Planetaki Planet WWD

Double Shot #644

2010-02-09T14:18:25+00:00

There's certainly no shortage of goings-on to link to lately.

Devise 1.0.0 - Major milestone for this Rack-based authentication solution for Rails.
Cloudfront: no-brainer CDN Support for S3 - I've got a couple of apps out there where I really should implement this.
Save file and reload Safari from TextMate - Passed on by Alex Heaton.
Bye Bye Github and GitHub post - Afterthoughts - Elad Meidar discusses expectations and git hosting.
SendEmail 1.56 - Command line email sending that can handle TLS (and thus Google Mail servers). Requires some perl modules.
sinatra_more - Gem to boost Sinatra to handling more complex applications.
Auto timeout sessions in Rails - Useful plugin from Matthew Bass, for the times when you need to keep people from just idling. I ended up forking it to make it use jQuery instead of Prototype.
MR.Flow - Web-based designer for MapReduce operations.
EdgeRails.info - Ryan Daigle is moving all his edge content to a fresh domain.
RubyInstaller Release Candidate 2 - 1.8.6, 1.8.7 and 1.9.1 - Useful tool for people who want to run Ruby on Windows without resorting to a virtual machine.
Savon - Ruby SOAP client that includes WSSE authentication.
Wrap your SQL head around Riak's Map-Reduce - Personally my SQL head says "no! enough already!" but I expect I'll have to learn this stuff sooner or later.
Haml Sucks for Content - Actually a good post on some advanced HAML techniques rather than another entry in the holy war.
Less.app - Autocompiler for your LESS CSS files. Well, if you have any.

3 Apps For Collaborating on Scripts Online

2010-02-09T03:28:41+00:00

Here are some apps that provide useful ways to collaborate online on writing scripts for anything from short promotional corporate videos to full-length motion pictures. Sure, there are many ways to accomplish this task, such as sharing a document using Google Docs or Zoho Write, but these three apps focus specifically on the task of writing scripts, along with the formatting that requires. They each include the ability to invite other writers to join your project and maintain a centralized copy of the material for each contributor to view and update.

Adobe Story

Adobe Labs is currently featuring Adobe Story in preview mode, which means you can create an account and start using it for free (for now, anyway). You can create projects that can include as many scripts as you want. These projects can also include charactor biographies and links to external resources, like blogs or relevant web sites. The user interface is slick and rather intuitive. There’s also an Adobe AIR desktop app (of course) that conveniently allows you and all collaborators to work in offline mode, synchronizing all changes whenever you’re connected again.

Here’s the home page for a fictitious project I’ve created called “The Revenge of The Blog,” which is basically a remake of the classic campy horror film “The Blob.” There’s also a character biography page for Robert Scoble, who will reprise the Steve McQueen role from the original movie (I said it was fictitious!)

Plotbot

Plotbot is a web-based script-writing app that also allows you to collaborate with other writers. The good news is that the web app functions very well just like a desktop app, and automatically formats the scripts as you write it — you just have to come up with the ideas. It’s pretty good at determining what you’re trying to type, such as a scene heading or character dialogue.

There are also some handy tools, such as the notebook area where you can track thoughts and information about the story as well as a forum area to brainstorm with others. You can upload a screenplay if you already have one available. Plotbot is free.

Celtx

Celtx is a little different than the other apps in this collection. It covers a far wider variety of scripts for more types of projects besides film, such as scripts for video, documentary, theatre, comics, advertising, video games, music video, radio, podcasts, videocasts, and much more. It provide a free desktop application that you can download and install, but collaborating with others via the online service (called Celtx Studio) is not free. It provides collaboration for up to five users for only about $5 per month, which isn’t bad.

The Celtx app offers the most features that I’ve seen in this type of tool. Not only can you add dialogue to scripts, it has other functionality such as a sketch tool to draw objects, a catalog to track all props and objects, index cards to arrange scenes and a cool storyboarding tool. Check out Sam’s post on the app for a full review.

So there you go, three different ways to collaborate with others on scripts, whether it’s for an entertainment project such as a movie or a corporate instructional video. These apps make it extremely easy to maintain all related information and help save you time and effort with the medium’s formatting, so you and your team can focus on the creative aspect of writing.

What tools do you use for collaborating with others on scripts?

Related GigaOM Pro Research: Report: The Real-Time Enterprise

And the winner is…

2010-02-09T03:29:02+00:00

Michael Buckbee. Michael asked the best question during our recent contest with Legal River and its new answerboard. Michael gets an hour of free legal advice/work and a free year’s membership to StartupToDo.com.

“I’m a software developer for The Social Collective (http://www.thesocialcollective.com) we create specialized social network tools for conference, festivals and tradeshows. If you’re going to SXSW this year, we’re the company behind their my.sxsw.com website where you can create your own custom personal schedule on the site, sync it to your iPhone and see where your friends are heading.”

—-
Also, Patrick and I are interviewing productivity guru David Allen on ways and methods of applying his Getting Things Done methodology to building software companies and working online. If you’ve got a question for David, add a comment now.

Minute Suites: Rest and Recharge, Airport Style

2010-02-08T22:25:00+00:00

Between security hassles and being charged fees for everything but the oxygen we breathe on board a plane, air travel has become something to be endured rather than enjoyed. But a new service that recently opened in Atlanta Hartsfield airport, called Minute Suites, wants to serve as travelers’ oasis from the stress of life traveling the unfriendly skies.

Atlanta Hartsfield’s Minute Suites is located on Concourse B in a space that was formerly a business center, and bills itself as a “traveler’s retreat”. Minute Suites offered me the chance to give them a try during a layover on a recent cross-country trip.

Although my flights were not arriving or departing from Concourse B, the location was convenient to reach. Minute Suites is close to the intersection at the center of Concourse B, where passengers can board the train that shuttles people between Hartsfield’s concourses. It was a two- to three-minute trip each way from Concourse A where my flights were arriving and departing.

The Minute Suites host on duty when I arrived, Michael, was cheery and welcoming despite the extremely early hour and my jet-lagged, exhausted demeanor. He lead me to my suite and gave me a tour of its amenities.

Minute Suites are 7ft x 8ft units that are entered through a sliding door. I was told the five suites are sanitized between each use. Each suite is furnished with a sofa that pulls out into a bed, and a desk with a chair. The suites could easily accommodate three adults or two adults and two children.

The only amenity that Minute Suites doesn’t have is plumbing. If you are looking for the restroom, you’ll have to step about 100 feet down the concourse to find one.

In the wall next to the desk is an HDTV that serves as the unit’s entertainment system and Internet terminal; the television service offered is DirecTV with the NFL package. The TV can also be used to check on the status of your flight, since it can display the airport’s Flight Tracking system.

If you have your own computer along, Minute Suites offers ethernet and Wi-Fi internet access included in your suite rental in addition to the provided Internet terminals. I used my MacBook to try out the Wi-Fi access. Getting on was as easy as entering the password I was provided, and the connection felt snappy enough (at least for the web surfing and email that I was trying it out on).

