Wanting to use OpenID, but concerned about some of the problems? Take a look at LiquidID, which combines the single sign-on and universal identifier features of OpenID with management tools to help you manage your ID with more precise … Read More »
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Mike Gunderloy
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Have you ever wished you could delete an email message that you already sent? Or send an email that the recipient wouldn’t be able to print? These and other features – such as self-destructing email and messages that you can edit … Read More »
Wiktionary at Your Fingertips
By Mike Gunderloy
Jul. 18, 2008, 2:00pm PT
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Some days I’m all about saving the extra mouseclicks. Looking up information with Firefox is pretty simple; most of the time just typing the term you’re interested in to the awesome bar gets you right to an applicable site. But Firefox … Read More »
We’ve all had them: days when, no matter how hard you try, nothing seems to get done. Fortunately, independent web workers tend to have more flexibility than some other job holders. When you pounding your head against the productivity wall doesn’t work, try one of these … Read More »
Tracking Coffee and Phones
By Mike Gunderloy
Jul. 18, 2008, 8:00am PT
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It almost seems like an age of scarcity for web workers, but that’s only because two new resources have coincidentally hit the web at nearly the same time. On the one hand, Starbucks has finally dropped the other shoe and released … Read More »
Intuit – you know, the folks who make QuickBooks – have put together an online invoice-management site called Billing Manager. You enter your company information, and your client information, and what invoices you want to send with line-item detail, and … Read More »
The bedouin-style web worker may get plenty of exercise thanks to a lifestyle of hopping from coffeeshop to co-working site. But the sad reality is that most web workers are also desk workers: we spend the day in front of our computers, sitting on our backsides. … Read More »
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Google rolled out a new feature for its online Google Docs suite yesterday: templates. Now, if you don’t like starting with a blank page, you can select New, From Template and start browsing their gallery. You’ll find hundreds of choices, … Read More »
Zeer is a social networking site built around a special focus: food. Their key asset appears to be a database of over 100,000 food items, searchable by UPC code (it turned up about 80% of the random things I pulled … Read More »
We’ve discussed the paperless office before, and some of us have made strides in that direction. This year so far my accumulated office paper makes a stack only about two inches high (primarily contracts and tax documents) – everything else has been scanned and shredded. … Read More »
Thanks, Google. We knew someone would listen when we posted our list of 25 things that annoy us about Google services. Here’s the proof: in GMail, you now have the option to decide which addresses you email should get added … Read More »
Get too much email these days? Who doesn’t? Startup AwayFind (now in private beta; request access via their homepage) wants to help you cut down on the nuisance by letting you only deal with email twice a day. The secret … Read More »
Pretty much every web worker I know has a way to track tasks. These various solutions, whether web, client-side, or paper, are great for keeping yourself on track. But what if you need to manage coordinated activities for a distributed team? … Read More »
If you’re a Twitter user you likely saw the news this morning: Twitter bought Summize. The deal, covered on the business level by our parent blog GigaOm, brings Twitter some more smart engineers and a potential route to … Read More »
Looking for a way to get more exercise, despite being a deskbound web worker? Steelcase (makers of high-end office furniture) have an idea for you: the Walkstation. Based on the idea that you can burn enough calories to make a … Read More »
A widely-reported survey done earlier this year by job site Dice Holdings comes up with a somewhat perplexing result: 37% of the IT professionals they surveyed said they would be willing to take up to a 10% pay cut to telecommute. On the one hand, this … Read More »
We’ve looked at several free CRM (Customer Relations Management) packages in the past. Now there’s a new entrant in the category: Bizroof is offering free accounts for their hosted offering, which handles a good chunk of tracking functionality. Their … Read More »
Well, that didn’t take long. Despite the activation hassles, despite the cost, Apple had a phenomenally successful opening weekend for the iPhone 3G: by Sunday, over 1 million of them had been sold. That’s a lot of phones … Read More »
Fortunately, the overall web really is a pretty reliable beast. But when it’s not – assuming that you can get online at all – there are ways to narrow down what’s going wrong. Here are half a dozen tools to turn to when you’re having trouble. Read More »
By Mike Gunderloy
Jul. 12, 2008, 2:00pm PT
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If you’re working as part of a distributed online team, you may some day find yourself managing that team – I know, it’s happened to me more than once. From there, it’s only a short hop to carrying out formal performance reviews. If you shudder at … Read More »
Bootstrap wants to be your online bookkeeping service – at least, if your requirements are simple enough for their streamlined interface to handle. Their sweet spot is the self-employed worker who needs to track income and expenses in a format … Read More »
If you’re like many web workers, you have accounts with profiles all over the place: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Jobster…so what do you do when you need to update your description or photo or other profile info? Atomkeep hopes they have … Read More »
