• The app emphasizes integration with Google Apps, which can enhance the Google Apps toolset. (Mavenlink is available — and highly ranked — in the Google Apps Marketplace.)
• The final step of a project — invoicing the client — is built right into the tool. Think of Mavenlink like “Basecamp meets Freshbooks” in that regard. The premise of Mavenlink starts with the idea of managing your projects from inception to completion: collaborate, manage, track time and invoice, all in one place.

Here is how the company breaks down its offering:

Using Mavenlink can help streamline your workflow without the heftiness of a complex project management tool such as Microsoft Project,  although the company does have a project tracker including assignments, key dates, and project status. Unlike many project management systems, the built-in time tracker includes an invoice tool built right in (versus others that might integrate with a separate invoicing system). And if you’re using QuickBooks and don’t want to switch to its invoicing system, the company is working on QuickBooks integration. Right now, you can export data as a .CSV.

Mavenlink’s permissions system takes into account the complex relationships you have as you work with both your internal team, subcontractors and clients. Everyone in a project ecosystem can have access to just the parts of a workspace that is relevant to them. With the integration of email and even mobile, everyone has access to project data and can collaborate and share information easily.

The soup to nuts approach to project management seems to set Mavenlink apart from other project management tools that handle only parts of the overall project process. Mavenlink has a freemium model: you can get three active projects, save for the custom branding, for free. Paying subscribers are also assigned a customer service rep who is available by phone, email or text chat.

What project management tool are you using, and how’s it working for you?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

Maybe you’ve built a website that the client decides to modify with no regard for best practices or usability. Or you’ve set up and managed their Facebook or Twitter channels, building the conversations and exchanges to a fever pitch, only to watch their updates and tweets generate crickets. All your hard work — on the client’s behalf, of course — disintegrates before your eyes.

What do you do when you’ve handed over the assets that your client has paid for, and they proceed to muck things up? Here are some tactics to temper the pain:

1. Take out the emotion. Anyone good — developer or creator — infuses passion into their work as well as blood, sweat and tears. But when your contract is over, you have to cut emotional ties with the project or the product.
2. Be prepared for potential disaster. Once something is out of your hands, it is no longer within your control. You have to ready yourself emotionally — and legally — for the possibility that your client will destroy the work you’ve done. Think about adding a clause into your contracts that outlines how you’ll respond to any changes that occur because the client is managing the assets you’ve turned over.
3. Have the conversation. Be open with your client about that clause in your contract that states what you may do after the contract ends. Assure them that you are all for empowering your clients to take over their assets and offer training and guidance, but make it clear what your professional response will be if they deviate drastically from best practices.
4. Develop a contingency plan with your client. Ask your client how they’d like you to handle the potential situation of witnessing them making a gross misstep in modifying the work you’ve done or mismanaging something. What would they want you to do if you saw them go astray?
5. Document carefully. While you are managing the assets, document everything. Take screenshots, track things, measure things, list things and compile any information that gives a clear picture of what you did and what was working while the assets were in your hands. After the contract ends, if you see problems arising, document everything to show the “before” and “after.” Record your assessment of their changes using clear, unemotional language and outline where you feel they’ve taken a wrong turn.
6. Make your case to step back into the mix. If you’ve kept the lines of communications open with your former client, approach them respectfully with your assessment and review the state of what you created for them. (Remember, again, to take out the emotion). Give a solid business case for re-engagement to help them get back on track. A smart businessperson will take the data you give them and will determine the ROI of renewing a contract with you versus letting their assets flounder or fail. Throughout this process, stay positive, encouraging and helpful.
7. Cut ties. If your former client decides they can handle things — and you feel they’re on a downward spiral — exercise your “what we’ll do if you mess things up” clause in your contract. The best course of action if there is no way to salvage the work you did is to distance yourself from the mess. You might consider removing the case study you’ve had on your website. Better yet, make sure your case study doesn’t link to the actual site or asset but instead uses screenshots that demonstrate the work you did. You can include a professionally-worded statement that the contract with the client ended on a particular date, and you are no longer engaged in managing the asset or that the client took over and that the current asset reflects their modifications. Again, stay positive. Never badmouth a client even if they are no longer your client. In the worst-case scenario, you may have to entirely remove any references to the client or the work you did for them to protect your company’s reputation. Only you can decide if and when drastic measures are necessary. At that point, focus on the good work you have done and continue to do and chalk it up to life as a consultant. You can only do so much, and once something is out of your hands, you just have to let it go.

What have you done in the past when a client messes things up?

Photo by stock.xchng user guitargoa

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Can Enterprise Privacy Survive Social Networking?

The Language Gap

While I am trilingual, for each of the languages I know there are hundreds that I am not familiar with, so English is the default language that I use to communicate with foreign clients. Though every client I’ve worked with has at least some familiarity with English, a few of them weren’t fluent enough to express clear instructions. When this happens I just look for solutions that will help us communicate better.

My first approach is usually to confirm and repeat the client’s instructions. If I receive an email with a list of tasks the client wants me to do, I send an itemized reply to confirm that I have understood everything correctly. This is good practice even without a language barrier, since it lessens the risk for misunderstandings.

It also helps to encourage clients to express themselves naturally. For business communication most people feel that they must speak formally, sometimes to the extent of sacrificing clarity. If this is the case with your client, encourage him or her to speak conversationally and not worry too much about “sounding professional”.

