Last month, I made the switch to Google Quick Search Box from Quicksilver on my Mac. While Quicksilver improved my efficiency and cut the time I spent searching for files, Google Quick Search Box has upped the ante even further by adding in the ability to speedily access all my Google services through the same interface. I’m very impressed with it.

Google Quick Search Box is available as a free download for OS X. On the surface, it seems fairly simple. Just like with Quicksilver, you hit a keyboard shortcut and up pops a box where you can run a search. You can access applications and files from there, too. But Google Quick Search Box also has some additional capabilities:

• Find contacts within your address book
• Complete calculations
• Open your bookmarks in new browser tabs
• Look up dictionary definitions
• Launch songs in iTunes
• Launch files saved in your Google Docs account
• Perform a Google search

That’s not an exhaustive list, and you can even add features, like the ability to send messages to Twitter.

You can also perform a variety of actions on any file you find through Google Quick Search Box. With a couple of clicks, you can access information about the file, move it to the trash, and even open files in larger type. There are also a number of application-specific actions you can take, like ranking a song in iTunes or composing a new email to a contact.

It may seem like the wide variety of tasks that Google Quick Search Box can handle could be overwhelming when you sit down and use it, but it’s very adaptable. As you use it, it learns which files you’re most likely to launch, speeding up the process.

If you’ve used Google Desktop in the past, you’ll be familiar with the concept behind the Quick Search Box — but there are some important differences between Google Desktop and the standalone launcher: the ability to perform actions on your search results and access to calculations and definitions are unique to Google Quick Search Box. The Quick Search Box can also be extended with plugins, and the code is available on Google Code if you want to make changes of your own. Google Desktop does offer one advantage over the Quick Search Box: the ability to search cached and deleted files.

Google Quick Search Box makes it possible for you to significantly speed up your work. Even if you operate more in the cloud than on your desktop, you can access the applications and files you need to work on quickly. The features of Google’s launch application set it far ahead of applications I’ve used in the past.

What are your favorite ways to use Google Quick Search Box?

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We’re living in a social media world, and, like it or not, our avatar is often the first impression others get about us as we interact virtually on social networks, blogs, microblogs and other online communities. Our avatars are a representation of our brands — our personal brand or our company’s or organization’s brand. But how many of us are thinking strategically about our avatars?

Here are six tip for better branding using avatars.

1. Define your brand. Anyone familiar with Branding 101 knows how to think through the attributes of a brand. Simply put, you need to ask yourself which words best describe who you are and what you’d like to project to others. When I was working with my business partner to think about the brand for our new company, we came up with “professional, creative, playful, approachable.” For my own personal brand, I might pick “helpful, honest, sensible, snarky.”

2. Identify your assets. Once you’ve established clear brand attributes, you need to go through the images you have or are considering using for your avatar and pick those that most clearly represent those attributes. Without question, using a photograph of yourself will always establish more trust than using any other image, particularly any non-human image.

A cartoon image of yourself can be a good second choice if the nature of the illustration is in keeping with your brand attributes. You could use a site such as Meez, DoppelMe or Yahoo Avatars to create a cartoon likeness. You might use your Second Life avatars to represent yourself on your profile, particularly if you’re involved with the virtual world in your work.

Your company logo could stand in for your own image. However, that may create different expectations from others if they think they’re hearing from the “company” instead of you.

Any other image that you pick could potentially cause confusion or give the wrong impression. Not everyone gets the inside joke between you and your friends when you put a photo of a hot dog on your profile. If you are thinking about the importance of the image you project, you need to make your avatar choice very carefully.

3. Optimize your images. If you are using a photograph, you can use a free online editing tool such as Picnik, PiZap or FotoFlexer to touch it up or add interesting effects.

Beware of “overproduced” photographs that misrepresent what you actually look like. They may not affect trust now, but could once someone meets you in person.

4. Be ever-present. Don’t get lazy and fail to add an image to your profile. In fact, make sure any time you set up a new social media account that you have an avatar ready to upload immediately, while you fill in the basic details of your profile. Wherever there is the opportunity to extend your brand with an image, upload that image.

A profile without a personalized avatar can send the wrong signals to others. When I’m contacted by someone who uses a generic avatar, I feel a mixture of:

• Suspicion. If I don’t know the person, I want to be able to see what they look like and so I wonder what they’re trying to hide.
• Skepticism. If they don’t take the time to add their image, I wonder how seriously they’re taking social media as a communications tool, particularly if they’re contacting me for professional reasons.
• Doubt. I think that if someone can’t even figure out how to add a basic image to their profile, they might lack basic skills, which doesn’t bode well if they’re approaching me for a job.
• Frustration. In this world of virtual contacts and less likelihood of a face-to-face meeting, I rely on profile images to provide a sense of connection that’s lacking from purely textual encounters.

