Thinking about how we do work takes time. It’s time well spent at the beginning of a project or at critical junctures. However, thinking about the work instead of doing it during a project can be disruptive and counter-productive. When we find effective practices and tools, we want them to become so ingrained in our process that we use them without thought.

Creating a seamless workspace

As a user, be thoughtful when you develop your personal workspace. Consider your options in terms of human skills and needs, technology, tools, and organizational practices — but then get to work once you have found an approach that is effective for the given setting.  Create a system for re-evaluating your design choices, but be biased toward stability rather than change. It may make sense to re-evaluate your workspace by the project rather than by the day or week.

If you are a content, tool, or practice supplier, do not create hurdles to seamless working.  Here are some examples of vendors that have inadvertently created hurdles to seamless working:

• Tool functions that do not match the cycle of the work. In an early use of BlackBerry handsets for law enforcement, the officers found themselves having to re-login in the middle of pursuits.
• Device blocking. The NY Post recently began blocking iPad users who are browsing via Safari. Users are redirected to a page explaining that they must purchase the NY Post iPad app to see the content. This, and all sites that admonish iPad users to download an app rather than just showing the page, break search flow.

Examples of tools that remove hurdles to seamless work are those with options for distraction-free screens (such as iA Writer for Mac) or the ability to easily control notifications (such as Tweetdeck).

Should application design or our personal work design help us navigate these hurdles? Both.

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Plugins are available to embed Vanilla Forums in WordPress (please see disclosure at the end of this post), Blogger, Tumblr, Drupal, and Squarespace sites. The WordPress plugin can automatically log WP users into Vanilla without having to sign in again, or to create a separate account. Vanilla also has tools available to import forum content from phpBB and vBulletin.

The cost of the hosted version of Vanilla Forums ranges from a free, advertising-supported plan, to a “premium” plan with unlimited users and 15 GB of storage, costing $199 per month. If you wish to host a forum on your own server, an open-source version is available, for which there are a large number of add-ons available to customize the forum.

Disclosure: Automattic, the maker of WordPress.com, is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

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After iPad announcement day, I provoked a lot of controversy by writing that I felt that the iPad could serve as a travel computer for me. After handling it and trying out its features, I’m now even more convinced that is true.

I’m a writer, more specifically a professional blogger. I’m not doing heavyweight computer tasks when I travel. In fact, I’m usually not even writing when I’m on the road except for brief updates to my web sites. I’m answering email, conducting text-based research on the web, taking notes, and doing other lightweight tasks.

I’m not the only writer or blogger who thinks the iPad can help in their work. After a week with an iPad in hand, the Chicago Sun-Times’ Andy Ihnatko raved about how useful the gadget is for his workflow on TWIT last week. Mashable’s Ben Parr wrote one of his recent posts completely on the iPad, although he admitted that a few things were a pain, like working with images.

The only real processor- or software-heavy task that I did during my last extended business trip was edit photos in Adobe Lightroom on my return flight, which could easily have waited till I got home. It certainly wasn’t worth hauling around a computer that weighs three times as much as an iPad for almost a week just to get a two-hour head start on my photo processing.

The first thing I noticed when getting my hands on an iPad was how big it was. The size was surprising. I had expected the screen to feel smaller than it does. This was good news for its usability for many of the tasks that I do. Many of these tasks, such as web browsing, can also be done on my iPhone but the small screen makes them awkward. The iPad provides the screen real estate to take notes, browse and read without getting a headache from it.

Besides being large, the screen is also gorgeous. The resolution is wonderful and it is just a joy to look at. As spoiled as I am by using my iPhone screen on a daily basis, the iPad screen is even more beautiful, although it obviously gets streaky easily.

Another thing I noticed almost immediately was the speed of the device. It responds to commands lightning-fast compared to my iPhone. This kind of processor power raises interesting possibilities for what the iPad may be able to do in apps that the iPhone can’t, such as in the area of photo editing. There is already at least one photo editor out for the iPad, PhotoGene, that looks to be very robust.