Online translation tools can come in handy if your client has a hard time translating a phrase or idea into English. Ask your client to express the thought in his or her native language, then use translation tools like Google Translate and Babel Fish. Keep in mind that with these tools the results might not be accurate. For a better translation, you can ask around in foreign language forums or even visit the language section of Yahoo Answers. Just make sure you receive more than one answer to check for accuracy.

Still, these solutions might not be enough in some cases. Once, I had a client who had trouble with expressing negations. When she would say something like “write a list” she actually meant “do not write a list”. When I realized this problem, I would include graphics in my confirmation emails. I attached check marks for the things I would do and a cross beside any item I would not do. This taught me that it can be more helpful to use visual cues that substitute or complement your discussions.

But if communication becomes truly difficult and a do-it-yourself approach is no longer good for the project, it’s worth considering hiring a translator.

The Cultural Gap

Since what we have with clients is a business relationship rather than a personal one, it may seem like cultural differences won’t matter. But there are cases where there’s a difference in professional culture. The way you approach meetings, calls, and projects, may be a bit different from what they are expecting, and vice versa.

This was what happened to my WWD colleague Pamela when she worked on a startup project in France, which she wrote about in a previous article. Basically, she discovered that her definition of a vacation was different from theirs.

The solution to this is to begin your working relationship with a discussion on your preferred work process. How often do you need to report to the client? Should you be available for support at certain hours of the day? Will any of their holidays fall within the dates of your project? Formalize your work process by coming up with a project milestone sheet together. Discussing your concerns and committing to tasks in writing will help you both adjust your expectations before the work has begun.

Have you worked with clients whose language and culture are different from yours? What was your experience?

Photo by stock.xchng user stoll

The new version, released to coincide with Macworld earlier this month, includes a number of new features that really up the ante in terms of Mac integration. It’s a significant enough release that I’m giving Postbox another go as my primary email client, since I still have an emotionally draining relationship with Apple Mail and would love to kick that habit once and for all.

Address Book

Maybe most useful among the new features, at least for those coming over from Mail, and most definitely for MobileMe subscribers, is the new Address Book app integration. By default, the new 1.1.1 release of Postbox for Mac will use your Address Book contacts instead of creating its own database. You can opt to turn this feature off if for some reason you’d rather keep things separate. Any new contacts you create from within Postbox will also create new Address Book cards for those individuals, so it works both ways.

Spotlight Search

Also important for people making the jump from Mail is complete Spotlight access to all of your Postbox-stored mail. Message bodies, header info and attachment names will all now show up as hits when searching using Spotlight (as long as it’s enabled in Postbox. You have to turn this feature on, since it’s off by default). Spotlight integration is also a two-way street, since you can now right-click on any highlighted word in any email and select “Search in Spotlight” from the contextual menu to run a search.

iCal

iCal integration is now a two-way street in this latest release, too. Meeting notifications will automatically be sent in the background, and choosing “Mail Event” from the right-click menu in iCal should open a new Postbox message, so long as you’ve set the app as your default email client. Mail.app may still open too, but if this happens, Postbox has a quick fix to ensure things work properly the next time:

• Within the Finder, right-click on the iCal icon and then select Show Package Contents.
• Navigate to the “Contents” folder, then the “Resources” folder. Right-click on the folder called “Scripts” and select “Get Info.”
• Expand the “Sharing & Permissions” box and click the Lock icon in the lower right-hand corner to unlock this setting. Change any permissions that are listed as “Read Only” to “Read & Write.”
• Restart Postbox.

iPhoto

Something I always really liked about Postbox was its easy to use, built-in content filters that would allow you to see all your images, links and attachments at a glance with a single mouse click. The Postbox developerss have taken that functionality a step further with this new version, allowing you to export any image attachments in your mailbox directly to iPhoto. You’ll need to go through the somewhat lengthy process of completely indexing your inbox before you can do this, but it’s a really nice little feature that’s well worth the wait, especially if you have a lot of shutter-happy relatives and friends, as I do.

Many Other Improvements

There’s lots of little additions and under the hood improvements in version 1.1.1 of Postbox, too. One of the better ones is the ability to drag any icon to the Postbox icon in the dock and have it automatically create a new email with that file as an attachment. It’s a small thing, but it’s also indicative of the kinds of refinements put into this version aimed at making it more than a match for its native Apple competitor, and for other popular options like Mozilla Thunderbird, too. Postbox is free to try for 30 days, so give it a shot, especially if you’re a Mac user who’s had enough of Mail.

Are you a Postbox user? What do you think of the new version?

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

Email: The Reports of My Death are Greatly Exaggerated

The trick with time tracking is arriving upon a degree of detail that’s both useful and efficient. It doesn’t help you if keeping track of things is all you end up doing because it’s such a time and attention-intensive process. Conversely, a general account of “Peformed project-related work” for a time block of eight hours isn’t particularly illuminating, either for the client or yourself. So how granular should your time tracking and reporting be?

I worked with one company that insisted on providing time reporting for all project staff in 15-minute increments to all of its clients. It might seem impossible, and in practice, it was, though that didn’t change the wording of the guidelines. What ended up happening was that either the client would demand simpler reporting, or company assets on assignment would “go native” and refuse to submit such ridiculously extensive accounting of their time.

Over time, the most sensible way of going about time tracking for the company became apparent. Generally speaking, project staff would report changes in activity throughout the day in blocks of time of no less than half an hour, and no more than three. Then before passing on said info to the client, administrative staff would edit it, depending on the needs and wants of the particular client stakeholder receiving the report.

