How to Know When Someone 'De-Friends' You on Facebook

Just last week Facebook reminded users of the options they had for ignoring unwanted friend requests and the social network is trying to make it as painless and subtle as possible for all parties involved. Another issue that got the same treatment was removing a friend from your list, which was also a subtle action with the ones removed not notified in any way. Unless they have the Friends Checker Greasemonkey script, that is, which brings up a hard to miss message when a user removes them.


“When the script detects that someone you used to be friends with is no longer one of your friends, a message will appear informing you about who it was and giving a link to their profile page,” the script's entry on Userscripts.org says. “The script checks by default once per hour when on Facebook, but this time can be increased.“

The script, spotted by Inside Facebook, is simple to use, assuming you can handle installing a Greasemonkey script, and its functionality is limited but to the point. Facebook Friends Checker regularly polls the social network to see who has “de-friended” you in the interval since the last check. The polling interval can be adjusted by going to the Greasemonkey entry in Firefox's Tools menu and then selecting “User script commands” followed by “Set time interval to check for removed friends.”

With Friends Checker you can automatically see who has removed you from their list every time you visit the site. Of course you could check this manually by going through each friend's profile but this isn't really an option especially for those with hundreds of friends. Facebook itself, for obvious reasons, doesn't send any notifications in this event. However, there's no need to worry just yet as the script has been installed only about 20,000 times which, while a decent number by itself, pales in comparison to the more than 250 million registered users the social network has at the moment so the chances of someone you're removing using it are pretty slim.

Source: Softpedia.com

Bored? 7 Ways Turn Downtime into Uptime

When you’re self-employed, it’s very common to experience periods of downtime. In fact, in my experience, there tends to be a somewhat predictable cycle that brings about periods of increased workflow that’s followed by a slow down.

When the slow down occurs and how long it lasts is different for every business. But if your business is anything like mine, the periods of the workflow cycle can be intense – from more incoming work than you can handle to an abrupt quiet period. I have come to appreciate this downtime, though, and have a number of things I do to turn the silence into productive time for my business. Here are some ideas:

1. Revisit Your Goals

Spend some time analyzing your goals, the progress you’ve made and what you need to do to stay on course. It’s also helpful to create some mini-goals that will help the process and give you specific activities with measurable results that you can do immediately.

2. Focus on Social Media

Review and revise your social media accounts, update your profiles and join new online business networks. A slowdown in work is also a great time to become more active on social networks and start to build and enhance your relationships.

3. Assess Your Web Site

If you have less client work coming in, it could be the perfect time to give your own web site a close look. Read through the content, check your contact information, perform a SEO check, and test out forms and functionality. You may also want to update your portfolio so it reflects your most recent projects.

4. Reach Out to Clients

Downtime is a great time to send clients a feedback survey to get their take on your work if you didn’t do it at the end of a project. You can also use this time to ask clients for testimonials to use in your marketing materials.

5. Follow-Up and Re-Pitch

Do you have a few proposals out there that you have yet to hear back on? Follow-up with prospects to see if there is still an interest. You may be able to generate some new work, or at least clear your pending list of dead opportunities.

6. Get Organized

If you’ve been fumbling with your tasks and struggling to manage projects, now is a great time to work on your systems. Migrate to a new project management app or try out a new to-do list system to become more productive and less scattered. It’s also a great time to clean your office, organize your files and focus on administrative tasks that tend to be forgotten.

7. Get Away from Work

A workflow slowdown can be the perfect time to take a break, get away from work and refresh your outlook. In my experience, a quiet period is usually followed by a quick ramp up in work, so take the time to enjoy the calm before the storm.

If you can predict this period of downtime, keeping a running list of downtime tasks can help you avoid wasted time. And being focused and busy when work is slow will help you avoid any stress and anxiety that may come with a lack of work.

Plus, if you truly make the most of downtime, you will likely find that it goes by too fast to allow you to accomplish all of your downtime goals, which is not a bad position to be in.

How do you handle downtime in your workflow?

Source: www.sitepoint.com

73 Ways to Become a Better Writer

Do you want to become a better writer? Silly question, eh.

The good news is that writing makes you a better writer. Just like practicing the piano makes you a better pianist, or riding a trail bike makes you a better biker.

A few weeks ago I asked a question on Write to Done: What Helps YOU Become a Better Writer? The suggestions the readers offered were so rich and varied that I decided to gather them all together for Copyblogger readers.

I think there is one guaranteed winner among the seventy-two suggestions - blogging. Writing a blog is an amazing way to sharpen one’s skills. As bloggers we have to produce words daily - even when we don’t feel like it. And we get instant feed-back through comments. As Leo Babauta points out in his inspiring story How I got 100,000 Subscribers: Lessons from Zen Habits, it’s the readers that help us improve.
Doing these things can help you become a better writer:

1. Become a blogger.

2. Use self-imposed word limits.

3. Accept all forms of criticism and learn to grow from it.

4. Read what you’ve written over and over, until you can’t find any more problems.

5. Show what you write to a trusted friend for feedback.

6. Outline. And then write to that outline.

7. Edit, and edit again.

8. Live with passion.

9. Be open, curious, present, and engaged.

10. Take a break between writing and editing.

11. Learn a new word a day.

12. Get the pen and fingers moving.

13. Write in different genres: blog posts, poems, short stories, essays.

14. Read grammar books.

15. Write without distractions.

16. Challenge yourself: write in a crowded cafe, write on the toilet, write for 24 hours straight.

17. Take a trip. Road trips, beach trips, bus trips, plane trips.

18. Watch movies. Can you write the story better?

19. Write. And then write some more.

20. Read, think, read, write, ponder, write - and read some more.

21. Read your stuff aloud to anyone who can stand it - including the cat.

22. Go back and cut 10% from your word count.

23. Talk to people.

24. Listen to how people talk.

25. Read lots of books. Both good and bad.

26. Make notes of your (fleeting) brilliant ideas.

27. Start your writing ahead of time - not hours before a deadline.

28. Listen to podcasts on writing tips.

29. Use simple, declarative sentences.

30. Avoid passive voice.

31. Limit your use of adjectives and adverbs.

32. When in doubt, cut it out.

33. Kill clunky sentences.

34. Be inspired by other art forms - music, dance, sculpture, painting.

35. Read your old stuff and acknowledge how far you’ve come - and how far you have to go.

36. Write for publication, even if it’s only for the local newsletter or a small blog.

37. Make writing your priority in the morning.

38. Keep squeezing words out even if you feel uninspired.

39. Tell everyone: “I’m a writer.”

40. Recognize your fear and overcome it.

41. Let your articles rest and then return to them with fresh eyes.

42. Comment on your favorite blogs.

43. Keep a journal to keep the writing juices flowing.

44. Use a journal to sort out your thoughts and feelings.

45. Keep it simple.

46. Practice monotasking. Set a timer for uninterrupted writing.

47. Watch people.

48. Get to know someone different from you and reflect on the experience.

49. Try new ideas or hobbies - the more variety you have in your life, the more likely you are to keep on generating good ideas on the page.

50. Read works from different cultures. It helps keep your writing from tasting stale in the mouths of your readers.

51. Rethink what is ‘normal’.

52. Work on brilliant headlines.

53. Check if your assumptions are right.

54. Join a writing group. If you can’t find one, form one.

55. Write during your most productive hours of the day.

56. Designate time to research.

57. Take time to muse and mindmap.

58. Map out a writing schedule for your project and stick to it.

59. Ask someone else to proofread.

60. Read Zinsser’s “On Writing Well” at least once a year.

61. Break out of your comfort zone.

62. Write at the scene. If you want to write about a beach, get a picnic rug and go write by the sea.

63. Go to the supermarket, the ball game, the class room, the building site. Make notes of the sensuous details, the atmosphere, the people.

