A good bio shares your experience, builds your credibility, makes a first impression and displays your personality. Having a great Twitter bio is important as it can make or break a person’s decision whether to follow you or not.

Not only do you need to pay attention to what your bio says about you, but also the other fields in your profile including “Web” and “Location.” The Twitter bio may be small, but it’s powerful. Here is a checklist to ensure you your bio passes muster.

Does your bio include relevant keywords? Do you want people to find you by your career, company, industry, location? Why are you using Twitter? Who are the people you want to connect with? Use these to figure out what keywords to use.

The keywords for me include “writer,” “editor” and “games” (I do game reviews.) I built my bio around those and added a personal touch at the end: “Content maven aka writer, editor and bookwormette who plays with words and games (www.thegamezen.com) in between PTA work and refereeing the kids.” Yes, I snuck in a URL, even though it’s not clickable.

Does your bio cover what you do? People who use Twitter for networking and business tend to follow people based on what they do and their topics of interest. The “what you do” part can also get you on people’s lists. For instance, I have lists for writers, marketers, PR peeps and so on; and it’s the bios that helped me with building my Twitter lists.

What do you have under “Location”? While many of us can work with people all over the world, our locations can lead to surprising opportunities. In fact, I had lunch with someone I met in Twitter. Within just a few tweets, we found out that we live within a mile of each other! Again, this can get you on location-based Twitter lists like mine, which covers Dallas-Fort Worth.

Have you seen nonsense numbers for location such as UT: 12.345678, -234.5678? This comes from Twitter applications like Ubertwitter, but these mean nothing to most people. (FYI: you can enter these coordinates in Google Maps to find the person’s location.) Originally, I had “Plano, Texas” and changed it to “Plano, Texas, north of Dallas” so those searching for “Dallas” will find me.

What does your web link look like? This might seem like a strange question, but some people put in short URLs (tinyurl, bit.ly, ow.ly, is.gd, etc.) in this field. Most of us have learned the hard way not to trust this. Twitter doesn’t shorten the links in this field, so don’t use a shortened URL link. It reeks of spam. “Hidden URLs are usually spam sites or MLM marketing,” tweets Suzanne (aka ZeroCattle.)

Where does your web link go? There’s no one single obvious answer. Often I want to go straight to a person’s blog, if they have one. Sometimes I just want to read more about the person. Some people create a landing page specifically for Twitter, which is where my link goes. However, I wonder if pointing to my blog would be a better idea.

Suzanne suggests linking to your business’ web site or to a profile on a social network site, if you don’t have your own site. While it’s easy to set up your own site, not everyone has the need for one especially those in corporate careers. Peggy Dolane (aka FreeRangeMom) likes to see a person’s web link take her where she can learn more about them or their passions.

Don’t worry too much about having the perfect bio. Many of us have tweaked our bios over time while becoming more comfortable and familiar with Twitter. Even my own is probably version 3.3. Remember, be yourself. That’s what makes you stand out.

What do you look for in a Twitter profile?

One of the banes of many writers’ existence (including my own!) is inheriting a slew of documents where the people working on them previously haven’t paid much heed to document versioning, leaving you trying to make sense of a mishmash of documents. On more than one occasion, I’ve been left hoping for a tool that would enable me to compare documents in bulk so I can get a mess of a documentation library under control before I can begin the real work on a project.

While word processors like Microsoft Word often include a one-to-one compare documents feature, what if you inherit a whole library of documents? Enter CompareMyDocs.com, a new web-based service from Nordic River, the makers of TextFlow, a version management tool. It enables you to compare multiple .rtf, .doc, and .docx documents.

Unfortunately, while it’s still in beta beta, CompareMyDocs.com works best on text-only documents (word processing documents without a lot of formatting) without images or tables. Therefore, while the service would work better on my draft WWD posts, it’s not yet suitable for the technical documentation I create by day.

I did like the ability to compare multiple versions of documents via the web interface. Bonus points go to the easy upload routine. However, I would have liked to see a bit more clarity in the interface, because, as shown in the following illustration, I only had access to Bold, Italic, and Underline controls, but to nothing else — including help. I can only assume this is due to the beta nature of the service.

Despite the limitations of the product in beta, CompareMyDocs.com is a promising tool that is worth a spot in every web worker’s bag of tricks when it comes to resolving document versioning issues, especially if you ever find yourself having to compare multiple documents at once where word processor compare documents features will take too long.

