If you use Gmail you might be interested to know that Google are working on the problem.

Gmail is great at filtering out spam but today the Google gmail team announced that they will use similar technology to automatically sort your emails by importance.

This cute video explains:

While some may argue complain, once again, that the evil Google is interfering with our lives and meddling with our messages, you’ll be glad to know this is an opt-in service. And, like it’s brilliant spam controls, it appears to work in the background making intelligent guesses based on who is in your contacts list, who you reply to, and which emails you read.

As a technology writer and freelancer I get a lot of email, to a lot of accounts, and I subscribe to literally hundreds of newsletters, services and feeds that come into my inbox. I’ve activated Priority Inbox and now I see messages from clients at the top and newsletter, circulars, BACN and other “offers” below.

I’ve been a huge fan of Gmail for a long, long time — looking at my archives I can see I received my first Gmail in July 2004 and, not coincidently, I sent my last Hotmail that same week — and this new feature looks like it’ll help me manage my mail even more efficiently.

If you don’t use Gmail you’ve probably got very good reasons but if you do then you really need to check out the “Priority Inbox” feature from Google Labs — it’s being rolled out slowly over the next few months (only one of my 6 accounts have it enabled right now).

By Michael Rose Freelance Advisor Editor-in-Chief

This cheeky little site has a different view…

HowtoUseTwitterforMarketingandPR.com

While the message is clear, and seemingly contradictory to all our advice on the subject, I can’t help but agree with the sentiment:

The “don’t” means:

• Don’t just talk about your product all the time
• Don’t just talk about yourself all the time
• Don’t just tweet links to your site all the time
• Don’t spam people, ever.

Doing any of the above is like being the bore at the party… talking loudly about you, yourself and your business… and shouting at the guests with a megaphone.

Try turning the megaphone around and, with those four simple rules in place, I think you should go right ahead and use Twitter for Marketing and PR purposes.

Focus: The Power of Targeted Thinking attempts to give the solution to all these feelings of confusion and distraction. Author, TV script writer, lecturer and consultant Jurgen Wollf offers intriguing time management techniques — from recognising the 80/20 rule in your life and work to the Alter Ego strategy (think De Bono’s ‘Many Hats’) — this book is a great read for anyone looking to boost their mind’s ability to focus on what matters most.

This is an easy to read and inspiring book which not only lays out the theory but has plenty of space to write notes — each chapter comes with a practical exercise that helps you focus and see how the techniques are to be applied.

The main focus (sorry!) of Focus is it shows how we can direct energy at the key tasks that lead to success, bringing in the creative parts of our minds, spotting and noting dreams, and then realising them by overcoming the information overload and stress associated with the tumult of distractions of today’s knowledge work.

More than just time management, Focus aims to helps you manage your own psyche, acknowledging the range of alter egos we all have at our disposal and harnessing them for specific tasks:

You can be ‘Miss Money Penny’ the rational, conservative you, perfect for preparing taxes or deciding purchases. Or you can be ‘Atilla’ the strong, and goal orientated fighter, the person that never lets others ride roughshod over your needs. Or, my favourite, ‘Sister Harmonia’ the negotiator – gentle, conciliatory and reasonable.

Published by Pearson the book comes with multi-media support material video interviews, diagnostics, mp3 and PDF downloads, plus blogs, podcasts and e-bulletins, all available on www.focusquick.com.

A great read. A practical workbook for anyone lacking concentration or dealing with diverging priorities: 8/10

Buy the book

Published by Pearson Prentice Hall and available, as always, from Amazon.co.uk

Win the book

Fancy finding some focus? We’ve got a copy of the book to give away.

To enter

• Simply log-in below
• Enter your answer to the following question:

“What focuses your mind? What is your best tip for finding or regaining focus?”

• Log-in via Twitter or Facebook and make sure you tick the ‘Share’ box.

Hint: Share on both Twitter & Facebook and double your chances of winning! ;)

We’ll pick a winner at the end of the month.

Read more in the #FreelanceFocus series

“I am a London based image retoucher, creative artworker, reprographics and print production workflow specialist offering my skills mainly to advertising agencies, photographers, reprographic studios, design consultancies and printers.

“For over twenty years I worked for some of the country’s top high-end design, reprographic and production studios. My work has won awards and I have produced all sorts of imagery, brochures, advertising and packaging for national and international brands.

“Early this year I felt it was time for a change and resigned my position to start Bill Greenwood Ltd.”

Why leave the comfort of a regular wage and risk it all?

“A number of reasons really. For me it was about the challenge, my skills paying for me and not lunches for someone else; also the freedom and flexibility of working for who I wanted to and when I wanted to.”

How did you start the process of going limited?

“I pitched the idea of me going solo and starting to trade as a Limited company to a few trusted friends and industry people and the support and response was amazing, I had a lot of great feedback and even the promise of projects to work upon once the business was up and running, all of which so far have come to fruition.

“So I was convinced.

“It was a matter of sorting out the company formation, accountancy and of course dealing with the taxman.

“So now to deal with the administration headache!”