A lot of commenters on my previous iPad article suggested that instead of an iPad I get a netbook for my travel needs. While there is a price penalty for buying the iPad over a netbook, I see the iPad as a better option for me for several reasons:

• Weight: The iPad is half the weight of most netbooks — an important carrying consideration for someone with arthritis in their back.
• Compatibility: Since I’m already heavily embedded in the Mac OS ecosystem (I use an iPhone and MacBook with iCal, Contacts and Mobile Me, for instance), all my data will sync natively very easily with another Apple device. I use the iWork suite, so having a device that can use those files is definitely a plus. I can design presentations at home in Keynote and then take them on the road using the iPad. I can take transfer text notes back and forth in Pages.
• Speed: The tablet format and quick-boot OS will make it much easier to do quickie tasks (such as making a short note in an application like Evernote) than a netbook. Juggling a netbook for such tasks while standing would be awkward at best, and I could be done and have the iPad put away again before the netbook would probably even be booted up.
• Connectivity: For me, the 3G iPad, with its no contract pay-as-you-go connectivity, is the one to have. To have cellular system access with a netbook, I’d have to pay for a connection device like a MiFi or wireless card, which means paying every month for an expensive service whether I really need it that month or not. With the iPad 3G plan, I can have (and pay for) connectivity only when I need it.
• Battery Life: Both the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg and Andy Ihnatko are on record as saying the iPad can get 11 hours or more of battery life using power saving settings. This far exceeds the average netbook and is just one more reason the iPad is a superior travel device.

So, how do I imagine utilizing the iPad on my next business trip?

First, I have to gear up. I’ll have an iPad with 3G. I’ll install the following apps: Evernote, iWork (Pages, Numbers and Keynote), Things and WordPress (please see disclosure at the bottom). I’ll take the camera connectivity kit and an external keyboard with me, but the keyboard can stay at the hotel during the day which means I save the weight of hauling it.

Some preparation at home will make my life easier on the road. I’ll add to the iPad’s onboard photo library any photos I think I may want to use from my archives while at the event. I can export my Notebooks from Circus Ponies’ Notebook program to view as web sites in Safari if I think I’ll need them. I’ll also prepare in advance blank draft blog posts that are pre-completed with thumbnail photos (for instance, the event logo) and any advertising banners I intend to use. This will save cutting & pasting and photo editing on the road, and will make posting faster in general. All I’ll have to do is write content and use the camera connection kit or my iPhone camera to add pictures to my posts.

Once on the road, I’ll use Evernote and Pages for taking notes, WordPress or Safari for doing my web posting, Things for editorial planning and Keynote for any presentations. Any contact or calendar changes that I make will be synced to Mobile Me for backup. I can store and pull files that I need from Mobile Me or Dropbox.

I am really looking forward to the day that I can leave my laptop at home when I pack my suitcase.

Disclosure: Automattic, maker of WordPress.com, is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

I’ve added social networking features with BuddyPress 1.2 to a couple of my WordPress blogs without any problems. I can safely state that this new version is going to be very popular with bloggers all over the globe. Within minutes your blog will have Twitter-like status updates for your blog readers and writers (called the “activity stream”), who all now become members of your new social network. Also included out of the box are easy to use message boards and groups. Members can either join existing forums and groups or create new ones about any subject matter they’re interested in. They can communicate in the public stream or via private messaging with one another or via their own groups they establish on your social network. There’s also a useful Member Directory that allows members to communicate with other other. Every member has an extended profile they can fill out any way they want.

Here’s a sample of what a BuddyPress install looks like:

One of the things that I like is the option to make your home page either your blog posts or the activity stream. The choice is up to you: do you want to keep your blog as the focal point of your site or do you want the social network to take center stage? If you choose to make the activity stream your home page, then a new tab called “Blog” is added, which is where all blog posts will be available.

Also worth mentioning is the fact that BuddyPress — like WordPress itself — is extensible, which means you can add many new features and functionality via plugins and widgets.You can also change the look and feel of your new social network with themes customized for BuddyPress features.