64. Start with metaphors and stories.

65. Approach writing with gratitude, not just with a ‘must do this’ attitude.

66. Deconstruct and analyze books and articles you enjoy.

67. Know about story architecture. Many writers don’t. Which is like doing heart surgery or flying an airliner by intuition. Survival rates are low.

68. Socialize with other writers.

69. Stretch or exercise in between writing.

70. Make a note of ideas for further development before you leave a piece for tomorrow.

71.Use mindmaps for inspiration.

72. Take risks - don’t be afraid to shock. You are not who you think you are.

73. [Please add your own suggestion in the comment section!]

I hope that one or more of these suggestions has inspired you. Let me know which ones resonated with you. And please add to the list. I look forward to reading your comments! Thanks to all the Write to Done readers who contributed to this list.

Article source: http://www.copyblogger.com/better-writer/

Google building 3D hardware boost into Chrome

Departing significantly from what other browsers offer, Google has begun building its O3D plug-in for hardware-accelerated 3D graphics into its Chrome browser.

"The O3D team is working on getting O3D integrated into the Chromium build, and we're close to being able to complete our first step towards integration," said programmer Greg Spencer in a mailing list announcement Wednesday about Chromium, the open-source project that underlies Chrome itself. "I'll be making the Windows build of Chromium be dependent upon building O3D as part of the build process."

By helping to pave the way for high-powered Web-based games, the move furthers Google's ambition to speed the transformation of the Web from a static medium into a foundation for applications. Another piece of the work is Google Native Client, which is designed to let Web applications take advantage of a computer's native processing power.

The overall effort has taken on new importance with the announcement of Chrome OS, Google's Chrome-based operating system set to arrive on Netbooks in the second half of 2010. Chrome OS will use Linux under the covers, but the real foundation for Chrome OS applications is the Web, Google has said.

Native Client coming, too
Google plans to build Native Client into Chrome, too.

"We recognize that there is well-justified resistance to installing browser plug-ins. For this reason, we have a strong preference for delivering Native Client pre-installed or built into the browser, and we'll be focusing on that as our main strategy for delivering Native Client to users," said Brad Chen, engineering manager of the Google Native Client effort, in June.

Just offering the technologies is only a first step. Google must convince programmers to learn to use them and convince Web developers to embrace them. That's not simple, especially when few browsers can take advantage of them.
Brad Chen, engineering manager of the Google Native Client

Brad Chen, engineering manager of the Google Native Client
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Chrome won't be the only browser to feature the acceleration features, though, because Google is working on plug-in versions, too. By building the technology into Chrome, Google could exert some pressure on others to support it.

Making Native Client and O3D into some kind of standard could help convince programmers the technologies are worth supporting and win over potential rivals. "The support of ratified standards (that Web developers) can use is something that we are extremely supportive of," said Amy Barzdukas, general manager for IE, in an earlier interview.

After years of near-dormancy, development of HTML, the language used to describe Web pages, has hit a feverish pace right now as browser makers try to make the Web into more of an applications platform.

Browser wars are back
Google added new fury to the browser wars when it introduced Chrome in September 2008. Chrome has attained a small but respectable market share of nearly 2 percent, according to research from Net Applications, but it has a long way to go expanding from the technophiles to the mainstream.

Chrome doesn't have the Internet Explorer or Safari advantage of being built into an operating system--though that could change over the years if Chrome OS manages to overcome its challenges and catch on widely. And Mozilla's Firefox took years to achieve its present market share of about 20 percent, making it the top alternative to IE and in widespread enough use that Web developers often choose to make sure their Web sites work with it.

Google has been spending a lot of time reproducing what other browsers already have--plug-ins, bookmark management, print preview, and any number of mundane but useful features. But Google also has been working on innovation, including more robust security and faster performance when running applications written in the JavaScript Web programming language.

Google has high hopes that it'll be able to match the performance of desktop applications with its technology.

"With O3D, we think we'll be able to enable high-quality games, the kind you're accustomed to seeing on consoles, as well as CAD (computer-aided design) applications," Chen said in a May speech. And regarding Native Client, "We want to be within single-digit percentages of what you can do with the best desktop native code," he said.

Google also is participating in a separate 3D Web graphics effort spearheaded by Mozilla and the Khronos Group.

Article source: CNET

MySpeed: Watch video at your own pace

There are some videos that drone on--business presentations, product demos, and online driving school--and others that rush by too quickly. MySpeed is a fun, free-to-try bit of software that serves as a playback remote so you can watch Flash videos at your own pace.

The simple app consists of a sliding bar that's set to 1.0, regular time, when a video plays. Slide it to the left to slow the sound and picture, or to the right to speed both elements to two or three times the original speed. You can also use shortcut keys to quicken or slow the video. Crtl+Alt+F makes it faster; Crtl+Alt+S drags it down.

The audio and video largely remained in sync when tampered with, but original trip-ups in streaming and buffering were more noticeable with the video accelerated. If you don't set MySpeed to start on boot-up, you'll need to open it each session. After that, it'll run in the background from the system tray.

MySpeed is an amusing, sometimes time-saving utility for YouTube and sources of Flash video. However, for the $30 post-trial asking price for the Windows app, it's clearly aimed at very frequent video watchers, especially e-learners who may want to breeze by some sections of a module and stroll through other, more technical segments.

Article source: CNET

Facebook Connect Available Now in Multiple Languages

Facebook may be the biggest social network in the world and one of the most visited web sites but it doesn't stop here. The company wants to get as many people as possible using the service and while the site is already the most visited destination online it aims to connect to its users even when they are visiting other sites. This is where Facebook Connect comes in, allowing any site or service to offer Facebook integration.
And with the social network having such a big presence worldwide it was only a matter of time before Facebook Connect got internationalized.

Being the premier social network in the world, as it has officially passed 250 million registered users with only 70 million or so in the US, it’s easy to see why it would need a powerful localized experience and, in fact, Facebook is available in 64 languages already, just 18 months since the program was launched. And now Facebook Connect users can benefit from the same level of service, with all of the features currently available in their native language.

“Developers who've implemented Facebook Connect, including those who have installed social widgets like the Fan Box, now have the ability to decide in which language they want their Facebook Connect features rendered,” James Leszczenski writes on the Facebook developer blog. “When a user first connects to your site, or publishes something back to Facebook, the Facebook Connect content will appear in the language you specify. User-generated content continues to appear in the language in which it was written.”

Facebook Connect has been a resounding success for the site, having been deployed by more than 15,000 sites or services in a little over six months since its launch. The login standard has been adopted by several large companies already, allowing users to login with their Facebook credentials. The localization feature is easy to implement, with webmasters having to make just small modifications to their code.

Article source: Softpedia

Adobe Releases Beta Text Layout Framework

This week, Adobe announced the beta release of the Text Layout Framework, an extensible library, built on the new text engine in Adobe Flash Player 10. This will allow developers and designers to use more sophisticated typography layouts in Web applications. The framework is intended for use with Adobe Flash CS4 Professional or Adobe Flex, and is included in the next version of Flex, code named Gumbo.