How did you decided to go limited? What research did you do?

“Over three months I did a lot of research. Visited many forums and websites that dealt with company formation, accountancy, bookkeeping, Corporation Tax; VAT, PAYE: the list goes on and on.

“I must have read hundreds of articles online covering all these topics. The HMRC website became my homepage for a while and virtually every PDF relevant to what I wanted to do (setting up a limited company with me as the sole director) passed my eyes.

“I became a bit of a tax geek!

“Having never set up a Limited company before I was confused by some of the websites I visited. There is a lot of conflicting advice out there and although I could have carried out the paperwork myself I decided that I would get a professional company with all the right credentials to sort it all out and get it right first time.”

How did you choose an accountant?

“Accountancy and bookkeeping was another area that was vital to get right. It’s not my core skill and I admit to being a newbie in this area. I wanted to be able to see instantly how my business was running financially but was not keen to spend valuable time learning and managing an accountancy application. Ideally I wanted an online solution where all my information was available to me wherever I was. I looked at a few online systems, made some calls but was not totally convinced that the packages I looked into so far were right for me.

“A colleague mentioned Crunch Accounting and I got busy looking into them. I signed up for a demo and was very impressed with the online software, it was just right for me. A call to the Crunch offices put me in contact with Ed Hopkins who really knew his stuff and fully answered all my questions. Ed took me through the whole process and offered me some great advice to save the business and me money.

“The bonus of a dedicated account manager and of a fixed monthly price that the company could budget for with no tied-in contract definitely helped influence my decision. I was confident that signing up with Crunch was the thing to do, so I did. Crunch also carried out my company formation for me and also became my registered office. All the services I required in one place.”

What about choosing a bank account?

“Santander offer free business banking for life. My branch in Camden set me up with an appointment with a local business banking manager David Barter who was first class and excellent getting the paperwork sorted. Everything went smoothly.”

How did you find clients and work?

“In my case, even though I have been in my industry for a long time, have built a decent reputation and many contacts it was still like starting over. During my initial investigations I was lucky to have been offered some projects and these have been realised with others still to be carried out. So this gave the business a great start.

“Of course for all businesses, marketing and promotion is an ongoing and necessary task. I’m always looking for new and interesting projects. I utilised LinkedIn and other online forums associated with my trade as well as the tried and trusted methods of meeting contacts and attending functions to promote my services and skills.

“I put together a website to showcase previous projects, this is still a work in progress for me as I have been quite busy and still have so much more to put on it.”

What’s the best part of being freelance?

“Being your own boss, it’s great fun and quite exciting. An ongoing story!”

If you are looking for freelance artworking, retouching, posters or packaging then check out Bill’s portfolio site — BillGreenwood.com

Let’s take a look at how you can use your time more efficiently, give you client more confidence in your work and help them to pass knowledge to you more effectively.

Avoid progress meetings

Some clients need frequent progress reports, generally they like to see results rather than just hear about what is coming soon. The live demos are also useful for a client as they get a better idea of how the finished product will look at work. The downside is that you often need to run a meeting which costs you time and can often be unbillable (this can be painful when you count the time for preparation and travel too).

What if you could save time by sending them a 5 minute progress video which takes you just 30 minutes to record and send? A steady stream of progress videos saves you meeting time and keeps the client just as informed. You can’t cut out all of your meetings but you will reduce their frequency.

These progress videos can help you raise questions — you can show how something works right now and question the alternative approaches. The client can easily answer by writing an email or giving you a call — an added benefit is that you keep the client to task as you’re dealing with single issues at a time.

Avoid group meetings

If you’re working as part of a team then another benefit of a video is that everyone can watch the video at a convenient time — this is a lot easier to organise than a group meeting. The videos can be re-watched and they form a history of progress for the client. If the client has to report to others then they can use the videos as evidence of progress, empowering your employer is always a good thing!

Training the client to communicate to you with screencasts

A further benefit of screencasts is that you can train your clients to create their own to use when communicating with you. Imagine changing the horrid situation when a client tries to describe graphics, animations and processes over a voice-only phone call and instead they can record a walk-through in their the demo product or a competitor’s site as they explain what they need.

Getting the client to demonstrate bugs is a wonderful use of screencasts. They’re showing you how to replicate the issue (and they’re forced to figure out the replicable steps rather than giving you a vague description over the phone!) so you can easily verify the problem. Once they’re comfortable with screencasts they’ll know that if you’ve seen the bug, you’re more likely to know what the problem is and how to solve it which gives them more confidence in you.

How do I make my first screencast?

There are two approaches to screencasting:

Create quick and simple videos

This should be your first approach if you’re new to the subject. There are a couple of web tools that make this very easy.

Use desktop software

The added benefit here is that you can edit the recording afterwards. This takes longer but gives you a far more professional result.

Web tools to record a screencast

The easiest tool to start with is TechSmith’s Jing. Jing runs on Windows and Mac, it is free and it takes just a few minutes to get started. TechSmith also offer free video hosting (which can be private) so after recording your video you just send a web link to your client and ‘it just works’ in their browser.