There is very nice attention to detail in the Minute Suites. There is a hook with two hangers for hanging up jackets, and each unit has its own thermostat so each visitor can set their own comfortable temperature. The desk chair rolls and is nicely cushioned. There are controls for the lights and sound system in the wall at one end of the bed.

Since I had just gotten off a red-eye flight, I was particularly interested in trying out the daybed for a nap — something that I would normally never do in an airport. Pillows and blankets are provided. The suite contains an alarm clock on a ledge behind the bed, or the Minute Suites staff will provide you a wake-up call (or actually, knock). Michael was extremely prompt with my wake-up knock, although I had set my iPhone alarm as a back-up.

The bed was very comfortable. I tried out the Nap26 program that is built into the entertainment system, which is supposed to make you feel as though you’ve had three hours of sleep in only 26 minutes. I found the program soundtrack so annoying that it actually kept me awake instead of putting me to sleep even though I’d had only two hours of sleep in the previous 24. I turned it off after only a few minutes and promptly fell asleep.

A key component in my ability to sleep was the suite’s sound masking system. Essentially a giant white noise machine, the masking system’s volume is adjustable by the suite’s occupant. Thanks to this system, I was able to sleep completely unaware that I was in the heart of one of the world’s busiest airports, in a suite 10 feet away from a congested concourse. The only sounds I heard were a few loud bangs that I believe originated in the service area below the concourse.

If all of this sounds like a wonderful way to spend your airport layover, it is. But there’s a catch to this luxury: the luxury price. Minute Suites rent for $30/hr, with a one hour minimum. Eight hours costs $180, since at eight hours a rate decrease of 25 percent takes effect.

But if you aren’t turned off by the price, Minute Suites can be a great place to recharge or get some privacy to do some business on the go.

Would you try a “traveler’s retreat” if there was one available ton your trip?

Taking a Closer Look with 1DayLater

2010-02-08T22:25:00+00:00

This year, in an effort to get a better grip on the ways I generate income, I’ve been looking for a free, simple app that will allow me to track my income easily. I should say that this was my first priority; as a second priority, I wanted to track my time more closely as well.

Although I like feeling organized, I don’t want to spend ages learning how to use software, and one thing that really frustrates me is unintuitive systems with poor usability. Generally, I think the simpler things are, the better. So I was excited to hear about 1DayLater, a new time-, cash- and distance-tracking service that is nothing if not straightforward.

For me to put the words “excited” and “tracking service” in the same sentence is a big deal. I decided not to get my hopes up. But using the service lived up to expectations: 1DayLater seems to be just what I needed.

The Basics

1DayLater is a free web-based service (additional premium features will be added as the service moves out of beta). Create an account, and you can use the clear interface to enter the “values” associated with the activities that you do: money, time and distance. You associate that value with a client and a date. Simple. If you like, you can add notes to that entry; my entries identify what tasks I completed for each client. There’s also a auto-timer that you can use to track your work in real time. Very handy.

From this point, users currently have a couple of options. The first is “Analysis.” The system can provide you with charts that reflect, for example, the time data you’ve entered, providing a graphical overview of where all your time’s going. This should provide some very interesting (or is that alarming?) information once I’ve been using the system for a while.

The second is “Export,” which lets you download data in OpenOffice spreadsheet format. You can select to download data about a certain client, “value” type — time, expenses, income, mileage — or on the basis of search criteria that you define.

The 1DayLater team is, of course, working on additional features which will include invoicing and mileage claims; these features are likely to form part of the paid component of the 1DayLater service. The Export facility was released as I was reviewing the service, so hopefully these extra features won’t be too far away.

Equally important is mobile access to the service. Those on the go will undoubtedly be disappointed that there are currently no mobile or desktop apps for this service. While this may seem like a big oversight, the 1DayLater blog explains that the team is now working to develop these (not surprisingly often-requested) apps.

Who’s it For?

The brothers who developed this service, Paul and David King, describe their inspiration for the service:

At the start of 2008 we were working separately as freelancers and realised that there was a problem common to both of us — we found it hard to keep track of how much time we were spending on our clients, and that this problem was reflected in our invoices.

As someone who’s in exactly the same place, I find the service is just what I want; a lot of the other software and services I looked at were too complex and detailed for my simple needs. I didn’t need to share my data with anyone else, except maybe an accountant — so what some would perceive as the limits of the 1DayLater service are great news to me.

OK, so the service doesn’t sync with my calendar; most of my time is unscheduled, so this isn’t a feature I need. OK, so it’s a one-person-per-account system; there’s only one of me, so I don’t need to aggregate my data with others (though if I did, I could probably do it manually through the spreadsheet export).

I do think, though, that the present lack of mobile and desktop apps is a limitation that would reduce the convenience of this service for a large portion of web workers — fortunately, not for long!

See For Yourself

You can view the demo for 1DayLater without signing up, but registration is free, so you might as well go ahead and see what the service does for you.

Have you tried 1Daylater? What other time, cash, or expense tracking services can you recommend?

Related GigaOM Pro Research: NewNet Went Social with Partnerships Galore in Q4

Photo by stock.xchng user D-squared.

3 Places to Discover New and Relevant Content

2010-02-08T18:18:17+00:00

Web workers are a busy group, and it can be too easy to get buried in our work while rarely surfacing to keep up with the latest news, trends and other information that we should be learning. While I love my RSS reader and check it frequently, RSS readers have limitations. They are best for keeping up with information that you have added to your reader because you know you want to read it. What about all of that other information from sites that you don’t already read?

One of the best ways to find this news and interesting information is by using sites that provide smart ways to aggregate content. In some of these examples, the content is curated by real people, but in others, it’s generated algorithmically in that the posts being linked to or discussed rise to the top. Here are a few of my favorite ways to discover new and relevant content to get you started.

Techmeme

Techmeme is probably the most well-known way to find the hottest tech industry news. It uses a combination of human editorial input and algorithms to find the posts that people are talking about and linking to. My favorite thing about Techmeme is that it has an excerpt of the main story along with links to many of the other bloggers who are discussing the same topic. It’s easy to get a quick understanding of the story, while getting a look at how different people are reacting to the news. These reactions can be particularly fascinating for some of the more controversial stories. I use Techmeme to keep up with the news that all of the rest of the bloggers are discussing so that when I go out with my geeky friends in the evening, I’ll be ready to talk about the latest news.

The Twitter Tim.es

My new favorite content discovery site is The Twitter Tim.es because my personalized page is curated by the people that I choose to follow on Twitter. It takes the links posted by the people you follow and links from friends of friends, and puts them into a newspaper-style layout with the most frequently tweeted links at the top with larger headlines. Since I only follow people on Twitter that I really want to keep up with, the content that appears on my Twitter Tim.es page is highly relevant for me. It usually contains a mix of general technology information and Portland news, which is my perfect mix. You will need to sign into Twitter to create your pages, but as it uses oAuth to authenticate with Twitter you don’t have to give up your Twitter password.