Have you tried out CompareMyDocs.com? Share your experience below.

Google Apps is a favorite tool of many web workers, but soon it might be just as well-known to many of our cubicle-bound corporate colleagues. That’s because Google is making great strides into the enterprise, taking on the likes of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino with the enterprise version of the product.

With its recent earnings statement, Google noted that growth in its enterprise business was accelerating. That acceleration includes some recent large wins with enterprise customers for Google Apps — with some big names in the bunch, including Jaguar Landrover (15,000 users), Rentokil Initial (35,000 users), Motorola’s handset division (20,000 users) and Konica Minolta (7,000 users), adding to some large customers reported earlier this year.

Google Apps is making inroads into the government sector, too, with the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office and the City of Orlando recent switchers to Google Apps (from Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange, respectively).

If you’re already a Google Apps user, having it more widespread in the enterprise could mean easier collaboration and less fiddly exporting/importing of large documents and emailing them to colleagues and clients, which should be welcome news for many web workers. It should also be good news for corporate web workers who are often on the road and perhaps working from a few different machines.

However, although Google Apps is a good product and competitively priced, I suspect Google will find it hard to keep its growth in the enterprise sector accelerating like this, as it will be difficult to persuade many organizations to switch from their existing deeply entrenched Exchange- or Notes-based installations. Many large businesses have systems that rely on Exchange or Notes to function, and I can imagine that many conservative corporate IT departments would be deeply uncomfortable with the idea of their data residing on Google’s servers rather than their own.

Do you use enterprise Google Apps in your business?

I recently had a day started like any other weekday, apart from a little light rain. It ended with an overflowing inbox of client requests and a that awful feeling of being overwhelmed.

I spent the morning on a Windows 7 article that I needed to finish. Several emails came in. “No problem.” I thought, “I can handle them in the afternoon.”  Every Wednesday at noon, I have a weekly status meeting with a client. It forced the article and my eyes to take a break from each other.

At the end of the meeting, my day crashed with a thunderous roar. More email requests had arrived. Like the rain, the work started to pour in. This doesn’t happen often, but it turned this organized planner into a panicky gal. Plus, I managed to lock myself out of an important account, something I never do.

One of my worst habits is checking email too often. I do this because I don’t want my inbox to pile up. I scan my emails frequently and then delete, file, respond or or leave them for later if the message needs more than a few minutes of my time. On this day, many of the messages met the “leave” requirement. So they remained in the inbox where they caused my stress to climb even further.

So what do I do to stop getting overwhelmed like this? Here are the steps that I took to regain control:

• Pick the most urgent task. Complete the task, celebrate accomplishment and get a quick lift.
• Delete email newsletters and updates. You can always catch up on them later, but reducing the number of unread messages is a quick way to reduce the  stress that comes from an overwhelmed inbox.
• Add tasks from emails to the to-do list. Then, prioritize and assign them so I can see what needed doing now and what could wait. This way I can move the emails where they belonged and out of the inbox.
• Skip or postpone events, meetings, appointments, etc. You can always skip or move non-urgent meetings or events to concentrate on urgent matters.I had more meetings than usual that week, so I rescheduled one so I could have more time at the office.
• Let go of social networking. Not forever — just for the day. Though social networking is an essential tool in my business, I let it go that day because I knew it wouldn’t help my productivity or stress levels. Besides, if I had tried, I may not have communicated as well as I do on a normal day. I returned to it the next day.

Although following these steps didn’t completely cure that feeling of being overwhelmed (there were still a lot of email to deal with), it definitely helped to regain a sense of control and order.

How do you handle overwhelming situations?

Mozilla has made beta 2 of Firefox 3.6 available. If you are already running beta 1, you can use Help->Check for Updates to get the latest version.

Running the release through the Sunspider JavaScript performance benchmarks shows that performance is virtually unchanged from beta 1, but according to Mozilla, this version fixes around 190 bugs so it is definitely worth downloading (although I have to say that I have been running beta 1 on both Windows and Mac machines for a week or so and have had no issues so far).

Are you running Firefox 3.6? Let us know what you think of it below.

I work with a number of nonprofit organizations and associations. A common theme among them is their reliance on fundraising efforts to gather money for their projects.