I’ve been a BuddyPress user since its early beta and release candidate releases. While those early iterations had some minor bugs as you might expect, the BuddyPress support community was extremely helpful and swift with suggestions for fixes or workarounds. I expect the community to continue to be so supportive with this official release of BuddyPress 1.2.

Important: Just in case, it’s always smart to perform a full backup of your WordPress blog and database before experimenting with anything that integrates with your infrastructure, as BuddyPress does. There are many excellent backup plugins you can use. It’s better safe than sorry.

Disclosure: Automattic, maker of WordPress.com, is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

Major blog platforms WordPress, TypePad and Tumblr now have very capable iPhone applications, enabling bloggers to publish on the go, with many of the same features they enjoy when publishing from a desktop browser (Disclaimer: Automattic, maker of WordPress, is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True). These applications are handy for everything from publishing a posting with a photo and pithy observation to correcting a comment or editing a page.

All of these applications are a free download from the iTunes App Store.

TypePad for iPhone. SixApart’s TypePad platform has long been a leader in mobile blogging almost since the inception of the hosted service. From TypePad for iPhone, you have the following options: “Create a Post,” “Take a Photo,” and “Add a Photo.” The application’s control panel lets you specify TypePad account information, New Post defaults, and even your Twitter login. Including a photo in a blog post is as simple as choosing “Take a Photo,” shooting the photo, and then creating a post and publishing it. Having the “Take a Photo” option available at the top level of the interface makes posting a photo to your TypePad blog simple and easy. The application has a clean user interface.

WordPress for iPhone 2. The recently released (and much-improved over the previous version) WordPress for iPhone 2 enables you to access comments, posts and pages on any WordPress blogs hosted on WordPress.com or on your own hosting domain. Some notable features in this release include a New Comments interface; passwords storage on the keychain; automatic saving and restoration of posts if the network connection is lost during publishing (especially useful for AT&T customers!); and persistence (when you load the app it automatically opens the last post you were working on). Adding a picture to a blog post is as easy as easy as tapping Photos when you are composing a new post and adding a photo from the library or taking a photo with the camera. WordPress for iPhone 2 is a clean and very usable application.

Tumblr. The microblogging service Tumblr is also available via an iPhone app. With the Tumblr iPhone app, you can post text, photo, quote, link, chat, or audio content Tumblr. The audio feature enables you to record audio and send it directly to your tumblelog. I rank myself as a light Tumblr user, but find this application to be very consistent with the web interface, which I find to be one of the application’s positives.

Do you publish blog posts using your iPhone? Share your experience below.

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Doing what we do here at WebWorkerDaily, it is sometimes easy to forget from whence we came. That is to say, everything has a beginning, including a career, or part of a career, devoted to working online. For many of us already in the field, the starting point may have been a natural inclination towards technology that gradually blossomed into a full-fledged professional pursuit.

But for those just getting their feet wet, the process might not be so organic. You might be showing up late to the game, and with only a basic grasp of the rules to begin with. Let’s take some of the pressure off by taking an introductory look at two of the basic tools of the trade.

Blogs

Blogs (or weblogs, to give them their original name), are a web worker’s best friend. They help with research, networking, sales, and brand establishment (personal or corporate). Once upon a time, you could just put up a web site and forget it, or maybe go back and update content once a quarter, or once every two quarters. That was fine when the Internet was just a supplement to real-world business, but it’s become much more than that. In web working, your web site is the social face you present to the client, and having a blog helps keep you relevant.

Imagine a salesperson who checks in with a prospect once a quarter. Now imagine that salesperson provides exactly the same information in exactly the same way to exactly the same stakeholder every time. That’s what you’re doing if you’re not providing frequently-updated content on your web site. With a blog, which you might update on a daily or weekly basis with articles about new developments and trends in your field, you can show prospects that you’re engaged, excited about your field, and always aware of shifts in the business landscape.