Lazyfeed

I’ve just started using Lazyfeed, but it shows some real promise. You pick any topic that you want to learn about, and it provides real-time updates on the most recent content in your topic. It has a couple of features that make it particularly useful. First, it is really easy to add or delete topics, which makes it a great way to keep up with a hot topic temporarily (like a product launch) and then delete the topic after the buzz dies down. It also suggests related topics, which can be helpful when you are starting research on something new or to pull in some additional information.

What are your tips for discovering new and relevant content?

New Book on Business Planning Helps Productivity

2010-02-08T14:17:07+00:00

Every December, I sit down to write my business plan for the upcoming year. Invariably, however, the lure of pumpkin pie, the razzle-dazzle of holiday lights and the continuous playing of Christmas music take me off track. I find that I’m just too distracted to seriously focus on the business planning at hand.

Instead, I set my sights on January. The merriment is over, and I’m ready to get a grip on my work world again. The only problem is that my inbox is so backed up, and my to-do list has grown so long, that it takes me most of the month to process through the open items that have congregated while I was mentally away for the holidays.

So here I am in the beginning of February, finally ready to knuckle down and work on my business plan for the year. A process that — while I’ve gone through it dozens of times over the years — is always a bit daunting at first, but greatly worthwhile.

I find that my productivity during the year is always enhanced when I have a road map to follow in my business. Even if all the gaps aren’t filled in or the fine details sorted out, just knowing the major stops along the way, and how I plan on getting there, empowers me to be more on purpose and more productive during the year.

Now that I finally have the breathing room to sit back and reflect on my business plan for 2010, I have found assistance in a great new book titled “Passion, Plan, Profit: 12 Simple Steps to Convert Your Passion into a Solid Business“ by Christy Strauch. Here’s her take on creating a business plan.

Karen Leland: First off, why did you write this book?

Christy Strauch: I wrote this book for creative types (like web workers) who are in the business world, but haven’t necessarily had a peaceful relationship with making the business side of their business work. Because of that, the first step in any business plan process is to connect with your purpose for being in your business — whether you’re self-employed or working for a company. It’s easier to persevere through some of the challenging times if you have a purpose to pull you through.

Karen: Well, once you know your purpose, then what?

Strauch: You need to determine who your perfect clients are. Take the knowledge that you already have about who hires you and who works with you, and then talk to your clients to gather the rest of the information. You need both the demographic information about them (things like their age, where they live and their level of education) and psychographic information (what they like to do for fun, their attitudes about technology, what they read, who else they go to for help and so on).

Karen: How does knowing who your perfect clients are help you to build a business plan?

Strauch: If you understand how people find you and why they are drawn to you, you can better determine the best way to reach out to them. Is it through a networking event, advertising, cold calling or writing articles? People often choose web workers because a colleague has recommended them.

Karen: In the book, you talk about the importance of looking at the competition as part of your planning process. Why is that so important?

Strauch: Well, to begin with, you need to figure out what you’re best at. What is unique about you? What do you offer that is distinct from your competitors? By taking a look at your competitors, the economy and your own business, you can find a way to position yourself to your clients. That positioning becomes part of the strategies for your business that you pick and put in your business plan.

Karen: Do you recommend any particular tool for this analysis?

Strauch: Yes, I suggest every businessperson do a yearly SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis. It will help you, along with knowing your purpose and your customers, to choose business activities that make the most sense in the current year — to serve your current customers and attract the right new ones.

Karen: How important is including financial information in your business plan?

Strauch: It’s critical. At a minimum, you need to have a forecast of your income for the next 12 months and projected expenses for the same period. You also need to choose three or four measurements that you can watch regularly to make sure everything’s on track in your business.

Karen: Is there anything else people should do to stay on top of their business plan after it’s written?

Strauch: Yes. Do a monthly and quarterly review process. Because things begin to change right after you remove your pen from the paper, these reviews help you keep up with (or even stay ahead of) the inevitable changes that happen to all businesses.

Do you have a business plan for this year?

Double Shot #643

2010-02-08T14:16:51+00:00

Whew, busy weekend. It's scary when you look forward to Monday as a day of rest.

Rapid App RC1 (Rapp) & Rails 3.0b Support - Webbynode is early to the Rails 3.0 hosting party.
The easiest way to test Rails 3 - Instructions from BitNami to get up and running with their RubyStack.
The Path to Rails 3: Greenfielding new apps with the Rails 3 beta - Walkthrough from Jeremy McAnally.
Signed and Permanent cookies in Rails 3 - Pratik covers one of the new Rails 3 features.
52Framework - Claims to be the first HTML5/CSS3 framework, and as far as I know, it is.
Standard Browser Security Features - Surely the most comprehensive writeup of same origin policy in existence.
Rails Plugins - Site that's tracking whether plugins are ready for Rails 3. Not much uptake yet.
The Rails Initialization Process - Ryan Bigg goes digging into the guts of Rails 3.
Why Riak should power your next Rails app - Deep dive into another NoSQL alternative.
Auditing Rails Projects - Quite old, but still workable technique for adding rcov builds to cerberus.
D'Note - Automatically extract TODO and FIXME and so on from your source code. This could come in handy as part of a build process.
mocklinkr - Make your mockups linked & clickable.
Facebooker tips 1 - SessionExpired, Cucumber and Default environment - Elad Meidar is starting to document his battles with Rails + FaceBook.
RoboDomain - Domain management tool for people with a lot of domains.
Ruby Whois 1.0 is here! - The code behind RoboDomain.
rake db:size - Rake tasks to get database and table sizes. A little collaboration between Elad and myself.
jDiv - jQuery rollover dropdown panel.
jquery-twit - And, yes, Twitter display via jQuery.
Bundle me some Rails - An introduction to the way Rails 3 does library management. I remain deeply skeptical.
MegaMutex: A Distributed Mutex for Ruby - Lock things cross-machine using memcached.
Javascript unpacker and beautifier - Makes dealing with minified js a bit easier.

Feb. 8 is Clean Out Your Computer Day

2010-02-07T21:03:53+00:00

It can be hard to remember to routinely clean out your computer — whether that means running virus scans or organizing your files. That’s why having a day devoted to making sure that your computer is working well and that you can find anything you need on it is a good idea. The Institute for Business Technology originally sponsored a National Clean Out Your Computer Day several years ago, assigning it to the second Monday in February. It’s a holiday well worth adding to your calendar.

Clean Up Your Operating System

It seems to be a fact of life that the longer your operating system has been installed on your computer, the slower it gets. I recently had to back up all my data and reinstall my operating system, and the difference it made is incredible. Even if you aren’t prepared to completely wipe your system, there are some things you can do to speed things up.

Microsoft recommends running built-in utilities, like Disk Cleanup and Disk Defragmenter, on a regular basis. There are comparable utilities in every operating system. You can also use an external tool, like Iolo Technologies’ System Mechanic, which can fix common problems and reduce demands on your system, like unused background programs.