While some groups may use a content management platform like Wild Apricot (which includes built-in features to help with donation management) for many groups such tools are unavailable or insufficient.

Minds on Design Lab has taken its experiences working with fundraising groups to develop Giving Impact, a web-based service that allows groups to create and track fundraising campaigns, and then take them viral with social media integration.

Campaigns are created and managed on the Giving Impact web site. A branded and customizable widget is created which can then be placed and integrated with just about any site.

Donation transactions are handled end-to-end by Giving Impact, with payments processed through PayPal. Confirmation screens allow donors to share their contributions via Facebook, spreading the word about the project and encouraging others to also contribute.

Giving Impact is an attractive option for groups who are looking to easily integrate their fundraising projects into their web site. The tools are thoughtfully created, and the tracking functionality allows you to easily stay up to date with the status of your campaign.

Giving Impact plans start at $30 per month with a 5 percent transaction charge, with other plans offering reduced transaction charges for higher monthly fees. I worry that the pricing may be a concern for smaller organizations, fearing that the bulk of their donations will be lost to fees, but hopefully the ease of use and availability of the donation widget will increase donations sufficiently to offset the costs. While the app is in its initial launch phase, the transaction charges are being waved until Jan. 1.

How does your group handle donations? Would Giving Impact help you?

I was very eager to get in on the Google Wave beta. So much so that I solicited invites from pretty much anyone who even mentioned it on Twitter for about two solid weeks. Eventually, my constant pestering paid off, and I was rewarded with an invite. After the standard delay period before my invite actually came through, I got to waving.

That was roughly a month ago. In the intervening time, I’ve been using Google Wave with a fair degree of consistency, although my time spent with the beta product from Google has dropped off significantly in recent days. I have a fair number of contacts, mostly professional, and it seems like the perfect tool for me, considering the nature of my work, which at the moment is exclusively based online.

So what did I do with Google Wave during the month I had access to it? The answer, sadly, is not much. Not much that I couldn’t already do better elsewhere, anyway. For whatever reason, I just can’t seem to surf the Wave.

All Muscle, No Finesse

I don’t deny that Google Wave is a powerful tool (for more information on just how powerful it is, see the report “Google Wave Explained” on our subscription research service, GigaOM Pro). Nor do I deny that it has the potential to become even more powerful in the future, when it receives wide release. The fact is, though, that it has much more power under the hood than I need at the moment, and it’s lacking ways to tame and redirect that power productively.

Google Wave is particularly confusing to users without a fair degree of tech savvy to begin with, and possibly not worth the ramp-up time required to get users new to the app on board. Of course, later on, if Google opens Wave up to developers, custom installs and simplified UIs might ease the transition, but I’m still not sure it can replace other apps tailored to specific tasks.

Google Wave is an Island

Despite some add-ons and menu bar notifiers I tried out to keep me on top of what was going on in Google Wave, I still found the service far too easy to ignore. I realize that it’s really in a sandbox stage, and probably not meant to be fully interacting with everything else, but for something that’s essentially a social service, it feels boxed and separate from my other tools.

Not only did I feel it was easy to ignore Wave, but I felt it was easy for others to ignore my Waving activity, too. As with any tool, adoption will vary during the launch phase, but I’d say that more than half of the users I tried waving with seemed to eventually tire of the effort and turn their attention elsewhere. Reaching these same people through more traditional means posed no problem, by contrast.

Gadgets, Gadgets Everywhere, But Not a Drop to Drink

Potentially, Gadgets integration seemed like one of Google Wave’s most potentially useful features. I say “seemed” because it ended up not really being the case, at least not yet, anyway. The Maps gadget is really the only one that I used with any kind of actual purpose. The others are all very nice proofs of concept, but beyond that, they bring little to the table in terms of actually helping me to get work done.

In fact, I think many of the gadgets currently available stand as distractions, clouding the true value of Google Wave for doing web work. That said, I’m also they type of person who never uses Mac’s Dashboard widgets, or a personalized Google homepage, or Windows gadgets.

Many More Waves to Catch

All I really want to convey is that Google Wave might not be the killer app many are making it out to be. It has promise, and it has a long way to go before it gets a public release — we’ll likely see a very different beast when that finally does happen. But as it stands, this particular web worker isn’t exactly enthralled with his Wave experience. That doesn’t mean I’m giving up on it though. It still has way too much geek cred to dismiss outright.

