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Posts Tagged ‘client’

20 Jan 2010

Some organizations have this policy that social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc. are a waste of time and therefore ban their staff from using such sites during office hours.

Then you also have companies that have no such rules in place and allow unrestricted access to the web as long as the employees are able to deliver what’s expected.

A. When Twitter is Not Allowed in Office

Twitter on Mobile Phone If you are working for a company that falls in the first category (no social media please), its better that you install a Twitter mobile app on your cell phone and not use the office computer at all for tweeting. After all, your boss will get a web usage report at the month-end and he will easily figure out which sites have you been visiting secretly during office hours.

If you don’t have a data-plan on your phone and cannot resist that urge to tweet ever 10 minutes, you may use tools like Posterous or Nutshell that allow anyone to send and receive tweets through regular office email.

There’s another option that will come handy if the twitter.com website itself has been blocked by your office firewall. You can use Twitter indirectly through third-party sites like Brizzly or Dabr.

These sites offer a fresh interface to your Twitter account with all the regular features (retweets, @replies, etc.) but the more interesting part is that they will work even if Twitter domain is inaccessible from your office computer. You can track up to 5 accounts with Brizzly.

Your Twitter friends’ timeline feed is protected by a password but you may still subscribe to it with a simple hack involving FeedBurner.

You can then follow tweets from your friends using Outlook or any other newsreader. Alternatively, you can subscribe to the friend’s feed directly with FeedDemon provided that access to Twitter is open in your office.

If you are allowed to use IM clients in Office, you can add twitter@twitter.com as a buddy in Google Talk and send tweets through IM. TweetSwitch is another free service that lets you send and receive tweets through popular instant messaging clients including AIM, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Skype and GTalk.

B. Use Twitter Without Letting Anyone Know

Now let’s look at the second category – you are very much allowed to use Twitter at work but you still don’t want to give your boss an impression that you are a Twitter addict.

In that case, here’s what you can do to possibly hide your Twitter addiction from boss and colleagues.

You can probably find a gazillion desktop apps for Twitter but if you are looking for something that doesn’t scream to the world that its a Twitter client, try Quitter.

Quitter is a simple twitter client that runs through the command prompt or the DOS window. With Quitter, you can read and reply to tweets, follow /unfollow people or even manage your direct messages. All you need is a Windows computer and no one in the office will ever have a clue that you are engrossed in Twitter.

If you are a Microsoft Office user, Spreadtweet is another interesting option for you. This is a proper Twitter client but in the guise of a spreadsheet so your boss will think that you’re working on an Excel sheet while you are up there tweeting your heart out!

With SpreadTweet, you can send and receive updates, @replies and direct messages all inside an application that looks like a clone of Excel 2007.

The other great option for Microsoft Office users in TwInbox – you probably have Outlook open on your screen all the time and this free Outlook add-in will simply turn your Outlook into a powerful Twitter client.

You can handle tweets just the way you manage your Inbox and the add-in will even let you tweet email messages with a click. The service is integrated with TwitPic so you can tweet pictures by simply dragging them into Outlook.

There’s more – all standard Outlook features like search, mail archiving, categories, etc. will also become available to your Tweets. This screencast explains TwInbox in detail.

How to Use Twitter During Office Hours

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

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Tags: A. When, Amit Agarwal, B. Use, boss, client, google, office, office computer, Outlook, tweets, twitter, web usage report

ICQ Returns: Combines IM With Haphazard Twitter and Facebook Integration

In: web resources

19 Jan 2010

In its heyday, ICQ was one of the most popular instant messaging networks. Today, you will probably have a hard time finding your friends on ICQ. Nevertheless, almost two year after the release of ICQ 6, ICQ just released a new version of its IM client. ICQ 7 now integrates updates from Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Delicious, Flickr and YouTube. ICQ plans to add support for more social networks in the near future.

ICQ 7 is only available for Windows. Mac users can rest assured that they are not missing out on much.

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Social Networks on ICQ: Haphazard Integration

Sadly, ICQ doesn’t excel at integrating any of these social networks. Facebook users, for example, can comment on status updates from their friends but there is no button to “like” an item. Interestingly, you can “like” your own updates but not those of your friends.

The Twitter client can display updates from all your friends on the service, but you filter this feed to just see @replies or direct messages, making ICQ 7 mostly useless as a Twitter client.

ICQ’s PR material stresses that “users no longer need to open a browser and log into each and every network they’re members in.” For any meaningful interaction on these social networks, you still need to open up your browser, however.

One of the few positive aspects of ICQ’s social network integration is that it allows you to post an update to all of these networks simultaneously.

One highly annoying aspect if ICQ 7’s installation procedure is that – by default – the application wants to change your default search engine to ICQ Search and install the ICQ toolbar. While ICQ Search is an inoffensive retooling of Google Search, we would prefer the company be a bit more open about these changes. Currently, they are tucked away in the install dialog where users are likely to just click “next” instead of doing a close reading of the dialog’s text.

Stay Away, Even If You are Feeling Nostalgic

Besides nostalgia, there aren’t a lot of good reasons to install ICQ 7 at this point. The social networking integration is haphazard at best. As an instant messaging network, ICQ has clearly seen better days. In an age where good multi-network IM clients like Digsby, Pidgin, Meebo or Adium can easily connect you to all your friends on every network, there really isn’t a need to install a single-purpose IM client anymore.