Clean Out Files

Even as hard drives keep getting bigger, we keep coming up with files to fill them up. While sorting through all your files may not be necessary, doing a little spring cleaning can make them easier to manage. Personally, I try to get the files I don’t think I’m going to need again off my main computer and on to a separate hard drive every so often, if only to make sure that I have space for more.

It may not be a bad idea to go through what you have on other storage media. I recently ran across a stack of floppy disks, only to realize that I didn’t have access to anything that could actually read them at this point. There are a few files there that I’d like to have, but otherwise, there’s no reason to cart around old floppy disks.

Don’t Forget the Hardware

Even if the only part of your computer that you can actually see is the monitor, it’s worthwhile to occasionally knock the dust off. We’ve discussed cleaning laptops before, and cleaning desktops isn’t too different. Wipe down those monitors, clear out vents and maybe even clean your keyboard and mouse while you’re at it. Just getting rid of the dust can extend your computer’s life.

Make Your Progress Permanent

Once you’ve gotten your computer cleaned out, it’s worth taking a little time to make sure that it stays that way. One of the best options is to make sure that any tools you’re using are set up to run automatically — virus scanners, backups and so forth should be running regularly without you needing to remember to start them up.

Don’t forget to mark Clean Out Your Computer Day on the calendar for next year!\uFEFF

Photo by Flickr user PhotoOptik, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

bit.ly.Pro: Create Short URLs With Your Own Domain

2010-02-07T05:06:35+00:00

As Twitter has rapidly risen to dominate the real-time web, related applications and services have also come to prominence; many in the field of URL shortening. Foremost amongst these is bit.ly, which today released a Pro edition of the service.

bitly.Pro is, in essence, a “white-label” edition of the public service, where a short URL such as http://bit.ly/bHRDfP can now be replaced by one with a custom domain, such as http://imrn.me/bHRDfP.

As well as the ability to utilise a custom domain, bitly.Pro also provides a dashboard view, enabling users to view analytics on all the links shared from your custom domain. I put bitly.Pro through its paces today by registering my new domain — imrn.me. Setting up the service is surprisingly easy; here’s how I did it:

I registered imrn.me with GoDaddy.
I changed the domain’s nameserver settings to point at my own MediaTemple-hosted server.
I altered the DNS records (A and CNAME) for the new domain to verify and redirect to bit.ly.pro.
I logged into bitly.Pro with my standard bit.ly account details to link both account histories.
Used the standard bit.ly bookmarklet to generate my first custom shortened URL: http://imrn.me/90mM9Q

All in all, the entire setup process took me around 10-15 minutes and the new real-time analytics dashboard will prove useful in tracking the “virality” of my shared links. Sadly, your shortened URLs still share their namespace with other bit.ly users, so your domain will still be suffixed by a five-character reference.

However, other than vanity and analytics, there are good reasons for employing a custom domain for your shortening your URLs.

Why use a custom domain?

In recent months, there’s been much discussion on the impact short URLs are having on the long-term stability of the web; notably by weakening the web with centralised hyperlinks, reducing transparency, introducing unwelcome interstitials and providing opportunities for phishing attacks.

Delicious creator Joshua Schacter suggests some publishers should offer their own shortening services to mitigate some of the negative circumstances of shortening.

Indeed, we’ve recently seen brands such as Flickr, TechCrunch, WordPress and Google offer short URLs such as flic.kr, tcrn.ch, wp.me & goo.gl.

For such prominent brands, content publishers and even prolific Twitter users, bitly.Pro offers a useful form of transparency and trust to users clicking on shortened links.

Though the service doesn’t address the problem of centralization of links, it’s a step in the right direction. For those who demand more control, installing a hosted URL shortening app may be more appropriate.

Related GigaOM Pro Research: Report: The Real-Time Enterprise

WWD Weekend Reading List

2010-02-06T22:15:50+00:00

Here are some interesting posts from around the ‘Net to catch up with over the weekend:

What are you reading this weekend?

How Mel Gibson Can Help Your Content Strategy

2010-02-06T18:51:55+00:00

I saw Mel Gibson on a talk show last night. He was there to promote a new action flick he has coming out, and the host asked him about his “Three E” approach to movie making. He responded that there are three things he tries to achieve with his movies: first entertain, then educate, and then, if possible, elevate.

I instantly thought these were admirable objectives to shoot for in almost any kind of communication, though the order of priority would vary depending on the type of communication and its purpose. It may seem like I’m stating the obvious, but what came to my mind right away was how appropriate these three objectives would be for a content development strategy.

Then it occurred to me that in this context, there has to be a fourth “E,” one that is pretty critical in the social Web: engage.

I wrote about content strategy not too long ago. It’s a hot topic and a rising career field. So if you create content (and who doesn’t these days?), you might want to ask yourself if your content satisfies any of these four criteria. Think of them as a kind of quality control standard.

The content you create — from animated demos to blogs to tweets to videos on YouTube — all influence your clients’ and peers’ perception of you. As a professional, you understand the importance of the quality of your product, and you should consider your content as one of your products.

Think about the people you follow on Twitter or whose blogs you read. Chances are your favorites provide a lot of Es. I looked at the tweets of one of the people I enjoy following, and found that most of his tweets qualified:

Just for fun, take a look at what you put out there and do a quick analysis to assess the quality of your content based on the four Es. What do you see?

If you want to learn more about content strategy, don’t miss “Content Strategy Forum 2010,” two days devoted to the topic in Paris in April.

What guidelines do you use for the content you create?

Less is Less

2010-02-06T02:35:49+00:00

“If ease of use were the only requirement, we would all be riding tricycles” — Douglas Engelbart

Have you noticed that many web-based services advertise themselves with the premise of “less,” or being “simple?” They say their programs reduce the time and energy that your team exerts using unecessary and distracting features, functions and options, letting them focus instead on just doing their work.

Many people appreciate the loose structure of these tools. We use terms like “agile” and “flexible,” and for a lot of use cases this sort of framework can indeed be very appealing.

For example, let’s look at the typical web-based project management tools. Most are essentially designed to be warehouses for all data pertaining to a project. They integrate basic to-do lists, messaging and milestones and provide a framework to hang our project upon and to make sure nothing gets lost. Their open nature and lack of structure make them capable of accommodating a wide array of projects, and you can essentially make them work for just about anything or anyone.

Conversely though, and what concerns me, is that often the lack of features and perceived overhead can actually introduce more real overhead to your process. At what point does their simple nature become a hindrance to the work that actually needs to be done?

Yes, incorporating something like dependent task assignment adds complexity. Yes, introducing advanced message routing can require some thought and set up time. But these features provide value and are worth it in some instances, because working around the lack of some useful functionality causes users additional real — and ongoing — overhead.

The concept of overhead in this context was introduced to me in a recent chat I had with Hamid Shojaee of Axosoft, developers of bug tracking/project management tool OnTime, which I’ll be reviewing in the next day or so. His comments really got me thinking about the way that web applications are developed and marketed.

