Flipping corner on logo. Flash file (Budget: $30-250, Jobs: Flash)
source
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Job 4708: Web Design Boat Charter Service $251 - $500
I have a website but I would like to change the look of it so it is a bit more classy I am happy with our existing logo and slogan changing dreams into memories But I would like the site to take o...
Budget: $251 - $500 PLACE BID - Find Web Design Jobs - Post A Job
Bidding Ends: 02/06/08 Client Located: Narellan, Work From: Anywhere
Friday, February 8, 2008
Job 4701: Web Design Restaurant $1001 - $2500
new site to do has to be clear young easy to use contents contact info about us can be together w contact pics of the restaurant menu ...
Budget: $1001 - $2500 PLACE BID - Find Web Design Jobs - Post A Job
Bidding Ends: 02/02/08 Client Located: Milan, Work From: Anywhere
Add sounds to itadmin-c-l-group site by projclg
Add sounds to c-l-group site. Current website has flash elements and four pages in it. Urgent. (Budget: $30-250, Jobs: Flash, Website Design)
sourceThursday, February 7, 2008
Photo Modification by tovaglenn
We are taking the Dad out of this image, to create a mask for guests to his 40th Birthday Party. What we need is: - The Dad's face (the person in middle of photo) to be "trimmed out of" the... (Budget: $30-250, Jobs: Graphic Design)
sourceJob 4699: Website Programming Whypark Clone $501 - $1000
whypark com automatically creates adsense templates and adds relevant daily fresh content to site allows you to add and place adsense code anaytics sitemap and ect I would like the template...
Budget: $501 - $1000 PLACE BID - Find Web Design Jobs - Post A Job
Bidding Ends: 02/02/08 Client Located: El Monte, CA Work From: Los Angeles, CA Metro Area
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Initiative Worldwide CEO Alec Gerster to Retire
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) --- Alec Gerster will retire as the CEO of Initiative Worldwide in March and Richard Beaven, CEO of Initiative North America, will take his post, the Interpublic Group of Cos.' agency said today.
source
CMS for website by aveho
I currently have a static website that is 100% CSS in design. All content is styled with a style sheet. I would like to integrate a content management system (CMS). The website consists of the following 5 main sections: 1... (Budget: $30-250, Jobs: Javascript, PHP)
sourceJob 4729: Website Graphic Design Promotional Microsite $251 - $500
This summer we will be launching a new social website for young adults 18 35 In order to build interest and attract members we will be running a promotion The promotion will be run by its own m...
Budget: $251 - $500 PLACE BID - Find Web Design Jobs - Post A Job
Bidding Ends: 02/05/08 Client Located: Gothenburg, Work From: Anywhere
Warning - A Nothing To Do With Writing Post - 3
What seems like hours and hours later, and really isn’t that long, but tell my back, and things are coming together even as they look like there falling apart. The kitchen is almost empty, most of my clothes are packed, I’ve gotten a good start on the books and I’ve discovered the leaky garage isn’t as bad as I thought it might be.
As always, I forget how heavy books are when gathered together. I wonder if we every will have a reader that will replace the physical, paper book. I hope so, even as I know I would truly miss the look, feel, smell and reading of the paper book.
Have I gotten any writing done, other than these three silly blog entries? I actually did do some editing on a chapter for a client and printed it out. Tomorrow morning right after jobs, and before I start packing, I’ll spend a bit more time.
So it is possible to write on the fly, but you knew that ;)
Writer well and often,
Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing - a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision - for those who want to get a book written.
When The Project Goes Terribly, Terribly Wrong: Freelancing and Public Furor
Like so many sudden deaths, it came under perfectly normal circumstances: I submitted a humor column to a website I’ve been publishing with for years. It went live in short order. And within forty eight hours, my prior understanding of how we interact online was dead, dead, dead.
Just as psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler Ross suggested it might, the violent death marched me through five stages of grief. Some lasted longer than others. Some required more drinking than others. But at some point, most freelancers who publish online for the general public troop through them. May you have loved ones and plenty of ice cream around you.
