WWD Coffee Break – Monitoring, Telework & Marketing

ScreenshotFree Site Monitoring – If you’re in web development – or just someone keeping up a weblog – there are probably a site or two that you need to keep an eye on as far as uptime goes. While there are many fine site monitoring packages you can install on your own PC to warn you if a site goes down, there are also a couple of free services out there now suitable for quick and dirty site monitoring. Two that I’ve tried lately are Montastic and mon.itor.us.

Either of these services will keep an eye on your own sites by periodically trying to retrieve a page and notifying you by email or RSS if things go wrong. Montastic has the cleaner interface and simpler feature set; mon.itor.us has more bells and whistles (like graphs and purchasable SMS notifications) but can be more confusing to get started with. Neither one has all the features you’ll find in serious client-site enterprise monitoring software, but for just telling you whether you’ve got a problem with one of your customers’ web sites, they’re a fast and easy way to go.

Making the Case – Previous full-time telecommuter Stella Commute has written an excellent article on how to write a telecommuting proposal in a professional manner. She recommends focusing on the business at hand (rather than your personal issues or saving the planet), and explaining what you’ll do, how you’ll do it, how you’ll stay in touch, and how you’ll be evaluated – among other things. If you’re trying to sell your boss on a telework position for yourself, it’s definitely worth a read.

Year-end Marketing Thoughts – Like it or not, a lot of us in the web work universe are also in marketing. Fortunately, with the “New Marketing,” this is becoming a less-unpleasant prospect. This set of random thoughts from gapingvoid sums up the current state of affairs pretty well, at least for those who live in the world where marketing happens by social network instead of one-way media.

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