As a web worker working on a contract basis from home, your process should be similar. The easy part is knowing to what degree of detail you need for your own purposes of professional development: experience will tell you that. Determining what a client wants is trickier, but should follow a similar logic. Arrive at a standard first through trial and error with some early projects, and then use that as the template for all future engagements. Solicit and pay attention to client feedback after that to determine what’s right for the person you’re currently working with.

As with most things, the best way to go about it is to avoid extremes. Report too much or too little, and you’re likely to either over- or underwhelm a client. The perfect balance is hard to achieve, but a good balance shouldn’t be too hard to arrive at.

How do you determine how granular to make your time tracking?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• A 2011 Green IT Forecast
• Green IT’s Q4 Winners: Wind Power, Solar Power, Smart Energy
• Report: Cleantech’s Third-Quarter Growing Pains

Luckily, Facebook recently opened up its API to allow third-party developers more access to core features, which gives them a chance to rework the web app and deliver something a little easier on the eyes and potentially less frustrating. That’s exactly what Microsoft’s done with its new Silverlight 4 Beta Client for Facebook, available for Windows and Mac. It’s also demonstrated that Microsoft can sometimes make something I actually like.

As you can see from the screenshots below, the Silverlight Facebook client does something visually striking with the content it pulls from Facebook itself. It uses a fairly sparse dark theme with big, easy-to-read type that borrows just enough from the standard web-based Facebook layout that you won’t find yourself hunting for commands and interface elements.

Your main view shows your news feed (the live feed, not the “News Feed,” which is completely useless and should not be the default for any reason). You can filter your news feed results using the same filters you’d find on Facebook.com, which appear down the left-hand side. Commenting and “liking” is enabled in the news feed, and you can post status updates by clicking the “what’s on your mind?” link at the top. Clickable selections from your friends’ photo updates appear slightly blurred on the right-hand side, providing even more functionality.You can also switch to either “grid” or “photos feed” modes. Grid displays your news feed in a columnar view, so that you can see more at once. Photos feed brings the partially-obscured photos backdrop to the fore and displays a mosaic of your friends’ recently uploaded images. It’s quite nice looking, and it provides a way of looking through your contacts’ images that’s far more appealing than Facebook’s standard method.

The photo browsing in general is very cool, and it feels much better checking out albums than it does on the web. The only downside I’ve found is that some albums, for whatever reason, aren’t browsable in the app, because of some setting the uploader has used in creating them.

What really puts this client over the top, in my opinion, is that it gives you access to both Events and your messages. Thanks to the inclusion of both of those features, I no longer have to visit the web-based Facebook at all. You won’t be able to use Facebook chat through the Silverlight app, but there are other solutions for that, too, including some web-based clients and multi-client apps like Beejive for the iPhone (which is what I use).

Other limitations include some control issues –you have to click on a column’s arrows to scroll, instead of using a mouse wheel, for example. This may be a limitation of Silverlight itself, or it could just be because the client is still in an early beta stage at this point, but it does get a bit annoying. You also can’t hide things you don’t want to see without visiting the Facebook web site, and some types of links will take you back to the web, though I didn’t encounter this very often because those are mostly Facebook app links, which I don’t generally use anyway. There are also some obvious bugs, but again, this is an early beta.

By far the most useful aspect of the Silverlight Facebook client is how it treats Facebook more like a CRM system and less like something to use for idle distraction. For example, whenever you view messages between yourself and someone else, it populates the right-hand side of the app with the latest updates, links and photos posted by that person. That way you can refer directly to that contact’s recent activity. It isn’t providing you with any information you can’t get on the web site, but it is combining and presenting it in much more useful ways.

It’s a solid Facebook client, and it makes the service feel much more professional. If you use Facebook during the course of your work, and you aren’t happy with how it works on the web, the Silverlight Client is definitely worth checking out.

Post your thoughts on the Silverlight 4 Beta Client for Facebook below.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• What We Can Learn From comScore’s Year in Review
• A 2011 Connected Consumer Forecast

In this post, I’m going to list the standard things I provide every client. If any of these elements are missing, I find that someone walks away dissatisfied, be it the client or me. When present, they seem to allow things to progress fairly smoothly, although, as we all know, there’s no such thing as a sure thing.

Contract Document

Get it on paper. This is something I can’t stress enough, and something which still gets forgotten or overlooked so often it makes me doubt our capacity for learning as a species. If you need any evidence about the necessity of a contract document, look no further than the recent kerfuffle between TechCrunch and Fusion Garage over the CrunchPad/JooJoo device.

You don’t have to spend hours putting together a huge and complex contract before you start doing any work. At one firm I used to work with, we would issue proposals that included an abbreviated contract component. It wasn’t much, and it didn’t require a massive amount of time upfront when we weren’t yet getting paid, but it did ensure that clients felt the agreement was strong, and protected the interests of all parties.

Simple Mission/Objective Statement

The key to the document I’m talking about in this section is that it be simple. Make sure that you can express in plain language what it is the project is meant to achieve. Ensure that both you and your client agree on the wording, and agree on what it means before you set it in stone.

It will also help if this statement details a specific product or project endpoint that’s measurable. Otherwise, you might run into problems with an unknown quantity or an ambiguous endpoint that could result in a contract that drags on to a point where it isn’t really profitable for you to work on it any further.

Scheduled Check-Ins

Just like your significant other, your client is going to want you to check-in once in a while to make sure everything is still OK. It can become quite annoying, depending on the client, though you should always remember that the client is risking money on you as a contractor, so progress updates really are their due.

However, you can make it easier on yourself. At project outset, set up a regular schedule for progress updates, and hopefully that will curtail some of the unnecessary looking over the shoulder clients tend to do. It will also give you mini-goals to work towards between your larger milestones or deliverables, which should keep you on target.