I certainly recognize and accept that some products and services naturally offer too much or too little functionality and that a single application won’t work for everyone. Needs, goals and requirements vary across the board and I’m glad that there are the multitude of options available to us. Being mindful of our decisions when choosing these applications and accepting the trade-off that “simple” may bring with it other consequences down the road when your needs change.

I always say the best thing about doing what I do is having the chance to interact with smart people, and talking with Hamid and others is always a fascinating and enlightening process. It is my pleasure to also have occasional chats with self-proclaimed “interface radical” Amy Hoy, designer for the Freckle time tracking service. We rant about the state of user interface and interaction design, and I always appreciate her candid comments.

In our most recent chat we talked about the concept of “simplicity,” and how as a mantra it provides a nice warm fuzzy feeling and a compelling argument for use, but is “less” or “simple” really the issue? She says an application can be complex, or introduce complexity and still be powerful, enjoyable and surprising. “Way too much of the usability talk on the web focuses on first run experience, says everything should be obvious, but that’s oversimplifying the issue.”

So what concerns me is if this quest for creating simple software is hurting us. Are we creating a culture of users that require a dumbed down experience, at the expense of the increased efficiencies and productivity gains we can realize with more complex tools? Are we also stifling the creativity of the designers and developers who are afraid to provide useful features because of the fear that they may be complex or not immediately obvious?

Hoy says, “A tool you use a lot should offer opportunities to grow and learn,” and I love this concept. We as business owners, entrepreneurs, web workers and freelancers are smart, naturally inquisative, resourceful and creative. We are capable of using software that challenges us; in fact, I believe we could benefit from it.

Are you afraid of your software doing less?

5 Most Popular Posts on WebWorkerDaily This Week

2010-02-05T23:02:50+00:00

Just in case you missed any of them, here are the five most popular posts on WebWorkerDaily this week:

7 Ways to Find Your Focus

Karen shares seven techniques to stop co-workers from interrupting your focus.

The Importance of Buffers

Amber recently suffered through a stressful, overly busy week. In this post, she explains why buffers are necessary for some breathing room.

Public Speaking Demands Productivity

Karen explains why productivity can be something that you give to others; which is why if you speak in public you should make sure your presentation is productive and professional.

My Dirty Little Task Management Secret

Dawn’s problem? She marks everything as “urgent.” In this post, she explains her new methodology

Could the iPad Be My New Travel Computing Device?

The launch of Apple’s new iPad coincided with Nancy’s return from a hectic trip. here, he speculates whether the iPad could replace her MacBook as her “on the road” computing device.

Coworking Update: bzhive Opening Party

2010-02-05T19:23:43+00:00

bzhive, a new coworking space in San Rafael, Ca. that I mentioned back in December, is to hold its opening party this Monday, February 8th at 6PM — you can RSVP for the free event here.

bzhive will serve Marin County and its neighbors, and has a conference room and parking available. Membership costs from $215 per month; if you’d just like to try out the service, access for drop-ins is free, as long as space is available.

If you’re involved with a new coworking venture, let us know about it in the comments.

Improve Productivity by Avoiding Going Online Before Breakfast

2010-02-05T19:23:42+00:00

In the old days, it was traditional to get up, get dressed, and read the newspaper — or listen to the news on radio or television — over coffee and breakfast.

These days, though, I’ve been getting up at 5 or 6 a.m. In a lot of ways, the early morning hours are a great time to write and do projects that require uninterrupted effort. But I find that it’s way too easy to get sidetracked. Since I work at home, I’m tempted to sit down at the computer first thing in the morning to “check my email.” Unfortunately, too often, I find that “checking the email” has turned into a marathon session of “checking the email, responding to email, reading online news, and catching up on Facebook and Twitter…” and the next thing I know, it’s already 9:30, and I haven’t yet eaten or gotten dressed.

So I’m going to try a few things to regain my mornings:

Turn off my computer at night. Not only will I save energy, it will require an extra effort to turn it back on in the morning.
If I must leave my computer on for some reason, I plan to shut down my mail software, web browser, RSS reader, Twitter client and anything else that’s likely to send notifications overnight. I’ll probably leave my IM client on, but will set my status to “away” or “not at desk.”
Route my business email accounts through a service like AwayFind. I used this a while ago, but haven’t tried it since Thursday wrote about its new features.
Use a VoIP service like onSip to set my business phone lines to take messages, or forward calls to me in an emergency. I’ve found that most clients are quite understanding about what’s really an emergency.
If I do turn on the computer in the early morning hours (for instance, if I get an idea that I want to write down), I won’t fire up my email client or my browser, but will instead go directly to my word processor or to Evernote.

It’s going to be a challenge to follow these recommendations, especially since I live on the U.S. West Coast, and most of the rest of the world is already working by the time I get up. We’ll see how I do.

How do you keep your mornings to yourself?

Photo by stock.xchng user swissboy

Double Shot #642

2010-02-05T15:33:31+00:00

I'm about ready for a weekend. Fortunately, I can see one coming.

Rails 3.0: Beta release - It's out at last. If you're brave enough to try to port a non-toy application you'll probably find the wiki page on plugin and gem status useful.
jQuery Easy Slides v1.0 - Indeed, an easy slideshow plugin for jQuery.
Bulletproof backups for MySQL - Step by step on how to set them up sensibly.
Dynamic Dummy Image Generator - One-step rectangular blank placeholder images for layout testing. Alternatively you can run fakeimage to get the same functionality from your own Sinatra app. (via LifeHacker)
script/migrator for navigating migrations - Console script to go back and forth in your Rails migrations, from Maxim Chernyak. Looks very useful.
ZGRViewer - Graphviz visualizer that has some nice zooming and navigation features. I'm trying it out with ERDs generated from Railroad. If you're looking at this stuff for the first time, the Graphviz OS X Builds page and associated FAQ may be useful.
EventCalendar - A more sophisticated descendant of the old Rails CalendarHelper plugin.
Trunks - Git, Mercurial, or Subversion source control hosting "at spouse-friendly prices." Free while they're in beta.

Sendible Relaunches; Now a Powerful Social Media Marketing Tool

2010-02-05T00:45:25+00:00

Sendible, a service for scheduling and posting messages to social networks like Twitter and Facebook, has recently relaunched with some great new features that should prove very useful for social media marketers.

Unlike many of the services that Doriano mentioned in his free Twitter automation tools roundup, Sendible lets you schedule and send messages to a myriad of services, including Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, Plurk, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Brightkite and a host of others.

It’s much more than that, though. Since we that we last wrote about it back in 2008, Sendible has relaunched with some significant upgrades. These changes make it a much more useful marketing tool, allowing you to reach all of your contacts from one interface, no matter what services they use.

New features include the ability to import contacts from other services, a content discovery service that helps you find interesting or useful content to share, the ability to automatically share content from a blog, email marketing and newsletter tools, as well as social media monitoring, tracking and analytics tools.

