I think it’s safe to say that many online workers would also describe themselves as lifelong learners. I know that personally, I’m always looking for new ways to learn, which is why I was so intrigued when I came across WiZiQ. The web service bills itself as an “Online Educational Platform for Teachers and Learners” and is available free of charge. What it provides is a virtual classroom, the purpose of which is left completely up to users.
Definitely an attractive proposition, and one which I can think of many uses for in terms of web working applications. But in practice, what are WiZiQ’s limitations? Could I, for instance, monetize the service, and offer lessons created with WiZiQ as part of a subscription or pay-per-lesson model?
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Facebook is a great tool for web working. It makes networking simple, offers loads of opportunities for promotion, and it boasts a massive user base. Still, it’s not designed to foreground your work, and sometimes it can be a little difficult to draw attention to the things you want people to take notice of using only your basic profile options and Facebook’s native Page and Group tools.
My Web Portfolio is a Facebook application that’s designed to help web designers at least strut their stuff on the popular social network. Just as the name implies, it allows you to build and share a portfolio of your web sites and share them with other Facebook users.
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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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Having spent some time teaching at a university, and being on the brink of becoming a student again myself, I recently stopped to reflect about how my school work and that of my students might be improved with some Web 2.0 tools. The discussion is timely, too, since a lot of working professionals are heading back to the classroom in an attempt to stay relevant during tough times.
During my first go-around, I wasn’t savvy enough to take advantage of what was available, but with the benefit of hindsight, I’ve identified the following three categories of web apps that could make studying easier and more effective.
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As a developer and some-time designer, I’m always on the lookout for tools to make communicating with customers easier. For many things, the textual tools that web workers reach for are sufficient: email, wikis, project management systems, instant messages, and so on. But sometimes you just need to draw a picture to get your point across. The latest tool I’ve run across for this is Balsamiq Mockups - and it’s a nice tool indeed.
When you run the desktop version, you get an empty window that looks like a notebook page (complete with spiral binding) and a menu bar of controls - everything from web browser shells to progress bars to charts to maps to all sorts of widgets. To construct a user interface mockup, you drag from the menu bar to the drawing area, then click and drag and resize things. Widgets that contain data - like a table or a textbox - make it easy to edit that data, so customizing the user interface for the application you’re showing off is trivial.
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We always like a good utility here at WWD. But we like it even better when two of our favorite utilities start working well together. That’s the case with 1Password and Dropbox: if you’re storing your passwords (and other confidential information) in 1Password, you can now use Dropbox to keep those passwords synchronized across multiple computers. Here’s how.
The first thing you need to do is install 1Password on all the computers where you want to keep the same passwords. (Yes, this only applies to OS X users at the moment - though it seems that you can at least view the password file contents on a Windows box if you know the master password). Next, you need to step up to the most recent beta version of 1Password: open Preferences, go to the Updates tab, and turn on “Include Beta versions”. Then click the “Check Now” button and upgrade your copy of 1Password to the current beta. Remember to do this on all of the computers where you’re running 1Password.
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