The Text Layout Framework delivers multi-lingual, print-quality typography for the web, including support for:

* Bidirectional text, vertical text and over 30 writing systems including Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Lao, the major writing systems of India, and others
* Selection, editing and flowing text across multiple columns and linked containers, and around inline images
* Vertical text, Tate-Chu-Yoko (horizontal within vertical text) and justifier for East Asian typography
* Rich typographical controls, including kerning, ligatures, typographic case, digit case, digit width and discretionary hyphens
* Cut, copy, paste, undo and standard keyboard and mouse gestures for editing
* Rich developer APIs to manipulate text content, layout, markup and create custom text components

While this might be especially of interest to developers (because it looks like there is a bit of hard work behind the scenes to use it), for designers it means that online typography design is coming closer to what can be achieved in print. On the Adobe website you can test out eight examples of how you can manipulate and control text. Examples include working with columns, text effects, linked containers, ligatures and graphics. On first impression, the ability to work with text like this feels a little bit like InDesign “lite,” which is very exciting if you love type and are frustrated with current limitations on the web.

Do you think the Text Layout Framework sounds like something good for designers and developers to work together on?

Article source: Sitepoint

Falcon Grabs Screens with Talon

Aviary has expanded their offering of nifty AIR-powered, bird-themed graphics tools with the recent release of Falcon – a simple visual markup tool.

So what exactly *IS* a visual markup tool? Falcon is basically just a really neat tool for selecting, cropping, and marking up screen content. Bloggers, writers, and general forum junkies take note!

Like Aviary’s other tools, Falcon is free and runs live in your browser via the magic of Adobe AIR. However, the bit that makes Falcon particularly useful is its integration with Firefox via the Talon Firefox Extension.

So, here’s the 30-second tour:

1) After installing Talon, you’ll find a new button on your Firefox toolbar, and a new right-click/CTRL-click option on your mouse. Activate this control and you’ll be able choose between capturing areas, whole pages, or the entire application window.

2) Falcon resizing textOnce captured, your screen image is auto-loaded into the Falcon application inside your browser, complete with a small but useful suite of editing tools.

3) The toolbox allows you to add attractive, stretchable arrows, lines, squares, and circles with a simple drag and drop. As these are vectors, they remain fully editable at all times.

4) The Text tool lets you annotate your image. I must admit, I found the lack of text-size controls a little disconcerting at first. However, once you’ve become accustomed to the idea of using the scaling tool to control the size of ALL elements, — even the text — it’s all good.

5) When you’re happy with your image, you can then choose from two options: save to desktop or create an account with Aviary. The latter allows you to upload the image directly to their image hosting servers.

Though I confess I’m partly loath to add yet another image hosting service to my list, it’s hard to beat the sheer click-and-forget joy of the Falcon/Talon system. The transfer process is completely invisible, and it also autogenerates ready-to-eat markup for Twitter, BBcode, Facebook, and WordPress. Slick stuff. There’s something to be said for laziness.

Ready-to-eat codeI’ve been using Falcon for a couple of weeks now and it has quickly become a fave. True, the editing tools are relatively modest but are good enough to make your point in 95% of situations. In the other 5% of cases, jumping out to more sophisticated tools (including Aviary’s own Phoenix editor) is simple enough when required.

Most importantly, Falcon is superfast — even on modest systems — and clean, and positions itself exactly where you need it, when you need it.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

Articles source: Sitepoint

Is GMail Finally Complete?

Google has a reputation for never completing a project. GMail has been around for five years but is yet to lose its “beta” tag. Docs, Calendar and many other Google services are still beta-products despite having evolved radically since their initial release.

The company’s reasoning for endless beta cycles has never been clearly explained and Google always insisted the tag would be removed once the product was ready. I suspect Google’s motivation for beta tagging is a combination of:

* it reminded users that the web application was experimental and undergoing development
* it lowered user expectations of early web systems and gave us a pleasant surprise to find fully-functional online products
* version numbers rarely have much meaning when applied to web applications and services. Unlike shrink-wrapped disk-distributed software, web solutions can be incrementally improved on a daily basis. Few people, other than the developers, will care if it’s version 7 or 57.

However, Google has finally recognised that the “beta” label has different connotations in the business world and it could be damaging their prospects. Many business users are put off because they associate the term with incomplete or untested software.

It is possible that other Google products will follow the example set by Chrome. The web browser had a beta period of just 100 days and is already at version 2, even though it was only released in September 2008. Could Google’s beta habit be over?

Has Google’s insistence on beta labels ever confused or put off any of your clients?

Article source: Sitepoint

Firefox 3.5 and the potential of Web typography

In addition to new features such as support for HTML 5, geo-location, and a noticeably faster engine, Firefox 3.5 added a new CSS rule that makes Web typography much more attractive.

@font-face is a CSS rule that allows Web designers to reference fonts not installed on end-user machines. Just as you would have a pointer to a server-based stylesheet or JavaScript file in your Web page code, you can now make reference to a hosted typeface.

You'll note that news sites such as CNET News and NYTimes.com are optimized to make Web type more readable and as stylish as possible, but there are many design possibilities via additional downloadable typefaces. (As with any linked asset, there is some level of security risk if a hacker gets their hands on the font file.)

Mozilla's John Daggett explains: Within a stylesheet, each @font-face rule defines a family name to be used, the font resource to be loaded, and the style characteristics of a given face such as whether it's bold or italic. Firefox 3.5 only downloads the fonts as needed, so a stylesheet can list a whole set of fonts of which only a select few will actually be used.

This function is something I would have expected to be commonplace by now (Safari began supporting it in Version 3.1 and Opera in Version 10) but neither have the market share to drive usage the way Firefox and Internet Explorer do. (Note: this function doesn't work in IE.)

Generally speaking, the Web browser has done a terrible job with type. We've been stuck with old standbys such as Helvetica or Times New Roman, and don't forget the oft-loathed Comic-Sans and other delightful Microsoft fonts that are often easy to read but lack any real style (Verdana, for example.)

As Ian Lynam and Craig Mod write: "Fine typography has always been one of the stumbling points of Web design. Limited at most to a handful of cross-platform specific fonts, Web designers have often found it necessary to hack their way into typographically nuanced territory."

New font possibilities won't necessarily make you more popular or a better designer, but @font-face does open the door to make Web pages much more attractive and readable without being forced in Flash or other plug-in based solutions.

This of course is provided that font developers figure out ways to make their typefaces available freely or in a manner that encourages developers to use them. From a technical perspective, Firefox 3.5 allows fonts only to be loaded for pages served from the same site. This prevents sites from freely using fonts found on other sites and gives a bit of protection, but not much.

Most commercial type foundries aren't prepared for this and generally don't have licenses that are conducive to this type of use. But there is a big opportunity to get stylish new typefaces onto browsers worldwide, provided font designers are ready to embrace an open mindset.

Article source: CNET

Just Do It! 5 Ways to Get Over the Fear of Working for Yourself

If you’re contemplating starting a business or beginning a freelance career, you may be scared to death. Let’s face it; there’s a lot to worry about. So many factors come into play when you work for yourself that you may not have to face when you’re externally employed. You may worry that:


* You will fail.
* You will not make enough money.
* It will have a negative impact on your family.
* You will end up hating it.
* You’re not disciplined enough.
* You don’t have drive.
* You’ll be selling something no one wants.
* You don’t know enough about marketing, networking or business management.

Looking at this list can be paralyzing, and you may even convince yourself that you’re not cut out for entrepreneurship. But is that really the case? If you’ve done the research, the work and the planning to position yourself for self-employed success, you can’t let the fear derail you.

Try these actions to help you control the fear and follow your dreams.

1. Make the Fear Work for You

Consider all of your worries and concerns, but instead of letting them eat at your resolve, use them to push and challenge you every step of the way.

2. Adopt a Positive Attitude

Not only is having a positive attitude a key factor of success, but the more you think with optimism, the more you will believe it and the more it will start to become an automatic part of your daily life.