Don’t forget that avatars aren’t just for social media profiles. They’re also available on many blog publishing tools so your image appears with your blog comments. You can also create a universal avatar via Gravatar (Globally Recognized Avatar) and attach a consistent image to many of your interactions on blogs and social media sites.

5. Mix it up. While on the one hand you want to be consistent with your personal brand and thus your avatar, that doesn’t mean you have to use the same image across all sites. Nor does it mean you can’t switch out your image periodically to keep things fresh. The consistency comes from staying “on message” with your avatar choices.

Pick an avatar that is appropriate for each site — in many cases you could use the same image, but think before you upload. And when you’re ready for a change, pull from a pool of images you’ve already reviewed and optimized.

6. Politicize with care. Who knew that simply making your avatar green could be a powerful and controversial political statement? Many people will modify their avatars to show their support for or against the cause of the moment. Managing your brand also means taking care to decide which political or social movements you’ll be backing with your personal branding images.

Changing your avatar to green can be the virtual equivalent of wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with a political slogan, or even attending a rally or protest. But while it may be a physically “safe” way to broadcast your personal and political opinions, it could affect your personal brand in detrimental ways. What if a client or potential employer doesn’t share your views and sees that you’ve been supporting a cause they are vehemently against?

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have the courage to speak out for what you believe in, but understand the deeper impact to other aspects of your virtual life and work when you choose to use your brand avatar as a soapbox.

How are you building and managing your personal brand through your avatar?

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Online organizer and notepad tool springpad is one of those apps that has impressed me from the start. I love the ready-made springpads and the ability to clip items in to my notebooks as I move about the web, but the recent introduction of mobile access makes the service eminently more useful. The ability to view and modify my data from any web-enabled device makes those shopping and other lists available without the need to print them out before my trip.

Once you have your account set up, visit my.springpadit.com to view the pages from your mobile device. The mobile site isn’t as feature-rich as the main site but it’s quite usable for quick access to your springpads while on the go.

I did receive error messages about lack of support for Opera Mobile, which I hope they will address soon. The minimalist pages I was directed to using that browser pale in comparison to the full mobile app that displays with Pocket IE on my Windows Mobile.

With an eye to being a “whole life” organizer, springpad has always been more than just a productivity app. The addition of mobile access goes a long way to making it much more ubiquitous, and thus much more useful.

How do you use your mobile springpads?

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nim·ble : quick and light in motion; marked by quick, alert, clever conception, comprehension, or resourcefulness.

Being a web worker has its advantages, and one of the biggest is that you can build a very adaptable and nimble business. Here are a few of the ways we stay flexible.

Web workers hear about developments and opportunities immediately.

The good thing about working online all day is that you have access to information as soon as it becomes available, making it easy to keep a finger on your competitors’ and customers’ pulses and adjust your services and business offerings accordingly.

Tip: To make your business a bit more nimble when it comes to staying in the loop, participate in social-networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Your competitors, clients and potential customers are there posting updates and issues they’re facing 24/7.

Web workers can jump on opportunities quickly.

Even better than just hearing about opportunities, web workers are in the unique position to take advantage of them quickly, amazing customers with their service, even before a working relationship begins.

Tip: eLance and other job posting sites are perfect places to find out about new business opportunities. As soon as customers submit their needs, you can be there to respond and provide a solution. The same is true of sites like Twitter. Using the service’s search functionality, as well as Twitter applications like TweetDeck, you can immediately see when someone is looking for your type of service or expertise and be the first in line with assistance.

Web workers can quickly adapt.

The landscape of the web is constantly changing. Businesses, applications and sites that exist today may not be around three months from now. Fortunately for the “in-the-know, always-connected” web worker, it’s relatively easy to adjust course and compensate for the changes in scenery.

If a favorite web app is no longer available, a quick Twitter query or Google search for an alternative is only a few key strokes away.

Tip: To stay agile in the ever-changing web world, be sure to always backup your files, keep your computers and applications synced, and stay knowledgeable of alternatives for all of your commonly used web applications.

If you take advantage of the tools and resources available to you online, it’s easy to build an adaptable web-based business, one that can even get a jump on the competition.