Have you managed to integrate Wave into your web work?

This week has been a bit of a challenge. I’ve been haggling with car dealerships over purchasing a new car. I’m sure I don’t need to explain how frustrating that process has been, but I will say that I’m surprised at the customer service lessons I’m getting out of the experience.

1. Don’t rush your customers. Pouncing on them as soon as they arrive is not enticing to customers and can come across as a bit desperate. Give them space to consider their purchase. Stay accessible, but don’t smother them.
2. Don’t hound your customers. Give them room after they leave to evaluate their options. A phone call or email a day is fine, but don’t go overboard (calling an hour after they leave the showroom is a bit excessive).
3. Don’t argue with your customers. You obviously have strong opinions for and against certain features relating to your product, but if your customers have opposing opinions, it’s best to disagree respectfully — and gently.
4. Don’t downgrade the competition. Berating your competitors won’t win you any points. By showing respect for the competition, you demonstrate a quiet confidence in your own product.
5. Listen to your customers. Are you paying attention to what your customers are saying? Are you listening to what’s important to them? Be fully present and listen to the needs, desires and frustrations that your customers are sharing. This is invaluable when it comes to fitting the right product with each person, and the ability to recall minor preferences is even more impressive.
6. Focus on your customer’s needs, not yours. This may be surprising, but the customer doesn’t care about your bottom line. They’re not worried about making this work so that you benefit. They don’t care about your timetable either. Instead of worrying about your needs, focus all your effort and attention on doing an exceptional job.
7. Don’t be condescending. Don’t patronize your customers. Consider the possibility that they may have actually done their homework and know what they’re talking about. Your customers understand that you have “inside” knowledge, but don’t talk down to them or be dismissive. It’s insulting, and that alone could cost you the sale.
8. Know what you’re talking about (and find the correct answers when you don’t). Here’s an example. I went into one dealership this week and had settled on colors for the interior and exterior. When I went to another dealership, they said that color combination wasn’t available. (Yes, it was. I had seen the car myself.) It turns out that the combo was available, but the person relaying the incorrect information knew that they’d have to get it from the company’s other dealership, which was an hour away. That’s three strikes. One of salesmen didn’t know the facts about his own vehicles and suggested that I didn’t know what I was talking about, and the other lied for the company’s benefit.
9. Don’t just say what you think customers want to hear. “What? You need a certain price? No problem. We can do that.” Yet when the customer shows up with checkbook in hand, that price no longer exists. Puffing and bluffing isn’t going to impress your customers, and if you’re only trying to appease them, eventually that will surface, leaving customers feeling very frustrated with you.
10. Shoot straight. If you can’t do something, you can’t do it. Period. Say so. Say what you mean. Mean what you say. Be direct and upfront and never skirt the truth.
11. Communicate clearly. Go over things slowly and carefully (and then go over them again). Be thorough and detailed with your responses to avoid misunderstandings.
12. Stay cool under pressure. When you’re dealing with other people’s money, there will inevitably be tension. Proceed with caution. Take breaks. Take a few breaths. Keep things in perspective and consider the other side. Do not, under any circumstance, lose your composure. Talking too quickly or loudly and seeming frustrated or agitated will only risk evoking the same response from customers.
13. Keep your promises. Call when you say you’re going to call. Have what you say you have. Do what you say you’re going to do.
14. Know what’s really going to impress customers. Take cars, for instance. Customers want the best in safety, and a good-looking car with low gas mileage is important, but what about reliability and how about some proof? Rather than going on and on about how super awesome your brand new cars are (they better be), show me one with 500k miles on it that’s still rolling. Paying $30k seems much more appealing when I can think about driving that car for twenty years.
15. Make things easy on your customers. In general, making a big purchase (buying a car, hiring a VA, etc.) can be a stressful experience, so find ways to make things as easy and painless as possible for customers.

I have not been impressed with three-fourths (or more) of the salespeople I’ve come across this week, and if things don’t get better quickly, I might be the customer who simply drives her car to 500k miles — that’s the final lesson. I actually had a salesman tell me that their goal is to wear customers down, until we eventually give up and give in. I will, but it won’t be the way they expect. I’ll go home and keep rolling in my faithful car, because they forget (or weren’t listening when I told them) that I work from home.

So, Lesson #16, don’t treat your customers as opponents to be beat. If you do, they’ll eventually think of you that way, too, and eventually move on to someone who’ll work with them instead of against them.