Recently I gave a quick talk on “Screencasting in 7 minutes with Jing — it shows you how to get started, what the result looks like and includes tips for effectively making your first videos.

Two other relevant tools are ScreenToaster and Screenr. Both offer their own hosting and are free, ScreenToaster runs on Linux too and Screenr specialises in linking your video out to Twitter (which makes it great for recording short public demos and pushing them out to your readers!).

Desktop tools to record a screencast

On Windows the main tool is Camtasia Studio — it has a 30 day trial and then is quite pricey but it has many features and a powerful editor. If you’re going to screencast frequently then it is a sensible purchase.

On the Mac the main tool is ScreenFlow — again there’s a 30 day trial and a very reasonable price for the full package.

Both of the above tools have powerful editors, they let you record multiple scenes and import other assets (e.g. images, sounds, animations and intro and exit scenes). Getting through the learning curve for both will take you an afternoon, after that you’ll be ready to produce your first edited screencast.

Other tools to use

For a longer list of tools see my comprehensive list of screencasting software. It lists not only the recording tools but many useful additions like audio editors and sizing tools.

Getting started quickly with The Screencasting Handbook

I’m the author of The Screencasting Handbook, the 128 page PDF is packed with 4 years of my own professional experience from building ShowMeDo and ProCasts. The goal is to lay out everything you need to quickly and confidently plan, record, produce and distribute your own screencasts. The Handbook is aimed at freelancers, teachers and marketing professionals covering both quick videos and in-depth productions. Visit the blog to find a lot of tips and links to useful software.

An added bonus of the Handbook is the free Screencasting Google Group — over 130 screencasters are a member of this Group. Feel free to join and ask questions, we’re all happy to help you move forwards.

By Ian Ozsvald — author of The Screencasting Handbook

The rise of home working | Money | The Guardian

Of course, we’ve known about the steady rise of home-working and the joys of #homeworking for some time now. For more on home-working don’t forget our Working-From-Home section is where to find all the latest posts.

A recent winner of Apple’s ‘iPad App of the Week’ award, Portfolio To Go features an elegant and intuitive photo-wall giving users instant access to all of their Flickr photosets: scroll each gallery horizontally to browse thumbnails, scroll vertically to traverse through all synced galleries.

Portfolio To Go for Flickr

Lovingly created by Brighton-based freelance developer Nick Kuh, easily allows freelance photographers, graphic designers and artists to present their portfolio offline to clients — perfect for use with a wifi iPad. You just sync and go. Photographers create and edit photosets on Flickr.com and Portfolio To Go acts as a presentation tool, keeping in sync with your Flickr changes.

Portfolio To Go supports all iPad rotations so can be flipped vertically for portraits and horizontally for landscapes.

While there are plenty of other portfolio apps out there Portfolio to Go has a really neat ‘Send Portfolio to a Client’ feature. Photographers can pick and choose which of his or her galleries to share and can then send an auto-generated email to clients and friends containing a free download link to ‘Portfolio To Go Player’ iPad App.

By clicking the emailed link clients launch the photographer’s portfolio on their own iPad.

Simple, yet very effective: 8/10

Video review of Portfolio To Go

[via Adorama TV]

The survey, carried out over PeoplePerHour.com’s 73,000+ user database, is one of the most extensive ever to be conducted on the UK small business sector. More than 360 small businesses responded to the survey during the last three months between May and July 2010.

A summary of the key findings is as follows:

The Internet is taking an instrumental role in new generation startups.

Small businesses have shown remarkable dexterity in embracing new technologies in order to remain flexible and efficient:

• Almost 1 in 5 small businesses now sell their products/services entirely online whilst 37% operate entirely virtually
• Online media and the blogosphere have surpassed traditional media as the main source of news and information for small businesses
• 35% state that an increase in flexible hiring has constituted the main change in their business in the last 2 years.

  • IT/Web development in particular is a sector in which small businesses are focusing on, with the majority now choosing to fill in-house IT/Web roles with highly skilled freelancers.
• 38% are planning on increasing their use of freelancers for IT/Web development. Only 1% plans to reduce it.
• 31% site Web Design as the most sought out IT skill required in their business
• 54% of businesses are currently filling in-house IT/web roles with freelancers.
• 52% prefer to use UK-based freelancers for their IT as opposed to offshore

Freelance trends

As the flexible working method shifts from a fad to a long term solution for small businesses, experience and quality replace cost as the crucial factors employers are now looking for.

• 1 in 2 small businesses now use freelancers more often compared with 2 years ago
• 58% prefer local freelancers to offshore
• 52% site ‘experience’ as the most important criterion in their decision of allocating their project
• An estimated 50% of small businesses now use freelancers at least monthly, with 58% of respondents citing quick access to specialist skills as the principal reason
• 56% of small businesses believe that what is still missing from the freelance community are ways of distinguishing quality freelancers

In summary, the results highlighted above ignite a general sense of optimism, and in particular for the freelance economy. Small businesses are increasingly entrusting freelancers for various jobs, with monthly earnings of the top freelancers on PPH growing tenfold in the last 12 months and now averaging over £2,000 per month for the most active. In fact, 60% reveal that they get repeat business as well.