How do you keep your business agile and quick to adapt? Share your tips and experiences of the nimble web business.

Definition from Merriam-Webster
Image from Flickr by Ana Patricia Almeida

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Twenty-six letters aren’t enough for many of the projects I work on. I need accented letters, symbols and all the characters that make up a full character set. I also need a way to easily use those characters that don’t appear on my keyboard. Not all software apps come with built-in glyph tools and, if you routinely switch back and forth between different programs, a built-in tool may not be enough. Whether you’re typing up a technical document or laying out an ad, having a character selection tool that beats the standard Character Map can help you get the right glyph every time.

Character Tools on Mac

There are a surprising number of character management widgets for Macs. Personally, I use Symbol Caddy — it’s a Dashboard widget that allows you to copy symbols from the widget into whatever app you’re using. It also offers an HTML mode, which provides you the HTML entity code for the character. It’s particularly easy to use, with characters organized into specific groups.

The fact that Symbol Caddy is located on the Dashboard makes it easy to quickly access and then switch back to the program I’m working in. It significantly speeds up my work because I don’t have to launch a separate program or hunt around for where Character Map might have hid a particular symbol.

An alternative that also operates through the Dashboard is CharacterPal, which provides shortcuts for individual characters as you mouse over them. CharacterPal offers a few more tools than Symbol Caddy, including the ability to view special characters in different fonts before copying them as well as the ability to choose between a variety of different keyboard layouts. There are also other character management tools available for Macs, including both stand-alone applications and other Dashboard options.

Character Tools on Windows

While the various versions of Windows come with Character Map, there have been some efforts to improve on that particular tool. GlyphThis is one alternative, offering features like the ability to change grid dimensions as well as improved capabilities for including symbols and characters from Wingdings and other glyph fonts without having to constantly switch back and forth between fonts. GlyphThis is the work of one person, Matthew Fowler, but he’s been very good about updating the program as needed.

The alternatives beyond GlyphThis for PCs are relatively limited. The updates made to Character Map in recent versions of Windows does make it a more useful tool than previous versions. Depending on how heavily you use special characters — and how willing you are to memorize a long list of keyboard shortcuts — you can make Character Map work for you if need be. Additionally, many font management applications can provide you with a way to look through individual characters. A few options include Suitcase and MasterJuggler; prices can vary significantly.

What tools do you use for accessing special characters?

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Personal branding, whether you like the term or not, is something every web worker should consider. Don’t look at it as marketing or packaging yourself, but more as being true to yourself. Micheal Port’s book, “Book Yourself Solid” makes that distinction very well, while the Food Network demonstrates exactly how to make it work for you and your business.

Michael Port’s concept of personal branding starts with his belief that, “When you work with clients you love, you’ll truly enjoy the work you’re doing; you’ll love every minute of it. And when you love every minute of the work you do, you’ll do your best work, which is essential to [booking] yourself solid. Second, because you are your clients; they are an expression and an extension of you.”

The cornerstone of his philosophy is that “the greatest strategy for personal and business development on the planet is bold self-expression,” and many successful personal brands have used this very strategy to rise to the top.

The Food Network is filled with great examples of personal branding success stories using the “bold self-expression” strategy, and while the brands are very unique, they all attract their individual audiences by being exactly one thing — themselves.

Take three of the popular Food Network personal brands: Rachel Ray, Paula Deen and Emeril Lagasse. They each have individual flare and have used that individuality to create tremendous personal success.

It doesn’t matter if you like their individual personalities. In fact, the people who dislike them are probably as relevant to their branding efforts as their loyal fans. They boldly demonstrate who they are, like it or not, and that’s exactly what makes them successful.

As Michael Port says in his book, “In order to create a respected personal brand, you must be fully self-expressed. You can’t hide behind the shingle that you’ve hung over your door and you can’t water yourself down in any way, shape, or form.” That’s an important quality of the personalities at the Food Network; none of them are watered down. They’re bold, they’re in your face, and they’re successful.

But how do you mimic their efforts and create your own successful personal brand? That’s the easy part. Figure out who you are and who you aspire to be. Then figure out the conditions that must be met in order to always be representing that brand. Only work with clients who meet those conditions and are best suited to work with you. Never water yourself down. Never live outside of integrity. Be true to yourself — always. It’s the surest way to guarantee that you only work with ideal clients, meaning better service, better results, greater client satisfaction, and in the long run, a truly successful business.