I’m amazed at the treatment I’ve received this week from car dealers, but it’s made me appreciate exceptional customer service even more. How do you ensure that your customers are impressed rather than appalled?

Image from Flickr by thebig429

One of my favorite and most often-used features in Microsoft Word is Track Changes. For the uninitiated, Track Changes lets the document creator see what changes an editor makes to an original document. Unfortunately, while PowerPoint has a Review tab, it is limited to adding comments — it has no Track Changes feature. So reviewers have to get creative in referencing the original content and then making note of suggested changes using comments.

Workshare Compare for PowerPoint gives you the ability to compare two PowerPoint files and see the differences between them. While it doesn’t track changes while you edit the PowerPoint file, like Word does, it does give you the ability to see the changes that have been made between versions of a presentation.

You can select which version of the slide (either original or modified) you wish to keep right inside Workshare, much like Word’s accept/reject feature. The interface clearly shows which is which, and outlines the changes in the detailed summary at the bottom. The easy-to-use interface takes no effort to figure out, so you can get right to work. I made a quick screencast to show you how it works:

The biggest drawback to Workshare is the cost of a license. (A 14-day free trial is available.) One license of Workshare Compare for PowerPoint retails for $199$145 per license per user for one year. If you don’t renew the license, the software stops working. (Note: There are two editions of Workshare Compare, one of which is for PowerPoint and the other for comparing PDF and Word documents.)

Personally, I don’t edit PowerPoint presentations enough to justify this cost on an annual basis, and I believe that many people will agree with me. Those who edit and share PowerPoint presentations on a regular basis and frequent presenters will benefit most from the application, but the subscription-based fee may be a barrier.

Have you tried Workshare Compare for PowerPoint? Do you think it is worth the cost?

Yesterday, I watched my Twitter stream transform into a spirited conversation, complete with hurt feelings, wounded pride, and genuine attempts to put forward logical and eloquent arguments. Online friendships were torn asunder, and strong new allegiances formed. The culprit was a deceptively simple question: What makes someone a social media expert?

The question seems to have arisen because a certain print and online publication hired someone to fill that particular role, and another party felt the chosen person’s follower count was insufficient for the task. Implying, you see, that someone’s Twitter follower count is an important (if not the sole) indicator of social media success, and therefore a strong contributor to achieving “expert” status in that particular field.

Many, many people took umbrage with said view, and responded essentially that quality, not quantity, accounted for true “expert” abilities in social media. More specifically, many pointed to the quality of interaction, which defines the “social” aspect. As such, people like celebrities — who might have high follower counts but primarily broadcast more than they engage in back-and-forth conversations — don’t really count as social media experts.

So what is it that makes a true expert? It’s a question that is no doubt on the minds of hiring managers everywhere as social media becomes more and more important to the everyday business of all kinds of companies. Without established metrics (despite some great ways to measure ROI) and hiring criteria to fall back on, what should HR departments and individuals looking to hire or contract social media experts be looking for? Should Twitter be considered first and foremost among social networks when weighing expertise? What should we validate social media expertise with, and what should we maybe not put so much stock in?

Add your comment on this debate below.

Twitter lists are a great way to group people into various categories, filter conversations, keep up with experts within a specific field and track a topic without needing to follow all of the relevant users — and can even be used as an RSS reader replacement. Despite being such a new feature, people are already using lists as a measure of influence.

I’ve spent the last few years working with online communities and collaboration technologies, and have come to expect to be able to collaborate with people when using online social tools. As a result, I wish that Twitter lists were more collaborative. Right now, Twitter lists and accounts have a one-to-one relationship. I create a list, and I’m the only person who can edit it. I started thinking about this limitation when Rael Dornfest created his Portland Food Cart list. I’m a huge fan of the Portland food cart scene, so I decided to follow his list instead of creating yet another one. The downside was that as there were some food carts missing from his list, I needed to send @replies to Rael to get him to add them — I couldn’t just add them myself.

The collaboration features that I propose would allow the owner of each list to open them up to allow collaboration/editing from other people. The list owner could always make tweaks, revert changes and have the final say on changes made by other users.