From my work with NASA and plenty of pilots, I’ve learned that disasters are never brought about by a single cause; it’s always a chain of events. This was the disaster chain for me and my article: 1) It was a satire about the danger of ruining cherished American Christmas cartoons by viewing them through an adult lens 2) for a very general audience 3) which was not accustomed to reading satire on this particular site 4) and was invited to a discussion board beneath the following headline: “BAH HUMBUG! Social messages seem to rear their ugly heads for adults in kids’ classics.� 5) Said headline blared forth for the entire no-work, no-school weekend before Christmas, when the article was “staged� on the front page of the site.
It was the Hindenburg of freelance writing.
Denial
I never visited the site’s message boards, because I figured that if readers wanted to register an opinion, they’d do so through my website, which was linked in my bio line. All the feedback I’d had, initially, was positive; the piece sailed through the approval of at least two editors, possibly three, and several new readers stopped by my site or dropped an email to let me know they’d enjoyed it.
And then one comment caught my attention:
“I was reading the comments posted by readers after it and was stunned by all the negative feedback. Are these people for real? They really thought you were serious? Just wow.�
“…all the negative feedback�?
I’m not a stranger to negative feedback; I wouldn’t have lasted .0000001 seconds in my MFA program if I weren’t conditioned to people brandishing an essay in my face and saying, “No. Start again. Make the last line the first, and then the concept might be tolerable.� I sure as Twain wouldn’t have a career as a writer if I didn’t think I needed it in order to improve, and faced it on a constant basis from editors and trusted readers. I’ve had it right here on FreelanceSwitch, for heaven’s sake. So I clicked over to the site’s message boards to investigate.
I’ve written about politics, motherhood, and religion, and had never in my life seen anything even remotely approaching what unfurled on the monitor before me. I was, it seemed, in desperate need of therapy and antidepressants. A person who should never have children. A person who was unqualified as a professional writer. A person who must have had an awful childhood, and who hated Christmas, and very likely roasted kittens for lunch. It was difficult not to take it all personally, because when a person takes time out of his or her life to type, “I hope Mary Beth Ellis never comes to my house for the holidays,� it’s kind of hard not to distill such reactions into an occasional bad mood of the general human race.
By now I was well aware that I had committed the cardinal sin of writing the wrong article for the wrong audience. And yet I was shocked by the backlash, not because I’d never considered it impossible that another human being might not like my writing, but because, wellâ€"these people were just so mean . There had been times, certainly, when I’d read an article which made me angry, and my response was to… stop reading, and move on with my life. I abhor nasty conflict, experiencing a stomach-tightening sensation when I see it even on television. I’m the person at the airport ticket counter who says, “Oh… all flights cancelled due to snow for forty-eight hours? That’s fine, I’ll just buy eleven bags of candy for $14.95 apiece.â€? Then I’ll sit in the corner and fume to myself.
But not everybody is a fumer.
Bargaining
In my experience as an educator, I had found that if people were aware that they were heard directly, their anger and tendency to lash out drops considerably. I mulled it over, and decided that this was all a simple misunderstanding compounded by holiday stress. Discuss it openly, that’s what we needed to do! I posted to the message board myself, offering apologies to those who hadn’t liked the article, explaining in non-condescending terms that it was, indeed, a satire, and inviting those who had questions or comments to email me.
Which, of course, made it all worse. I had brought a strongly worded greeting card to a gun fight. Because now there was author blood on the webpage, and the insults continued unabated… on the anonymous message board. Exactly three people took me up on the offer of a personal email conversation, and all three parted e-ways with a mutual, heartfelt “Merry Christmas.� I continued to field only positive feedback on my personal site and in my inbox. A pattern was emerging. And the pattern made me furious.
Anger
Only people with nice comments or genuine questions were willing to tie themselves to a traceable email address. But as though I owned packs and packs of Doberman pincers to unleash upon those who displeased me, commenters who addressed me as “honey� and who openly hoped I wasn’t paid for the article continued to hide behind anonymous usernames or fake Blogger accounts. I never expect everyone on Earth to fall into raptures over or agree with my every word, but at least my name was up there in big red letters over the article. I was angry with the hiders and angry with myself for being angry.