Image by Horia Varlan ~ cc

From solo-freelancer to successful software startup

His first column for Inc.com, Driven to Distraction, is Fried’s fascinating tale of how he built 37Signals from his solo freelancing business.

“I launched my first real company, a Web design company called Spinfree, in 1996. It was a solo show: just me, a desk in my apartment, and some self-taught mediocre Web design skills. But it was all I needed. The jobs rolled in, and my clients were happy. I could pay the bills, stash away some savings, and work when and where I wanted.”

This alone is inspiring, 37signals is now a huge business (with $8m revenues by 2008), but what’s interesting in Fried’s tale is his signature ‘disruptive’ attitude. Was his success all hard work and ambition… no…

“I can attribute a healthy chunk of my success to the positive returns of laziness. Laziness has the best ROI in the business.”

Fried describes how he followed the typical freelance tactics, bidding on ever larger projects, building himself up, “saying “we” instead of “I” in an attempt to sound bigger”. But, Fried soon realised, he didn’t need to do any of these things.

“How did I figure this out? Laziness. I got tired and let down my guard and wound up learning something important about myself: I love work, just not hard work. I think hard work is overrated. My goal is to do less hard work. And what’s hard? Acting like someone else, writing elaborate proposals I don’t believe in, and flinging mud at the competition. That’s hard and horrible work.”

“Fifteen years later, this continues to be the most important lesson I’ve learned as an entrepreneur: Most of the stuff you agonise about just doesn’t matter. Truth is, things are pretty easy and straightforward — until you make them hard and complicated.”

You’ll need to read the blog to get the full story but if your interested in how one man can grow a massive business from a simple beginnings, from a solo freelance-job into a series of award-winning products with over a million customers, all while retaining his core principles and small business mindset then Fried’s work is really inspirational.

Jason Fried is co-founder of 37signals, a Chicago-based software firm, and co-author of the book Rework, which was published in March.

• Read our Rework review

Understanding your responsibilities

It is well established in law that by signing-off artwork the client accepts final responsibility for it. It means that, under normal circumstances, re-printing becomes a client’s responsibility once your artwork has been approved.

Observing best practice in the design and marketing business means obtaining sign-off from your client before artwork goes into production.

Once the client has signed off the artwork you are no longer responsible for it. It means that your Professional Indemnity insurance will not meet a claim for reprint (for example), because it would be the client’s responsibility (or possibly the printer’s if the reprint was the result of a straightforward printing error).

The best way to protect your interests is to ensure that your standard Terms and Conditions carry reference to sign-off and the client’s responsibility.

If, however, a client tried to blame you and attempted to make a claim against you, even if you weren’t at fault, then your Professional Indemnity would defend you. This would also be the case if the client simply refused to pay you, and threatened to counterclaim if you pursued the debt.

If for some reason you can’t obtain a sign-off or the client makes a last minute verbal amendment, you should acknowledge the amendment in writing (by letter, email or fax). You could attach a proforma template that points out that, if the client is unable to sign-off the final artwork; you accept no responsibility for errors that may subsequently occur.

If you inadvertently failed to obtain sign-off and there turned out to be an error in the artwork, you would still be covered. However, you should always try to observe best practice.

We recommend: Insurance from Blyth Valley

Blyth Valley specialise in insurance for small to medium-sized businesses and independent consultants. By offering profession-specific policies and giving customers their own personal insurance advisers, Blyth Valley are one of the top Professional Indemnity insurers on the market.

More Info: Blyth Valley’s Professional Indemnity plan

More advice from Blyth Valley (PDF downloads)

Blyth Valley Ltd is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) under firm reference no. 307180. You may check this on the FSA’s register by visiting the FSA’s website or by contacting the FSA on 0845 6061234.

Image by PacoAlcantara ~ cc

“Ten years after its introduction, the review of IR35 finally got underway, signaling the beginning of the end for the tax. The Government announced the terms of reference for the long-awaited review of small business tax measures. The new Office of Tax Simplification will look at the issue and have been specifically tasked with trying to find an ‘alternative approach to IR35′. Their initial report is expected in time for next year’s Budget.”

via Shout 99 » Review on IR35 begins

Thanks to the new update, available on iTunes, calls now go over 3G so you no longer need to be at home on a wireless network to make and receive calls.

Since the release of iOS 4 with its multitasking capability Skype fans have been crying out for a new version of Skype that will work with the iPhone 4 (or the iPhone 3GS and third-generation iPod touches). Multitasking means Skype runs in the background so you can use your phone as normal and Skype calls and messages will come right through to the home screen.

It’s interesting to see Apple (and the phone networks) have allowed this Particularly useful for iPod users the Skype app basically turns your iPod into a phone.

Just start entering your To-dos

Built entirely for the web you just sign up for a free account and start typing in your to-dos. To add a task you just type and hit return. That’s it.

