Working Like A Dog (Maybe)
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Meet Raven. She’s my new office mate. Until this winter Raven had always been an outdoor dog, living the high life in her oversized dog house and sharing a large enclosed run with her Rhodesian Ridgeback pal, Kodi. Unfortunately Kodi passed away this summer so Raven has been a little lonely. As the weather started getting cooler and the snow started piling up by the foot, Raven has casually made her way into the house and deemed herself my sidekick. Her two favorite places to sleep all day are by my feet under my desk or right in the middle of my office (as shown above).
Raven has been a great influence – she really does help me stay on task more. I’m less hesitant to get up in the middle of something for fear of disturbing her nap! 
So, what have I been working on? Let me warn you – it’s all over the board.
I recently upgraded my system to Windows 7. So far so good – nothing really earth shattering new, but it did give me the opportunity to clean off my desktop, reorganize all my bookmarks and start the year fresh. Before I did the Windows 7 upgrade I backed up all my files to Carbonite (I initially tried the free Carbonite Online Backup – no credit card required – and almost immediately upgraded to the paid version – much cheaper than a second hard drive), synced my bookmarks to Xmarks (just in case I wanted them back) and wiped the screen down with the very cute little duck (Aroma Home Screen Wipe – too cute) that is perched on top of my monitor.
Project wise I have a few web design projects in the works – hopefully I will be sharing a few of them here in the next week or so. I’ve been playing with the new Genesis series of themes from Brian Gardner and the latest Headway release from Grant Griffiths. I am also getting ready to do some social media consulting for a client with a really important iPhone app (more on that later).
I am having fun field testing the Palm Pre Plus phone (which I used to take these photos – nice quality coming from a phone!) for Verizon. You can read my initial thoughts on the “Mom Palm” and stay tuned because I have another write up and a giveaway coming up as part of the campaign.
While I don’t really like the term “Mom Blogger,” I have been doing some writing in that department. You can find me at Snackpicks.com as part of their team of Mom Experts and recently the youth sports social networking site, WePlay, featured one of my articles from SportsGirlsPlay.com titled “Getting Past I Quit.”
And finally I have been keeping up with all of my own sites, from all the new guests on the Essential Tools series to tons of new printable activities and party ideas, girls sports insight and what’s for dinner!
Whew! I think I might just need a nap.
Essential Tools of Web Design Pro Selene Bowlby
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You are in for a treat this week! As part of the Essential Tools series, we are featuring the ultra talented web designer, Selene Bowlby of iDesign Studios this week. Selene’s name regularly appears on lists of the top female web designers in a variety of categories and her educational articles, like 15 Key Elements All Top Web Sites Should Have, are always “must reads”.
So, in her own words, these are Selene’s absolute essential tools for online success:
As a web designer, one of the first things I need is a killer graphics program. There are some things you just can’t skimp on, and in my opinion, a high end / industry standard graphics program is one of them. Photoshop is the best of the best when it comes to this, and I use it almost every day.
Another program from the Adobe suite that I use on a daily basis is Dreamweaver. Possibly overkill, since I hand code all of my sites, and stay in the code view 99% of the time, but it does it’s job well, and I like it more than any of the other editors I’ve tried in the past. For the record, it is significantly better than Notepad, which is what I started out with when I first started playing with HTML back in 1994, LOL.
When it comes to developing web sites, both for myself and my clients, I can’t rave enough about WordPress. While I initially started out creating static HTML (and occasionally Flash) web sites, I now focus almost entirely on designing and developing custom WordPress themes.
In my opinion, WordPress is the best CMS (Content Management System) and blogging software out there. The fact that it is open source, and has such a vast community of developers behind it, means that the software is constantly being improved upon. As we speak, I’m anxiously awaiting the release of WordPress 3.0 later this year. My favorite part of developing custom WordPress themes is the constant learning. I’m not over-exaggerating when I say that I learn at least one (or five) new techniques with each site that I create. And with WordPress 3.0 on it’s way out soon, that number is sure to increase.
Equally as important, are all of the WordPress plugins. Almost anything my clients have ever needed their web site to do… if it wasn’t a feature already built into WordPress, you can almost always count on there already being a plugin out there that can do it for you.
Mozilla Firefox / Thunderbird + Gmail
Yes, I am a web designer/developer, and like many of my breed, I am pro-Mozilla and anti-Microsoft – especially Internet Explorer 6. (Ironically enough, I have always owned PC’s – although I plan on finally buying a Mac the next time around).
At any rate, I started off using Netscape and Netscape Messenger years ago as my web browser and email client of choice. As Mozilla evolved, I transitioned over to Firefox and Thunderbird as soon as they became available. I have years worth of email archives in Thunderbird – nicely arranged into folders for each client, prospect, etc. And Firefox’s support of web standards (especially over the lack of support from Internet Explorer) make it my number one choice in web browser.
As far as web based email clients, I am partial to Gmail. Although I don’t usually send mail from Gmail, I have a backup copy of all of my messages going to that account. It’s especially helpful if I am out of town and want to check my email on something larger than my BlackBerry.