That’s the “why”, but what about the “how”? The best way to get started is to become familiar with some basic blog publishing software. Try out a free WordPress.com (disclosure: WebWorkerDaily is hosted on WordPress; see additional disclosure related to WordPress below) or Blogger account, both of which offer visual editing and preset templates; leaving you to concentrate on the content, not the geeky back-end stuff. Read around so you get familiar with the blog writing style. Note the average length of posts, where paragraph breaks occur, the use of hyperlinking, etc. You don’t have to share your blogging with the public until you’re comfortable doing so. Take your time and build competence first.

Twitter

You’ve probably heard about it, but you may not yet have gone so far as to sign up for an account. Twitter is a relatively new kind of social network, that, unlike its popular predecessors MySpace and Facebook, is focused primarily on users’ content and less on users’ profiles or identities.

When I first discovered Twitter, which was not all that long ago, I had no idea what to do with it. I couldn’t figure out how to find people to add, no one I knew was using it, and the 140-character limit seemed arbitrary and somewhat cruel. I came to realize that it is a valuable way to expand your network of potential clients, collaborators and service providers, and to conduct spot research and enhance your reputation as an online professional.

Nowadays, you will find that most professionals working online who have active blogs will also have a “Follow me” button or at least link to their Twitter profile in some way. Twitter takes the concepts I talked about with blogging to the next level. To successfully use your account to further your professional goals, you have to provide updated content with a frequency previously unheard of, and with significant brevity, as well. Those in advertising will probably relish the challenge of drilling down meaningful content to 140 characters, as I soon came to.

How to use Twitter succesfully is a topic that is still subject to fervent debate. If you’re looking for a good starting point, Darren Rowse of Problogger.net is frequently considered an expert in the field, and you can find his Twitter-oriented blog at Twitip.com. With Twitter, as with blogs, the key is to follow others and take in as much as possible, in order to get comfortable with the unique form of communication it presents.

I know the “watch and learn” method of gaining familiarity with these basic web working tools might not appeal to those newcomers who’ve been forced by the loss of employment to seek work online, rather than chosen it themselves. But like starting any new career, there will be ramp up time, and training and orientation are required if you want to become truly successful. Hopefully our Web Work 101 series of articles will help cut down the time on that learning curve.

(Disclosure: WordPress is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.)

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Serendipity is a powerful, feature filled weblog application and a worthy WordPress alternative.

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Since then, I’ve still not incorporated Zemanta suggested items into this WWD blog but have used them more and more often on some of my other blogs, particularly my personal blogs where I have less stringent writers guidelines to follow and anything goes because they’re mine. Now Zemanta has added a few more features that have caught my attention.

Zemanta says their tools can help increase traffic to your blog because of:

1. better annotation of posts, links, images with actual crawlers for Google and Yahoo can rate the post higher and glean more context from your post; and

2. placement of links to related posts across blogosphere helps get more track back for the post which can also increase traffic.While Zemanta admits that their product is still geared more toward the personal blogger versus the professional blogger, they suggest more layout flexibility and augmented features that will be of interest to pro-bloggers are coming down the road.

Here are some of the new developments with Zemanta:

1. Zemanta is no longer just a Firefox plug-in but is also available through Internet Explorer.

2. Zemanta tools are now integrated with WordPress and Movable Type software eliminating the need for yet another browser extension for users of those blogging software products.

The new release also increases the number of images suggested from the grid of nine and adds a scroll bar to view more images while keeping the older images visible, provides more image context including a description and licensing information, and suggests more articles.

Another great little addition is links to Amazon. When you mention a book title in your blog post, Zemanta recognizes it as a book and suggests a link directly to that book on Amazon. Future iterations of the software will also allow you to personalize Zemanta with your Amazon affiliate account information so you get your due commission for directing your readers to the bookseller.

Other features of note include mapping and geotagging. Mention a place in your blog post and have the option to link directly to the location on Google maps or add a geotag, part of an experiment for adding embedded maps. Zemanta also is adding a Popular Page that shows you the most popular articles or blog posts that are being linked to by Zemanta members.