How do you make sure that you only work with the most ideal clients for you? What methods do you use for interviewing and screening clients before taking on their work or projects?

Images from the respective web sites of Michael Port, Paula Deen, Rachel Ray, and Emeril Lagasse.

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As a web worker, I’m always looking for interesting ways to market my products and services. I was impressed by a recent Twitter promotion here in Seattle. It was simple, effective, and cost almost nothing.

Sound Transit, the agency that is building Seattle’s new light-rail system, is gearing up for the opening of the first line in a few days. It’s getting a lot of press coverage, but the marketing efforts are being supplemented with a special Twitter promotion.

Last Thursday, a hint was posted on the Sound Transit Twitter account:

I’m going have something pretty cool to announce this Monday! You’re gonna like it. Light Rail Fans Please Retweet!

Of course, people did retweet, and the news was picked up by the Seattle Transit Blog, which posted the rumor that there was going to be a ticket giveaway for the inaugural journey:

Ribbon cutting should be at Mount Baker Station at 10 am, and the inaugural ride should start there, for those who have tickets. Rumor has it that a giveaway might be what’s going on @ST_TravelLight on twitter. That’s also who you want to follow for opening day news.

Sure enough, on Monday, Sound Transit twittered:

Get a Link Inaugural Ride Ticket! Be @ Union Station (401 S Jackson St) Tomorrow 10 a.m. – 1 p.m. The 1st 100 people there will get tickets.

I was at Sound Transit headquarters in Union Station at the appointed hour. In the lobby was a line of about 25 people, with more trickling in. I got my ticket and left, but as the morning wore on, Sound Transit updated the Twitter account with the number of tickets remaining; they were all gone within a couple of hours.

This really was a brilliant promotion — simple, easy to implement, and cheap. Total resources needed: someone updating the Twitter feed, a couple of people handing out tickets at a table in the lobby, and some signs reading “Twitter Promotion” on the door. The tickets and accompanying informational materials had already been printed.

Yes, Sound Transit could have used other media (or even its own web site!) to get the word out. But by using Twitter, Sound Transit knew exactly how many people would get the notices (743), and so had a good idea of how many tickets were needed. So the line was manageable, and crowd control was not an issue. Beyond that, Sound Transit also knew that its Twitter followers are train and transit geeks. It couldn’t have asked for a better-targeted audience: one that’s very likely to say positive things about the new light-rail system.

I know that I will recommend similar promotions to my clients, and to some of the community organizations with which I work, in the future. And I’ll see you on the train on Saturday!

Have you used Twitter and other social media for small, informal promotions? How well have they worked for you?

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Congratulations to Chris Paytas, the winner of our Virgin Mobile Boradband2Go contest. Here’s Chris’ winning story:

As a youth pastor I’ve been to some pretty exotic (read: end of the earth) places. In the summer of 2006, while on a mission trip to a small village called La Cieba in Honduras, one of our students had a grand mal seizure. While we were fortunate that we were staying with a doctor, news still needed to get home to his parents about the incident. Not having phone service and with the nearest working phone an hour-plus drive away, we opted to use the sometimes-on-a-clear-day satellite Internet service. Having tried for several hours to send an email, only to have the Internet crash every time, we decided to take matters into our own hands. We climbed the building to get to the satellite dish and adjust its position. Not knowing the best spot for positioning we had to holler down to verify the signal strength every time. Realizing that trees were blocking the best positions, we grabbed a chainsaw and haphazardly cut away a clear path. We finally were able to get a decent enough signal when I climbed the remainder of the tree and held the dish over my head to send the email.

The student was fine. I have a more lasting memory, however: a four-inch scar on my leg from where I cut myself climbing the building.

Thanks to everyone who entered — I enjoyed reading all of your stories about the crazy things you’ve done to get Internet access!

What crazy things have you done to get Internet access?

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Recently, I’ve been thinking about personal branding and finding myself disagreeing with the idea that it’s something with which we should all be concerned.

While I was reviewing “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Personal Branding,” I read this quote in a section detailing the personal brand extensions achieved by Madonna:

“And then in 2008, when she was turning 50 and her career was perhaps waning, she thrust herself back into the headlines by having what was described as an “affair of the heart” with baseball superstar Alex Rodriquez, about 20 years her junior, which lead to both of their divorces.”

The implication that a person would have an affair and divorce in order to relaunch a waning career embodies most of the reasons why I can’t think of personal branding as a priority.

