weaknesses but one of them is sure to be a good fit with you if you can define just what it is you are looking for.

Make a list of just what your ideal app would do and then visit them all to see how they match your needs. Set up a trial account and go through the process of creating some dummy accounts and invoices. See what works for you and what may be missing. Ask a question in the forums or by email to test their support.

We’ve done some of the hard work for you though with the reviews below.

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