Last week I explored the concept Noded working. “Noded” is really a subset of a much wider phenomenon emerging in the world of work — the notion of “portfolio careers.” In her blog on the subject, Katie Ledger — co-author of the forthcoming book “And What […] Read more »
Rounding off our week of features on the Future of Work, I thought it appropriate to consider methods of exploring the future, in particular ways to help you think about your career trajectory. Perhaps one of the most well-known and used mechanisms for understanding possible futures […] Read more »
Recently I was sent an interesting piece on “motivating yourself when you just don’t feel like it.” In other words, how to slay the demon procrastination. The suggestion of this article was particularly timely as I’ve been feeling somewhat adrift for the last few weeks. I’d […] Read more »
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The coffee shop has long been an valuable digital oasis for freelancers and untethered workers, providing an essential mix of cake, connectivity and company. It has inadvertently, and sometimes deliberately, become the third place, figuratively located between home and work. Last December we reported that the […] Read more »
My obsession with portable solar energy continues — in the past I’ve written about Suntrica’s portable chargers, Reware’s Juice Bags and Noon Solar’s range of bags. Suntrica’s chargers, though difficult to purchase outside Finland, currently offer the most elegant and practical solution for cheap, mobile and […] Read more »
This week I’ve been speculating on the Future of Work and the types of skills that might be required. However, hindsight can provide useful clues to the future, so it’s important to reflect on existing behavior in order to determine where we’re headed. Between April and […] Read more »
Recently, I’ve been talking to many local journalists about the unfolding implosion of the newspaper industry and its implications for their profession. As the industry struggles to adapt to a world which is moving onto the web, journalists are not only learning to blend social media […] Read more »
Last week, Sam explored trends in the technology jobs market, suggesting that significant opportunities only reveal themselves when examining both the available jobs and the underlying trends in demand for skills. Coincidentally, on the same day that Sam’s piece was published, The New York Times suggested […] Read more »
Last month — courtesy of Nokia — I had the privilege of attending one of the most exciting conferences in the technology calendar, TEDGlobal 2009. Though TED is invitation-only — and monstrously expensive at $4,500 — it succeeds in bringing together an extraordinarily diverse range of […] Read more »
One of the most anticipated features of the new iPhone OS 3.0 has been “tethering,” or the ability to share your iPhone’s 3G Internet connection with your laptop, via Bluetooth or USB. For web workers — “the great untethered” — iPhone OS 3.0′s tethering represents an […] Read more »
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Though the demise of Portland, Ore.’s Cubespace coworking community represents a sad development in the nascent history of coworking, the region’s vibrant Silicon Forest will give rise to other coworking options in due course. In the meantime, there are ongoing successes elsewhere, notably in Italy, with […] Read more »
One of my favorite blogs recently has been The Art of Manliness. It’s not a boneheaded celebration of dumb machismo, rather a thoughtful exploration of what being a man can and should mean in a post-feminist world. With values anchored in equality, the writers explore everything […] Read more »
The practice of wireframing is common to most web production professionals. Oddly, there’s no clear market leader or category-defining product in this space; even solutions such as Adobe’s Creative Suite lack dedicated wireframing or rapid prototyping tools. There are, however, a number of useful smaller options. […] Read more »
It’s been said that the apps that break out at Austin’s South by Southwest festival are those that help festival-goers navigate and orient themselves within the sprawl of parties, panel sessions and gigs. The 2007 edition of SXSW was Twitter’s big moment, the tipping point for […] Read more »
As the first generation of coworking spaces, such as IndyHall, Old Broadcasting House and others, enter maturity while new locations and communities start up, it’s useful to reflect on some measures and metrics of success. Marc Harrison at the Urban Workspaces blog — seeking to establish […] Read more »
From Reware’s solar-powered Juice Bags to Noon Solar’s range of solar handbags, some of our regular readers may have detected that I have a bit of a “thing” for solar power. I’m sure this is an enthusiasm shared by many web workers: When your working life […] Read more »
Earlier this month, O’Reilly Media published its latest title in the “Missing Manuals” series, Josh Clark’s “iWork ’09: The Missing Manual.” It throws a spotlight on Apple’s office suite, with how-to guides for the Pages word processor, the Numbers spreadsheet and the Keynote presentation app. Even […] Read more »
Screensharing application Yuuguu is an old favorite of WebWorkerDaily. Today, the company launched support for Skype users, bringing its screensharing expertise to one of the largest communication platforms in the world. We caught up with CEO Anish Kapoor to learn a little about the features announced […] Read more »
To paraphrase the famous Wes Anderson and Robert De Niro American Express ads, “My life happens here; my bag is Timbuk2.” I’ve lived an untethered, web working, co-working lifestyle for around nine years. In my previous life as an R&D consultant, hopping between Paris, London, Leeds […] Read more »
Wix — founded in New York by ex-venture capitalist, Allon Bloch — offers users the ability to create a free, SEO-friendly, Flash-based web site using only drag-and-drop tools. I’m surprised I hadn’t come across Wix before, as according to the company’s PR, more than 500,000 users […] Read more »
