Web Worker Daily

“Cloud computing” has easily replaced “Web 2.0” as the current trendy buzzword. The state of California is even turning to it for government systems. I have to say, however, that I have serious reservations about heavily implementing cloud computing in my own work flow. I believe that cloud computing is the killer app of the future, but the future isn’t quite here yet.

Don’t get me wrong. I do make limited use of cloud computing applications, especially Gmail. But mostly, I don’t feel comfortable putting my entire computing life “in the cloud”. Here’s why. Read the rest of this entry »

As more and more companies and teams are going strictly virtual, there are a whole new set of issues to consider and challenges to address. Using my own virtual social media marketing team as an example, I’ve identified a number of needs that require some kind of technology solution, but at the moment, we are “patchwork quilting” our tech infrastructure to accommodate all of our needs.

Here are some needs virtual teams face daily:

Here is a diagram of what we’re currently using as our solutions and which issues and needs each solution addresses. The software we currently use is in orange. Yellow designates the software we are considering.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a great time to be a web worker. Almost every day, a new site, service or product comes on the scene that promises to make our work more efficient (or more fun). Some areas, like project management or image editing, are crowded with options. And in order to gain a following, many services are being offered inexpensively or at no cost.

But as Paisano wrote recently, current conditions won’t last forever. Many sites will eventually become fee-based; others will shut down when their funding runs out, or when their owners decide to move in a different direction.

So when I evaluate a product that I’d like to incorporate into my company’s workflow — especially a product that will be visible to clients — I try to consider the product’s feature set, along with the issues raised in Judi’s 2007 WWD post. I also ask the following questions: Read the rest of this entry »

Given the vast and growing number of online tools available to web workers, choosing which to use can seem overwhelming. This makes it easy to obsess more about the tools themselves rather than the strategy for using them, as if by choosing the perfect tools you can guarantee the success of your ventures. Of course, that is hardly ever the case. Even great tools, used with very little planning, will seem mediocre at best.

I often give advice to people who are interested in starting online businesses. One of my “pupils” (so to speak) is new to social media, but after the recent media Twitter craze, he decided that he was going to use it to promote his site because, “that’s where everyone is.” A couple of days later, he emailed me and said that he wasn’t satisfied with his results, so he decided to follow the advice he read on a blog and try Facebook instead. Again, after only a minimal increase in his traffic, he wrote to me asking, “Have you ever tried StumbleUpon?” My immediate reaction was, “Social media marketing: you’re doing it wrong.”

This problem of constantly flipping tools doesn’t just happen with social media. I’ve had several clients who’ve spent weeks obsessing about Movable Type vs. Blogger vs. Joomla, for example.

So what should you be doing instead of obsessing about the choice of tools? Read the rest of this entry »

Customer relationship management (CRM) solutions vary, but for the most part they help businesses manage sales leads, accounts, campaigns, forecasts and activities. Most CRM packages tend to be too heavyweight for the sole proprietor, however. They cost a bundle and contain features that most web workers don’t need. Zoho has a relatively simple CRM solution that’s free for up to three users. Although it takes some figuring out, it’s a good option to consider for web workers.

Zoho CRM comes with all the basic CRM functions you’d expect: You can manage campaigns and leads, view reports and dashboards and manage inventory.

Getting Started

It’s best to start at CRM.zoho.com, even if you have an existing Zoho account. At first glance, the application looks overwhelming, especially if it’s the first CRM package you’ve used. Zoho has a useful Getting Started video that gives you a quick overview of the application and makes it feel less threatening.

Everything you need to access appears in the tabs at the top of the screen and the links below them. You can customize most of the reports and dashboards as well as the settings for every tab. Read the rest of this entry »

Amidst the noise being generated by those attending and reporting on the SXSW conference, I caught wind of a particularly interesting announcement made by BatchBlue and some other web service providers about a “Small Business Web” of integrated SaaS products designed for small business.

“The Small Business Web is a movement to bring together like-minded, customer-obsessed software companies to integrate our respective products and make life easier for small businesses,” Pamela O’Hara, CEO of BatchBlue, told me via email.

By using the APIs, or Application Programming Interfaces, present in each other’s products, the participating companies hope to offer a very high level of integration between their services. This will allow each company to focus on its own core competency, while allowing for easier data portability and a better overall experience for the user. Read the rest of this entry »

Depending on who you ask, Second Life is either an early pioneer in what promises to be a brave new virtual world of peer-to-peer interaction, rife with business opportunities, or a non-starter that got way too much hype way too early and won’t live up to any of it, no matter how long we wait. I believe my fellow WWD writer Aliza Sherman is very much on the former side of the fence. I’ll only say that Second Life’s rise hasn’t been as meteoric as Twitter’s, for instance, but that I still see potential for it to grow.

Yesterday, a couple of new tools were announced that made me stop and reconsider how much of that potential is actually being capitalized upon, how soon the virtual world’s appeal might broaden, and what that might mean for working on the web. The services in question are a Virtual Conference Centre and Real Time Research, joint venture projects by Second Life development vets Rivers Run Red and consulting group Futuresource. Read the rest of this entry »

There are a large number of project management applications and service out there; we’ve looked at many of them in the past. Most of them are explicitly directed at coordinating a team working on projects for a client, and are a poor fit for a single freelancer working alone. That’s the market that Burden Butcher hopes to tap into, with a project management tool explicitly for freelancers.

After creating your account, you’ll be sitting at the Projects list. Creating a new project is streamlined: supply a name, a rate, a client, and optionally a deadline, and you’re ready to go. Choosing a project to work on is simple, as it should be. Each project contains four tabs in a web interface: Canvases, Milestones & Tasks, Time Tracking, and Invoice.

Read the rest of this entry »