Scope Change Documents

This isn’t strictly always necessary, but if it looks like the scope of the project is going to change, then it’s a definite must-have. I have a template of this type of document ready to go at project outset, in fact, because I end up using it so often, even though it only comes into play when the project you find yourself doing deviates from the one you set out to do.

As soon as you anticipate having to do more or different work than you and the client had agreed upon, the best thing for all involved is to provide them with a scope change document for approval before proceeding, unless you absolutely know that you have free reign. You’ll be protecting yourself from a whole heap of trouble, believe me.

Needs and Wants

Not every client will want all of the things I’ve listed here. In fact, a good many of them may try to talk you out of some of these. The fact remains that I think they’re necessities, and most clients will, too, once you actually use them. In the end, it’s all about making sure everyone involved gets what they want out of a project, not just what they think they want.

Do you agree with this list? Is there anything missing?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

Seesmic apparently saw the wisdom in that idea, because it recently revealed a new Windows-only Twitter client that doesn’t require AIR to run. I jumped at the chance to take the software, which is currently only available as a preview edition, for a test run.

Feature-rich

Seesmic for Windows has just about every bell and whistle I could ask for in a professional Twitter client, but without a lot of the unnecessary frills that I feel get thrown in with something like TweetDeck. It seems closer to Tweetie for Mac, which is still my favorite client, independent of platform concerns.

You can use multiple accounts, and customize your columns in the main window however you like. By default, your Home feed will display tweets from all the accounts you have registered with Seesmic, which is a great thing for people who use different Twitter accounts to organize the people they follow, like groups. For those who don’t, Seesmic includes support for Twitter lists, so that you can organize those you follow that way instead.

My personal favorite feature of Seesmic is how the compose window uses your first-entered account by default. That means regardless of what post I reply to, and in what stream I find it, the reply originates from my main account. This is ideal for me because it’s my primary publishing identity, while the others are mostly for monitoring.

Searches can be initiated at any time using a field intuitively placed at the top right-hand corner of the Seesmic window, but I couldn’t find any way to find trending topics. While I don’t generally have cause to check the trends, not having the ability to do so does rankle a bit.

Good-looking and Functional

This is the best-looking Twitter app I’ve seen on Windows, and possibly one of the best-looking Windows apps I’ve seen, period. Especially using a dark-tinted Windows 7 glass visual theme, it just looks designed to fit its surroundings, which is more than I can say for any AIR application.

The tabbed sidebar and light-colored stream backgrounds make it a very usable interface, in addition to helping with aesthetic effect. I would appreciate an option to turn on color-coding for @ mentions or conversations between two people you follow, but with columns designed for the purpose, I guess the Seesmic team figures that isn’t necessary.

Advanced controls for each tweet can be brought up by hovering over a user’s portrait, or by right-clicking on any individual post, so you have options in terms of replying or retweeting. You can also create user lists on the fly from anyone in your stream, or add people to existing lists, which makes it very easy to create functional groups quickly. You can even drag a user’s profile pic to the group of your choice to add them to it.

If there was a feature I’m missing most with Seesmic, it’s the ability to follow/unfollow people from within the client. It’s something I use regularly with my iPhone Twitter clients, and something I enjoy being able to do at a moment’s notice without visiting the web-based interface for Twitter.com.

Client of Choice for Windows

I won’t mince words: Seesmic’s dedicated Windows app has become my go-to software for using Twitter on a PC, even though bugs are present in the preview version. It’s just that good, and it’s not Adobe AIR. In fact, it might be reason enough for me to spend a little less time in OS X, and a little more time working in Windows 7. I’ll stress the might in that last statement, though. If you want a copy, for now you have to sign up for the Seesmic newsletter at Seesmic.com, but turnaround time for a download link seems to be less than a day for most.

Have you tried Seesmic for Windows? Let us know what you think of it below.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• A 2011 Connected Consumer Forecast
• A 2011 NewNet Forecast

Twitt is a new, lightweight Mac Twitter client that has some interesting features I haven’t yet found elsewhere. Can it compete with perennial favorites Tweetie and TweetDeck, though? Using both those programs regularly has set my expectations fairly high, but Twitt definitely counts some surprising twists among its repertoire.

Good Things

Twitt displays your Twitter stream like an iChat conversation. It’s an interface that’s familiar to Mac users, and it fully supports themes, including user-generated ones. It comes with two, the default iChat style and an iPhone theme that is much darker. I still prefer the look of Tweetie overall, but having options is always nice, and some users will value it over other UI considerations.

I also like that there’s a compose window at the bottom, which you can optionally hide. It’s preferable to me to always have a field for posting in view, since I find it actually makes me much more likely to actually tweet on a regular basis, something which I find myself doing less and less of since I started using Tweetie as my main Twitter workhorse.

Filters is another thing Twitt has going for it. The app allows you, via a preference panel, to specify terms that Twitt will then look for in your stream. It’ll then automatically hide tweets containing said keywords, effectively enabling you to filter out annoying trending topics or ongoing conversations you aren’t particularly interested in.

Not So Good Things

I’m hesitant to say “bad things,” because none of Twitt’s features are set in stone, and these can still be changed in later editions, but as it stands, there are a few failings the program has mean I won’t be changing horses anytime soon.

First of all, Twitt only supports one account at a time. That’s good news for people who want to keep things simple, I suppose, but if you have more than one Twitter account to monitor or manage, you’re out of luck with Twitt. For my line of work, that’s a dealbreaker. You can log out of your current account and sign in with another easy enough, but why bother when other clients offer much simpler account switching mechanisms.