At this point, I piloted the flaming Hindenburg directly into an old wooden barn stuffed with gasoline-drenched rags: I went back to the publishing site’s bulletin board, and did exactly what the trolls wanted me to do. I unleashed about a hundred words of defensive furor. Sorry you didn’t like the FREE ARTICLE, which you were also free to stop reading at any time. I most certainly had further qualifications as a writer than a self-run blog, which a five-second Google search would have revealed. And, no, my 67-year-old parents were neither hippies nor child abusers.
I also included, much to my current chagrin, a literary version of that obnoxious daytime television cry, “You don’t know me!� Because that was the crux of it: People who had absolutely no idea about my background, my qualifications, or my politics were suddenly criticizing all three. Why did I care, and what did that say about my priorities?
Then the backlash to the backlash started, and I began to see commenters catapulting the very same mud in the opposite direction. “You should grow a brain.� “You wouldn’t know good writing if it bit you in the butt.� The sentiment was appreciated, but by now, the method certainly was not.
Depression
Who was to blame? Well, me, for starters. Our snap-heavy culture has given us permission to act this way, even celebrates it, and I, for one, have typed some not-very-nice things about Britney Spears. What else is the Internet but a worldwide slam book, one in which I myself had written as a humor columnist, gleefully mocking public figures–because that’s part of the job description, isn’t it? If a person makes an extraordinarily nice living as a politician or entertainer, it stands to reason that he or she should expect a few jabs from Jay Leno every week or so. Simon Cowel on “American Idolâ€? has made an entire career of in-your-face snideness, and America pays him handsomely for it.
What was different about this situationâ€"in addition to the small technicality that I am not, in fact, an actual celebrity– was that now it was happening to me , and I didn’t like it one little bit. Something about typing into a little box on a little screen unplugs people from the fact that there is another human being out there on the receiving end. Were any of these people to register their opinion of my writing to my face, I doubt they’d say the same thing, or at least not in the same way. I certainly wouldn’t saunter up to Shania Twain and denounce her for contributing to the objectification of women. But I have said so in the glowing, transitory online world, because that seemedâ€"okay, somehow.
When did we become this way? Is it the language, the culture, the curt abbreviations of the Internet, or all of the above? I stopped writing about politics last year because I was weary of the shrillness it seems to breed, no matter one’s stance. There’s a political scientist here in the States by the name of Jay Cost. He’s a non-partisan poll reader who crunches numbers and reports on voting trends. That’s all he does. He doesn’t endorse anyone for President; he doesn’t identify himself as a liberal or conservative in any way. And yet, on his blog, he’s posted the following genteel warning: “I have no tolerance for emailers who choose to be unconstrained by the parameters of basic etiquette. I get too many emails from people who use the anonymity of email to be rude. Please be courteous.�
Is this, then, who we truly are? Are we only our most honest selves when we aren’t held accountable for our actions? For centuries, have human beings really been these nasty little ferrets, kept in check merely by a superior sense of manners?
Those questions spooked me more than any other aspect of the entire incident. On the second night, afraid for me, my husband physically took my computer out of my hands. I was shaken to the core and considering a professional hiatus. Had I not been able to write all along, and people were just too kind to tell me to my face? If those detractors were correct, if I really couldn’t writeâ€"then there was no career, and there was no me.
Acceptance
I contacted one of the editors of the piece in question to gather a second opinion. He couldn’t understand the reaction, either, and told me about an article he’d written which was given a headline suggesting non-PC overtones. Within seconds, he was deluged with anonymous hate mail. The computer was set so that an alarm went off each time he had new mail, so every few seconds, every time he sat down to write, it was ding, ding, ding. Racist, racist, racist.
“How did you deal with it?� I asked.