3. Set Realistic Goals

Start off small and let your momentum build with time. When you set realistic and achievable goals, and evaluate them often, you will be more encouraged and confident in what you can accomplish.

4. Ask for Help

It’s hard to do anything in life completely on your own. Having the support and encouragement from family and friends and knowing people believe in you can do a lot to stifle the fear. You may even want to consider a mentor to keep you on track.

5. Be Patient

Make a plan, work hard and always do your best, but realize that it’s not going to happen overnight. If you accept that it’s a process filled with both successes and failures, it will be easier to live in the moment…and appreciate each step of your journey.

Article source: Sitepoint

Make music a social experience with these sites

We all like to share songs with friends, and we all have songs that share meaning with loved ones. Perhaps that's why there are so many music social networks out there. These sites combine both, and make music exploration and enjoyment something that you're not doing on your own.

From the well-known to the obscure, I've been exploring a variety of music social networks that you'll definitely want to check out:

Buzznet is a great way to connect with other music lovers. You can write status updates and view an activity feed that shows what your friends are listening to. You can also tell all your friends what your "song of the moment" is and post it to a profile that can be completely redesigned and themed using built-in tools.

Buzznet has some songs from major artists, but I would have liked to see more tracks. That said, the site makes up for it with music videos from YouTube. That adds a bit more value, as long as the recording quality is good..

Log all your Facebook chats in Firefox

Facebook's built-in chat service is convenient, but where it lacks when compared to software-based chat tools is in letting users log past conversations. Facebook intentionally does not save full conversations, however it does keep a few lines from the last time you chatted with someone so you can pick up where you left off.

If you're looking for more though, there's a new Firefox add-on called Facebook Chat History Manager that saves all of your conversations locally. As long as you're using the browser with it installed, it saves everything and puts it into a log that can be filtered by friend or date. There is, however, no search function, so if you're looking for a specific word or phrase from a past chat, you'll have to view all your chats on one page, then use Firefox's built-in search tool. Hopefully a later version will add a way to search from the local index.

Since the extension saves all of your chats locally, you're totally hosed if your computer gets lost, stolen, or suffers failed hard drive. On the flip side of that, the chat log viewer is password protected, so there are no worries of someone else gaining access to your entire chat history.

If you're a heavy Facebook chat user who does not access the service through a software chat client, this extension is one of the easiest ways to log your chats, and definitely worth the download.

Gmail mobile gets keypad shortcuts auto-complete

On Wednesday Google released two small but important updates to the mobile version of Gmail. New to the service are keyboard shortcuts and address auto-completion; two time-saving features that desktop Gmail users have been enjoying for years.

The keyboard shortcuts (obviously) do not work on the iPhone. For now, Google is limiting them to Android phones with a physical keyboard. These are exactly the same as on the desktop version, so you don't need to re-learn anything.

The auto-completion, on the other hand, is available to everyone and is quite a time saver. It begins pulling up names from your contacts as soon as you type just one letter.

Auto-completion only works in the "to" field when typing a new e-mail though, and does not work on Gmail's search like you're able to do on the desktop variant by using the Gmail labs add-on. Hopefully that feature will trickle down to this mobile version, since it's immensely helpful when trying to add search operators, or sort out messages from specific contacts.

One thing to note is that these new features are only available in the English version of Gmail mobile. Google has not said if, or when, they will make their way to other localizations of the service.

Manage your social life with these apps

Managing social network profiles is getting more difficult. As we sign up for more services, we need to split our time between multiple sites. But with the help of social aggregators, we can limit those issues. The following tools do a fine job of keeping your social life in one spot, helping you to monitor it more efficiently.

I should note, though, that these won't be your path to social networking bliss. Some folks find aggregators too overwhelming. They believe these resources only complicate matters. You might agree after trying some of these tools.

I should also note that Facebook Connect--Facebook's single sign-on service that competes with OpenID--might soon match these aggregation services. Users can already bring some items with them to Facebook. It might only be a matter of time before the service allows users to pull full social network feeds into Facebook.

Social network aggregators
Atomkeep Atomkeep is designed to help you sync all your profile information across multiple social networks. When you change your profile information on the site, all the networks you sync with it will be updated automatically. So, if you're moving to a new home, you can go to Atomkeep, change your address, and it will update that information on Facebook, Bebo, and other social networks. The site is in private beta, so you'll need an invite code to try it out.

Yahoo to distrbute its version of Hadoop

Yahoo announced plans Wednesday to release an open-source version of its take on Hadoop, a grid-computing framework used to run many parts of its business.

Yahoo is a major force in the development of Hadoop, which is principally overseen by the Apache Software Foundation. Hadoop is essentially an open-source version of the software Google uses to run its Web indexing servers, and Yahoo uses it for much the same purpose internally.

Hadoop runs on tens of thousands of servers inside Yahoo, said Nigel Daley, quality and release engineering manager for Yahoo Grid Technologies, in a blog post Wednesday. That's a much larger implementation than other companies and organizations might wish to deploy, but at the same time they would like to benefit from the reliability tweaks that Yahoo has made to Hadoop in order to support its enormous Web properties.

"This distribution is largely a response to the numerous requests that we have received to share Yahoo!'s internally tested and scale-proven releases," Daley wrote. The code is available for download immediately here on Yahoo's site.

Blellow: A New Site for Freelancers

Looking for a new way to find freelancing work, network, and help out your fellow freelancer? If you’re a Twitter user, Blellow may be right up your alley. Blellow is a social networking community for freelancers and creative professionals who answer the question “What are you working on?”

It works much like Twitter. You follow and are followed by other Blellow users, and you enter status updates (in 300 characters or less). The fundamental difference is that it’s work-based: you describe what you’re working on, a problem you are having, or help you need on a particular project or problem. Then, other Blellow members will reply to your thread with suggestions, solutions, or comments.

Kudos

Blellow has a driving purpose of sharing knowledge and collaborating with others. Users who regularly help others solve problems and find solutions can receive “kudos” from the original poster of an issue or problem. You can give out as many kudos as you like for each thread. The idea is to reward the person who helped you the most.

Groups

Groups allow topics to be organized and sorted, i.e. Photoshop, Web Designers, Entrepreneurs, etc. By joining a group you can immediately interact with other members without having to follow anyone.

Projects

Projects allow you to post a request for assistance on one project. Projects can be paid or pro bono. Pro bono projects are unpaid projects meant to add to your portfolio, but may lead to further paid work depending on the project and popularity.

Jobs

The Jobs section is a job board that allows businesses and individuals to post jobs for full-time, part-time, and contract positions in the categories of design, development, writing and other.

Meetups

Blellow provides an opportunity for live gatherings for networking, socializing, or just getting to know the people you interact with on Blellow.

Overall, it’s an interesting new service that can be a potential powerhouse for freelancers once it takes off, especially for those accustomed to Twitter. The goal of information sharing among colleagues is great on it’s own, but the added features of a job board and project help may also make Blellow a great new way to find freelance work.

Have you used Blellow? What do you think about it?

Article source: Sitepoint

Web Fonts: Do Something Positive!

Mark Pilgrim has fanned the flames of the web font debate with his post today, entitled F**k the Foundries. It’s a shame he chose to express his thoughts as an angry rant, because his tone undermines some important points.
The Debate in a Nutshell

This debate isn’t simple, but it isn’t terribly complicated either.

The good news is that the people actually involved in this debate (as opposed to those just shouting from the sidelines), including font vendors, browser vendors, and professional web designers, actually agree on some important points:

* web fonts should not be encumbered by DRM (hooray!)
* there should be a convenient way to license commercial fonts for use on the Web

Among the browser vendors there is heated debate over whether browsers should support the use of ‘free’ fonts (for most meanings of ‘free’) using existing file formats on the Web. In fact, this debate is a distraction that would immediately evaporate if the real issue could be resolved.