Don’t get me wrong: I agree that as human beings, we’re naturally concerned with the way others see us, particularly in a professional sense, as those perceptions affect our ability to earn an income while doing something we love. But there’s a line between self-awareness and commoditizing ourselves in order to achieve “success.” I think the difference between the two is probably self-respect.

What is a Brand?

A brand is a concept that’s developed to simply and clearly communicate a product’s benefits to a target market. Today’s generally held wisdom advocates that everyone should be actively working on building their personal brand.

This premise assumes that everyone’s competing in a cluttered market where prospects have little time. So we need to be known not by a complex set of attributes — versatility, dedication, the ability to turn jobs around quickly and on budget, knowledge, expertise or talent — but by a unique selling proposition. Some personal branding pundits indicate that we should distill ourselves into a few sentences that clearly identify our point of differentiation and brand values. This is so that should we meet a prospect while networking, we can deliver a killer description of ourselves that resonates with them and causes us to be “top of mind” when they next need a person with our capabilities.

What is Success?

I disagree with this view, because I see the distillation of myself into a few key sentences as a kind of commoditization. While I appreciate that it’s good to be clear about your capabilities, skills and experience when you’re pitching for work, I see straight-up branding — presenting myself as embodying a few crucial brand values formulated to resonate with a prospect — as a denial of the complexities that peoples’ personalities naturally entail. The kinds of complexities that make people, and life, enjoyable. To me, denying or ignoring those complexities is also something of a dishonesty, or at least a disservice, to both myself and my client.

For me, success is doing something enjoyable with people I enjoy being with. I want to know more than their elevator pitch — I want to understand their complexities and paradoxes, and I want them to respect mine. My most successful client relationships have entailed a similar level of honesty on the client’s part.

I see success as being appreciated for who I am and what I can do, so I balk at the idea of avoiding saying or doing certain things because they might erode the integrity of my personal brand.

What Does Personal Branding Mean?

We’re not all Madonna, and not all of us take personal branding to the point that we’re willing to divorce our partners in order to relaunch ourselves into the public eye. That said, it’s fair to say personal branding can lead to certain kinds of behavior:

• broadcasting certain news about yourself in order to “generate interest” in your brand, or keep it “top of mind,” rather than because you’re excited about it and want to share that excitement with others
• having to reconcile with yourself over something you did and enjoyed, or something you want to do, that doesn’t fit with your personal brand
• maintaining certain contacts and avoiding others on the basis of whether or not they support or agree with your personal brand
• trying to make your private life entirely coherent with your professional persona
• seeing each day as an opportunity to build your personal brand, your friends as potential brand evangelists, your activities and relationships as tools by which you can either support or erode your brand
• trying to alter your personality or philosophy to make your personal brand more consistent

What’s the Alternative?

I’m not sold on the concept of personal branding — I prefer the less catchy idea of self-awareness. Instead of brand values, I think of basic human qualities like honesty and integrity, and being proactive. Instead of planning a personal brand extension, I like to ponder the question, “This is cool, but what will I do next?” and to follow my heart (rather than my brand strategy) in making a choice. I realize that this attitude may be seen as ignorant or homely or naive, but so far, for me, it’s created the kind of success I want.

Perhaps personal branding is just another name for self-awareness. What do you think?

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Yesterday, Simon noted that Elance’s Online Work Index, which analyzes the hot categories for jobs posted on its marketplace, shows PHP-related jobs holding the No. 1 spot in July (as has been true since February). This lines up with trends that we have been tracking on the OStatic blog, where open source and open source-related skills are becoming key differentiators for people seeking work in tech. Not only do such skills help those seeking work stand out from the crowd, but job opportunities related to open source are on the rise in many categories, even in this bad economy.

In a post over on OStatic, “Open Source Skills As a Job Seeker’s Key Differentiator,” I provided the following chart showing percentage growth data from Indeed.com for jobs related to various content management systems:

As you can see, the growth in demand for people skilled in open-source CMS platforms, in particular Drupal and Joomla, is huge. Part of the reason these particular platforms are ushering in more jobs for tech workers is that many publishers are switching to free, open-source content management systems from expensive proprietary ones. (In this post over at OStatic, I discussed that shift, and how the first major online publication in the UK is now running completely on Drupal.)

The fact that PHP is a hot ticket in the development world is just one of many more examples where open source skillsets can be very valuable in the tech work arena. In a column for ComputerworldUK, noted open source pundit Glyn Moody points out that Google’s recently announced Chrome OS could usher in many jobs in open source, especially for Linux-savvy folks who can support the new operating system. Moody also cites data showing that Linux-related job opportunities have fallen at a much slower rate than other types of tech jobs in the down economy.

