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Yippiemail makes switching email addresses and forwarding mail easier than forwarding snail mail via US Postal Service. Read more »

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Jungle Disk, the Amazon S3-backed online storage software whose 2.0 release we recently covered, is out with a new version. This time it’s the release of the Jungle Disk Workgroup Edition, which sets its sights on small and medium groups who need to manage shared storage […] Read more »

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If there was any doubt in your mind about the importance of web workers to the economy, yesterday’s announcement of new business laptops should put it to rest. Not only are they rolling out laptops in every conceivable niche, from ultra-portable to long-life battery to hefty […] Read more »

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We’ve written before about various ways to keep your email address confidential when sending mail. Now there’s another alternative: akapost, which provides simple email proxy services. To sign up for an account, you provide your real account, and an alias. Then to send mail, you just […] Read more »

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Like many another independent web worker, I’m a jack of all (or at least many) trades. Putting together a career on the web often involves pulling together disparate skills to keep customers happy and keep bread on the table. The problem is that unless you’re very […] Read more »

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It’s been widely reported in the last 24 hours or so that Twitter has imposed limits on following behavior – though some reports have gotten a bit confused. As laid out on our parent blog GigaOM, Twitter is currently limiting the number of people that you […] Read more »

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There are a variety of sites out there to help you build a resume that will actually get you a job. Razume hopes to stand out from the rest by making it easier for you to fine-tune a resume. After joining, you can use their tools […] Read more »

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The Chandler Project has a long history: it was started up in 2002, with backing from Mitch Kapor, as an attempt to create a cutting-edge PIM application. Over the years, the project became the butt of jokes for its inability to actually ship anything, and earlier […] Read more »

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Most of us have probably tried one or another of the online whiteboards out there. The problem is generally that the drawings produced on them look awful; who can draw neatly with a mouse? Dabbleboard has a neat solution to this problem: it’s smart enough to […] Read more »

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Keyboards are one of the essentials of web work; if you can’t get words into your computer, you probably can’t get much done. And yet, web workers seem to be split on how much they care about their keyboards. Some are content to use whatever cost-saving hardware the manufacturer sold the computer with. Others (and I count myself in this camp) are willing to spend considerable money looking for the perfect keyboard. Read more »

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If you’re an independent web worker, one of your selling points is probably that you’re readily accessible to your customers. Many of us can be contacted by an almost embarassing variety of ways: multiple email accounts, multiple phone numbers, contact forms on our web sites, Get […] Read more »

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The California Supreme Court ruled unanimously this week that noncompete clauses in employment agreements that dictate who you can work for in your next job are against state law and unenforceable. This has implications for web workers in that state, many of whom operate under contracts […] Read more »

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In an interesting turn of events, Yahoo! (who, along with 32 other companies, is about to get picked on by a Congressional committee over their customization and privacy policies) has announced that anyone who wants to enhance their privacy on the Yahoo! network will soon be […] Read more »

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Squarespace is an interesting entrant in the website-and-blog authoring space. They offer a great array of features for anything from a blog to a fullblown small business website, with a state of the art in-browser editing interface. But despite the fact that they would seem to […] Read more »

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One of the difficulties of handing over work to a virtual assistant (or a real one, for that matter) is deciding which things you’re better off paying other people to do. Erica Douglass suggests in an excellent blog entry that you should set a baseline rate […] Read more »

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We’ve written about the benefits of outsourcing your chores, and we’ve covered the expanding field of virtual assistants. But though I’ve employed office staff in the past, I’m reaching the point where a VA might make sense. The problem is that I’m having trouble identifying chunks […] Read more »

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If you’re running a very agile project team, you may find that even tools like Basecamp are too complex and high-maintenance. No Kahuna offers a new take on lightweight project management for those cases – and it works very well. After you sign up, you can […] Read more »

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Document-sharing site Docstoc (who we’ve mentioned before) has rolled out a new feature: private documents with tracking. You’ve been able to upload documents privately to Docstoc for a while (so that they don’t show up on the main public site) but now you can track what […] Read more »

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Back in the good old days (say, five years ago) picking a domain to host your web presence used to be simple. You just found a word you liked, bought the .com (usually at some price that today seems exorbitant) and that was that. But the landscape has changed considerably. Read more »

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Rattling around the blogs this morning is the cautionary tale of Nick Saber, who found himself locked out of all his Google accounts. We’ve written plenty about the benefits of backing up your data from local hard drives to the cloud, but cases like this – […] Read more »