If you’re involved with social media marketing efforts, Sendible looks to be an extremely powerful tool that’s worth checking out. A limited free plan is available (it doesn’t have many of the cool features I mentioned above), while paid plans range from $5 to $40 per month.

Do you use Sendible for social media marketing? What do you think of the new version?

Related GigaOM Pro Research:

Report: The Real-Time Enterprise

Couldn’t Tweet Today? Don’t Beat Yourself Up Over It

2010-02-05T00:45:25+00:00

Frustrated because you haven’t blogged in a week or a month? Barely tweeting in Twitter? Haven’t checked out LinkedIn for too long? Missing face time in Facebook? Stop fretting. Social media won’t come crashing down if you get bogged down with work, become ill or take a vacation.

Last week, I barely had any presence in the world of social media. I missed every Twitter chat. I scheduled most of my Twitter replies, with little live interaction. When I needed a thinking break, I read a few blogs without leaving any comments. But I didn’t feel guilty, even though social media is my No. 1 marketing tool.

It took an extreme case for me to learn that panicking about missed social media and blogging time does you no good.

Learning from an Extreme Example: My Thumb Story

I’m a writer. That means I need my hands and all of my digits. Then the unexpected happened: I tore a ligament in my thumb in a tennis match. (The injury details for those wanting it.) I couldn’t type with two hands for several months. Single-handed typing was painfully slow. I tried to speed it up by just using the index finger of my injured hand, but my sick thumb swelled from the movement. I had to stop or type with one hand.

I tried speech-to-text software, but that experiment failed for me. I blogged just a couple of times in four months (as opposed to my usual couple of times per week). At least I could still tweet on a fairly regular basis since I could handle it with one-handed typing. In the meantime, to make matters worse, I couldn’t even read a book.

My injury occurred shortly before the American Thanksgiving holiday and winter break — fortunately, a time when things slow down. But I couldn’t even send holiday cards, something I had been doing for over a decade. By then, my guilt had climbed to enormous levels as I had all this time on my hands and little I could do with it, in either my personal or professional lives.

However, I found that when I could type again and returned to all the activities I had skipped, things fell in place as if I had never left. And following doctor’s orders ensured my thumb healed properly so I could jump back into my routine.

Accept that You’re Human

We’ve all had times when we missed a workout or accidentally skipped a meal. So don’t beat yourself up if you miss out on some social media of blogging time. If Rebecca Blood, one of the earliest bloggers, could stop blogging for seven months and make a comeback, the rest of us can, too. We’re humans, not machines, and sometimes we all need to take a break, whether that’s by choice or not.

It’s OK. The world understands. It’s so busy with information overload that it won’t notice. Not that you’re forgettable, but your connections will be there when you come back. Really. Take care of yourself first.

How do you handle it when you can’t “get things done”?

Image courtesy of stock.xchng user Micky Lynne

Related GigaOM Pro Research:

Call it Real-Time, Squared, or NewNet, the Web Is Changing

Are Blog Comments Worth It?

2010-02-04T20:16:48+00:00

A few days ago, Engadget turned off comments on its posts — a move which, ironically, reignited discussion about the value of blog comments in a world pulsing with social media.

Some sites I’ve worked on have inspired commenting that I could only describe as pitiable drivel; others, like WWD, seem to inspire respectful, well-thought out opinions from informed readers. I used to think this was a matter of where the site pitched within the market, and who used it. The Engadget story convinces me that content topic also influences the tone, quality, and usefulness of comment contributions. But I’m sure there are other factors as well: the kinds of content you’re presenting, the degree of opinion included in that content, and so on.

Thus, for those working online, with a plethora of social media to manage, countless personal and direct messages to respond to, and, hey, a bit of work to do as well, the question arises: are blog comments worth it?

Comment Pros and Cons

When I first read about Engadget’s move, I thought “this looks like a step back to the traditional publication model, where the publisher controlled what was said. It negates the notion of free speech — of free broadcast — that the web was lauded for putting in everyone’s hands.”

The no-comment approach seems to say, “Yes, everyone can have a web site and publish their own content, but some of them aren’t prepared to talk about it, or support others in talking about it.” After all, one of the benefits of blog comments is that your users don’t need their own site, social network account, email address, or even greater awareness of the market space in order to connect with you. In an era that’s all about dialog, denying on-site dialog seems counterproductive and unsupportive.

The case against comments is usually that comment moderation is too time consuming to be sustainable. If, as Engadget argues, the commenting populace is only a small portion of the overall audience, those comments are unlikely to lead to significantly higher traffic levels or ad revenues. As has been pointed out by many of the people who’ve commented (via Twitter and other avenues) on this move, removing comments means less garbage, faster page load times, and a better user experience.

With the growing wealth of social media at our fingertips, site owners could find that avoiding a single channel that’s not proving advantageous is of benefit, clearing the decks and making it easier to focus on the kinds of communications they do best — and where. And if, like Engadget, the brand is big enough, and its following loyal enough, people will talk about, recommend, and consume the site’s offering regardless.

What About Your Blog?

In my view, there’s an interesting cultural difference between a blog that allows comments and one that does not. A blog that doesn’t allow comments seems to me to be saying “this is the final word on this topic.” To me it seems there’s something formal about such publications — they distance themselves from users; they hold themselves up as a paragon rather than engaging “on the level” with users.

In many cases, this could be ideal. Engadget, for example, isn’t like WWD. Here, we ask for comments, we want to engage, and we aim to build a creative dialog that enriches the initially published content. Engadget provides straight-up news and reviews of technology. So perhaps that site is less about community than about providing information. Perhaps facilitating on-site dialog isn’t central to the site’s strategy. Perhaps cementing the brand’s position as The Last Word on a given topic by relieving the site of comment facilities does, in fact, support that strategy.

What about your blog, though? Do you think you could successfully pull off removing comments? Would it upset your readership? Would it undermine your relationship with them? In short: how important are blog comments to your own engagement with your audience?

Photo by flickr user Desirée Delgado, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Related GigaOM Pro Research:

Report: The Real-Time Enterprise

Outsource Your Personal Chores and Errands

2010-02-04T20:16:48+00:00

You can outsource business tasks with sites like RentACoder, Elance, oDesk and many others. But imagine what you could do if someone else could clean your house, shop for groceries, take care of the pet or handle invitations to an upcoming event.

The concept of outsourcing can go beyond using virtual assistants, web designers and programmers. By outsourcing chores, you can remove the stressful things in your life, and as a result, have more time to do the things you love.