It’s One Week to a View and there are columns for every day of the week. You can easily scroll into the future to look at what’s coming up, or back into the past to see how well you’ve done your dones.

For GTD fans there is also a SOMEDAY slot at the bottom for all those pesky tasks that need doing but not on a specific date.

To mark a task done you just click it and it gets crossed out, you can also hit an ‘x’ by the side of the task to kill it off. If you can’t get round to a task or your day is looking too busy you can just drag tasks to a later day. You can also drag not so important task down to the ‘Someday’ section or vice-versa.

Almost too simple…

While I can think of lots of missing features here I really do love the simplicity of TeuxDeux. Personally I need syncing of tasks to various computers and my iPhone (so I’m using many different Google Calendars and Omnifocus to keep all that together) but as an Editor I’m now using TeuxDeux to schedule content releases and I can share the log in details with my team so we’re all looking at the same, clutter-free, diary.

This week I’ve also realised I can use TeuxDeux to schedule my Pomodoro‘s for the day, I just bash out the 16 things I’d like to get done in my 18 hour day and tick them off as I complete each successful Pomodoro.

10-second summary

I think TeuxDeux will be too simple for most people’s to-do list needs (Omnifocus and Taskpaper are the real heros for me) but if you’ve got a specific set of tasks that needs scheduling, it could just be who makes tea this week!, then it’s perfectly adequate, very stylish and a lot of fun to use.

Minimalist styling + simple drag, drop & tick-off = 8/10

Have a play » teuxdeux.com

Pro-tip: You can use Google Chrome’s application shortcuts, Mozilla’s Prism or Fluid for Mac to turn TeuxDeux into a standalone application. Nice!

You may also like the simplicity of

• NowDoThis — seriously… you can’t get ANY simpler!
• TaskPaper — Simple to-do list software for Mac & iPhone
• Ta-da List — To do list, simple, easy, fast, sharable

When not writing down things to do Michael Rose manages to get things done as editor of Freelance Advisor

From simple, free rapid drafting and prototyping tools to more complex and outright technical offerings we give you a quick overview of the options for freelancers needing to quickly create a mockup for a website or landing page.

Keeping it simple

The best, most flexible, option for wire-framing a site was invented hundred of years ago. It’ll cost you around 20p and is called Paper and a Pencil. With that little bit of facetiousness out the way pencil and paper really is the best way to start sketching out your ideas. An even better idea it to take a thick pen, like a Sharpie, as that will help you to focus on the big picture, the shapes and relative sizes of your page elements rather than the details like section names and text — leave the detail to later.

Finger painting

If the thought of getting your hands dirty makes you a little squeamish then the next simplest technological tool is the beautifully simple Draft from 37 Signals. I say simple, you actually need an iPad and spend $9.99 at the AppStore but Draft is a really fun tool to use, and sketching with your fingers and sharing via email (or Campfire) with your collaborators is great fun. With just thick white and red lines on a black background Draft lets you sketch as you would on paper but without all that pesky eraser dust.

Free tools for rapid-prototyping

If you’re looking for free prototyping tools then the excellent iPlotz gives you the ability to create 1 project with 5 pages, enough for getting the idea across for a simple site. The benefit of iPlotz over the many, many other prototyping tools out there is that it has a great selection of Export options. You can export to a PDF and it’ll list every component giving a series of thumbnails, and any notes you’ve added, in a single document — perfect for passing on to a designer who needs to know the exact dimensions and specification of every button and section. iPlotz also has collaboration and project management tools built in, which allows everyone in your team to create tasks for other team mates.

Pencil is a free Firefox add-on that, oddly, runs in its own window. While not as powerful as Omnigraffle it does have a great range of options for quickly mocking up pages and is very easy to use.

HotGloo also allows basic, flat PNG and PDF export options but, compared to iPlotx and Pencil, it has a much simpler look and feel. What you gain in speed and style you loose in options but there are plenty of layout elements and some sophisticated layer and alignment options — well worth a look.

You may also like…

Protonotes; a quick annotation tool. If you already have a design online, or need feedback on your current site then adding a small script from Protonotes allows you to give clients and colleagues access to an interface which allows them to give instant feedback on your design, right on the page.

Professional tools for site designers

The Granddaddy of professional quality offline-tools has to be Microsoft’s Visio and OmniGraffle for the Mac. Visio started out as an add-on to Word but it now a full blown product in it’s own right, it sells well and there are plenty of reviews online if you want to take a look.

Omnigraffle is a bit more interesting. Out of the box you can draw hierarchical charts, great for site-structure planning or throwing together a quick organisational chart for your business — and it’s really easy to use straight fro the get go. There are also a wealth of options for polishing your sketches and turning into beautifully looking wireframes that you would be proud to show any client. Onnigraffle really it comes into its own when used with wire-framing templates; Konigi’s wireframe stencils are excellent and Yahoo’s Omnigraffle stencil set adds any UX/UI element you could wish for.

For Geeks (and interaction designers) only!