Second, there isn’t any mechanism for in-line viewing of conversations that I can find. Nor is there a means to view profiles, follow, or do any of the other fun stuff that I’ve come to expect after using Tweetie and TweetDeck for so long. Without these features, I’m afraid Twitt will remain little more than a quaint alternative for Twitter amateurs, instead of a fully-fledged professional tool.

Conclusion

If you’re using Twitter as more of an IM client and less of an RSS replacement and/or brand management outlet, then there’s definitely something to be said for Twitt’s simplistic approach. Things work as you’d expect them to in an IM client. Clicking on someone’s portrait enters their username into the compose field, so that you’re automatically having a conversation with that person. Ongoing conversations between others are highlighted (orange, by default) and stand out from the rest of your stream.

For my purposes, and I suspect for a lot of other web workers, Twitt just isn’t powerful enough to play with the big boys. But it does have the advantage of being free and easy to learn if you’re just starting out. Once you get your sea legs, however, I highly recommend stepping up to Tweetie or TweetDeck.

Which desktop Twitter client are you using, and why?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• A 2011 Connected Consumer Forecast
• A 2011 NewNet Forecast

When Aliza originally reviewed the software, it was free beta release software. Now that it’s reached version 1.0, it comes with a $39.95 price tag for registration. Users can still download a free trial, so you can take Postbox through its paces before deciding to make a purchase.

I tried Postbox back when it was still in beta, right around the time Aliza originally reviewed it, and there are some definite improvements in the 1.0 release.

Better Search

One of Postbox’s main selling points is its advanced search capabilities. In Aliza’s original review, she talked about how you can search for all emails within a certain time period, or search for attachments and links within emails. Postbox also now boasts a number of search operators usable without opening the advanced settings panel, including “from:name” and “subject:keyword” if you prefer doing things all from one window.

Search and email indexing is also much faster than it used to be. Even with a large archive of messages, many of which are heavy on images and links, it took almost no time at all to download and make available my entire MobileMe archive; much less time than Mail takes to perform the same task.

More Add-ons

Add-ons like Lightning for Postbox, which brings your calendar into your Postbox window via a new tab, are a big part of the program’s appeal. There are utilities for Google Calendar access, message import/export, to-do lists, backup services, Growl notifications, and managing multiple identities on a single account. More are being developed every day, so expect the list to continue to grow.

One of my favorite Postbox-compatible plugins is ThunderBrowse, which allows you to view web pages directly in the application, without having to switch over to your browser of choice: great for digging in and really trying to conquer your inbox during a marathon session.

Easier

It’s hard to put my finger on exactly what usability changes occurred between earlier betas and this final release, but in general things seem redesigned with greater ease in mind. One great example is the ability to drag and drop email messages across accounts in the sidebar. It’s great for keeping your inboxes organized according to how you want to respond to messages, instead of according to how misinformed senders might try to reach you.

Postbox’s already impressive Conversations view for threaded viewing of replies also got easier, with on-the-fly notification of updates sent while you’re reviewing. That way, if someone sends an email continuing a conversation you’re currently reading, you need only click a button to view the latest response.

A Lot More Social

Maybe the biggest change since Aliza’s early experience with Postbox is the addition of multiple social network support. Postbox users can now sign in to their Facebook, FriendFeed and Twitter accounts via the application’s web services menu.

Doing so will not only allow you to post new status updates to those services via Postbox, it will also enable profile photo matching in the links/additional info sidebar to the right of the message reading window. If, for example, you get a DM from someone, Postbox will automatically retrieve that person’s current Twitter profile pic and display it. Messages you receive directly from contacts you also have on Facebook or Twitter will likewise display their profile pic from those services, though I’m not sure which takes precedence in the case of double matches.

For Aliza, the problem with switching to Postbox was that she had become so used to Gmail that learning a different system seemed like re-inventing the wheel. For me, it was that the early betas were actually fairly buggy, and just didn’t feel like something that could be a full-time solution for what is a core tool in my web working arsenal. This final version seems much, much more capable, and will definitely see full-time service on my Windows 7 machine. Will it replace Mail.app? As Aliza pointed out, old habits die hard, so we’ll have to see if I can avoid a relapse.

Let us know your thoughts on Postbox in the comments.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Social Inbox vs. The Future of Email
• Infrastructure Overview, Q2 2010

At the start of their careers, most freelancers take on every new client that comes along. But as we mature and gain more experience, we become more discerning when we’re choosing who we work with. This usually happens because we’re starting to specialize, we want to avoid dead-end projects, or we become more specific about the work we prefer to do.

As we become more involved in selecting clients, what criteria can we set?

Are you the best freelancer for the project? We usually hope that the answer to this question is “yes,” but this isn’t always the case. From the start, we need to know if our work values, skills and experience are what the client needs.

Even if you don’t have all the skills needed, do you know where you can find capable people who can help you out? This is where your network comes in. If you aren’t the best freelancer for the job, you can always pass on the project to someone who is.

What do you know about the prospect’s working history with freelancers? If I’m talking with a potential client who has worked with freelancers before, I make the effort to find out what their working relationship was like. I find that the more difficult and unpleasant their experience with prior freelancers was, the more likely they are to volunteer this information. This helps you avoid the mistakes that your predecessors made, as well as predict future obstacles and problems.