The only significant point that the people involved disagree on is whether or not the file format that is used for licensed, commercial fonts on the Web should include the details of the license embedded within it or not. If yes, the format must be developed and support added to browsers.

Microsoft has already built the beginnings of such a format, but further investment is needed. Meanwhile, there are many who believe that the time and effort required to develop, license, and support such a format in all major browsers is too great, or that it will have little or no practical benefit, and is therefore unjustifiable.

Right now, the game is at a stalemate; Microsoft and the commercial font vendors believe the new file format is needed, but are unable to develop it with the available time and money. Everyone else believes current font formats like OpenType are all we need, but they don’t control the fonts.

If you’ve ever played chess, you know there is nothing more frustrating than a stalemate: everyone walks away angry. That’s why the only real developments in the font debate lately seem to be explosions of anger like Mark Pilgrim’s.
Do Something Positive

As a web designer, whatever you believe, you’re probably frustrated too. Instead of joining the shouting match, try making a positive contribution to fonts on the Web.

Here’s one important way that you can: Buy a font. Send a message.

Maybe, like Mark Pilgrim, you would happily pay to use commercial fonts in the web sites you design, and you don’t believe upstanding web designers like you need a new file format to make you aware of the license terms that apply to fonts. If only those backward font foundries would take your money!

Well guess what: they will!

There are legal ways to use commercial fonts on the Web today; they just aren’t particularly convenient. Nevertheless, professional designers use solutions like sIFR and CSS image replacement to use commercial fonts on the Web every day.

The next time you design a site, use one of these techniques to demonstrate your willingness to support commercial fonts on the Web. Simply include a commercial font or two in your design, and make sure you buy a license to use those fonts. Once you have—and this is the important part—tell the world you did!

Include a colophon page on your site that lists the fonts you used, and states that they are fully licensed. Send an email to the designer or foundry that created the font and let them know you bought it to use in a web site design.

Most importantly, mention in your note that you would gladly pay an additional fee (a fair one) to use the existing OpenType version of the font file on your site, if they would only offer a license that allowed you to do so.

The good news in all this is that commercial font vendors are not the monolithic entity that many tirades like Mark Pilgrim’s make them out to be. Most of them are tiny studios with just a few designers who just want to design fonts and get paid to do it. We do not have to convince them all at once.

This is just one way to make a positive contribution to resolving a debate that has, sadly, to this point been dominated by negativity. Can you think of others?

Article source: Sitepoint

KnowEm searches 120 sites for open user names

KnowEm is the latest in services that check for unclaimed user names at multiple social sites. This is helpful if you're interested in retaining the same user name at sites you haven't yet signed up for, or if you're on the verge of launching a new site or service and want to lock down that brand name before someone else does.

Most recently we checked out Namechk, which does the same thing for 84 different sites. KnowEm steps it up by searching in 120 places, as well as offering a premium service which will actually go to each site and sign you up. This doesn't come cheap though; it's $64.95, and it only goes to the sites where the user name is still available. It then sends the log-in information back to you so you can do things like change the password and where it's sending confirmation e-mails.

What's more, is that for $10 a month it can keep signing you up for any new services it adds to its search engine. It promises anywhere from 6 to 10 per month, but that can change depending on what new sites are introduced during that time.

Is it worth it to place your money, and trust in a service like this? It depends on how fast the providers are at adding the new sites and registering for you. If you've got an eccentric, or otherwise uncommon user name then yes, it will probably still be available. However, for more common names, you're better off keeping an eagle eye on your RSS reader and signing up for new services as soon as they're announced.

Article source : Cnet

Qik brings its mobile video to Facebook

In the live-streaming wars, mobile service Qik has a new weapon in its arsenal: integration with Facebook's video player.

Thanks to Facebook Connect, Qik members can now automatically upload their videos to Facebook, set their status messages to link to the video on Qik when they start live-streaming, and have the update show up in their news feeds. Windows Mobile smartphone users (non-touchscreen) can also selectively upload Qik videos to Facebook, an extra feature that the company hopes to roll out to other devices soon.

You can't use Qik to live-stream videos directly on Facebook, at least not yet. But regardless, it's the first mobile video app to allow automatic uploads to Facebook through the social network's application program interface, Qik representatives said.

Live streaming, much like location-based mobile networking, is one of those niches of social media that doesn't have a real frontrunner yet. There are a ton of players in the space, both Webcam- and mobile-focused, and getting a few extra steps ahead is often a matter of being the first to get on a popular platform.

Article source: CNET

Students Who Use Facebook Have Lowest Grades

While the connection between using social media and having low grades in school or college has not yet been directly made, researchers conducting a new survey on social media could not help but notice that students who spent most spare time on Facebook tended to have the lowest grades of all those who were studied. The scientists in charge of the research underlined the fact that being an active part of the social media movement did not necessarily mean that these students studied less, or had an intellect below average. It simply means that these correlations need to be explored more thoroughly.

Ohio State University education researcher Aryn Karpinski told LiveScience that students in the survey who were very active on Facebook tended to have a GPA of around 3.0 to 3.5, as opposed to the teens who reported little to no social media activity. Their GPA levels were in the 3.5 to 4.0 category. Karpinski made it clear that such correlations did not imply causality, in that there might very well be other factors at stake there that drove these students to have lower grades.

The expert also noticed that Facebook users spent between 1 and 5 hours each week studying, or otherwise getting ready for school, whereas non-users took a significantly higher interest in their education, studying between 11 and 15 hours per week, and sometimes even more. Karpinski also said that these results did not necessarily mean that social media users were less interested in school. These children could spend more time on non-learning, extra-curricular activities, such as making music, or working, and not necessarily on Facebook.

In addition, the amount of time spent on learning and reading is also dependent on a student's personality. There are those teens who study all day long just for the sake of it, or who are really interested in the objects they are taught in schools and colleges. On the other hand, others simply accomplish the minimum amount of requirements to remain in school, while devoting their time to their hobbies, or simply doing things that have no connection to their education.

Karpinski's research will be presented on April 16th, at the annual meeting of the American Education Research Association, and will contain details about how students reacted when seeing the questions about their social media behavior. “They're very territorial about their Facebook,” the researcher shared, emphasizing the fact that she tried not to insert any bias, either positive or negative, into the questionnaires.

Article source: Softpedia

How Giving Back Can Help Your Business

I’m a big believer in giving back by donating your time and expertise to your community and your industry. Volunteering can have a number of benefits — helping others, enhancing your skills, becoming active in your community, and creating a sense of achievement. But giving back can also help your career and business. While I wouldn’t recommend volunteering solely for the business benefits, here are some of the areas where you may see value from your efforts.

You can develop new relationships.

Getting out there and volunteering in your community puts you in a great position to meet new people who you may not otherwise meet. These relationships are not only good for networking, but they also help you to create a group of people to consult with outside of your immediate business network.

It can broaden your experience.
Influxis.com

Even if you donate time doing something you do everyday, volunteering provides an opportunity to work on something new with new people in a new place. You get to see more and experience more, and you never know where you might learn a new skill, discover a new way to do something or expand your knowledge in some other valuable way.

It provides indirect marketing exposure.

Sometimes the best marketing is marketing that happens naturally. This can happen when you are focused on a task, especially one that involves collaboration and teamwork.

It’s good for your reputation.

If you work for yourself, everything you do, on and off the job, impacts your business reputation. Giving back is one way to position yourself in a good light. When you spend time and effort for the betterment of others, you are telling clients, potential clients and colleagues that you are empathetic to those around you.