My wish list for Twitter lists includes:

• Open lists: These lists would be open for anyone to edit, and would be a great way for people to add themselves to, say, a conference attendee list or to collaborate on lists of industry experts. To cut down on spam edits, moderation features would be a nice addition.
• Lists open to the people I follow: Anyone that I follow could contribute to my list. This is probably the option that I would use most often. Since I only follow people that I already know, this would be a great way to collaborate while automatically reducing the amount of spam entries added to a list.
• Specific people can edit a list: In the case of the food cart list, Rael could open it up to a few specific people who are passionate about the Portland food cart culture and have those people help him maintain it.
• Copying/cloning: This would be similar to how Yahoo Pipes lets you clone another user’s pipe as a starting point for something that you’ll repurpose for your needs. If someone has the start of a great list, but with a few things that I don’t like, I’d want to be able to copy it and add or delete people from it as necessary.

I’ve focused my wish list around community and collaboration features. What’s on your wish list for Twitter lists?

“If I’m going to feel lousy, I may as well go into the office and get some work done.”

“I’ve got so much to do; I can’t afford not to go in.”

“It’s just a little cough.”

At one time or another, probably all of us have uttered these sentences in defense of dragging our sneezing, wheezing, coughing, flu- and cold-ridden selves out of our sickbeds and into the office.

Equally true, we’ve all heard the phrase, “I’m not that sick,” uttered from a co-worker or client’s lips — only to find ourselves down and out for a week with their illness a few days later. Going to work when sick has become such a growing trend that it’s earned its own moniker — presenteeism.

Wikipedia defines presenteeism as “the opposite of absenteeism. In contrast to absenteeism, when employees are absent from work, presenteeism discusses the problems faced when employees come to work in spite of illness, which can have similar negative repercussions on business performance.”

Of course, many web workers don’t actually head into an office, so don’t need to worry about infecting co-workers. But working while ill can have other repercussions, too. An October 2004 Harvard Business Review article titled “Presenteeism: At Work — But Out of It”, highlighted a study commissioned by Lockheed Martin to assess the impact of 28 medical conditions (including migraines, asthma and the flu) on workers’ productivity.

Researchers from Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston found that even employees with less severe conditions had impaired on-the-job performance and that, in total, employees who came to work with these 28 conditions cost the company approximately $34 million a year.

So if coming to work when sick is bad for the patient’s health, and equally as detrimental to the business’s bottom line, why do we continue to do it?

According to the findings of the Unscheduled Absence Survey by CCH, a part of Wolters Kluwer Law & Business, 66 percent of those surveyed said that having too much work and fear of missing deadlines were the most common reasons they came to work when sick. Another 56 percent cited lack of anyone to cover their workload as the reason, and 36 percent are showing up out of company loyalty.

And while a strong work ethic and company loyalty are to be admired, they may not be reason enough to leave the house when you’re sick. This flu season has not only begun with a wallop, but on June 11, 2009, the World Health Organization declared that a global pandemic of H1N1 flu is underway. With all these nasty beasties floating about, but a pressure to be productive lurking, it’s hard to know what to do, when to stay home and when you’re clear to go out.

Of course, good old-fashioned common sense (and mom’s advice) dictates for most of us how to handle the situation: Wash our hands, cover our mouths, don’t go to work with a fever etc. But hey, why take my, or mom’s, word for it? According to the CDC web site flu.gov, here’re their recommendations for keeping the cruddy stuff from spreading.

• Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it.
• Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze. Alcohol-based hand cleaners are also effective.
• Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs spread this way.
• Follow public health advice regarding school closures, avoiding crowds and other social distancing measures.
• If you must have close contact with a sick person (for example, hold a sick infant), try to wear a facemask or N95 disposable respirator.

As for the time required to be away from your fellow citizens, flu.gov says stay home if you are sick until at least 24 hours after you no longer have a fever (100°F or 37.8°C) or signs of a fever, without the use of a fever-reducing medicine. For more details, check out http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/guidance/exclusion.htm.

Oh, and just in case you’re wondering, I’m writing this column on my laptop from the comfort of my bed, which I have been confined to for the past four days since coming down with a whopper of a cold I picked up at a play. I guess all the hand washing in the world couldn’t make up for the guy in the row behind me hacking away at the back of my head all night.

Do you suffer from presenteesim,  and struggle to work even when you’re ill?

As Google is issuing Wave invites in a steady trickle, those fortunate enough to have an account are trying to figure out how this new tool might fit into their workflow and help them better communicate and collaborate with their teams and clients.