37 Signal’s recently reveal that they don’t do wireframing at all… they start prototyping in HTML right away. If you know your the difference between and class and and ID and are not afraid of writing code to directly, semantically, build an interactive prototype rather than a flat wireframe then Quplo – a web-based prototyping software for interaction designers looks very promising.

If you think prototyping should happen in code, in the browser, you can start from scratch, hand-crafting coded pages and having them hosted right before your eyes, or you can pull in a design from any existing URL and then make changes from within Quplo, great for reverse-engineering successful designs or working on a redesign of an existing site.

Round-up

If you want a complete overview of what’s out there then Konigi have their finger on the pulse of what’s currently available — their round-up of rapid-prototyping tools, “Tools for ideation“, will give you a good sense of all your options.

My advice would be to start on paper with a big, fat pen and when you’re ready to start drawing boxes try one or two of the free tools. If you’re a professional designer you may want to invest in some more expensive professional software, but the wealth of free online tools with sensibly-priced upgrade packages might mean you are able to do most of your prototyping in the cloud rather than having a standalone piece of software.

All the tools vary in terms of finish, some are deliberately ‘sketchy’ forcing you to focus on ideas rather than pixel perfect designs, others, like Omnigraffle, allow you to quickly get your ideas on screen and then polish the designs if you really need to. Everyone’s need vary so do take a look at all of the options and see which might work best for a one off design or for fitting into your professional workflow.

Michael Rose is a freelance Web Editor, writer and part-time philosopher.

To mark the importance of SMEs, The Startups Awards 2010 have added a Home Business of the Year category to their annual awards.

Startups is the UK’s most popular website for small businesses continues to help thriving companies improve on their success — acknowledging the best fledgling businesses that Britain has to offer. Entries are now being accepted for these prestigious awards, which reward the most exciting new companies across the country, complimenting the Governments programme of support.

“Each year we unearth a whole set of innovative, disruptive new businesses and entrepreneurs that continue to make people sit up and pay attention to the start-up market. We were thrilled with the quality of entries we received in 2009. I’m confident we’ll have another fantastic pick of companies to choose from in 2010 because we’ve seen the impressive scale of UK talent out there today.” Says David Lester, small business expert and founder, startups.co.uk.

Previous, 2009 winners include: Wonga, Go Sustainable, Three Sixty Entertainment and Truecall.

This Year’s Startups Awards

The awards contain 16 categories, including:

• Green Business of the Year
• Women in Business Award
• Product of the Year
• Best Use of Technology
• Business Plan of the Year.

This year, there are 5 brand new categories:

• Home Business of the Year
• Mobile Business of the Year
• Franchisee of the Year
• Angle/VC Backed Business of the Year
• Craft Business of the Year.

Winners of each category will then compete to be named the Startups Business of the Year.

How to Enter

To be eligible to enter, the business must have been trading for less than three years and be privately owned. The closing date for entries is 03 September 2010 and finalists will be announced early November.

For details of how to enter and a full list of categories visit: startupsawards.co.uk.

Chris, a victim of the recession, was made redundant when his employer had to cut-costs so he went it alone and setup his own business. To find more clients, he has been attending events at his local chamber of commerce and using websites like PeoplePerHour.com where he can advertise his services.

“PeoplePerHour.com, says it is seeing an increase in people setting up on their own and advertising their services to companies nervous about taking on full-time workers. "Hit by the recession, many employers are reluctant to hire on a full-time basis, resorting instead to more flexible options, like part-time workers and freelance staff," said the site’s founder, Xenios Thrasyvoulou.” ~ via Guardian.co.uk

We’ve long been fans of PeoplePerHour.com and this story was a heartening tale in these recessionary times.

Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hanson’s contrarian style matches their work and life philosophy — the duo eschew traditional business models, pulling down everything from meetings to planning, from traditional office culture to going it alone without investment.

Re: Work. Are you doing it wrong?

Fried and Hanson, founders of 37 Signals and creators of Basecamp know a thing or two about starting a business. Perhaps they were lucky, scratching the right itch at the right time, solving their own problems and hitting an untapped need in a host of other online startups — but their story (and attitude) has taken on near-mythical status in Web Developer circles.

Their first book Getting Real outlined their philosophy, it’s just an eBook — but an ebook that has sold 30,000 copies generating well over half a million dollars for the company. (You can read Getting Real for free online.)

Rework – a business book for the rest of us

“Every once in a while, a book comes out of left field that changes just about everything. This is one of those books. Ignore it at your peril.” – Seth Godin

Rework is explicitly designed for a more general audience, web businesses are just like any other business in many ways. Rework is a bumper book of better business basics for everyone from freelancers and contractors all the way up to entrepreneurs, business owners and CEOs.

This is Fried and Hanson at their best, they don’t care a hoot about what the old-guard are saying:

“They say a lot of things, they’re wrong. Screw the Fortune 500… we sell to the fortune 5 million!”

