How do you deal with telling all your clients you’ll be on vacation, that you’re offering a new service or special rates, or any other important piece of news for that matter? What if you’d like to send out a regular e-newsletter? Without certain programming skills, it’s a challenge. And not all of us web workers are programmers.
I have a new toy, and today is Show and Tell.
The company is CampaignMonitor. I looked around for easy-to-use and affordable options for sending mass html e-mails and found plans that were too expensive for my needs, or tools that required more IT knowledge than I had. I needed to send a nice-looking e-mail newsletter to members of the social network I launched because the mass e-mail feature included with the platform I use is just pathetic.
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Photo by Josh Bancroft
I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I never listen to music on my iPod. Seriously. I keep a playlist of 25 songs on it just in case I get the urge to listen to music, but I never do. And yet, I listen to my iPod for a minimum of 30 minutes every day and often for several hours.
Instead of music, I fill my iPod with audio podcasts. I don’t watch the news on TV or listen to the radio, so I rely on podcasts as my primary way to consume some types of news (blogs and feeds are also a big part of how I consume information). I use iTunes subscriptions, which allow my podcasts to automagically appear on my computer every day, and I sync my iPod first thing in the morning so that it is ready at all times.
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Producteev is the new kid on the block in the collaborative task management arena, but this app puts the emphasis on the social and makes multi-tasking, our 21st-century way of life, a lot easier.
Just to be clear, this is not another Basecamp-type application. It is a product of the less-is-more mentality, which often makes for the best applications. Producteev is for managing your activities and communicating with the other people involved in those activities.
My sister-in-law could really use this. She’s a swim team president, an assistant den mother, and in charge of fundraising for a large muscular dystrophy group in Los Angeles. On top of that, she is the Project Queen, at any given moment managing more of them than I ever could; everything from putting solar panels on her roof to organizing a family reunion in Hawaii.
All of our lives are like this to some degree, and web workers have to juggle not only home but also professional activities. We’re under particular pressure to be sure that nothing falls through the cracks. If you haven’t found a solution to that problem yet, read on.
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With this post Dawn Foster joins the WebWorkerDaily team. Dawn is a consultant, community manager, event organizer, blogger, podcaster, and technology enthusiast. By day, she is a mild-mannered consultant who helps companies build online communities and social media strategies, but by night, she is part of Legion of Tech to make the world (or at least Portland, OR) a better place for technology workers. - ED
I plan to spend a week visiting family in Ohio over the holidays. I will have hours on the plane and in airports, and I’ll have even more time in the evenings after the rest of the family is in bed and my body is still on Pacific time. I could spend it curled up and relaxing with some fiction printed on dead trees, but how productive would that be?
With any luck, you might also have a few slow days during the holidays: clients are on vacation, the family is driving you nuts, and you’re caught up on “real work.” What now?
I even have a wish list that I hope will help me turn this into a productive holiday. Read the rest of this entry »
It may be a terrible pun, but it is a useful micro-site from the people at Google. The site (and the pun) is “Appy Holidays,” and the aim is to help you manage your hectic holiday schedule.
In the tradition of Fashion Your Firefox, and iPhone Your Life, Appy Holidays collects a selection of Google Apps under a consolidated theme, in this case “manag[ing] the holiday hustle and bustle”.
The Google services featured on the web site include Calendar, Docs, Picasa, and the recently released Gmail-integrated video chat. In fact, the services listed and their suggested uses does present a nice way of getting all of your holiday ducks in a row. Most useful are probably Calendar and Docs, especially if you’re already using these services professionally.
I’m awful at keeping track of deadlines without a planner or calendar, and I already use Google Calendar to keep track of appointments, so it makes sense to add a new calendar devoted exclusively to making sure I don’t miss any of those holiday parties I’ve committed to, or, at the micro-management level, reminding me that the turkey needs to go in by 10:00 if it’s going to be ready when company comes.
Appy Holidays also suggests using Docs for shopping list management, and for labelling and writing holiday letters. They’ve even prepared a special selection of templates so that most of the work is already done for you. If you’re like me, you might also want to keep tabs on your holiday budget using a Docs spreadsheet, since otherwise January might be a very long, scant month indeed. Leftover turkey can only feed you for so long.
Last week Mike shared some thoughts on some of the reasons he is thankful he is a Web Worker. With the announcement that popular apps I Want Sandy and Stikkit are to close, I thought I would take a moment to list the acknowledge the tools or services that I am most thankful for.
These aren’t the only ones I use, but they are the ones that make my Web Working experience the best it can be.
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As we approach the end of 2008 it is a great time to think about doing a year end review and to begin setting goals for 2009. I’m not usually a fan of the typical New Year’s resolution but the transition into a new year is a logical time to make changes and start something new.
A common goal for a lot of folks is to get organized and be more productive, and for many this means committing to an organizational framework like David Allen’s Getting Things Done. I’ve been thinking about throwing my hat into the GTD ring but it seems like an overwhelming task.
So I was pleased to see our fine mobile friends at jkOnTheRun alerting us that the premier issue of Productive Magazine is available as a free downloadable PDF. This new publication is full of useful information about the GTD system and should be a good resource for the newbie or a seasoned veteran.
My first action item of the day - Done!
Do you GTD? Will Productive Magazine help you Get Things Done?
