In the days before the Internet (a.k.a The Dark Ages), people traveled to an office and stayed there until their employer (hereafter Big Boss) released them from their chains of servitude.
Fast-forward to today, the Internet allows us to ROFL and LOL each other 30 Internet Slang Buzzwords and Acronyms You Need to Know 30 Internet Slang Buzzwords and Acronyms You Need to Know to Fit The Internet is constantly evolving, so It's hard to keep up. Here are some internet slang buzzwords you should know. Read More People are now also ditching the dreaded commute to the office, choosing instead to work from their home office How to Have a Perfectly Productive Home Office How to Have a Perfectly Productive Home Office The infographic here will show you how to work from home. home while gaining productivity. It's a win-win! Read More It's a brave new world..
But to be productive as a remote worker How to be more productive when you work from home How to be more productive when you work from home Is working from home (or to use the term - telecommuting) more productive than working from an office? The debate reignited after Marissa Mayer made a call to all Yahoo employees. Like all the blah-blahs,… Read More Read More Aside from a webcam, your wit, your irresistible charm, and a DSL connection? This is a special investigation by Mark O'Neill of MakeUseOf.
Working from home has advantages, the main one being that you don't have to talk to anyone. But every once in a while, Big Boss or a colleague is going to need a conversation. A Virtual Webcam Meeting How to Look Good on a Webcam How to Look Good on a Webcam Here's something many of us dread:webcam meetings. It's one thing to chat with friends and family using Skype or Google Hangouts, but it's another thing to try to look good... Read More
Skype is the gold standard for video calls. 10 tips to make you a more efficient Skype user 10 tips to make you a more efficient Skype user Skype can do more than you think. With this article, you will learn all about its best hidden and advanced features. It's the Skype productivity manual. Read more . It revolutionized online chat when it launched in 2003 and quickly became a trusted service. And believe it or not, ever since Microsoft took control of Skype, the service has gotten a lot better .
If you're looking for an alternative group chat, someone finally made Google Hangouts better on your desktop Someone finally made Google Hangouts better on your desktop Someone outside of Google hacks CSS to finally deliver a decent Hangouts experience on desktop and laptop, and You can give it a try right now if you are a Chrome user. Read More Join.me and Appear.in are two good web-based alternatives as well. I particularly like the latter.
If your team or collaboration partners are scattered across the country or even in another country, in-person conference meetings are obviously impossible. So how do you recreate the water cooler or online conference room atmosphere, so you and your colleagues feel like you're huddled together in the same place, ready to gel and talk business?
For pure text-based chats The best way to get Slack to work with your favorite services The best way to get Slack to work with your favorite services Besides communication, there are many ways to carry information within Slack, but few integrations that let you control external services from Slack, until now. Read More It claims to have tens of thousands of teams using it, including NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which among its many missions, put the Curiosity Rover robot on Mars. Oh and MakeUseOf. Let's not forget about us.
It's free to sign up and use, though the free version has some limitations. But it is more than enough to use effectively, if you are part of a remote team and need to stay in touch with each other. For example, the staff at MakeUseOf use Slack to coordinate upcoming articles and often to shoot the breeze. We also use it to collect work tasks from editors.
If you don't mind paying for some extra features, the paid plans start at $6.67 a month (if paid annually, $8 a month if not). This gives you things like forwarding email to Slack and using your Google Apps for domains to sign in.
Another option for team communication is Campfire, which has a lot of fans. But there is no free version, plans start at $12 per month.
Another essential part of keeping your customers happy is receiving their emails and responding to them. But the more emails you receive, the harder it is to keep track of all of them. And many would agree that the key to sending an email to zen is Inbox Zero.
So how do you get Inbox Zero? By deciding when tasks in emails are due and then postponing those emails to come back just before the repeat date. Boomerang has a limited free plan and an unlimited paid plan, but if you want a free solution for managing emails and customer relationships, Streak is another highly recommended tool.
Once you put a date in an email, Boomerang or Streak will remove it from your inbox, put it in a special wake-up folder, and return it to your inbox on the date you requested. Think of it as a virtual assistant.