Fried and Hanson describe Rework as “a different kind of business book for a different kind of business”, it’s written for people who want to do something they love and get paid for it. It tells us that if we don’t have the time, money or commitment to go it alone then you are wrong. The new reality is one where technology is free and one person can now do the work of 3 people — all without working more than 40 hours a week.

“Work smarter and kick ass! You don’t even need an office.”

The book is chock-full of challenging assertions and great illustations

Ignore the “Real World

Traditional business common-sense is dull and stultifying they say. Something that gives off an air or pessimism and despair and attitude that conceals an underlying lack of faith in human nature.

Their opponents say ‘it won’t work in the real world’, ‘You are wasting your time’ but Fried and Hanson say “Don’t believe them! We fail the ‘real world’ test in all kinds of ways. The real world isn’t a place, it’s an excuse”.

Rework is a delight to read, we’ve heard it all before of course (Seth Godin and a whole host of Business 2.0 writers are all singing from the same hymn sheet), but Fried and Hanson have such an honest, to the point style it’s hard not to be won over by their optimism and aphorisms.

They turn principles on their head, the agile adage of ‘Fail, and fail fast’ becomes “Learn from your successes not your failures”. Fried and Hanson tell us with confidence that with this more positive attitude you’ll probably do it even better next time, success is the experience that counts, and this is how nature works, it builds on what works. And it’s hard to argue with that.

Planning is guessing!

“Writing a plan makes you feel in control of things that can’t be controlled”, they say. Instead they suggest we call our plans “strategic guesses”. Plans put blinders on you and are inconsistent with improvisation, we should look at what makes sense today. You have the most information when you are actually doing something. Plans, at the beginning of a project, are the worst time for plans. Give up on the guess work. Decide what you are going to do this week. It’s okay to wing it.

Laugh the Workaholics and Entrepreneurs.

Workaholism, they say, is unnecessary and stupid. Throwing hours at problems is not the optimal solution. Do you create problems to justify your existence? Do you know someone in a corporation who does? They bet you do. No one makes sharp decisions when they are tired, “stop fixating on details” the real hero is not the guy who stays late working all hours to get a project done. The real hero gets his work done in time and is already home.

Enough with entrepreneurs already!

For Fried and Hanson Entrepreneur talk “smells like a members only club”. Everyone should be encouraged to start their own businesses, they say. A lot of people are doing what they love on their own terms. Let’s call them ‘starters’ intead.

During a recent interview with Jason Calacanis, David Heinemeier-Hansson say you should always be working on your best idea “there is no reason for you to want to sell your company because there is no guarantee that you will come up with as good an idea, or even a better idea, the next time around.” Hansson still sees himself running 37signals in 20 years time because he is working on his best idea now. Jason Fried went further to write a blog post blasting the sale of Mint.com to Intuit because Aaron Patzer (Mint’s founder) ‘sold out’. (Hat tip to Marc Gayle)

Don’t think… just GO!

“Make a dent in the universe.”

“I had the idea for eBay before eBay [whinge, moan]“. You can’t sell ideas. Make stuff. Stanley Kubrick’s advice to film-makers was just as simple, start creating. Ideas are cheap. The real deal is how well you execute.

It’s been shown again and again that we all need to feel we are making a difference in our work, that we are part of something important and our efforts need to make us feel value. People need to notice when you stop doing what you do; “what you do is your legacy. Don’t just sit around waiting for something to happen to you”. Don’t think about ideas, make them happen.

Scratch your own itch

The key message when deciding on what to create is to test your own stuff on yourself. Do YOU like it? Do you want it? These are the principles that have made 37 Signals so hugely successful. They were a design shop and they needed a project management system that didn’t totally suck. So they built one, what became Basecamp. They needed a way to talk to each other, so they created Campfire. Today they’re developing new tols to save their own problems, including the lovely looking and (deliberately) simple rapid-prototyping tool Draft for iPad

“We knew what we wanted when we developed high-rise. When you solve your own problem you know what success looks and feels like, it’s a real problem you are experiencing.”

Basically, have faith in your own product, fall in love with what you are making you can’t go wrong.

Draw a line in the sand.

Why are you doing what you are doing? If you know then your superfans might get a sense of it too. If no one is upset by what you’re doing you’re probably not doing it right. And it’s ok to loose customers to gain superfans.

Fried and Hanson give a lovely example of a local bakery. ‘We close when the bread runs out’… the bakers make as much as they think they’ll need, and they make it well. They don’t create a surplus that will go stale towards the end of the day, they love bread and they want their customers to feel that love so when the good stuff is gone it’s gone, till tomorrow.

By Michael Rose, Editor

Buy the book today

• The book is available from Amazon — Rework: Amazon.co.uk: Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson
• You can read Rework sample chapters online

If you’re not up to speed with Broadband at home Chris Marling of Broadband Genie gives you a few things to consider.

How fast is fast enough?

The main one is how much you’ll need to use your broadband. With a wealth of different packages available there’s no point in spending money on a top-of-the-range deal if your business revolves around emailing and a bit of web browsing. Heavier users, meanwhile, will need to bag a home broadband deal that boasts a decent bit of muscle.