What’s really going on here? Many people think of open source as a non-mainstream, highly technical and specialized field. That is rapidly changing, though. In fact, it has already changed. It used to be that many open source components were built by developers for other developers, and weren’t fully realized platforms with application ecosystems orbiting around them. Now, promising open-source platforms are flourishing, and bringing jobs with them.

Google has not one but two open-source operating systems: Android and Chrome OS. Apache remains hugely popular among web servers. Red Hat is a successful public company posting strong financial results with its business model of services and support for open-source software. Startups such as Cloudera and Eucalyptus Systems are emulating that model for other open-source software offerings. Firefox is taking away market share from Internet Explorer every month. The list goes on and on.

It’s always been a truism that being a specialist can help you stand out from other job seekers. Now, increasingly — and even in one of the most depressing job environments in recent history — open source skills represent a way for tech job hopefuls to seek out new opportunities.

Have open source skills helped you get a job?

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While we have covered the social media aspects of LinkedIn in the past, the service is now being extended with third-party applications. Right now, Box.net Files and Huddle WorkSpaces enable you to use LinkedIn as an online document collaboration platform. These free tools are light versions of more full-featured products, but should serve you just fine for one-off collaboration needs.

The potential of LinkedIn for document collaboration may sound hinky to some, but there are some real benefits, including:

• Secure access via the LinkedIn social network of contacts.
• No infrastructure or administrative costs.
• Access documents anywhere via the web, as long as you are a LinkedIn member.

However, there is a flip side, in that that there are basically two types of LinkedIn users — those who log in faithfully on a regular basis, and those who log in just often enough to respond to network invites, and otherwise spend little time on the site. Online document collaboration via LinkedIn is going to work best for organizations where LinkedIn is already part of the corporate culture. In other words, frequent LinkedIn users are going to be the best adopters of these applications.

Both of these applications are accessible from your LinkedIn profile, via the “Featured Applications” section.

Collaborating With Box.net Files

LinkedIn offers Box.net Files as an application you can add to your LinkedIn Profile offering the following:

• Posting files to your LinkedIn profile.
• Sharing files with your LinkedIn contacts.

You can view and edit files via your LinkedIn profile:

Collaborating With Huddle WorkSpaces

Huddle WorkSpaces is another LinkedIn application offering online document collaboration features, allowing users to work together with unlimited connections. It includes private online workspaces with 1GB of online storage space free. While this may not seem like a lot for document storage, it should more than accommodate your ad-hoc online collaboration needs.

It also includes an online discussion forum for the exchange of information and ideas.  The Huddle Workspace forum should be familiar to those who spend even a minimal amount of time in online discussion forums.

While Huddle WorkSpaces touts that there is no need for Microsoft Office or OpenOffice.org because you can create and edit documents online using the app, it’s probably better not to stray from your desktop apps when creating a document you are sharing online, because you’ll only suffer for it with incompatibility issues down the road.

You can also post comments and request approvals from your browser.

Online Collaboration with LinkedIn

If you’re on a budget, you can definitely find some good online collaboration options via LinkedIn, providing your group is comfortable with using it.

Have you tried LinkedIn’s online collaboration applications? What do you use them for?

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Market research you can use: Keep informed about Cloud Computing and IT Infrastructure. Learn more »

I got an exclusive sneak peek at the July edition of the Elance Online Work Index (a kind of Elance “Hot 100″), which will be published tomorrow. The index, which uses data from over 100,000 jobs posted on the site, is a monthly look at which job categories are the most popular in the freelance job marketplace.

PHP still holds the No. 1 spot (as it has since February), but what’s more interesting are the “movers and shakers” this month. In particular, jobs in the “Graphic Design” and “Adobe Flash” categories have leaped up the index this month to end up in second and third places overall (up ten and six spots from last month, respectively) — this is good news for designers. Another big mover is jobs in the “Joomla!” category (breaking into the top 10 by rising 10 places to eighth), suggesting that there’s increasing demand for people skilled in the open-source CMS.

It’s more of a mixed bag for writers: While “Copywriting” (up 11 places to 23rd), “Editing” (up 16 spots to 48th)  and “Proofreading” (up 15 spots to 44th) are all winners, “Article Writing” (down five places to 7th) and “Online Writing” (down 12 places to 29th) are dropping down the index.