The primary reason I use Gmail, however, is for it’s incredible filtering system. While I have all of my email routed to Thunderbird on my desktop, I filter out everything but the essentials in Gmail, which are then sent to my BlackBerry. Take newsletters, for example… while I’m subscribed to them for a reason, I only need to get them on my computer. If I’m on the go, I want to limit the spam, and non-essentials so all I get on my phone are important emails from friends and family, clients, new business inquiries, etc. While I still want to receive the less urgent messages, they can wait until I’m in front of my computer.
Onebox + Google Voice
If you are running your business from a home office, like so many people do, it’s important to have a professional presence when it comes to communicating via telephone. I’ve been using Onebox for a few years now. It’s a great service that gives you a toll free number, forwards calls to any number you specify, lets you setup a comprehensive calling schedule, lets you send/receive faxes, and sends you voicemails and faxes via email. Their rates are reasonable for the amount of options they give you, too.
Enter Google Voice, which is my new love! It’s not quite as robust as Onebox, so I’m not willing to give that service up just yet. I primarily use Google Voice for outgoing calls. Working from a home office, I always used call blocking to mask my phone number when calling clients and prospects. With Voice, I can now call out with that number appearing as my caller ID, and I’m not giving clients 24/7 access to my home or cell phones. With both Onebox and Google Voice, I have a Monday-Friday / 9-5 schedule setup for incoming calls… after all, everyone needs their boundaries, and a healthy work-life balance is one of them! (As an added bonus, there is a Google Voice app for the BlackBerry, which makes it that much easier to use.)
I first got acquainted with Studiometry through my old full-time job. It’s a great tool for keeping track of all your clients and open projects, and is primarily used for time tracking – essential if you are running your own business and need to know how to bill your clients.
While the majority of the work I do is on a flat / per-project basis, I devise those rates based on the average amount of time certain job phases take. For example X number of hours for a site design vs X number of hours to develop as a WordPress theme, etc. I take those averages to come up with my project rates. I also have several clients that hire me for repeated site maintenance and updates – the type of thing that must be billed hourly, as it doesn’t quite fall into a cookie cutter project.
Enter Studiometry! It’s fantastic for time tracking, but is actually much more robust than this. It lets you track client contact details, create and send invoices right from the program, setup project schedules and milestones as gantt charts, etc. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t use this program to it’s full potential. I still only use it for time tracking (and use much more archaic methods for sending invoices… can you say Excel invoices saved and emailed as PDF files, LOL).
This one is a bit pricey (though not nearly as high as Adobe products), but well worth it for the time tracking alone. I know there are other online services that do the same thing, but there are some things that I prefer to purchase outright (aka software), rather than pay monthly usage for – and this is one of those things.
Whiteboard + Google Calendar
Call me old fashioned, but as far as scheduling goes, I like to see it written out in front of me. I’ve got a huge whiteboard in my office with several sections marked off that let me see my week ahead with a quick glance. I’ve got a section for income (with monthly and annual totals, as well as a list of outstanding invoices) / there is a section that lists all of my open projects with milestone phases and due dates / there is a section for my weekly work schedule, marked off in 1 hour increments that I use to block off time for each of the projects I’m working on, or scheduled phone calls, etc.
I also can’t do without my Google Calendar. I love the ability to create individual calendars within my main account – I’m a sucker for the color coding, LOL. I have ALL of my time blocked out… family time, “me” time, work time geared towards in-house projects, work time geared towards client projects, etc. And of course scheduling of actual appointments where I get email notifications 1 week, 1 day and 1 hour ahead of time. Better yet – it syncs with my BlackBerry!
Twitter / TweetDeck + Facebook
As far as social networking goes, Twitter and Facebook are my guilty pleasures. I primarily reserve Facebook for personal networking with family and friends. (I do have a fan page for the business, but I’m not nearly as active on it as I am on my personal profile or on Twitter.)
Twitter is fantastic for networking – especially among my field, because it is FULL of amazing designers and developers. It’s a great way to network with your peers and find great links… I read more posts linked on Twitter than I do from my feed reader (which, for the record, happens to be Google Reader). It’s great to see what other people are working on and just chit chat a bit when you need a break. Equally as great is if I ever run into a problem developing a site, I can always count on getting great feedback or suggestions from Twitter.
As far as how I tweet… with TweetDeck, of course! It’s been my favorite desktop Twitter app for some time now. I have as many columns as it’ll let me have, which makes it easy to scan for tweets based on topic (integrated very nicely with my Twitter lists). It even has a Facebook column… if only they’d hurry up and come out with a version for BlackBerry!
BlackBerry
Hello, my name is Selene and I’m addicted to my BlackBerry.
Although I am not a huge fan of talking on the phone, you will rarely find me without my BlackBerry in hand (or very close nearby). It’s connected to my Gmail account, I use Google Sync to sync up my contacts and calendar, and it even has a Google Voice app. And apparently this section should be titled BlackBerry + Google, LOL.