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Many people use Twitter as a virtual water cooler, purely for casual chat. But there’s another way to treat it: as a window into what thousands of people are talking about right now. If you’re interested in a topic or responsible for a brand, you probably […] Read more »

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RSS Feeds – most web workers can’t live without them. But we can (and do) switch the software we use to read them. Doseido’s Headline offers an up-to-date looking way for OS X users to scan through and manage their incoming feed items, at a reasonable […] Read more »

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Via the BBC comes the latest news of rotten people on the internet: Twitter profiles are now being used to broadcast links to malware. In this particular case, various users have been offering a purported link to a porn video, but if you click it (and […] Read more »

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The popularity of Twitter has launched a bevy of other services that depend on small updates and social interaction. One that isn’t just a copycat is mixin, which applies a Twitter feel to personal agendas – I think of it as “microscheduling.” After you create an […] Read more »

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Over on our parent blog GigaOM, Om Malik bemoans the lack of desk space in his office, thanks to too many gadgets. I can certainly sympathize – in fact, Om’s desk looks positively uncluttered to me. Currently on (or under) my desk, I have: Two tower […] Read more »

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Pretty much any new phone these days can tell you where you are, from a combination of GPS and cell phone tower triangulation. And you can even buy this technology outside of phones: AnyTrack will sell you devices that keep track of where they are and […] Read more »

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With the advent of the iPhone, plenty of web workers are thinking seriously about switching cell phone carriers. Others have the same impulse for a variety of reasons: a move to an area with poor service, a desire for a new phone that your current carrier […] Read more »

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Time magazine is out with a list of “25 great gadgets you should never leave home without.” Among other things, they include an Airport Express, a Franklin Global Translator, a MacBook Air, an iPhone, a universal adapter kit, a Kindle, a Flip Mino, a PSP, noise […] Read more »

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We’ve looked at the ethics of web working before, but one of our readers sent in a novel question: I started webworking when I moved out of the geographic area of my former company. They retained me on a contract basis, but I worked exclusively for […] Read more »

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A Washington Post article this morning confirms what many have long suspected: your information has pretty much no rights when it comes to entering the United States. Specifically, if you’re crossing the border (whether you’re a US citizen or not): Federal agents can seize your laptop, […] Read more »

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Web working web developers know about Firebug – the wonderful HTML/CSS/Javascript investigation and debugging addon for Firefox. But this hasn’t been any help for chasing problems in other browsers, which often have quite inferior facilities for figuring out what’s going on – until now. The release […] Read more »

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NEAT Receipts has been selling their pint-sized scanners and associated software for about five years now. Recently they put out an “advanced release” of their Mac software – the “advanced” part because it doesn’t yet have all the features of their established PC software. But it has plenty of useful features, and I took a review unit for a spin to see how well they worked. Read more »

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If you build software or web applications, sooner or later you need to ask what actual users think of your software. Silverback is a new OS X package designed to make this process simple and easy. Set it up on a Mac with a cam (the […] Read more »

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We mentioned Posterous on their launch about a month ago. At the time, they were an interesting email-to-blog platform – but they only supported creating their own custom blogs. But with some changes just announced, they’re suddenly a much more interesting platform: you can now use […] Read more »

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Analogies are tricky things, but one recently proposed by Ernie the Attorney should ring true for many web workers: he writes about living his life in ATM mode. To see what this means in context, and how it fits into the web worker lifestyle, let’s step […] Read more »

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While we’ve challenged the notion that every startup needs a business plan, many new web entrepreneurs still see them as essential. And therein lies a problem: it’s too easy to fall into business plan paralysis, where you get stuck on the writing and never actually launch […] Read more »

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Every web worker has at least one computer to keep running – and we all know what a nightmare that can be at times. iYogi has a suggestion for you: spend $119.99 on them, and their technicians will be available to you for a full year […] Read more »

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One of the perennial questions for the independent web worker is “how do I find customers?” This question has been on my mind again lately, because I’ve had a few extra hours to sell. As a longstanding freelancer, I’ve faced this issue more than once over […] Read more »

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For those of you who enjoy staying on the browser cutting edge, there’s a new place to go: Firefox 3.1 Alpha 1, nicknamed “Shiretoko,” is out. Though the release notes say bluntly “Current users of Mozilla Firefox should not use Shiretoko Alpha 1,” I’ve found it […] Read more »

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Google appears to have finally noticed that Mac users would like to sync their desktop calendars with their online ones: they’ve released (in beta form) Google Calendar CalDAV support. By following their instructions, you can set up synchronization between your OS X Leopard calendar and your […] Read more »

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