“That,� he said, is what I talk to my therapist about.�
Well, all these people were suggesting professional help anyway, so I called one. “Why all this anger out there?� I asked her. “It’s an eight hundred word article about cartoons. If people disagree with me, why can’t we just have a civil discussion about it?�
Her short answer: It’s all about shoving. “Somehow your words pushed an emotional button for them,� she said. “See how you yourself reacted when your own writing was, it seemed, unjustly under attack? You have your identity all tied up in your career, and you felt you were being annihilated.�
Within the article are the words, “All negative behavior stems from pain.� I pulled out my single semester of Psych 101 and asked the therapist if it applied in this case. “Is it that these people are just hurting, and they’re merely spreading the pain around?�
She asked me to repeat the line. “You wrote that?� she exclaimed. “Oh, no wonder these people are angry! See the mirror you’ve held up! They’re saying, ‘I’ll show you who’s negative!’�
I thanked her and hung up. Maybe I was a good writer who had produced a bad article. Maybe I was a bad writer who had risen to the level of mediocre just often enough to make a living of it. I could quit, or I could do what I have always done: Turn what doesn’t kill me into writing material.
Mary Beth Ellis runs www.BlondeChampagne.com. Her first book is available from www.drinktothelasses.com
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Stop Yelling Already! Dobrow Wants Some Football Civility
Glutton for semi-participatory story ideas that I am, I decided to view a full day's worth of pre-game shows a few Sundays back. What I learned was this: To ingest a salvo of NFL pre-game coverage between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET, and another full hour before the Sunday-night contest, is to tell your cerebral cortex who's boss in a way that could well affect your ability to experience joy, pain and other sensations later in life.
source
Myspace OCR Project by cidvile
Okay i need someone who can create a device that can read the myspace captcha images and return the value in plain text. I need it to work with another project of mine that is coded in VB6. I would prefer... (Budget: N/A, Jobs: Visual Basic, Website Security)
sourceJob 4693: Website Programming Interactive Politics $501 - $1000
This will be an information action site to local state and federal agencies This will become the largest interconnection web site for the people by the people s voice I am sure this will have t...
Budget: $501 - $1000 PLACE BID - Find Web Design Jobs - Post A Job
Bidding Ends: 02/01/08 Client Located: Columbus, GA Work From: Only Within GA
Warning - A Nothing To Do With Writing Post
Arghhhh! I’m moving, which is a good thing, but I haven’t moved yet. Instead I’m surrounded by boxes, my bed and desk are gone (that’s a very good thing), I’m literally on my knees typing at the moment. I think I can see how to get a better computer setup for today and tomorrow, but it involves clearing off a kitchen island, moving two bench-tables out to the garage, moving the island thing… yes, it will work and I think I’ll get started.
Next post I’ll tell you about my easiest move ever.
Write well and often,
Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing - a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision - for those who want to get a book written.
Is Your Work/Life Balance Killing Your Chances Of Freelancing Success?
You left the company because you were fed up with the hours, right? You wanted more freedom, more time at home and you didn’t want anyone telling you what to do anymore…so you started freelancing.
And now you spend more hours in front of your computer, constantly think about work and whilst you see the kids or your other half more frequently, you don’t really see them or spend ‘quality time’ with them - you’re too busy keeping clients happy.
Ok, ok - not everyone is in this situation with their freelancing business but I bet some of you are; and the other scenario is that you’re the kind of freelancer who now loves what you do so much, it doesn’t feel like work. You get so absorbed in what you’re doing that time passes in a blur and before you know it, it’s gone midnight; the problem here is that you find it difficult to let go and focus on anything else because it’s your passion.
Investing time in yourself and your wellbeing is a vital strategy for successful freelancers - you are your business. If something happens to you that’s it, there’s usually no back up.
Take a look at yourself right now….
Is your health currently suffering? Perhaps not in a major way but maybe just small niggles that are occurring, problems that have never been problems before. Are your relationships with the people who matter most suffering? Is your business suffering from the lack of time you spend on ‘you’?
If so, here are 12 tips to claw back a good measure of balance between your freelancing life and your other life:
#1 Remember your mission
Most of us go into freelancing to create a better life for ourselves and our families - whatever “better” means. Remembering what your motivation was to begin with can help you get things back in perspective, even if money was the motivator. Surely that money wasn’t for money’s sake but to be able to do something more with it?…Remind yourself what your ‘better’ life is and re-define your priorities if necessary.
#2 Set your boundaries
If you work from home as a freelancer, then you’ll know how easy it can be to let your office stuff creep into the rest of the house or vice versa. Setting physical boundaries for your work can help create psychological boundaries between your home life and your work life.