What are the options?

One of the most popular options is fixed-line or ADSL broadband. This can be bought through BT plus a whole host of other Internet Service Providers and uses the copper-wire telephone network to deliver the online goods. If you’re close to an exchange then broadband speeds can be pretty impressive.

Move farther away though and you could get a less sprightly service and other performance issues, but if you get something like the national average 3MB then that’ll be fine for most business needs. However, it’s likely to be less than that unless you plump for one of the higher specification packages on offer, but these are subject to a lot of different factors depending on where you are.

Although not covering the entire country, it’s worth checking to see if you can get cable broadband in your area. This is dominated by Virgin Media and speeds available from some of the packages via this supply can be the fastest currently available. This is basically down to fibre-optic technology, which is much more efficient than the copper-wire network. However, BT is currently upgrading much of that ageing wiring so things are improving on both fronts.

Try using a broadband comparison website like Broadband Genie, which will allow you to carry out a speed check in your area and also assess countless deals within one website, and all for free.

Don’t forget!

• To check if you’ll be given the hardware and software needed to get up and running with your new broadband supply. This should come as part of the deal.
• You’ll also need to read the terms and conditions regarding usage limits. Heavy users might need a more impressive package to cope with uploading and downloading large files. Nevertheless, it’s pretty easy to pick a deal to suit any kind of budget, from a few pounds per month up to fifty or more.

Broadband on the road

If you need to get out and about then investigate mobile broadband. Prices are competitive, you can have contract or pay-as-you-go and all that’s needed is a laptop and, generally, a small plastic dongle. The latter connects your computer to the mobile broadband network and, although reception and speeds can fluctuate, it allows you to keep on top of emails and browse the web if you’re away from the home office (or down the bottom of the garden!) for a while.

Chris Marling writes on behalf of www.broadbandgenie.co.uk, the independent comparison website for broadband and mobile broadband

The service works Like Twitter with short, quick posts, offering random acts of kindness — and odd jobs.

The site features some real gems:

• “I will plan your cross country road trip for $5″
• “I will leave flirtatious/didn’t-we-have-so-much-fun comments on your Facebook wall for $5″
• I will marry you and love you for $5
• I will draw a disturbing caricature of you or anyone for $5

Fiverr.com

A really simple solution (used far too frequently) is to have just one strong password, a complicated but memorable password for your main email account and a quick password for all your other, less risky, online subscriptions. While this is an elegant solution it leaves you open a huge risk — if someone gets hold of your main password you’re leaving yourself wide open to a cyberattack, if someone has access to your email they can request any password they like.

With modern threats like identity theft it is not uncommon for people to get hold of Facebook and Twitter passwords allowing people to pose as you and if you’re email address is linked to your social media account you’re showing the hackers exactly where they should be focusing their efforts.

Security experts recommend we have unique, strong, passwords of at least 12 characters including lowercase, uppercase and numbers. Generating random complicated passwords isn’t too hard… but remembering them is.

1Password to rule them all

I must admit for a long time I was just using two passwords, one strong, one weaker. For everything! When I started hearing about Twitter services stealing passwords and people having their social media accounts compromised I started to think a bit more seriously about security. I’ve been using 1Password for the last 12 months and although not cheap (£25) I’ve not regretted the purchase one bit.

Once installed 1Password asks you to create one really strong password. Then when you sign in to your sites 1Password automatically saves your passwords (as many browsers already do).

The difference to just letting your browser save your passwords is that 1Password stores all your passwords securely in the cloud — allowing you to use any machine.

Crucially, when signing up with a new service or updating current passwords 1Password can assit you in generating a new, really strong, password — I just asked it to generate one for me and it came up with v8mJC739d;NZP”7352n. While this is safe it is far from memorable but this is where 1Password comes into its own.

1Password integrates with Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. Your passwords are stored securely online (you also store them in Dropbox) so even if you’re not at your regular machine you can get access to your passwords via a weblink and any browser — there is also an iPhone app so if you’re sitting in an internet cafe you can just pull up your passwords on the iPhone and your in.

Whenever you sign in to a web service, e.g. Twitter, 1Password saves your username and password. You can also save multiple logins for the same site so if you have more than one Twitter account, for example, you can really quickly choose which personality to log in with. Switching accounts is as easy as hitting a button on your tool bar and selecting another personality. You can also log-in to sites right from 1Password, just double click on the account you want and it’ll take you to the webpage, automatically log you in — job done.

Having just one password is a bad idea, but having 1Password generate and store strong passwords is brilliant — you’re not just keeping your email and bank details safe but all your online identity is protected no matter how much (or how little) you trust their service.

Mac users have known about 1Password for a while now, it’s been running for many years and is kept up-to-date by a very active team of developers, there is now a Windows version (in Beta) so you can expect 1Password to become even more popular over the next 12 months.

Highly Recommended, intelligent and good-looking: 9/10

Elsewhere

• 1Password
• Five Best Password Managers [via Lifehacker]
• Keepass – next best, mulit-platform, powerful, but really ugly