While some of these categories sound too similar to take this index all that seriously (how different is “Online Writing” from “Web Content,” really?) and you should remember that this is taking into account only jobs posted on one site, it’s still worth noting as a snapshot of the current freelance marketplace.

Here’s the Elance Online Work Index Top 10 for July.

1. PHP (–)
2. Graphic Design (+10)
3. Adobe Flash (+6)
4. MySQL (-1)
5. HTML (-1)
6. Web Content (+1)
7. Article Writing (-5)
8. Joomla! (+10)
9. CSS (-4)
10. WordPress (-2)

(Disclaimer: WordPress is produced by Automattic, a company that is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True Partners.)

Designers: Are you noticing an increase in demand for your skills recently?

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Personal branding, as Pamela wrote earlier this week, is somewhat inescapable in the days of social media and working online. It really is just a fancy “Web 2.0″ term for being aware of, shaping and monitoring your online reputation. And for us web workers, whether we like it or not, our online reputations are often crucial to our abilities to do business and advance our careers.

The thing I personally wrestle with the most about my own personal branding is finding the balance between being transparent and yet protecting my professional reputation and marketability.

I believe wholeheartedly in being myself in social media. But could being myself hurt me? There is no way to make everyone happy when you discuss divisive topics like politics and religion. You inevitably are going to disagree with someone, and leave behind a negative impression of you in a space where there is no separation of your business and personal life. So I do self-censor when it comes to my online presence. Why invite the downside of expressing my views, when I don’t see an upside that outweighs it?

Here’s how I balance being real, and being marketable.

What I Share

I do share a lot of myself in social media, mostly via Twitter and Facebook. I talk about the tech in my life, of course. I post about my favorite TV shows. NASCAR commentary and Disney trips also show up often in my Twitter stream. I share the trials and tribulations (and joys) of life raising an autistic 6-year-old daughter. Above all else, anyone who follows my Twitter stream sees a good bit of my wry, sarcastic (and sometimes goofy) sense of humor.

What I Don’t Share

Despite all I share, there are some things I keep to myself. During the U.S. election last year, I never discussed party politics or revealed who I voted for. I also give religion a wide berth. I do have strong opinions on those topics, but there’s no need to discuss them through social media and risk offending someone. Another thing you won’t find in my online presence is obscenities. Although anyone who’s ever been a passenger while I was driving knows that I do swear, I keep it clean online. Since it is possible someone might be offended, I just err on the side of caution and stick to clean, non-offensive language.

So, what you get from me online is 100 percent me…but you don’t get 100 percent of me.

This may not be the right method for everyone. Some people may not need to be completely non-offensive. Being controversial can even be a personal brand.  It is something of a sliding spectrum. Depending on your career and your reasons for being online, your needs to censor your image may vary. It’s probably never smart to put up pictures of drunk partying on Facebook, but for people who are online for purely social reasons, talking about their political or religious beliefs may never cause them an issue other than maybe costing them a few online friends.

Whatever our online brand, all of us should be aware of the effect of anything that we put out there about ourselves, and consider the potential cost to our brand. Being transparent doesn’t necessarily have to mean letting it all hang out.

Where do you fall on the personal branding spectrum? Do you limit what you reveal online?

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I like Twitter, and I embrace it for both personal and private use. Until recently, though, I’ve been hesitant to take the next logical step and attend a tweetup, despite their popularity here in Toronto. (A tweetup is a gathering of Twitter users, and is something our own Aliza Sherman has much more experience with.) But I did finally bite the bullet and give it a try. Actually, two tries, to be more precise, which resulted in two very different experiences.

For the sake of all those involved, and to avoid scaring people in my area away from specific groups or events, the identities of all those involved will be kept a secret. The specific names of people doesn’t matter so much as the setting and organization of the event, anyway.

Tweetup the First — Small + Casual = Quality

Like a debutante at her first ball, I was nervous but excited about attending my very first tweetup. Two things drew me out of my shell: The organizer was someone with whom I’d had very positive dialogues on Twitter leading up to the event, and the guest list was small and handpicked by said organizer, whose judgment I trusted. It didn’t hurt the the venue was mere blocks from my house, in a neighborhood I was familiar with.

The format was very informal, without a guest speaker, and with socializing at the top of the agenda. Drinks (primarily sangria) and conversation flowed freely, and not once did I encounter a sales pitch or aggressive self-promotion, though I did walk away with a few business cards and a strong impression of who people were and what they did. That was key for me, since the hard sell inevitably sends me screaming for the hills.