While the small number of people who actually have an account right now is probably going to be the first hurdle for many teams who would like to try it out on a live project, I count myself among the lucky ones who got a Google Wave invite early and spread my nominations amongst some colleagues and clients.

One of my clients to whom I sent a nomination wanted to try it out on our current project, so I thought I would share some of the early lessons we learned and some tips from my initial dip into using Google Wave for a real client project.

1. Set suitable expectations. Despite the months of buzz, and blogosphere- and Twitterverse-wide clamoring for Google Wave invites, the product is still in preview and has some rough edges. Therefore, it does all parties good to be realistic, even if everybody is psyched to be the first kid on their block to use it on a live project. If your experience is anything like mine, you’ll also encounter bouts of slowness, messages to refresh Google Wave, and perhaps even the random browser crash. Your project team’s level of tolerance for such things might vary.
2. Do a dry run with a Wave. The Wave concept is definitely a new model for many. It took me an impromptu “dry run” with my client for us to truly grasp the Wave concept and see how it could shape our online collaboration. For example, I could see how Wave could be used to keep all project information and communications online and out of our already cluttered inboxes, and it was great to able to see my client paste text as well as type into a Wave in real-time.
3. Take control of your Waves. It’s easy to get a little excited and end up creating Waves for all sorts of things, but you need to take control of the conversation in Google Wave, instead of letting Google Wave take charge of your conversations. For my project, we decided on one Wave per project document, for the sake of organization.
4. Use folders and tags. While the Inbox Zero and GTD crowd have yet to full plant their stakes in Google Wave, I must say that the use of folders and tags is prudent, especially because while the Wave platform breaks so much new ground, but folders and tags are concepts are familiar to many. I ended up creating a project-specific folder for all the Waves associated with the client project. My use of tags also came further into play as a tool to fine-tune my own organization. A simple tip is to remember you can resize the navigation pane to accommodate your folder list as it grows. By default, your folder list may not fully appear in the navigation pane.
5. Consider whether to use live editing or attachments. Google Wave melds email and word processing together. Thus, it is important to decide whether you want to collaborate on documents directly in Google Wave or via file attachments. Unfortunately, at this time Google Wave lacks version control for file attachments (thus putting the feature at the top of my wish list for a Google Wave extension). My client and I decided to work with file attachments for the project documents and write directly in Google Wave for direct communications with each other.
6. Have a Plan B. It’s cool to get jazzed as an early adopter, but if Google Wave isn’t enhancing productivity and communications, be sure that you have a fall back plan in case it end up causing more problems than it is worth.

While my initial entry into Google Wave on a real client project was really just scratching the surface of this new collaboration platform, I do see a lot of potential. However, with its rough edges, it may not be the collaboration platform for everyone just yet. Personally, I am looking towards more Google Wave extensions and gadgets going live, because my initial experience tells me that they are going to be key providers of critical functionality and user experience.

If you’re looking for more info on Wave, check out the report “Google Wave Explained” over on our subscription research service, GigaOM Pro.

Have you tried using Google Wave on any of your current projects? Share your experience below.

The folks at Ribbit Mobile are offering 100 invitations to WebWorkerDaily readers for the beta of their new communication service. Just sign up on the reservations page, and enter the invite code “wwd09″ in the appropriate box.

Ribbit Mobile has more features than Google Voice, and reminds me a bit of VoxOx, which I wrote about a few days ago. This service looks very promising, but, like VoxOx, it isn’t finished yet. I’ve been unable to test it fully, because it doesn’t yet support Sprint cellphones. I also can’t get my contact list to import, either from a CSV file or through Plaxo (the only options Ribbit Mobile supports). I hope to post a fuller review soon.

Try it out, and let us know how Ribbit Mobile works for you.

There are times when things are so hectic that 9 am becomes 5 pm, Monday becomes Friday, and the first day of the month becomes the last before you can even turn around.

The days and weeks run together, and everything seems to be moving at lightening speed. Even though the impulse is to run as fast as you can to keep up, sometimes the best thing you can do is stop, see where you are, and adjust the course of a runaway train.

As a small business owner, it’s possible to have several projects going on at any given point, and unfortunately, there are many occasions where the one that makes the most noise and fuss is the one that gets the majority of available attention. Time goes by, and the most important things get pushed aside for the most desperate.

