Web Worker Daily

It seems like I am always looking for inspiration. In my case, I need inspiration for the many places where I contribute blog content: WebWorkerDaily, Fast Wonder, Shizzow, and others. I work on client projects and need inspiration for ways to solve issues and find innovative new approaches for community building or social media engagement. I manage online communities and help organize events and user groups where I need inspiration to find new and interesting topics of conversation.

While all people and all professions need to find inspiration, it can be particularly tough for web workers, especially those of us operating solo freelancing oe consulting businesses with no coworkers, bosses or others to help come up with ideas. We can sit in a dark room and wait for inspiration to hit us, or we can seek it out. I get most of my inspiration from listening to podcasts, reading, having coffee with smart people and browsing around online.

I was recently talking to Hideshi Hamaguchi here in Portland, Oregon when he mentioned that he was working on a new project. He described it as, “totally different, super simple, but something help people to get inspiration” and offered me a sneak peak. I couldn’t resist. It was an excuse to talk to someone so brilliant that it always makes my head spin after a conversation and learn about a new product focused on inspiration at the same time. This week, the product launched as Lunarr elements. Read the rest of this entry »

What if any page on the Internet – any web application, shared document, blog – had a back side you could use to track what you wanted to and be able to easily share that with your fellow web workers via email, for free? That’s what the new startup Lunarr does, cross platform, cross browser, with no browser plugin.

Take for instance a Google doc: pop it into Lunarr (if you get accepted to the beta program) and work on it as usual. Then, click on the page turn in the upper right hand corner and you flip to the back side of your doc where you can invite collaborators, link supporting documents, track revisions and see who’s seen your latest version. Lunarr works with any URL, not just Google docs, can display (but not edit) Microsoft Word and Excel files, or use one of its own templates. Read the rest of this entry »