Once you’ve set them, share them; the boundaries will only work if everyone else is aware of them and sticks to them.
#3 Plan specific activities
It’s easy to say “I’ll just take a bit more time off” or to try to schedule your downtime in your diary but often, unless you have a specific activity planned to do in your downtime, the work will creep into that time and you end up telling yourself “It’s not worth stopping now, I may as well carry on”. Planning specific activities to do in your downtime - especially with other people - is a great way to stick to it.
Usually your work will expand to fill any time you have, scheduling specific activities gives you a deadline hopefully making your more productive knowing you’re going to have to stop at a given time.
#4 Get hired help
If you find yourself bogged down by all the administrative and non-client tasks, then consider getting some help. You can use a virtual assistant or pay someone local to help. Whilst it might seem like an unnecessary expense that you can do yourself, there’s a great thing a mentor once said to me that I always remember: “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should”.
It’s a question of resources; you, the freelancer, are the most important resource your business has. Doing tasks which drain and distract you from the business of making money, however necessary the tasks are, is a poor allocation of your resources. Outsource these tasks to free up more of your time for play or to allow you to concentrate on the core activities that make your business tick.
#5 Maximize your efficiency and productivity during your working hours
Each of us has our own favorite productivity or GTD system; it’s a great idea once in a while to review it and see if you can make yourself or your system even more efficient.
I recently realized (and admitted to myself) that I spend far too much time reading through my feeds (all in the name of research, you understand) and checking out all my stats (all in the name of tracking and measuring, of course) which take up far too much of the time I’ve scheduled to write on blogs. As a consequence, I often end up writing blog posts late in the evening when ideally (from a health perspective), I should be winding down.
Identifying your time-wasters and productivity-destroyers is the first step to addressing them - this tool might help.
#6 Say “No!”
Too many clients, multiple offers to work on exciting projects, a list as long as your arm of your own pet projects…there is always something a freelancer can be working on. Learn how to be more selective about what you do and say “no” to everything else.
After realising I had over 7 rather large projects on my plate, I re-assessed, decided what I thought would be most fun to work on and ruthlessly cut them down to 3. Traveling the world as I do, means I often have far more exciting things I could be doing with my time that working; which means that the projects I do take on had better be even more exciting and inspiring than shark diving, lazing on a beach or wine tasting in South Africa’s wine region!
#7 Don’t dwell
The psychological impact of freelancing often means you’re constantly thinking about your work. It becomes much more of a personal thing (”your baby”) that it can be hard to switch off - especially when things have gone wrong. As a freelancer, even when you’re not actually working you may catch yourself dwelling on a mistake you’ve made, a missed opportunity that’s passsed or the next big project coming up.
Don’t dwell, identify what your ‘off’ switch is and use it….frequently. Maybe it’s exercise, maybe it’s a drink with a friend (just the one, mind you!) - whatever it is that helps you turn off the thoughts about work, do it and stop dwelling.
#8 Define the values in your life
What are the key things that mean the most to you in life? What do you value? If you’re not sure how to answer this, then try it this way: what would you miss the most if it were gone? Your answers might include health, family, your partner, your kids, your money, your home, your business.
Now if you were to prioritize them, what would your list look like? How much time do you spend nurturing and paying attention to the top few things on your list? Is the way you spend your time currently balanced to reflect the main priorities on your list?
#9 Sort your processes out
Inefficient business processes - the bane of many a freelancer’s life but what to do? Check out this post to make a start. Creating a standardised approach to do the most common tasks in your business is not only a great way to cut down wasted time in your business, it’s also a way of laying the foundations for getting in some help.
#10 Schedule family time
Like scheduling specific activities to do in your downtime, scheduling specific family time and activities is a good way to set more boundaries and be accountable to your family. This doesn’t have to be complicated, even sitting down for your evening meal together is enough.
#11 Practice extreme self-care
Taking care of yourself as a freelancer should be one of your top priorities. You are the most important asset your business has and if anything happens to you, your business is screwed. Extreme self care is a life coaching term and it’s basically a way of ‘topping up your well’ on a regular basis and creating an environment that nurtures you and your soul.