As for other favorite BlackBerry apps, I have the Facebook, Twitter (Seesmic) and WeatherBug apps on my home screen, alongside the default Mail, Contact and To Do List applications. My BlackBerry is my handheld everything, and I would quite honestly be lost without it!
I told you, you were in for a treat! Thanks again to Selene for sharing all her insight on her essential tools for online success!
Don’t forget to stop back next week for more essential tools for success, featuring Grant Griffiths of Headway Themes fame . If you are interested in sharing your essential tools for business, drop me a line at cpolanosky [at] gmaildotcom.
Verizon Palm Pre Plus – The “Mom Palm”
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Like many of my friends, I am a Mom on the go. I juggle running my own business, raising 3 very active kids, coaching gymnastics part-time, and sneaking in time for myself (and the occasional date night with my husband) – and I really couldn’t do it without today’s mobile technology. I’ve written about my mobile office and how I rely on my cell phone to help me keep my business moving – I truly am the poster child for today’s plugged-in Mom. My previous mobile phone just wasn’t getting the job done like I needed it to – so I set out on finding a new phone. As luck would have it, I have been invited to be a part of a group of Mom’s chosen by Verizon and their agencies to review the new Palm Pre Plus for the next few months. Talk about timing!
So, in full disclosure, I am letting you know that I have been given a Palm Pre Plus and the service package for it by Verizon for a few months. I am also being compensated for my time and will be hosting a giveaway in the upcoming months to go with the review. However, knowing that I am a truly a geek girl – you know the one that asks for a Wacom Bamboo Fun Tablet for Christmas, totes a pink Vaio laptop and has been known to dress her cell phone in red leather, you can bet that I will be giving the Palm Pre Plus a serious workout and will give you the real scoop on the phone.
When the phone arrived last week I had to seriously fend off the rest of my technology crazed family. The kids hovered around me as I opened the box and my middle school aged daughter immediately declared that she wanted a Palm Pre Plus of her own and if I didn’t like the phone, could she have it? Uh, no. It’s. MINE. Of course my teenage son immediately went into a full fledged monologue touting the features of the Palm Pre Plus (because he started researching it the day I told him it was on its way) and how it runs on the Palm webOS operating system, has 16GB of flash storage and 512 MB of RAM, uses multi-touch technology, has a 3MP camera with a flash, and on and on and on. I couldn’t get a word in edge-wise.
After declaring it the “Mom Palm” the kids finally let me have a few minutes to play with my new phone without their commentary. I totally LOVE the way the Palm Pre Plus feels. It’s smooth finish and rounded corners make it very comfortable to hold (unlike the smartphone my husband has which feels like you are holding a brick). The Palm Pre Plus is also small (and mighty) – measuring 3.9″ x 2.3″ x .67″ – it even fits in my favorite red Vera Bradley wristlet that goes with me everywhere!
The Palm Pre Plus is a combination touch screen phone with a slide out QWERTY keyboard. The touch screen area uses something called “gestures” which are simply movements of your finger across the screen in a certain motion that cause things to happen. For example, sliding your finger from right to left across the bottom of the screen takes you back one screen; you can close applications on the “desktop” but sliding them upward off the top of the screen; and you can zoom in and out on pictures by placing two thumbs near the center of the photo and “pulling” out diagonally. The keyboard ROCKS. It has a “clicky” feel to it much like a full size keyboard would.
Once I got finished playing with the gesture area and oohing and aahing over the keyboard, I started to set up the Palm Pre Plus. Within minutes I had made the Palm Pre Plus “my own” - by simply logging into my Gmail account I instantly had my complete contact list, calendar and email. This is exactly the type of functionality I need. Additionally, I synced the contacts with my Facebook account so not only can I call, text, Google Talk (IM), and email my friends right from the contact list – I can also see their Facebook status updates, profile photos and add notes to their contact details.
By syncing the calendar with my Gmail calendar (you can sync it with your Outlook calendar and others, too) I can keep track of my commitments from anywhere and get friendly reminders so I don’t miss a thing. If I add an event to my calendar from my phone it immediately shows up on my desktop. I have shared calendars with my family and with some clients and the calendars all show up in different colors on the Palm Pre Plus so I know at a glance who the appointment belongs to. Too cool!!
In addition to the standard Smartphone features of phone, text, email, web, camera and calendar, the Palm Pre Plus:
- acts as an MP3 player,
- lets you watch videos – with amazing quality too,
- has a cool “corkboard” for writing yourself memos,
- has a great to-do list (my favorite),
- can give you directions to anywhere in a flash using Google Maps (no GPS unless you want to subscribe to the Verizon Navigator service for $9.99 a month)
- and through the App store you can find free and low cost apps for just about anything you want to add to your phone.
Having used the Palm Pre Plus for just under two weeks now, all I can say is WOW! It may be small, but it sure can do a lot and look fabulous doing it! This phone and I will be spending a lot of quality time together – from my home office to the carpool line, pool deck and everywhere in between. I’ll keep you posted along the way – especially as I find out what other amazing feats this phone can help me conquer in my busy life.