And I’ve saved the best for last. The new Reblogging feature. I love the concept of this feature. Basically, it helps readers of your blog to more easily quote parts of your blog and incorporate it into their blogs ensuring accuracy and links back. The Zemified button that appeared at the bottom of blog posts using Zemanta features will be renamed “Reblog” and when readers click on it, they’ll get a new window with the blog post text included as well as tools for them to add any portion of the blog post that they highlight directly to their blog. They also have the ability to add in their own text to comment on or give context to the quoted blog text.

Anyone using the Reblog feature should keep in mind copyright laws and fair use practices when selecting the amount of text to quote.

The folks at Zemanta hope to extend their relationship with Six Apart to fully integrate Zemanta features into their Web-based blogging tools. That will most likely be an announcement for another time.

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WordPress

Many Backend Improvements

WordPress.org focused 2.5 on implementing a much-needed facelift and adding functionality to the administrative interface. The dashboard has been un-cluttered considerably, creating a welcoming environment when you first log in to your blog’s back-end. Also, administrators can now install dashboard widgets that show items such as stats about your posts, comments, incoming links, popular news, and so on. Some of the widgets feature RSS feeds for easy tracking in your favourite RSS reader.

New Post Editing Functionality

Features presented inside the blog post editing screen include multi-file uploading that includes a progress bar. This means no more having to upload files one at a time, providing a huge time-saver. Also, if your jpg images have EXIF data you’d like to show, WordPress will automatically extract that data into fields you can use.

If you have a blog that has multiple authors, the WordPress folks have addressed a major issue: concurrent editing protection. Now in version 2.5, if you edit a post that someone else has open as well, you’ll be prompted. No more auto-saves overwriting each others edits. WordPress will automatically lock the post and prevent concurrent saving.

If you’ve used WordPress’ new multi-file upload feature and have uploaded a batch of photos, you’ll enjoy the new built-in gallery as well. There is new short code for displaying galleries with thumbnails and captions. Users can also leave comments on individual photos. WordPress.org has documentation outlining the syntax for using this new functionality.

Safari uses will enjoy the new post editor as WordPress 2.5 includes Tiny MCE version 3.0 which boasts improved compatibility with Apple’s Safari browser.

Finally, WordPress search now indexes web pages, in addition to blog posts. This much needed feature adds to WordPress functionality as a CMS for a small website.

WordPress 2.5 has some much needed features and has advanced its functionality for anyone who wants to publish their own blog or website. To get started, make sure your hosting environment features PHP and MySQL (these components power WordPress) and download WordPress. Their 5-minute installation set is also available.

Alternatively, if you’re upgrading from a previous WordPress version, check out the upgrade instructions or use the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plug-in.

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In order to have some of the Word Processor features in my blog editor, I often compose my blog posts in Google Docs, then paste them into my blogging software.  Well as bavatuesdays has pointed out, Google Documents now features the ability to post directly to your blog software.

To use this quietly rolled out feature, type in your Google Doc as you normally would and hit the “Publish” button.  One of the options is to post to your blog.  You’re presented with the following screen:

As you can see, the window asks for your blog type, username, password, and blog name.  The support a large number of blog engines including WordPress, Blogger, Moveable Type, and more.

Once you’ve set up your blog information, you can easily post the Google Doc to your blog.  In my testing, the result was plain looking posts that appear just as they do inside Google Documents.

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In a blog post, Mullenweg announced that Automattic is acquiring BuddyPress and the designer and developer behind it, Andy Peating.  BuddyPress is a series of WordPress plug-ins that can take a WordPress MU (multiple WordPress weblogs on one single server) website and turn it into a social network platform.

What can BuddyPress practically be used for?  Say you have a group of co-workers or team mates and you want to have a social environment to exchange ideas and information with.  You don’t want to have to force everyone to sign up for FaceBook or MySpace, you simply want to collaborate.  WordPress, combined with BuddyPress will give you a space to connect with your cohorts outside of the ‘walled-garden‘ of these other social networking sites.

It will be great to see what comes out of the acquisition.  WordPress holds a high degree of promise as a content management system, and with the load of venture funding Automattic attracted recently, more great developments are sure to manifest.

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