Extreme self care can mean choosing to do something on a regular basis that you might usually consider a luxury or a treat (a massage, a facial, a poker night) or it can mean doing something on a daily basis that you know energizes, inspires and nurtures you like calling your best friend for a good old chin wag or taking 10 minutes out to just sit in the sun (or wrapped up enjoying the frosty air) every day. It’s about building an activity into your routine that regularly energizes and inspires you.
#12 Know the signs and symptoms - prioritize your health before you lose it
The life of a freelancer can be a particularly unhealthy one with irregular routines, challenging deadlines, demanding clients and a general lack of focus on your health.
As a former health coach and personal trainer, I realized that the reason most people don’t focus on their health is that you never fully appreciate it until it’s gone and you’re suffering. The question is, how much do you have to suffer and how many signs and symptoms does your body need to give you before you’ll listen and take action?
If you suffer from any of these symptoms, then it’s a sign your body is not a happy bunny and you should start focusing more on your health:
- Fuzzy head and spacey feelings
- Needing coffee to get you going every day
- Cravings
- Poor sleep
- Niggling aches and pains
- Constant headaches
- Digestive problems
- Unwanted weight gain or weight loss
It’s an age old battle - getting the balance in your work and life that creates the optimum experience for everyone.
These tips mean nothing if two things aren’t in place: your acknowledgment that you don’t currently have balance in your life and your desire to create it. Work on those first and then try out the above and let us know how you get on…
Monday, February 4, 2008
ART OF PAPER
I found this funny. Few days ago, I receive a mail from my friend. It is about the art of paper. I bet you see this before but that is real photo. However, I think over and figure it out. Now, I am go...
Solve more issues on the first call. Try WebEx free! Zap remote support issues. Crush support log jams. Blast through firewalls. Try WebEx Remote Support now!
Documentation for our web based software by mscimaging
We have a web based document imaging solution. We are lacking in documentation. We need someone who will be willing to use our software and become familiar with it, then write help documentation for it... (Budget: $30-250, Jobs: Copywriting, Proofreading)
sourceSame Ad Strategies Bring Different Results
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- It isn't often that the Ad Audit gets a chance to have two competitive ads on the exact same strategy. In ads for their "crossover" vehicles, Ford and Suzuki tout five-star safety ratings. One execution is good (could be even better), but the other is near perfect, indeed a rarity.
source
Job 4676: MySpace Profile Design $251 - $500
1 My Existing MySpace Page needs some very minor maintenance 2 I need to have a new MySpace page created Also to be considered a possible monthly maintenance agreement...
Budget: $251 - $500 PLACE BID - Find Web Design Jobs - Post A Job
Bidding Ends: 02/01/08 Client Located: Austin, TX Work From: USA
Template Website: Real Estate $501 - $1000
Template Website: Real Estate
RFP Budget: $501 - $1000
Project Start: 2008-02-16
Requests 8 Bids By: 02-09-2008
Deadline: 03-14-2008
Bid on This Design Project
I`ve started with a template that I got from a friend, but i`m having trouble with the flash design. I need someone who can edit the flash template. The top part is in flash, the rest in html, I believe.
Hiring Providers: Worldwide
Bid on This Design Project
I want to edit the flash file up top and plug in the content. I will probably need some help with the content. The search form will probably need to be coded as well, so people can search for houses....
This designer project lead is from DesignQuote.net
source
Freelance Writing Jobs - 61 New Writing, Blogging, Editing and Translation Jobs
Just posted 61 New Writing, Blogging, Editing and Translation Jobs.
Keep in mind that I try to post only jobs that let you work at home in your pjs. If there are 61 true freelance writing jobs, think how many full and part time writing and editing jobs there are that require you to go to someone’s office. Anyway you slice it, there are lots of writing jobs out there.
Write well and often,
Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing - a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision - for those who want to get a book written.
Linkswitch!