It makes you more well-rounded.

Volunteering makes you well-rounded, as a person and a business owner. And when you volunteer for the right reasons (and realize all of the benefits listed here are really just peripheral to the main purpose of giving back), you just may become a better person.

Do you volunteer? How as it benefited you?

Article source: Sitepoint

How to Successfully Integrate Social Media Into Your Site

While attending Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, I had the chance to hear Bob Buch from Digg present tips and case studies on integrating social media marketing into your or your clients’ websites.

Digg Traffic

“Each story that makes it onto the frontpage of Digg gets a minimum of 20,000 clicks back to the publisher. The best stories will get 200,000 - 250,000 clicks. Digg sends 80 million clicks per month to 3rd party websites,” says Buch.

How are other sites benefiting?

* TheOnion gets 600,000 page views per month from Digg users
* Wired.com gets 1 million page views per month from Digg users
* Telegraph.co.uk, the most successful Digg integration partner, and most popular broadsheet newspaper in the UK, gets 5.5 million page views per month from Digg users.
Use the Smart Digg Widget

The Smart Digg widget shows the number of votes to date and is massively more successful than a regular “Digg This” icon without the counter.

Integrated Most Popular Widget
Digg Widget on Telegraph.co.uk

One of the most popular elements on many content websites is a “Most Popular Content” box which highlights 5-10 popular articles based on recent page views. Time.com found that the “Digg Widget” integrated into their site, got 5X more interaction than their own “Most Popular Articles” box and massively increased their own traffic as a result of tons of additional Digging activity.

Facebook Connect

Popular tech news publisher TechCrunch saw registrations increase by 100%, while capturing additional demographic data on their users by integrating Facebook Connect.

While unusually successful, Bob notes that most websites see an increase of 30-80% increase in registration, and an additional 15-80% in comments and user generated content as a result of a clean Facebook Connect integration. You can even import user photos and other demographic data back into your site - such as location, gender, and other information that might otherwise drag down your sign-ups if integrated into your own registration process.

One of the biggest successes of Facebook connect is being able to virally spread your message, by appearing on the “News” wall for users who use post on your site, vote, upload, or otherwise interact with your site.

With each Facebook user having an average of 120 Facebook friends, this is a very quick way to expose your brand to a lot of people, really quickly, while providing “social proof”.

Threadless: The ups and downs of selling cotton

Threadless.com founder Jake Nickell and chief creative officer Jeffrey Kalmikoff on Friday chatted with TechWeb's Jennifer Pahlka about crowdsourcing design and feedback from a user-base that's buying up more than 100,000 T-shirts a month. Despite darkening economic times, Nickell says the site is still getting 150 to 200 user submitted designs per day, a number that the Threadless community whittles down to just nine that get released as new shirts on a weekly basis.

Kalmikoff said one of the things that keeps the designs coming in is how much designers are getting paid. According to him, the $2,000 (plus being able to retain the copyright on the image) is approximately four to five times what's being offered at other design shops. Nickell also said that unlike efforts from competitors, the Threadless formula has worked so well because the site doesn't ask designers to create T-shirt designs around specific things, something he said can limit the number of submissions they get.

Part of the operation that's not quite as streamlined, however is Threadless' marketing, something Nickell and Kalmikoff say they've learned on the fly after a few follies. "The whole idea of reciprocal promotion is something we now think about when doing a partnership," said Kalmikoff, who described early missteps where the company would offer what later turned out to be free sponsorship for movies, video games, and film festivals without getting any promotion in return.

Not all is bad though, Nickell says there are more than 800,000 people signed up for the company's weekly e-mail newsletter, which he says has driven repeat business.

To further the site's marketing push, Nickell says Threadless will soon be getting Facebook Connect integration. "All these moments when you could be sharing, commenting, posting a blog post. (That) interaction becomes content," he said. Threadless users who log-in with their Facebook credential can shoot their activity on the site and favorite designs back out to their public feed.

One thing that was not mentioned in the interview was how well the company's brick and mortar store was doing, and if the pair planned on continuing retail expansion. The Chicago store, which opened up in September of 2007 offers most all of what's available online, in addition to designer's art in a gallery space. It was also the first in a series of planned retail operations across the country, including stores in Colorado and California which have not yet opened.

Article source: CNET

Web 2.0 Expo: Time to hit refresh?

SAN FRANCISCO--Stepping off an otherwise quiet street and through the door of the downtown restaurant Roe on Thursday night was, at first, like a foray into a secret fantasy world where no market crash or economic recession had ever happened.

It was the launch party for Yola.com, a rebranded Web publishing platform formerly known as SynthaSite, in conjunction with this week's Web 2.0 Expo down the street at the Moscone convention center. There was an open bar, of course: The signature cocktail was a kir royale, a blend of champagne and blackcurrant liqueur, so champagne flutes were the drinkware of choice in the darkened room. The music was loud. Yola's logo was everywhere--projected on the wall, on T-shirts handed out at the door, on stickers scattered across the bar for the taking.

Yet if you surveyed the scene, there were signs of conscious frugality. The guest list was tight and the party was kept small, with only the ground floor of the two-story Roe booked; the open bar eventually ended, and the kir royales stopped flowing. While Yola was a "silver" sponsor of the conference, the event had not been heavily publicized. The same applied to many of the other scattered parties at the convention. If you knew the details, you could slip into a fun and relatively low-key affair that might even have free drinks and snacks. It was all about doing a bit of digging.

With a "doing more with less" theme, change was in the air at the whole Web 2.0 Expo: This edition of the biannual confab, co-presented by O'Reilly Media and TechWeb, felt like the recession had scooped a hole out of it with a spork. Attendance rates were slightly down, and even though conference representatives said more than 8,000 people came, the halls of The Moscone Center were noticeably quieter than in years past. Yet this is still a must-attend for the majority of the industry. Exhibitors from big tech companies like Microsoft and Adobe, courting developer talent to populate their various platforms and services, said that this is the best way to reach the biggest audience.

And here's what that audience was hearing: that with the harrowing financial climate, there is opportunity in casting off centuries' worth of old institutions that now only serve to hamper innovation.

"The current global financial crisis is the Web's fault," author Douglas Rushkoff said in his Wednesday keynote. "It's a good thing, and...it's really the arresting of a 400- to 500-year process from which value has been extracted from people and companies unfairly and unproductively."

"Six hundred thousand jobs were lost last month, and we've got to believe that the Internet has something to do with the massive restructuring, reorganization, and revitalization of what is our future," Meetup founder Scott Heiferman said in a talk on Friday morning. "They say that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, so there is this opportunity for us to turn our backs to the screen, to turn our backs to a centralized 20th-century culture where we are dependent on these bloated banks and insurance companies."

That's so last century
The irony lies in the fact that with so many talks at the expo fixed on the opportunities presented by financial difficulties, and the final death knells of the 20th-century way of doing things, the convention itself was still an old-school trade show. The expo floor was full (though not as full as last year) of colorful booths and talkative PR representatives, the panel lineup still packed with the usual marketing and programming buzzwords--ROI, SEO, PHP, RSS--and the art of the business card swap still tantamount.

"There's just not a whole lot that's cool this year," one disappointed attendee told me. Another said he'd found that after last month's South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas, there was something stale about the Web 2.0 Expo, even though it was much healthier than many had anticipated. Maybe it's time for a reboot.