Deciding What to Outsource

Web workers often do many tasks that go beyond their areas of expertise. It may be worth investigating the possibility of having someone else take on those energy-sapping chores. How do you decide if you should outsource chores, and which ones? Here are some factors to look at:

Take an honest look at your life. Is your mind constantly racing because you have too much going on? Do you miss important events or milestones of friends and loved ones? Are you losing touch with friends and family due to an overloaded schedule? Do you keep thinking about work when you’re not working? What’s the point of earning money if you’re not going to make the most out of your life?
Evaluate the time and cost. Figure out how long it takes you to complete the chore. Then, calculate how much you would earn if you drop the chore for more income-producing work. Use that number to help you determine how much you would pay someone to do the chore.
Account for possible training time. Some chores may require initial training. To shorten the training time, document the process. Even though the freelancer might do this type of work on a regular basis, the process may not be identical for all clients.
Review spending habits. You may find areas where you can buy fewer things and invest that into outsourcing to gain more time. It’s a sacrifice, but the extra time can be worth it.
Consider chores you despise. These exhausting chores interfere with your emotional state and energy levels, which affect work and personal activities. Hiring someone else to take on hated chores could give you extra energy and time to do the things you enjoy.

Available Outsourcing Sites and Services

You can enter your zip code or city on many of the following web sites to receive a list of services in your area. Other web sites ask you to answer a series of questions and serve up a handful of matches. However, in researching sites that provide these services, I have seen some serious complaints. As with everything else online, do your due diligence.

For live advice, try LivePerson, a marketplace for chatting live with experts in many topics ranging from health issues to spirituality. Browse for the service you need for a list of experts along with their bios, their cost per minute and whether they’re currently available.

You can enter chore requests in DoMyStuff and RunMyErrand. RunMyErrand is limited to Boston, but other cities have similar services. TaskUs not only lists administrative and sales and marketing services, but also personal services such as event planning, selling stuff and travel help. Then there’s craigslist.

Another option is to use a search engine. If you have a specific job in mind such as a chef preparing meals or a dry cleaning service that picks up and drops off dry cleaning, a search engine can help you find local resources. For example, enter “dry cleaning delivery service” to see a list of local services that provide delivery. Some search results include ratings and reviews. If you’re traveling and in need of a suit pressing, use your laptop or cell phone to search for a local delivery service to take care of it for you.

What chores do you outsource or want to outsource? How do you find and evaluate the contractor?

Photo by stock.xchng user Sanja Gjenero

The 5S Process for Getting Organized

2010-02-04T16:13:12+00:00

Here I go again, writing about organization. This time, though, it’s not because I’ve found a great new app to help me. You see that picture? It’s my inbox, aka my “to-be-dealt-with” pile. And there are two more like it. If only there were an app that could help me!

It’s so much easier to stay organized when everything is virtual. Or, if the files on your hard drive aren’t organized, at least you’re not tripping over them on your way to the kitchen. The moment I have to deal with something tangible these days, I seem to get in trouble. I used to be organized, but my life changed. So I need to get re-organized.

Part of the problem is that when I came to Paris from the U.S., the physical space I could use was drastically reduced. Another part of the problem was adjusting to the organizational methods — if they can be called that — of my office mate (husband).

Just as I was reaching the point where I could no longer tune out the chaos around me, when it was getting really oppressive, I discovered the 5S methodology. You may have heard of it if you’ve ever worked in a place with lots of equipment and people. It’s a five-step program that originated in Japan and was designed to get a work environment organized and keep it that way, all in the interest of maximum efficiency. I’m going to see if I can apply it to the occupational hazard I currently call my office.

The 5S Process

The five steps of 5S, and their approximate English translations are: seiri (sort), seiton (straighten), seiso (shine), seiketsu (systemize), and shitsuke (sustain).

1. Seiri (Sort): Get rid of anything in your work space that is not absolutely necessary for your work.

This first step is supposed to enable you to simplify tasks and use space effectively. It’s also supposed to help you be more selective about what you introduce into your work space and keep the number of work-related items around you to a minimum.

Frankly, for a personal office, I think this is a little extreme and bad for morale in any circumstances. I have a couple of things on my desk that are just there to give me something fun to look at. They’re staying. But the rest can go: the Advil, CDs, business cards (the bane of my existence), masking tape, Christmas postcards I meant to send to the two people I know who haven’t discovered email… There are a few other trouble spots I need to hit too, like the top of the filing cabinet, and that box of cables taking up space I could use. Step one is going to take me a full day at least.

2. Seiton (Straighten): A place for everything, and everything in its place

This step is about efficiency. It encourages you to make optimum use of your work area and to outfit your space with functional storage. It is also important for everything you use for work to have a convenient and appropriate home to which it is returned when you’re done using it.

This is how I used to operate, back when I had a lot of space. Once upon a time, I knew where everything I owned was. The fact that I couldn’t find a recipe last night, despite having paper files for my old, pre-computer recipes, may be the very reason why I’m writing this today. (Getting them onto the computer is on my to-do list. I have gotten as far as comparing recipe management software.)

3. Seiso (Shine): Clean up after yourself

This third step is about being responsible for keeping your own space neat. Most importantly, it doesn’t work unless everyone who shares the space does the same. The idea is to treat your office as if you might have a client drop in at any moment.

OK, once I get all the junk off of my surfaces, I will clean them. Regularly. There’s no way I can begin to do seiso without getting through the first two steps. Until then, no clients allowed.

4. Seiketsu (Systemize): Make it a habit

This fourth step is about establishing standards and a system for organization, and integrating them into your workflow in order to maintain a high level of neatness.

Some time last year, I stumbled across the concept of the “unpleasant task day” on the blog of a management consultant, and thought this would be a good way to approach this step. Michael Wade, the author of that blog, suggests you pick one day a month to do the things you hate to do. But since the 5S process is about neatness and efficiency, I’m thinking it should be more frequent. Maybe I’ll have a weekly “terrible task afternoon” for cleaning up and filing instead.

5. Shitsuke (Sustain): Prevention of backsliding

This last step is more accurately translated as “discipline.” It’s about making yourself maintain the neatness standards and system you’ve put in place.

Because I was once very organized, it shouldn’t be too hard for me to get back in the habit. I’m not so sure my husband is going to like this whole 5S thing though, even though he has the most organized hard drive I’ve ever seen.

The Reality

Clearly it’s unlikely that any of us could strictly adhere to a system like this, especially given the constantly changing nature of our work. Plus there may be uncontrollable factors (like husbands) that can toss a wrench into the works. But I’ve always found that a little structure never hurts when it’s used as a guideline, so I will try it out and see how it goes. Then I’ll try to apply it to my computer files, emails, etc. Anyway, it’ll be fun to say “Seiton!” the next time my husband puts the pliers down on the corner of my desk.

How do you stay organized outside of your computer?

Double Shot #641

2010-02-04T12:26:38+00:00

Sleep seems overrated until you have to skip it for a while.

gMap - jQuery plugin for Google Maps. Looks way easier than the last way I've done it.
webtranslateit - Gem to integrate a Rails app with Web Translate It, a web service to help provide localization.
Why use HAML (and SASS)? I already know HTML. - Another argument in favor of switching to HAML/SASS. This is rapidly becoming the vi vs. emacs of templating languages.
toto - Blog engine built atop rack and aimed at heroku deployment.
Ubiquitous Analytics and Tableau Public - This looks nice; the Tableau data visualization app is one of the things I remember from Windows days, and now they're bringing it to the web.
DTerm - Popup command line for OS X.