Time for some linking goodness from around the web and we have an odd assortment of goodies today:
How to Put Your Business on Autopilot Whilst You Travel the World as a Web Worker - Lea Woodward’s been putting out some great articles over at Location Independent. Cyan and I are about to become location independent as we’re moving to Hong Kong to work from there for a few months, which I’m very excited about. Lea’s also recently launched a charitable project called the “Leave it Better” initiative which is pretty cool! - Anywired - Skellie’s new blog Anywired is off to a stellar start with over a thousand subscribers in just five days!. Along with Lea’s LocationIndependent blog, Anywired gives you the lowdown on taking your work overseas.
- FunctionFox’s Resource Pile - FunctionFox is a time tracking and project management app who have shrewdly compiled an awesome set of resources and articles which looks super useful.
- Remarkablogger - Michael Martine has recently put out a free ebook called How to Start a Business Blog which is a good read and at that price, very worth grabbing
- Design Police - Amusing stickers that you can download to paste around the place to show what a design nazi you are!
- How to Get Started and Successful as an Illustrator - Nate Williams shares some valuable knowledge on becoming a pro illustrator
- Put Things Off - A neat little blog that’s popped up on my radar, featuring some very cute illustrations
- 8 Great Digg Like Social Networks for Designers in 2008 - Dustin Brewer compiles an awesome list of Digg-like sites including my favourite DesignFloat
- How to Set Your Fees - A short article with a link to a longer article on setting fees for contractors - always a popular topic here on FreelanceSwitch.
- Jobacle - A great podcast about careers with a fair bit of stuff that applies to freelancers, not as good as our award winning one of course
but awesome nonetheless! - Essential Tools for the Freelancer - A neat roundup of some great resources, from an up and comer blog - sentences.org - worth checking out
So there you go, lotsa links to check out!
Sunday, February 3, 2008
WPP's Group M Consolidates Local Broadcast Buying
WPP's Group M will consolidate the local broadcast units of its three major media agencies, MindShare, Mediaedge:cia and MediaCom, in a move to tackle local marketplace issues and create operational efficiencies.
source
Learn to design a Writing pad content box
Here we will tell you how to make a Writing pad content box in photoshop.
Better software development info. Get better choices for software development from the expert sources. All in one.
SimpleBits
Dan Cederholm just gave his world famous SimpleBits a brand new coat. It's the same but it's different. The latest realignment by Dan is my favorite version to date. He manages to keep a lot while changing it quite radically. This time he's going for an elastic grid that scales beautifully in my browser. This has to be one of the most impressive site designs I've ever seen. Via Shaun Inman.
New CMS Website for a Buildings Contractor's by wiseshopca
I need a New CMS Website for a Buildings Contractor's. Please read carefully before you bit on this project. I will give you all photographs, texts and corporate items. I provide the domain and hosting (Linux based)... (Budget: $30-250, Jobs: Flash, Graphic Design, Javascript, PHP, Website Design)
sourceJob 4596: Website Programming Selling Schoolboks Online $1001 - $2500
Website for our client to sell schoolbooks online Up to 3 000 titles Merchant Account already set up Realex Payment gateway Own hosting Platform with OS Commerce for Shopping Cart Content Manage...
Budget: $1001 - $2500 PLACE BID - Find Web Design Jobs - Post A Job
Bidding Ends: 01/31/08 Client Located: Mullingar, Work From: Anywhere
Website Programming: Baby Products $1001 - $2500
Website Programming: Baby Products
RFP Budget: $1001 - $2500
Project Start: 2008-02-15
Requests 8 Bids By: 02-08-2008
Deadline: 03-13-2008
Bid on This Design Project
I need to hire a freelance website programmer to add/remove products from our current site. No change to current layout. In addition, we have an immediate need to have a back end database created to organize the data customers submit when they register their products online.
Hiring Providers:Metro Area
Bid on This Design Project
Our current database is a "dump" of information, but not easy to retrieve or manipulate. We want this person to be able to pick up future projects and be local to Charlotte/ Fort Mill area....
This designer project lead is from DesignQuote.net
source
Q&A - How Do I Submit Clips?
Dear Anne,
Recently, in response to an “over the transom” article I submitted, an editor replied stating that he wasn’t accepting freelance pieces at the time but to forward my resume and writing clips.