You see, if you got past the surface, did a little digging--just like with the after-hours scene--there were some noteworthy talks at Web 2.0 Expo. There was a seminar about just how much you need to know about wine in order to impress business associates, a crash course from Digg's director of business development for old-media types who want to capitalize on the social news craze, and a session about marketing insights from the creator of the Burger King "Whopper Sacrifice" Facebook app. Keynote speakers like John Maeda, president of the Rhode Island School of Design, and the founders of indie T-shirt sensation Threadless, weren't exactly the sorts of conference highlights you'd expect.

In those talks, the lack of banter about monetization and user engagement was refreshing. The T-shirt clad Threadless guys, for example, didn't really seem to be in their element sitting on couches onstage for a keynote "conversation" in front of an auditorium of laptop-wielding conference-goers in uncomfortable chairs. They were 21st century dot-com heroes in a setting that some of the expo's out-with-the-old speakers would likely have characterized as so last century.

One of the biggest and most promising highlights of the conference was the after-hours Ignite offshoot, the latest in a series of wacky geek-culture seminars presented by O'Reilly and spearheaded by Web 2.0 organizer Brady Forrest. Seven hundred people packed into a nearby nightclub for a set of decidedly unorthodox presentations: a mandated number of PowerPoint slides, set on an automatic timer, so that no one could veer off topic or go over time. Ignite events are held all over the world and have quite a cult following; with presentations like "Mr. Hacker Goes To Washington" and "Demystifying Weird Japanese Toys and Tools," it wasn't your typical Web 2.0 Expo material.

Conference representatives seem to think that the conference format still has life in it. "The expo itself is not going to change. I think the content changes from year to year based on what the trends are like and what the market looks like," TechWeb community manager Janetti Chon told CNET News. "We try to be the conference that appeals to all Web enthusiasts...of course the conference will evolve as the market and industry evolve." She does have a point. Web 2.0 Expo is so big and far-reaching that putting any kind of new spin on it would risk alienating some sector of attendees.

Tim O'Reilly, founder of O'Reilly Media, said in his address to the expo on Wednesday that the term "Web 2.0" was "never intended to be a version number." But maybe it should've been. With all this talk, finally, about putting old institutions to rest, maybe the digerati should consider taking the plunge and making our industry gatherings something truly new. If we're going to talk about a fresh start, there are a lot of things that can be done to make our events reflect it.

From what it sounds like, many of us are ready for it.

Article source: CNET

Why A Blog Can Be Good For Your Business

Blogs are mainstream these days, and they have quickly become a very affordable marketing tool for businesses. Aside from monetizing your blog with advertisements, there are a number of ways a blog can increase income, generate interest and create more opportunities. If you have yet to start a blog, here are some reasons you may want to consider it.

Blogs can increase traffic to your business site.

We all know that search engines love blogs. With some strategic blogging, you can increase traffic to your business website. And usually, if someone finds your blog through keywords, they are probably part of the audience you are trying to reach with your other marketing activities.

You can establish yourself as an expert.

A blog gives you a way to share your experience. You can take a step toward becoming a respected expert in your industry by freely giving tips, advice and other information that readers can learn from and then apply to their own businesses.

Blogs give you a way to reach out to clients.

Blogs are informal, conversational and real-time. They give you an opportunity to talk directly to your clients and colleagues, providing value beyond the information listed on your website.

You can provide news, events, specials and other information.

A blog is a great addition to a business website, especially when it provides information about company news, events, new services, partnerships and special discounts. This format allows you to use a blog as an extension of your website.

You can offer technical support/documentation through your blog.

A great use for a blog is to make it a support site for your clients. You can create a documentation category that can provide help with common problems. You can also create a support ticket or helpdesk system through your blog. This can streamline your support process, freeing up your time to focus on your work. And it gives clients a quick way to get answers they need.

You can build a following.

When you post good information on a regular basis on a blog, you will build a group of loyal readers. With time, they will get to know you and what you do best. Your readers can become your biggest champions, providing referrals and leads.

Of course, blogging isn’t for everyone. It takes time, a commitment and worthy material. You need to post regularly, provide information that’s valuable to your readers, and be willing to interact with and learn from your audience.

I think the biggest challenge for bloggers, myself included, is sticking to a regular schedule. We’re all busy, and a blog post is just another item on the to-do list. But I can attest to the fact that once you start writing, especially if you’re writing about something you’re passionate about, it just starts to flow. And in the end, you’ll be happy you did it…and hopefully you’ll be advancing your business prospects in the process.

Do you have a blog for your business? Share the link, and you may inspire some non-bloggers to take the leap.

Article source: Sitepoint

What Does It Take To Be A Successful Freelancer?

Making the move to working for yourself isn’t always easy, regardless of how prepared you are. And if you’ve become self-employed as a result of circumstances beyond your control, it can be even more difficult. Being successful at freelancing takes a combination of freelance-friendly personality characteristics and an ability to face and conquer challenges. Here’s a look at the benefits, challenges and some must-have characteristics and traits that make a freelancer successful.

The Benefits

Being self-employed comes with a great set of benefits. Not only can you get rid of a long and unproductive commute and wear whatever you want, but you are the boss. Now, that’s a benefit. Here are a few more:

* You set your own hours.
* You choose the work you do.
* You have unlimited earning potential.
* You can work from anywhere.
* You get to reap the rewards from your hard work.
* You can take time off without clearing it with anyone.
* You can tend to family, house, and other non-work issues.

One of the biggest plusses I’ve found from being self-employed is that your career is what you make of it. You can get rid of all of the limitations and definitions — such as being a “Web Designer” or a “Programmer” — and create your own perfect career that’s a combination of everything you love without the things you don’t love. You have control of your future. It’s an exciting prospect.

The Challenges

While they can be vastly different from your office-working counterparts, freelancing has it’s own set of challenges. One part of being a successful freelancer is being able to handle whatever comes your way. Things like:

* Not getting paid
* Having difficulty finding work
* Not having a marketing budget
* Being unable to get health insurance
* Having difficulty networking
* Feeling isolated
* Dealing with difficult clients without any support
* Facing burnout

Unfortunately, all of these things are common freelancer challenges. But the challenges themselves are not a reason to ditch your freelancing dreams. You just need to be prepared to deal with them if and when they happen.

The Must-Have’s

Most freelancers, business owners and others who are self-employed have similar personality traits, lifestyles and other characteristics that support their success. You will need at least some of the must-have items on this list in order to be successful at freelancing:

* Drive
* Passion for what you do
* Practicality
* Networking ability
* Hard work
* Discipline
* Thirst for knowledge
* Time management skills
* Support from family and friends
* Risk-taking mindset
* Patience
* Thick skin
* Good communication skills

The most important traits you can have as a freelancer, I think, are drive and passion. Many of these other items can be learned and improved with time, but you are either driven to succeed or you’re not. And you need to love what you’re doing to sustain that kind of drive on a long-term basis. Those two traits are a powerful combo, and I don’t think I have ever met a successful freelancer who made it the distance without having both.

What do you think makes a successful freelancer?

Article source : Sitepoint

Web site builder SynthaSite rebrands as Yola

SynthaSite, a San Francisco-based company that lets users build Web sites with minimal technical expertise required, has changed its name: it has ditched the corporate-sounding moniker for the more Web 2.0-ish Yola.

"The name SynthaSite has brought us to where we are today, but it won't take us where we want to go," CEO Vinny Lingham said in a release. "We're reaching a global market and need a name that is easy to say, resonates in any language, and captures the creativity and excitement that our users bring to their Web sites."

Yola, which targets individuals and small businesses, comes from the Hindi word for "hatch." It launched early last year and now says it has more than 1.5 million registered users. The name change won't affect any of them, the company said, and if their sites are hosted on SynthaSite subdomains, the URLs will not change.