Do they see your services as a cost or an investment? Many new business owners see it as a chore to go out of their way and hire a professional. Some even go out of their way to point out how replaceable you are if you charge them “too much” for something they can “hire a high school student to do”. Watch out for these warning signs. They indicate that the client sees you as an expense, and not as a professional that can actually help their business. They are probably hiring you because they know they need the finished product — but they don’t know why or how it affects their business.

Can you handle the extra workload? If I may make a slight reworking of Hofstadter’s Law: “You always have less free time than you expect, even if you take this law into account.” It’s not just the project work that will take up your time. Client support can eat up several hours of your workweek, especially at the beginning. You might also need to provide extras to keep the client informed and happy.

It can be tempting to take on a new project, particularly in economically turbulent times. But if you don’t have the resources or the time to devote your best work to the job, then accepting it can be detrimental to your career.

Is there a possibility of developing a long-term working relationship? Not all clients need long term work, but many of them do, even if they don’t know it yet. If you see a possibility of working with this client in the long haul, it’s best to take advantage of it if you can. Having one long-term client can be more profitable and fulfilling than trying to keep a constant incoming stream of several short-term clients. It’s easier for the client too, as screening, hiring and training new freelancers can be a drain on their time and resources as well.

What will you learn from this job? As freelancers, we need to be more conscious about stepping up and acquiring new skills. We aren’t automatically sent to seminars and training courses like most of our corporate counterparts.

What things do you consider when taking in a new client? Have you changed the way you screen and choose clients?

Image by woodsy from sxc.hu

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

It’s been a week since their last email. After seeing your web site, some leads will contact you asking for more information, a project quote, or links to your portfolio. But after you give them what they need, you might not hear from them for a few days. Then, before you know it, more than a week has gone by and they still haven’t contacted you.

I find that prospects like these are often just shopping around and gathering as much information as they can from multiple freelancers. Many of them want easy answers, such as a hastily computed price quote or a vague list of services. There’s no in-depth discussion of the project. In fact, it’s possible that they haven’t told you what the project really is.

The fix: For cases like this, I find it helpful to ask a question at the end of my first reply email. This leaves the door open for additional incoming communication. You can also suggest a phone or VoIP discussion so that all the important details are covered in one sitting and no one waits around for email replies that may or may not arrive. If your prospect is still avoiding real discussions after you’ve tried these tips, then you shouldn’t be interested in working with them, either.

They keep asking for more of your previous work. You’ve already sent your portfolio and a list of client references, but somehow they want to see more of your previous work. When you send them a link to your web site showing an extensive list of clients, they ask, “Do you have anything else?”

Usually this means they’re looking for something specific and they’re hoping that you’ve already worked on something very similar before. It’s also possible that their project is different from anything you’ve ever done before and they just want to know if you can handle it.

The fix: Instead of just sending out links, why not add a description of what your portfolio means as a whole. For example, you can write something like, “As you can see from samples X and Y, I can create both illustrative and typographical logos.” Also, research their business beforehand so that you’ll know which portfolio items to highlight when they first ask for samples.

They ask you to make “samples.” Sometimes, a prospect might say, “How about you show us three concepts you have for the project and we’ll let you know if we like them?” They’ll call it an audition or a test, but it’s really spec work. Usually, spec work is a sign that the client isn’t interested in you or your skills. They want to see as many ideas as possible, all for the price of zero dollars.

The fix: First, think about whether your prospects are aware of what they’re doing or if it’s simply an honest mistake. If it’s the latter, it’s usually easy to have a conversation about the best work process for both parties. But if you’ve tried to talk to them about it and all you get is, “So what? The three other freelancers we’re talking to will do it,” then they clearly don’t care about your work and what you have to offer.

The project is all talk and no action. I’ve encountered several prospects who’d take the first steps with me — needs analysis, project proposals — but they don’t follow through. They want to have more meetings and discussions. Weeks later, I find that we’ve talked for several hours but nothing has been accomplished.

The fix: When sending documents during the negotiation phase, it’s best to write clear action steps in the form of milestone sheets or schedules. In fact, why not include a “Where do we go from here?” or “Recommended steps” section at the end of your proposals.

Often, clients who don’t show interest in your work or decisions don’t really mean any harm by it. It’s possible that they are just extremely busy or they’re not used to working with freelancers. On the other hand, if you know that you’ve done your end of the work and they still remain indecisive or distant, then it’s time to call the relationship dead before it has even started.

What do you do when your leads and prospects have poor response time or don’t seem engaged enough in the project?

Image by asolario from sxc.hu

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

Propane

It’s a fine way to power a BBQ, but it’s also more than that. Propane is a new piece of beta software that does what I previously did using a Fluid browser instance. Specifically, it runs Campfire-based chatrooms, which are a popular tool for people who need to collaborate in real-time with a distributed team. I use Campfire rooms to coordinate with other writers at various blog sites where time and scheduling is a primary concern, but that’s just one possible use.

Like with a Fluid instance, Propane provides Campfire with the bare minimum of browser chrome, so that it does in fact look like a native OS X app. It also provides some nice bells and whistles that allow you to customize the how and why of notification sounds and messages, including Growl notifications. There’s also great tools for better file sharing, including automatic source detection when you drag content (text and images) from a Safari window into your active chatroom in Propane.

Mailplane

I’m not actively trying to rhyme these app names, it’s just working out that way. Gmail is great, and Mail.app is nice enough, but I’d rather not use the two together if possible. I love Gmail’s web interface, but I’m not crazy about trying to manage my email activities in a browser window. Maybe that makes me old school, but I grew up on Outlook, and old habits die hard.