We’ve covered the RSS ranking service AideRSS a couple of times before – in a nutshell, they analyze the activity surrounding an RSS feed to help you identify the most talked-about items, on the theory that those are the … Read More »
There are a lot of ways to keep track of where you’ve been on the web: browser bookmarks, applications that save selected clippings, shared bookmark services. WebMynd takes a different tack: it saves everything that you see. Built as a … Read More »
You’ve probably heard the news by now that Yahoo! has opened up its search engine through a comprehensive range of APIs. Our parent site GigaOm has coverage of the industry implications, but our interest is more in the practical uses for web workers. Fortunately, … Read More »
There’s been a lot of speculation about whether the iPhone App Store would open today or tomorrow. Turns out you can see its contents right now. Read More »
Not every web worker is also a web designer – but many of us are, on scales from our own blog to giant commercial applications. If you find yourself pushing pixels and HTML and CSS around on a regular basis, you … Read More »
It’s clear that Apple told the major media today was the day that it was OK to talk about the iPhone 3G: Walt Mossberg, Edward Baig, and David Pogue are all out with major hands-on reviews. The general … Read More »
By Mike Gunderloy
Jul. 9, 2008, 8:00am PT
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There’s no shortage of services out there for shortening URLs (here’s our roundup of just a few of the alternatives). But that’s not stopping new entrant bit.ly from making a bit of a splash on its introduction. They offer … Read More »
A study reported by the New York Times comes up with some numbers related to text messaging usage. According to them, in the US 82 percent of cellphone owners say that they never use text messaging, 3 percent use it monthly, and 15 percent use … Read More »
Recently three Firefox extensions have made their way into my everyday usage: CyberSearch, ColorZilla, and the HTML Validator. All three have been stable and useful in Firefox 3.0 on OS X. Read the post for details. Read More »
We’ve written several times about portable applications that you can cart around on a USB key. But it’s rare to find a commercial application distributed this way. One new exception to the rule is MindMapper 2008 USB … Read More »
We’ve discussed the hassles of dealing with multiple timezones and distributed web-working teams before. New site World Time Engine (in open beta) tries to bring order to this chaos. At root, it’s a huge database: type in a location … Read More »
Dell is distributing a new research report from the Ponemon Institute titled “Airport Insecurity: The Case of Lost Laptops.” Their headline finding is simple: business travelers lose more than 12,000 laptops per week in U.S. airports. Given that many web … Read More »
By Mike Gunderloy
Jul. 7, 2008, 8:00am PT
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As web workers, we shy away from paper. But as a developer, sometimes I’m faced with a client who absolutely requires paper for some process – say, a dunning letter to a client. That’s where newly-beta PostalMethods comes in. They … Read More »
According to Rules of Thumb.org (a site where you can waste a dangerous amount of time) a rule of thumb is “a homemade recipe for making guess.” I tend to think of them more as little bits of random knowledge that I pull out when I … Read More »
The leading argument this weekend seems destined to be over voicemail. Techcrunch’s Mike Arrington kicked things off with his own anti-voicemail blog entry. Based on his own experiences and a survey of folks on Friendfeed, he condemns voicemail as being a nuisance and a disruption … Read More »
By Mike Gunderloy
Jul. 5, 2008, 8:00am PT
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Anyone who spends time on the various tech news sites quickly realizes that stories come in waves: one day there will be a flurry of iPhone items, another day Google’s latest improvement is at the fore. Some of this is driven by press releases, but a … Read More »
By Mike Gunderloy
Jul. 4, 2008, 2:00pm PT
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Just when I think I’ve seen everything that you can do in Firefox, along comes an add-on like Pencil (Firefox 3 required). By coupling the Gecko drawing engine with the ability to display, save, and load an external canvas, together … Read More »
It was 232 years ago today that a bunch of colonials got fed up with the king and announced that they weren’t going to take it any more. While I certainly don’t think the situation of web workers is comparable to that of America’s founders, … Read More »
A few days ago, when I was writing about the conflicting power consumption claims for solid-state drives (SSDs), it cost an extra $999 to get one in your new MacBook Air. Well, no more. Apple has revised their pricing: the … Read More »
An unusual notice appeared on the 37signals blog today: On August 15th, 2008 we will begin phasing out support for Internet Explorer 6 across all 37signals products. In order to continue using the products without any hiccups, Internet Explorer 6 users should … Read More »
With online office applications improving in quality all the time, they’re rapidly becoming the tool of choice for web workers. Between the ability to access your documents anywhere, the easy sharing, and the automatic backups, I know more and more people who are using these services. … Read More »
Firefox set another new record last month. No, not the 8-million-plus downloads on Download Day – that’s nice, but since this is the first time the Guiness people have ever certified a record in that category, it’s pretty meaningless. Much … Read More »
Microsoft today announced the launch of Equipt, a new suite consisting of the Windows Live OneCare security service and Office Home and Student 2007. What’s different here is the pricing: $69.99 per year on an annual subscription basis, covering three … Read More »
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