Being new to freelance writing, I only have a few clips and absolutely no knowledge of the format in which editors generally receive clips. For instance, should I send him the Microsoft Word format of the published clip with some blurb about where and when it was published? Or should I send the piece photocopied directly from the newspaper or magazine where it was published, leaving the editor more confident that it was, in fact, actually published? Further, what about pieces published electronically? I could send the piece in word processor format or just the URL which is problematic due to the ever-changing nature of the internet.
Any advice you have on this subject would be greatly appreciated as I have noticed that adhering to proper publishing etiquette greatly increases the chances of being published.
Thanks Again,
Pat
Hi Pat,
First of all congratulations on getting the query out. And congratulations again because the editor wants clips. Excellent.
You ask some good questions. Unfortunately, there isn’t one right answer.
I use a credit list instead of a resume; I have it on the web (see the link) and I have a word version. Even though you don’t yet have as many credits as I do, you can create something like this.
You don’t say how you sent your query or how the editor communicated back to you. If the editor sent you email, I’d send the credits with live links back the same way… I’d probably copy the credit list into the body of the email in case they don’t accept attachments. (You might want to email this to yourself first… it won’t be pretty, but you need to make sure it’s readable.) If your correspondence was via snail mail, use that. (Remember to spell out any links with the full url.) In either case, right up front make it clear you’re sending this in response to the editor’s request. Keep it short and sweet.
Re tear sheets or copies of tear sheets. It’s much easier to send copies of actual articles via snail mail. You can, of course, scan them and send the scan, but those files tend to be bulky and get stripped out with spam filters. Having your own website really helps because you can put clips, scans and links up easily and it’s super easy for an editor to take a look.
Finally, you’re right… links to articles tend to disappear but usually not right away. Go ahead and link, but make sure your description of the link includes the publication’s title, date of article publication, title of the article and a one sentence description of it. That way, if the link goes bad, at least the editor will know roughly what was published. I check links like this a couple of times a year and when I find a broken one, just remove the link itself, but keep the information about the article.
Hope this helps. And I’ll bet some of our readers have other suggestions.
Write well and often,
Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing - a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision - for those who want to get a book written.
What Year-and-a-Half of Blogging Teaches You
Oh wow, I’ve been tagged by Kathy Kehrli, the Irreverent Freelancer herself, for this blogging tips meme. So here I am saving your time, because I’ll be sharing what I’ve learned from a year-and-a-half’s worth of experience:
You Must Have a Life. What else will you blog about if you never leave the house? Part of the fun of blogging is getting to share new experiences, realizations, and whatever you’ll come upon as you live your life. And spending the whole day in front of a computer isn’t a life. But…
Nobody Gives a Damn About Your Personal Life. Unless you somehow find a way to relate your experiences to your audience. Rambling’s perfectly fine, so long as there’s something of value for your readers.
It Really is Publish or Perish. Interested first-time visitors will probably enjoy reading through your archives. But unless you create something new on a regular basis, there really is no reason why they should drop by again. Even immensely useful articles have a shelf life of one or two views.
Great Ideas are Fleeting. Have you ever thought of an idea so interesting and so useful that you simply have to share it with your readers? And when you finally get to blog, you either forgot the idea or can’t find a way to translate it into words? Join the club.
Your First Few Posts are Better Left Unread. Check out the first few posts of my personal blog, and you’ll see what I mean. You’ve been warned!
Popularity Equals Difficulty. As you gain a readership, you suddenly feel the pressure to perform and please your fans. Ironically, this actually leads to poorer blogging, as suddenly-popular bloggers change their voice/approach/technique to appeal to the lowest common denominator, dropping the style that made them popular in the first place.
Meanness Only Works if You Mean It. I’ve seen so many bloggers, including yours truly, be snarky or mean in an attempt to be cool, only to fail miserably. True snarkiness or meanness really does come from the heart.
And last but not least…
Self-Publishing is Cool. With a blog, you get to publish your thoughts and opinions, however and whenever you want to. And in a world where we can’t get everything we want, there’s something so satisfying about that.
So let’s see, who to tag?
Sasha
Markku
The Rising Internet Star
The problem is that one of the above doesn’t like memes, another rarely posts nowadays, and the last hates blogging about blogging. Any guesses on who’s who fellow freelancers?