Mailplane delivers all the Gmail interface goodness with a nice, native app wrapper. Basically it, like Propane, is just a browser instance with some additional features specific to the web app in question that makes it easier to use. It’s those features that make the app worthwhile, though. Mailplane takes advantage of Gmail’s keyboard shortcuts to allow you to view and create new messages, reply, attach media, and more using convenient buttons located along the top of the app window. It also badges the app icon in your dock with the number of unread emails, and can notify you of new mail using sound and Growl.

Those with Google Apps and multiple accounts are also in luck, because it supports easy account switching and storage. There’s also an option to display an icon in the menu bar, including new mail count. You can try it out for free for a month, but it is a paid program, and will set you back $24.95 if you do decide to purchase.

Gdocsuploader

This is less an app and more of a handy little applet, but the single, focused service it provides is incredibly useful: a simple drag-and-drop interface for uploading documents to Google Docs. It may not seem like much, but it saves a lot of steps vs. the traditional method, which can quickly add up if you do most of your document editing in Google Docs, like I do.

All you have to do to use it is keep the app icon in your dock, and then drag any document onto the icon to upload it. It’ll prompt you once for your Google name and password, and afterward it’ll just work. If you prefer, opening the app will automatically take you to a file browser for selecting a file to upload manually.

None of the above apps does anything that you can’t do using the web, but they do offer time-saving and usability enhancements that you won’t necessarily get using only the corresponding app for each in a normal browser window. Just because web apps are often convenient and user-friendly doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be more so with a more solid connection to your desktop.

Have any tips on how to make web apps more native? Share them in the comments.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Is it Time For the “Web OS”?
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce

Now I keep these warning signs in mind. They’re indicators that I need to take immediate action to keep my project on track. If you’re working remotely, that can be much harder to do than if you have daily face-to-face contact with your colleagues, but hopefully these tips will help you avoid the trap I fell into.

The project had started in the normal way. I took the brief, produced the work, and sent it off in draft form for review with the words, “I look forward to your amendments.” But there were no amendments. My contact at the agency asked for my invoice the same day. I wound up having to chase payment, my contact was avoiding me, and in the end, I only got paid for half the job.

Here are the five warning signs that should have alerted me to the danger.

Warning Sign 1: Moving Away from the Agreed Plan

When I emailed my contact the copy his client had commissioned — a 30-second radio ad — and he had no amendments, I thought it was very odd. I’d included time for client amendments in my project estimate, which he’d approved. We’d also discussed the turnaround time for amendments, so we were both expecting that my ad copy wouldn’t be spot-on the first time.

When his only response to my submission of the draft ad was to ask me to send the invoice, I thought it was weird. Weirder still was that he emailed me this instruction: most of my clients will call to discuss draft copy. In an office, body language and behavior indicates clearly if a colleague is uncomfortable. But even email and phone conversations provide limited feedback.

What I should have done was called my contact immediately after I received his email to confirm that he and his client really had no amendments, and that both were happy to wrap the project up. But at the time I dismissed my unease, telling myself he was probably just busy.

Warning Sign 2: Unprecedented Behavior

No one I’ve ever worked with has accepted copy straight up, without amendments. Ever. So this should have been a huge red flag for me. If a person you’re working with does something you’ve never seen before — and their behavior affects you — check it out with them.

Before you do anything else, give them a call to get clarification about what’s going on. If their behavior has made you at all nervous or uneasy, let them know. By raising the topic, you give them the opportunity to talk about any issues they have — issues that, as in my contact’s case, they may otherwise be uncomfortable raising with you.

Warning Sign 3: Silence

A sudden silence can mean that your colleague has been called out of the office unexpectedly. Or it can mean that they have a problem that they don’t know how to discuss with you.

After I sent my 14-day invoice, I heard nothing from my client — not even an acknowledgment that he’d received it. Again, slightly uneasy, I reassured myself that he was probably busy. What I should have been doing was calling to follow up my invoice and make sure he’d received it.

As it turned out, when I called after the invoice due date and left a message, he didn’t respond. I emailed; no reply. When I called the following week, I was told he’d gone on leave for two weeks. When I was put through to Accounts, they told me there was a problem with the invoice and they’d been instructed not to pay it.

Warning Sign 4: Fast Talking

When I finally spoke to my contact, it was over the phone, and he told me that his client hadn’t liked the copy and they’d had to rewrite it. But he was going into a meeting and couldn’t talk now. He’d see that I “got paid at least part of the invoice,” and then he was gone.

By this time, I knew he wasn’t going to pay. I also knew he didn’t have a meeting. But there was still time to salvage things, had I wanted to. If this happened to me now, I’d ask to stop by the client’s office for ten minutes and discuss the problems with my work. Don’t let a client try to bamboozle you with fast talk or excuses — no matter how much they sugar-coat their story. Discussing the problems can also give you a chance to rectify the situation.

Warning Sign 5: General Unease

It won’t surprise you that all through this process I felt a general sense of unease — one that grew as matters progressed.

Now, whenever I get that feeling, I know I need to try to work out the cause of the discomfort. As my experience showed, it’s tempting to ignore your instincts and hope that things will go the way you’d like. No one likes to be uncomfortable, after all. But if you’re feeling it, you’re feeling it for a reason. Don’t ever ignore it!

If you look at your discomfort more closely, you can usually identify the source of the issue. Then, you can formulate a plan to right matters. Perhaps you’ll explain your concerns, point by point, in an email, and then call your contact to discuss those concerns. Or maybe you’ll make a few decisions about how you’ll move forward on the project, setting boundaries you will and won’t cross, or creating a series of requirements you’ll need to have met before you progress through each deliverable.