ShortTask is a marketplace for tasks, aiming to match-make “solvers” and “seekers”: people who have time to complete brief tasks and people who need small tasks completed. In many ways, ShortTask is similar to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) service. Like MTurk, ShortTask is seeking to address […] Read more »
With the global economy still moribund, tools and services that help you find leads and extract more value from your existing business contacts can only be welcome. LinkedIn has become the online resume repository of choice and helps curate an individual’s professional network, but how to […] Read more »
Bizual, as Mashable noted in a recent profile, is a new web service that purports to help small businesses and freelancers attract new customers as well as find new suppliers — essentially a marketplace for matchmaking special offers from suppliers with potential customers. As cofounder Elliot […] Read more »
Screensharing applications are one of the essential weapons in the web workers’ arsenal and a popular topic here on WebWorkerDaily; in the past we’ve covered services such as Yuuguu and Oneeko. The latest to join the fray is Mikogo, a cross-platform (Windows & OS X) screensharing […] Read more »
Back in February, I wrote about the internal culture of Atlassian, one of the leading lights in web-based collaboration software. Beginning today, the company is offering the “Atlassian Stimulus Package,” almost giving away its flagship products — JIRA & Confluence — for just $5 per year, […] Read more »
Neil Kay-Jones — of screensharing vendor Yuuguu — has put together a useful overview of recent shifts in UK employment law regarding flexible working arrangements. These changes allow working parents the right to request more flexible working arrangements and could swell the ranks of web workers. […] Read more »
In my post on whether coworking spaces could be profitable, I mentioned Graze, an innovative healthy snack delivery service that seems to be taking off here in the UK. Many web workers are fixed to their desks for large portions of the day. Working from home […] Read more »
I first met Linda Broughton — head of NTI Leeds, part of Leeds Met University — in May 2007, at a meeting on the use of open-source software in the public sector where I planted the seed of an idea to develop a coworking community in […] Read more »
I’ve been on somewhat of an OS X productivity tools kick lately, with posts on EventBox, Mindnode and Manhour. So I’m going to round out that journey with a quick peek at a useful little tool that was recently brought to my attention, Sentinel Design Group’s […] Read more »
As web workers are generally spread across countries, timezones, cultures and organizations, creating and applying coherent management to distributed teams is challenging. Late last year, Celine shared some tips on avoiding conflicts within a teleworking team. Around the same time I came across UK-based “business psychology” […] Read more »
Last month, Aelgo launched the latest revision of its Manhour time-tracking application for Mac users. WWD regularly covers time tracking, accounting and billing applications, but Manhour’s new release and its specific support for OS X users makes it a good time to cast our critical eye […] Read more »
There’s an interesting debate on the profitability of coworking spaces unfolding over at CoolTown Studios. Most current coworking communities are focused on building a community and only just break even, or are subsidized by a sponsor. Writer Neil Takemoto suggests that coworking centers could become profitable […] Read more »
Alex Hillman is the co-founder of Independents Hall (colloquially known as IndyHall) a “coworking space and community” in Philadelphia. IndyHall is home to designers, developers, writers, artists, entrepreneurs, scientists, educators, small business owners, telecommuters, marketers, videographers and game developers, amongst other industries. I spoke with Alex […] Read more »
James Ward is a member of Leeds’ Old Broadcasting House (OBH) coworking community in Northern England, working as freelance “digital coach.” I spoke with James on his thoughts and experiences over the last few months as one of the most active evangelists of his coworking community. […] Read more »
Eclau (pronounced eck-lo) is a coworking space in Lausanne, Switzerland, founded by Stephanie Booth. Booth spoke with me about her motivation for starting Eclau, her experiences running it and her future plans, and offer up some tips for anyone thinking of starting a coworking space. WWD: […] Read more »
As part of a special report on Work/Life Balance, BusinessWeek ran a “Telecommuting: Once a Perk, Now a Necessity,” an interesting story on how remote workers and telecommuting are now being seen as necessary developments for many organizations, rather than perks afforded to a privileged few […] Read more »
Hot on the heels of our coverage of ProofHQ and redmark comes another collaborative review app, Argentina’s CreationFlow. CreationFlow differentiates itself from its competitors by virtue of its integrated project management features and its focus on visual design and advertising projects. The service is more of […] Read more »
I’ve found mind-mapping apps such as MindManager and MindView to be a little clunky and over-engineered. Sometimes, you literally want to sketch some thoughts quickly, with little concern for presentation or correctness. As luck would have it, I recently came across Markus Müller’s Mindnode, a deliciously […] Read more »
I’m dissatisfied with the current crop of “lifestreaming” apps. Overall, I think they’re missing a huge opportunity to help users focus their limited attention to the content that really matters. Last week, for example, Simon covered the release of skimmer, a desktop client that brings together […] Read more »
Last summer, we cheekily covered the Macro-1, a kind of lockable and movable cubicle for coworkers and hotdeskers. A similar product, but perhaps stranger still, is the recently launched OfficePOD, a self-contained office space intended to create a high-quality office space for employees at home. The […] Read more »
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