While still SynthaSite, Yola launched a new user interface last summer and more recently raised a $20 million series B venture round from Reinet Fund.

Build a Money-Making Website in 10 Minutes With DevHub

I’m always a little sceptical about online website building systems. Many make bold claims that anyone can build a professional website in minutes. If that were true, most of us would have been out of a job years ago.

However, the rise of blogging systems and social networks proves there are many millions of people who just want to write content and interact with like-minded individuals. It is a bonus if they can make a little money from their endeavors.

DevHub is a new system from the EVO Media Group that is firmly aimed at bloggers, entrepreneurs, topical experts, affiliate marketers, and users who would normally head to Squidoo or HubPages. The system is a result of 18 months development and was launched in February 2009. By the end of the first month, over 100,000 sites had been created on the platform.
How is DevHub Different?

Unlike some competing systems, DevHub offers:

* up to 10 different sites (you can request more if your existing efforts pass their quality-control inspection!)
* easy domain registration or a free devhub.com sub-domain
* multiple pages with integrated blogging
* a drag-and-drop page editor
* customizable themes and color editing
* SEO and statistics tools
* integration with Twitter, Google Analytics, and bookmarking sites
* zero cost.

Ultimately, DevHub has one goal: to monetize your site. The website builder has a selection of advertising modules including products, local directories, property listings, and job vacancies. DevHub takes a proportion of the revenue and gives you the rest.

The adverts are hard-coded HTML inside your webpage rather than remotely-hosted scripts or images. It certainly prevents Adblock Plus and other advert blockers from hiding the links. However, DevHub do not insist on adverts; the user can choose how many or how few they use.
The 10-Minute Challenge

My challenge was to test DevHub’s marketing claim and build a site in 10 minutes without prior knowledge of the system. I chose a subject - the 2009 Formula 1 season - and prepared a little content and an image.

Minute 1: sign up
Sign-up is quicker than most, although I was fortunate that the ‘formula1′ sub-domain had not been taken.

Minute 2 to 5: the home page
The editor is straight-forward: you drag a content box from the panel to the page and change its properties as necessary. One, two, or three-column layouts can be selected.

I probably spent a little longer than necessary experimenting with themes and colors. There are not a huge number of choices, but there are enough options to keep most people happy.

Minute 6 to 7: added blog articles
Clicking the blog link allows you to post, remove, or edit individual articles. I added two posts and placed a ‘blog entries’ widget on the home page.

Minute 8 to 9: additional pages
Two further pages were added:

* news - this shows an F1 RSS feed from the BBC
* pictures - a selection of photographs determined by keywords

I added several advertising blocks to both pages.

Minute 10: tidy up
I previewed the site and rearranged some content to make better use of the space.

The result can be viewed at http://formula1.devhub.com/. It will never win any awards, but it proved that a 10-minute site is possible.

The promise of easy money during a recession makes DevHub an increasingly attractive proposition. The community is growing exponentially and an API is expected shortly that will allow developers to build further modules for the platform.

Try it for yourself: click here to join DevHub.

What do you think? Is DevHub offering anything new? Are you earning any money from it? Will novices find the system easy to use? Can it succeed in an already-crowed market?

Article source: Sitepoint

Developing Personal Relationships With Clients

I’ve experienced the gamut of client relationship types — from all business to too personal — and it took me a little while to discover the right mix of business and personal that works for me. When I was just starting out, my instinct told me to be all business all the time. I wanted to be considered an equal, get respect from my clients and not be in a position to be taken advantage of. Once I had a little experience under my belt and some longer-term client relationships, I adopted a more personal approach, likely because I had more confidence in myself as a business person.

With the increasing popularity of social networking, I find myself crossing paths even more with clients on Facebook and Twitter, and many of the business/personal lines are becoming more blurred. For some, this may be too much client interaction, but this has created amazing opportunities for me. When you work virtually, like I do, it can be a challenge to create a personal element in your business relationships. And social networking sites create an outlet for personal interaction.

Why does it matter? Clients want to hire someone experienced and professional who can get the job done, but they also want someone they feel like they know and can trust. We’re all people first, and giving a little bit of yourself creates a foundation for a thriving relationship. It increases the likelihood that the client will want to work with you again.

Letting your business relationships get a little personal doesn’t mean you need to tell your client personal things about yourself or ask them personal questions. But if you give them a little more – mentioning your weekend plans, asking how their sick sister-in-law is doing, remembering birthdays – you can create a multi-dimensional relationship by which you can accomplish a number of things:
www.webfusion.com

* Create loyalty and trust that overlaps into work situations
* Give clients more reason to refer you because they feel they really know who you are
* Get to know each other better which makes working together easier and more efficient
* Develop opportunities for additional work within the company
* Become more approachable and be able to avoid miscommunication
* Show that you’re human, just like they are

Just like any relationship, the driving factor behind this is communication, whether it’s online or off. And also, like other relationships, this philosophy doesn’t apply across the board. There are some clients who you wouldn’t want to have this type of relationship with, either because of their personal preference or personality issues. It’s important to stay within the comfort levels of both parties, and adjust your relationship to fit each individual client.

Do you have personal relationships with your clients? Has it ever backfired?

Article source: Sitepoint

What is the Freelancers Union and Do You Need To Join?

I’ve been in the self-employed world for a number of years, yet I just recently discovered something called the Freelancers Union. If this is new for you as well (and if you’re U.S.-based), it might be of interest.

What is the Freelancers Union?

From their website, “Freelancers Union is a nonprofit organization that represents the needs of America’s independent workforce though advocacy, information, and service.” They are basically an advocacy group in the U.S. (based in New York), that conducts a number of activities to support freelancers, consultants, and the otherwise self-employed. Some of the services they provide include:

* Negotiate insurance rates on behalf of freelancers
* Offer health insurance to freelancers in 31 states
* Provide dental, life, and disability insurance nationwide
* Supply an outlet for networking, collaboration, and sharing knowledge
* Research the independent workforce, educate policy makers and lobby for change
* Offer events, seminars and workshops on a variety of topics
* Provide a job board for freelancers

Freelancers Union currently has 100,000 members nationwide. It is free to join and participate in the Union’s forums, job board, yellow pages listing, and receive membership discounts on a number of services. Events require a fee for participation.

Why join?

Freelancer’s Union does offer freelancers a lot of benefits, although most are not unique or different from other freelancer sites and organizations. By far, the biggest draw for joining Freelancers Union is the insurance benefits. As independent workers, insurance can be one of the most costly and difficult needs to fulfill, especially if you don’t have a spouse or domestic partner who has insurance you can benefit from. You can get insurance at more affordable rates through the Union, and that can help you continue to stay in business for yourself.

Why NOT join?

Freelancers Union developed quite a consumer uprising in 2008, when they switched to more expensive coverage without giving members much of a heads up. Then, Freelancers Union started their own insurance company in November, which introduced another set of potential issues for members. A message on the Freelancers Union blog from Sara Horowitz, executive director, talks about why they started their own company and what they hope to accomplish. There’s some additional information on the new company on The Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog, but it seems that because the Freelancers Union’s insurance company is so new, the real value (and cost) to members is not yet apparent.

What’s Your Take?

The cost of finding insurance coverage on your own is astronomical, not to mention the effort required to apply and get accepted into a plan as a freelancer, so this concept is certainly food for thought. I am very fortunate not to need independent health insurance, as I am a dependent on my husband’s plan. But if I were not in this situation, I would likely consider the coverage offered through Freelancers Union.

Do you belong to the Freelancer’s Union, and if you’re outside the U.S., do you have a similar group where you live that facilitates health insurance for you? What do you do as a freelancer to manage health care?

Article source: Sitepoint