Collaborative Note Taking 101

2010-02-04T00:35:13+00:00

Note taking can be a personal exercise. Look around any conference table today and you’ll see a wide spectrum of note taking techniques, ranging from people writing on paper to folks tapping away at laptop keyboards.

But the notes themselves are also often quite personal. For example, when I go into a client meeting, I am there from a technical documentation standpoint, and my notes reflect that. Likewise, I would expect not to get much from the notes of a programmer. The result is that “knowledge islands” can form as everyone hoards their own notes.

Applications like OneNote, Evernote and WikiTouch offer collaborative note taking features, enabling teams to access each others’ notes for collaboration, and help distribute that knowledge within an organization by capturing meeting, research and project notes in a centrally accessible location.

Here are some tips for implementing collaborative note taking on your project team:

Define the benefits. Moving your team to a collaborative note taking platform shouldn’t be a cause for more work, especially if note taking is already an integral element in your work. It is important to communicate the benefits of the move to the entire team. Is it to capture important project information like requirements? Is it to better document decisions? Is meeting and research information falling through gaps?
Choose the appropriate application. Moving your team to a standard platform for note taking shouldn’t be a daunting task. However, you need to factor in team member note taking styles and security considerations into the decision. If your organization is hesitant about keeping private notes in the cloud then I suggest taking a look at OneNote, which enables you to keep your note taking and collaboration inside the firewall. If the cloud is OK, then Evernote or Evernote Premium (with its SSL security encryption) would also be an option.
Set note taking guidelines. Moving note taking to a collaborative app may require some initial guidelines to enable a seamless transition. Depending on your needs, your note taking guidelines may include templates to use (OneNote includes note taking templates), and directions about things like the use of fonts, numbering and bullet points. The aim of your guidelines should be to ensure some consistency across the notes your team takes. The end goal is to have a repository of notes that is accessible and understandable to all those on the project team.
Set note taking roles. While collaborative note taking removes the need for a single “scribe” to take meeting notes, I might recommend that you still pay some attention to note taking roles when moving to a collaborative note taking environment. For example, you may want to make sure that project related notes are recorded by the project manager.

Do you use collaborative note taking on any of your projects? Share your experience below.

Related GigaOM Pro Research:

Photo by stock.xchng user wagg66.

TimeSvr: On-demand Virtual Assistants

2010-02-04T00:35:13+00:00

Moving from the well-oiled corporate environment of personal assistants and friction-free expense accounts to arranging my own travel and doing my own accounts was jarring; I’ve long toyed with the idea of engaging a virtual or remote executive assistant to help with administrative tasks. However, the pioneers in this field — Indian companies such as Brickwork, YourManInIndia and Get Friday — all seemed a little too expensive, requiring a commitment to buying large regular blocks of time. Essentially, what I needed was a virtual assistant provider with pay-as-you-go billing rather than subscription plans — which is why I was interested to see the offering from Malaysian company TimeSvr.

TimeSvr allows you to purchase the time of a dedicated “aide” for $85-350 (ten to fifty hours) or a flat rate of $69/month for a shared aide.

To create a task, you simply pull up the “dashboard view” and describe what you need in a few sentences; clicking “Do It” sets the task in motion with your TimeSvr aide.

I spent an hour or so queuing up a trio of tasks for the TimeSvr aides to work though on my behalf. The company CEO, Zaki Mahomed, was CC’d on my tasks, without the aides knowing that their work was under review. Here’s how they did.

Task 1: “Could you identify the best venues to hold a 2-day, 200 delegate conference in the city of Leeds (UK)“

TimeSvr aide Irfan found the city’s official bureau for conference venues and suggested Hillside and Weetwood Hall as candidate locations. The task was completed quickly, but the suggestions lacked range and depth. This could perhaps have been mitigated by a little back-and-forth conversation between myself and Irfan to narrow down my requirements.

Task 2: “What would be the total cost of flights, hotels & registration for me to attend this year’s SxSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. The festival takes place March 12-16 and I’ll be traveling from Manchester, UK, and I’ll also need accommodation near the Austin Convention Centre”

Ammar provided me with a pretty comprehensive a range of flight options from $600-700, along with a table of all SxSW registration packages and details for three hotels. Sadly, the hotels all seem to be quite far out and seemingly not drawn from the festival’s own hotel finder. What I was really looking for was a ballpark figure, so I could make a decision about attending; perhaps something I should have been more explicit about.

Task 3: “Other than Knight Foundation, are there any other funding bodies for journalism ventures in the United Kingdom or overseas?”

Ammar also picked up this task and did well to identify three organisations, one of which appears to be a great lead.

On the whole, I was impressed with the clean user experience and task submission interface, which felt almost Twitter-esque in its simplicity. Where I was specific and detailed with a request (as in Task 2) I got satisfactory results; where I wasn’t as specific, the responses were less useful.

Responses are delivered via email, but strangely aren’t displayed next to the “Previous Tasks” view in the application interface, making it difficult to gauge how long a task took and to keep tasks connected with their outcomes. Tasks are also flagged as completed by the aide, rather than the requester, so the opportunity to create an ongoing conversation or dialogue around a request is limited. Completed tasks do have ”feedback” and “response” options, but they seems to be articulated with an assumption that a task is closed, rather than being an ongoing dialogue.

Overall, I certainly got the feeling of being looked after and that the aides themselves communicated well. They’re fast, but perhaps taking a little more time with a task would give better outcomes. I’d really liked to have seen a little more initiative from the aides, and perhaps a preamble conversation before they attempted to tackle the tasks.

A great assistant can take initiative, anticipating their employer’s needs; such initiative perhaps only comes with time as aides and employers build a rapport and learn to read each other. With that in mind, my experience with my aides Ammar and Irfan was pretty good, and I’m sold on experimenting further with a personal plan.

Have you used TimeSvr, or a similar service? How did it work out for you?

Planetaki Planet WWD

Double Shot #644

3 Apps For Collaborating on Scripts Online

Adobe Story

Plotbot

Celtx

And the winner is…

Minute Suites: Rest and Recharge, Airport Style

Taking a Closer Look with 1DayLater

The Basics

Who’s it For?

See For Yourself

3 Places to Discover New and Relevant Content

Techmeme

The Twitter Tim.es

Lazyfeed

New Book on Business Planning Helps Productivity

Double Shot #643

Feb. 8 is Clean Out Your Computer Day

Clean Up Your Operating System

Clean Out Files

Don’t Forget the Hardware

Make Your Progress Permanent

bit.ly.Pro: Create Short URLs With Your Own Domain

More on Social media

WWD Weekend Reading List

How Mel Gibson Can Help Your Content Strategy

More on Social media

Less is Less

5 Most Popular Posts on WebWorkerDaily This Week

Coworking Update: bzhive Opening Party

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Improve Productivity by Avoiding Going Online Before Breakfast

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