Getting it all back under control is actually pretty simple. It’s done with a weekly review.

Step 1: Stop

Pressing forward aimlessly just because there’s so much to be done can actually be counter-productive. Taking time to gain big-picture perspective and then purposefully resuming work can help you get more done in less time. Although it can be tempting to simply start fighting the next fire in your path, stop doing everything and commit to getting a better hold on your load.

Step 2: See Where You Are

You can’t evaluate and prioritize without knowing what’s on the radar, so you need to lay it all on the table for sorting. Go through your email, notes, open projects, and someday-maybe list to see what exactly has to be done. Next, make a list of what’s important to you. What is it that you want to do? What do you want to accomplish?

Be realistic about what’s on your plate. Assign deadlines to every project and decide what’s doable and what should be eliminated or delegated. Simply removing some tasks and projects from your to-do list can bring clarity around what’s left to be done.

Step 3: Re-balance Your Load

Now that you know what projects are left to be completed, figure out how to balance the load. Hire a VA to help with menial tasks or things that take you away from your core responsibilities and projects. Batch your work so that you reduce the times you have to switch gears throughout the day or week. Find tools and systems to streamline your work and make you more productive. One example, I do a lot of interviews for the Upstart Smart blog and podcast. Coordinating schedules is very cumbersome and requires a lot of concentration and care to avoid double-booking and overextending myself. By simply using TimeDriver, I’m able to set my availability once and then interviewees can pick the times that work best for their schedules, saving me tons of time and frustration. That one quick adjustment has made my life so much easier.

Step 4: Set Up a Schedule

Block out set times that you’ll devote to the big rocks you need to move each day. Create uninterrupted windows where you can give 100 percent of your attention to making progress on each project. This doesn’t have to be a lifetime commitment. You’re simply deciding how you’ll spend your time for the coming week. You’re intentionally laying out a plan that will help you move things forward. If things mess up or don’t work perfectly, you can adjust the schedule and course again next week.

Step 5: Abide by the Schedule

A plan does you no good if you don’t look at it on a regular basis. Your schedule should stay open every minute of your day so that you refer to it often. If you think you’ll get sidetracked by email or surfing the Internet, be realistic about it. Put that in your schedule, too. Set aside dedicated blocks of time for email or simply checking your RSS feeds. That way, you’ll know that you have time for that coming up, too, but that right now, your focus is on the project at hand.

Step 6: Rinse and Repeat

Each week, set aside dedicated time to evaluate where you are and where you’re going. Figure out your most important projects and tasks for the coming week and hold them in your mind. By clearly identifying them, you can quickly check in with yourself and see if you’re focusing on the right things and moving your business in the direction you want it to go.

How do you ensure that you make progress in your business? What tools and tricks do you use to keep a runaway train on track?

Image from Flickr by by doug88888

Today marks the start of the fifth birthday celebration of my favorite browser, Mozilla Firefox. I don’t know about you, but I’m having trouble getting my head around the fact that it’s 5 years old — that makes me feel a little old myself!

In 2004, when Firefox 1.0 was launched, the first browser wars were all but over. Microsoft (msft) had beaten Netscape, Internet Explorer was — by far — the dominant browser, and those of us who actually cared about things like web standards were looking on in despair.

That changed when Firefox came along, showing the world that it was possible to produce a lightweight, fast, extensible and secure standards-compliant standalone browser. In those five years, it has grown from being a scrappy open-source upstart the geeks use to the second-most popular browser in use, taking about a quarter of the market, according to Net Applications (and on more technical sites like this one, Firefox is by far the most popular browser). Firefox’s rapid growth was helped in part by grassroots promotional efforts like the Spread Firefox campaign, but primarily thanks to Microsoft’s glacial rate of development of IE and its glaring security holes. Without the competitive pressure of Firefox, Microsoft might not have seriously developed IE beyond IE 7, and without browser development and innovation, some of the great web apps that we rely on today might not have been possible. Firefox’s own development continues apace, as the second browser wars — between Google and Mozilla this time — really start to heat up. Version 3.6 of the browser, which is currently available in beta (and works very well, I might add), should be released in December.

So, join me in raising a glass (or latte/tea cup) to Mozilla, the Firefox team, and everyone who has contributed to Firefox and its extension ecosystem over the years — it is a great product that many of us are truly thankful for.

Add your Firefox birthday wishes below.