Another way to look at email scheduling is meeting the needs of your colleagues or clients. Some emails are best sent on Monday, but others are best received in the afternoon. With a little strategy, you can make it to the top of the inbox at just the right time.
If you're in an office and working on a document, it's easy to get feedback from your boss or a colleague. They can simply look over your shoulder and read your work. But how to do it online? That's where it used to get a little dirty.
Constant rewriting with a sensitive client meant multiple copies of the same document were flying all over the place. One of my clients once thought my second draft was the finished product and she quickly posted it. Why? Because she had overlooked my final draft that was sitting in her inbox.
Google Docs eliminates the possibility of this happening. All drafts and edits are done on the same document, with an unlimited number of people logging in to give feedback. How collaborative writing tools make your life easier. Collaborative writing tools make your life easier. . If you've ever co-produced one, you know this can be difficult. It shouldn't be with the right tool. Read more . Comments can be made and replied to, and everything is saved to Google Drive. Put simply, Google Docs makes my job a hundred times easier.
Another option is Office Online, from Microsoft. All documents are synced with OneDrive. But Office Online and I have never fully clicked with each other. Our first date was a bit of a disaster, and when he told me he was changing his name from SkyDrive to OneDrive, I took the hint and left..
Once you've completed your magnum opus, it's time to get paid. And despite many contenders for the crown Making Payments Online:5 PayPal Alternatives to Consider Making Payments Online:5 PayPal Alternatives to Consider Is PayPal the best and safest online payment method? We look at 5 PayPal alternatives you should consider. More information, the king of online payments is still PayPal How to set up a Paypal account to pay for anything How to set up a Paypal account to pay for anything I have to admit that Paypal has become my own vehicle of choice for doing business online . It has become the most common vehicle that customers prefer to send payments for work. This makes... Read More
If you are dealing primarily or only with international clients, a PayPal business account is a must. Professionalism radiates and you get your money faster. You can customize your invoices, view your transaction history through filters, and set up custom payment pages.
Another online payment option is Stripe, which allows you to accept credit card payments by taking the card number and billing the customer directly to their card. I'm currently testing that one; stay tuned for in-depth coverage.
If you work from home, chances are you are using social media to market yourself and find new clients. Say what you will about Facebook and Twitter, but when it comes to marketing and promotion, they're hard to beat.
But the fastest way to annoy your social media followers is to release multiple updates at once. This will prevent all of them from being read, and you'll also get more than a few in a row.
The solution is Buffer, which spaces out updates to your state. Buffer Takes Social Media Scheduling To The Next Level With Video Buffer Takes Social Media Scheduling To The Next Level With Video If you're a social media junkie who likes to post ten times a day, then the tool you must have on your computer is Buffer. And Buffer now does video. Read More So, for example, you can have status updates during the night while you sleep in bed. There is a free plan and (in my opinion) a very expensive paid plan. The free plan should suit most people.
Finally, we cannot overlook the most obvious of all:cloud services. For those with multiple devices, running from one place to another (for example, the bedroom and the couch in the living room), syncing all your files across all devices is an absolute must.
The Major Player in Cloud Storage 5 Tools for the Dropbox Power User 5 Tools for the Dropbox Power User The popularity of Dropbox makes it difficult to use any other type of cloud storage. Here are 5 additional tools for you if Dropbox is an essential part of your web workflow. Read More If they just lowered their prices, I'd be on them like a dog in heat. For that reason, I turned to its archenemy Google Drive, which loads the peanuts and offers excellent file management tools. 5 Google Drive Plugins You Need to Use 5 Google Drive Plugins You Need to Use Google Docs and Google Spreadsheet are amazing free services, but when you include some of the plugins listed here, you can breathe new life into these tools. . Read more . Now that I like it.
The Internet has made it easy for all of us to become entrepreneurs. How the Internet has reinvigorated legitimate work at home. How legitimate work at home has been revitalized. Is there any truth to the stigma of working from home? We would like to present two examples of today's "online workers" who work exclusively online and you can decide for yourself. Read More We are no longer bound to the Big Boss from 9 to 5 pm. Now we can lie in bed, watch Judge Judy over last night's pizza, start work at lunch, and finish in time for a cocktail at happy hour.
Let us know in the comments what tools you use to get to the bar on time!
