I didn’t make many New Year’s resolutions this year. I cut out all those destined to fail, and instead focused on some that I have at least a little hope of achieving. A lot were work related, and one in particular applies primarily to web work. That resoultion? To be more green in my work practices.
It was something I hadn’t paid particular attention to since leaving an office setting. At my last corporate gig, I was instrumental is establishing a proper recycling program. It was easy because it was me vs. the corporate climate. At home, with no machine to rage against, I hadn’t even realized how much could be done.
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You may be interested and motivated to become a freelance writer, but it’s hard to know where to start. First, you should write, but that goes without saying. How do you turn your passion into paid work? It’s not a simple process, and it involves a lot of searching, digging, and some luck, as well.
These resources can help increase your chances of finding freelance writing work. It’s important to remember that whatever romantic notions of the solitary writer you may have, being successful as a freelancer depends on community, and these resources provide a good starting point for building your own.
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A big chunk of web working has to do with managing your online presence. That means staying on top of social media trends, managing Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other profiles, and making sure all these communities are working to your advantage. A well-managed online presence could mean a Digg front-page one day, and a well-placed link another, generating a lot of traffic and interest in whatever service/product you may be selling.
It’s surprising, then that people so often overlook the value of a personal blog in the social media web.
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Guest post by Pete Johnson
As an IT teleworker for a large company over the past 10 years, I’ve spent my share of time on conference calls. The other day, in fact, I set a personal record with 11.5 hours of them in a single work day (and I had the sore headphone ear and hoarse voice that came along with that feat). Despite this meeting load, I still had to respond to IM’s, reply to a multitude of emails, prepare slides early in the day for a presentation later on, and a host of other tasks. That begs the question:
How do you effectively multitask in meetings in a way that lets you get work done?
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The key to using Google Docs (GDocs) document editing effectively is to understand that it’s a web word processor rather than an outright replacement for full-featured desktop word processors like Microsoft Word. GDocs includes features that make it easy to produce content for the web — it understands HTML (though not as well as it should), makes it easy to put in links inside and across documents, allows you to publish online, and encourages collaboration with features like version control and real-time multi-person editing.
If you go to the Google Docs home page, you can create documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and folders to organize it all. This article focuses only on the word processing aspects of Google Docs — and looks at features that make it easier for you to get in a web word processing state of mind.
Edit the HTML directly. From the “Edit” page of your document, click on the “Edit HTML” link to the right of the “Revisions” tab. You’ll view the raw HTML of the document — and I mean raw. It’s not at all easy to read, lacking as it is in whitespace. If you want to do anything more than minor tweaks, you might want to take it to your favorite HTML editor to do so.
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