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Tags: client, default search engine, icq, install icq, lot of good reasons, Mac, meaningful interaction, network, pr material, search, twitter

Five Ways to Guarantee Your Failure as a Web Professional

In: web resources

18 Jan 2010

This article is geared towards anyone looking to implode under the crushing weight of unsustainable business practices, unreasonable client expectations, long hours for little pay, and a general sense of bewilderment as you ponder what went wrong. While that may not be you today, you may identify with one or more of these afflictions. Are you already recalling your worst client and the headaches they have caused? Here are some of the ways that you can hurt yourself as a web professional.

1. Be a Jack of all trades

It seems the conventional wisdom lies in how much you know rather than how well you know it. I see people who have skill sets that take up a lot of space on a resume. Admirable? I suppose so. Does it make you more valuable to a potential client? Absolutely not.

Think about it: has a client ever hired you just because you knew 8 programming languages and 10 web development frameworks? They hired you to work on a specific project that requires a specific skill set, and chances are you have represented yourself as an expert that is the best fit for that project.

If you can’t settle on a particular tool set, you won’t be able to gain that competitive edge we all desperately need to be successful. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but if you really think about it, no successful development company becomes so merely based on the size of their tool set. They become experts in a particular skill set, and they have value because they leverage their knowledge and find their competitive edge in that context. You can specialize in so many things; find a niche that works for you, and focus on that.

2. Take on every project that comes along

Getting work is great, isn’t it? As young, nubile professionals, there is a tendency to covet every job we get; billable time is billable time, right?

Inevitably, though, what happens as the workload increases? We gravitate towards certain types of clients that fit our skill set better, or people that we can tell understand our role as the experts versus "order-takers".

The point is this that you should be selective of who you work with. Don’t think of it as losing revenue as much as adding value for those you do choose to work with. Spread too thin, you lose the ability to be responsive to your client base; those people who are already sold on what you do, how you do it, and are willing to compensate you for the value you offer them.

3. Don’t have a business strategy

If business is good for you right now, then I would like to congratulate you on that. Often when business is good, it is easy to forge ahead and spend 8 hours in a day on billable work. You owe every moment in the office–and many of your moments out of it–to your clients first and foremost, right? It sounds harmless, but think of it like this: if you never sharpen your machete, how will you be able to cut a path through the forest?

It’s simply too easy to lose your competitive edge without knowing it, and then realizing as your clients move on one by one that the money didn’t come from manual labor, it came from your ability to continually improve upon the solutions you gave them in the first place, which in turn improves their ability to make money through the web channel.

On top of that, these are the people that are easiest to sell to. In sales, it’s called the low-hanging fruit.

4. Neglect your existing clients

Once you land a client and finish a project, be sure to put them on a nice ride that circles the park and walk away. They are happy and therefore they need nothing else from you. Time to hurry up and wait for the next word-of-mouth customer, right? Sounds like a safe plan. Occasionally you might need to call or email and see if they are doing okay, but that’s about it.

Now back to reality. When was the last time you reviewed your current client base looking at ways to improve upon their existing solution? Or talk to them for ten minutes and find out how things are going? If you are doing this, great, but all too often clients are left to grow old and hairy and slowly fade into the sunset.

Now imagine that there is a potential dollar figure that floats above each client and this represents lost potential revenue. You just can’t ignore your clients for long after that first project is completed. If they are happy with you, the first thing you have to do is think of another way to make them happy. You may want to give them some time to settle into their new digs, but at that point, you have a customer who understands the value you add to their company and will listen willingly to you for the next recommendation you can make to help increase their bottom lines. It really doesn’t get any easier than that to generate additional income.

It is good to talk to existing clients at least seasonally, but ideally to check in once per month and call it a value-added service because that is how attentive you are (to the money they are holding in their hand and ready to give to you for more awesomeness). Sounds exciting to me!

5. Don’t invest your revenue into your growth

Take the revenue, put it in the bank, and retire it from the business. "It’s been great working with you, but you can relax now and pursue whatever it is you like to pursue – maybe vacation in someone’s mortgage somewhere or take a ride in a 401K. Have fun".

Doesn’t that sound crazy? As crazy as that might sound, if you aren’t investing some portion back into growing your business (provided that is one of your directives), that is essentially what you are doing! You are sending perfectly good capital on a permanent vacation, perhaps eventually to be traded for a lifetime supply of unicorn glitter or a data plan for your cell phone.

It’s easy to be shy about using some of the capital you may have saved up to take a calculated risk on your business future, but then again, you took a risk going into business in the first place, didn’t you?

One entrepreneur thinks of his dollars as soldiers: they go out and they come back every day with hostages – more dollars. You can guarantee those dollars went out with a mission in mind though, not to wander aimlessly around waiting to be snatched up by someone else.

About the Author

Fred Bliss is a slightly over-seasoned bleeding edge web-evangelist. He is a married father of 3 boys. He has been working for the past year on Isotope eCommerce (a hybrid solution built in with TYPOlight CMS/ Framework) as lead developer, and one third of Winans Creative. Connect with him via Twitter: @fbliss and LinkedIn.