These five warning signs now ring alarm bells whenever I encounter them. Being aware of them, and acting on them, has kept me out of trouble since The Job That Went Bad. What warning signs do you watch for in your projects?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

Things started off well, since Tweetie offers a full-featured, ad-supported free version in addition to a $19.95 (currently on sale for $14.95) ad-free version. I can live with one ad per hour in my tweet stream in exchange for a great free program. Heck, half of the tweets of those I’m following are probably ads anyway.

Let me just say right away that Tweetie’s interface is gorgeous. It looks and feels like a Mac app, and it has a commitment to minimalist design that I very much appreciate. If you’re looking for desktop eye candy, Tweetie is definitely your client. I especially like the scrollbar and the way it handles multiple accounts in the left-hand sidebar. There are lots of other advantages as well:

Global Shortcut for New Tweet

Another big plus is the ability to set a global shortcut for composing new tweets. My MacBook is now set to open the composer whenever I press Shift+Command+T, which helps me get tweets out much faster than with any other program.

Easy Image/Link Sharing

I also love that you can drag image files to the composer window and Tweetie will automatically generate yFrog, TwitPic, Twitgoo or Posterous links for it. You can also set your URL truncation service, with the ability to choose from five different providers.

Threaded Conversations

Quick and easy access to threaded conversations, both public and DMs, is another nice feature. Clicking on an @reply will show you that public conversation thread, in the same window and without any other tweets. DM conversations look like iChat sessions. I appreciate the visual distinction between the two because it helps me know what kind of conversation I’m viewing at a glance.

Despite these and other things to its credit, Tweetie just doesn’t have what it takes to replace Nambu as my primary Twitter client from a web working perspective. The reasons are many, and though some might seem minor, taken together they draw a clear distinction between the two apps:

No User Groups

Tweetie 1.0 doesn’t support custom user groups, which is a must for a Twitter client if you’re following more than 100 people, especially if a fair number of those people tweet with any kind of frequency. Without dedicated user groups, you’ll miss out on important stories and links, and you’ll have a much harder time compartmentalizing your Twitter usage.

No Copying Text from Tweets

This might only be handy if you’re a blogger or writer looking to collect quotes from Twitter, but I’m sure there are other reasons a professional might want to do this. Having a built-in retweet button is great, but I want to be able to select text from directly within my Twitter-stream and copy that so that I can save it to another source. Ironically, I realized I was missing this feature while preparing to write this article.

No Column View

One thing that I got used to when using TweetDeck, and was pleased to find Nambu also maintained, was a column view option that let me organize different types of filtered tweets next to each other in the same window. Sure, with Tweetie, you can view searches (though not @replies, unless you search for your own @replies) in a new window, but it lacks the clean organization of a multi-column setup.

So what do I really think of Tweetie, in the end? The design snob in me wants to love it, declare my devotion to it, and never look at another Twitter client ever again, but the pragmatic web worker in me can’t justify using it for more than casual purposes. If you’re only following a few people, and you use Twitter for personal rather than professional purposes, then by all means, get Tweetie. But if, like me, you care more about what’s under the hood than the bodywork, stick with Nambu for now.

Have you tried Tweetie? What did you think?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• A 2011 Connected Consumer Forecast
• A 2011 NewNet Forecast

At the end of last month, fellow WWD writer Imran Ali posted a wish-list for lifestreaming apps, those efficient little consolidation tools that are supposed to help make sense of the social network mess we’ve got ourselves into. There’s no doubt, as Imran suggests, that these apps could be doing a lot more than just putting everything in one place, which is really what most actually do when you get right down to it.

I was optimistic that maybe Nambu would provide something out of the ordinary, but it remains to be seen what kind of cross-service interaction will appear, since the current Nambu beta only supports Twitter accounts. Future versions will implement support for identi.ca, FriendFeed and Ping.fm, but they aren’t accessible in Nambu’s preferences as of yet.

Still, even without support for additional services, Nambu is a very useful little program with a feature-set that’s sure to please Twitter users who dislike TweetDeck’s cluttered interface. It more closely resembles an instant messaging application than most Twitter clients, and it offers IM-like features as well.

Tweets appear in descending order from most to least recent, as you would expect, and appear in a much more OS X-friendly graphical style than TweetDeck’s stream. There’s a filter field at the top of the app window pane, and a collapsible composition field at the bottom, with buttons for quick posting of pictures to pic.im and instant URL shortening. You’ll also find buttons for retweeting, replying and sending a direct message along the top left of the interface.

What’s that? You say you miss your columns from TweetDeck? Have no fear, Nambu supports those as well. You can implement multi-column mode via the “View” menu, which allows you to add columns for things like private messages, replies (or “mentions,” in Nambu, which is actually a more accurate description), sent messages, searches and trends, and more. While checking out this view I also noticed that Nambu supports in-line threaded messaging, which is something I’ve been missing in TweetDeck.

Multi-column view can take up a lot of screen real estate, and might not appeal to everyone because of this. That’s where “Outline” mode comes in handy. Nambu looks more like EventBox in this mode, with a list of links to your sent messages, groups, mentions, search and other areas you might normally use columns for.

It’s a beast of an app, and thanks to easy switching between multiple Twitter accounts, it’s become my weapon of choice for professional tweeting. So if you’re on OS X and TweetDeck isn’t cutting it, or even if TweetDeck is cutting, take Nambu out for a spin. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Have you tried Nambu?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• A 2011 Connected Consumer Forecast
• A 2011 NewNet Forecast