End result: I had some laughs, made some worthwhile connections, and generally had a good time. I can be shy meeting people for the first time, but the small group size (10 to 12 people) made it impossible to stay in my shell for long.

Tweetup the Second — Large + Cliquey = Nothing Worth Tweeting Home About

I was so impressed with my first tweetup experience that when another hashtagged event came up a month or so later, involving some of the people from the first and a whole lot more, I was all for attending. This one was different in a few key ways: It was an ongoing monthly event with a larger, devoted following, and the setting was bigger and flashier, lending it a definite party vibe. At first, that was what appealed to me about the event, but I think it ultimately bears most of the responsibility for my eventual disappointment.

Maybe I should’ve looked more closely at the attendees list, but what I found out too late was that most of the people attending this particular event were already deeply entrenched in their own cliques, so that they basically pared off into tightly knit clusters of four or five at the beginning of the evening and talked (as groups of friends often do) about insider things that I wasn’t privy to. A few new attendees who were in the same boat as myself managed to group together and chat amongst ourselves, but it felt a little too much like being relegated to the kids’ table at a family reunion for my tastes.

Take-aways

This by no means covers all the bases when it comes to tweetups. I’ve yet to attend the kind that takes place in a convention hall and features a guest speaker(s), for instance. But it did teach me some valuable lessons about what to expect when your Twitter usage intersects with the real world. My advice to other novices: Try out more intimate events first, even if your natural inclination is to go to bigger happenings in order to blend in more easily with the crowd. For event organizers, I’d advise you to try to avoid clique formation as best as possible. I’d rather not spend my night feeling like I’m back in high school, whether or not I bring a built-in group of friends along for the ride.

Do you attend tweetups? If so, what do you/don’t you like about them? If not, what are your reasons for staying away, and what might convince you to go?

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Over on the OStatic blog, Lisa Hoover covered Luminotes, which has been around for a while, but just became completely free and open source, for anyone to use. It’s a note-taking and wiki-building tool that you can either use online or offline, collaborating with others, or just collecting notes and information on your own. I’ve been working with it, and I think a lot of people will like it for its ease of use and flexibility.
Here’s a screenshot showing how you get started with Luminotes:

Like many other wiki tools, Luminotes collects a series of linked notes, each with a unique title. To make a new note, you just click on the “+” button (at the top of the toolbar, at left in the screenshot above). You can link notes to each other using the “Link” button on the toolbar, and then there are standard formatting buttons that let you do everything from bolding text to creating bulleted and numbered lists within notes. Wikis are searchable, and you can import and export content to and from them.

There is a complete user guide for Luminotes found here, but I doubt that many users will need the guide. Everything is implemented through a WYSIWYG interface in the application, so that it feels like using Word or any other common word processor. There is no tricky markup language to or wrestle with.

Luminotes also has a blog, which discusses new features and the like. There is a Windows version and a Linux version, but Luminotes doesn’t work with every browser. I couldn’t get it to work in Opera, for example. It supports Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome and Safari. You can do the download and installation in about two minutes.

You can either work online or offline with Luminotes, and can store it and run it from a USB thumb drive. If you decide to stop using Luminotes but want to keep your content, you can export your notes to a web page or to a CSV file to store in a spreadsheet. This application is very straightforward and could be a good way to manage projects among collaborators, or personal projects.

What note-taking tool do you use?

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“Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online,” by Andy Beal and Dr. Judy Strauss, was recommended to me by several online friends who are involved in PR and marketing. It’s a practical and comprehensive book that’s designed to help individuals and businesses manage their reputations in a world in which the old rules no longer apply, thanks to the advent of the Internet.

The book begins by providing background on the importance of managing your company’s reputation online and the potential consequences if you don’t. It follows with practical instruction on using tools like social media and search engine optimization as ways to be proactive about managing your online reputation in order to achieve your business goals. The final section is about online monitoring of your reputation and managing an online reputation crisis.

The big emphasis in “Radically Transparent” is on being proactive in reputation management. The book’s practical recommendations center around creating a positive reputation through the use of tools like social media and blogs, instead of waiting to respond to critics in a crisis where you would always be playing catch-up. The philosophy is that actively building and monitoring your reputation can actually prevent a crisis from happening.

Some of the book’s sections (such as “The Power Of Blogs”) may be somewhat basic for WebWorkerDaily readers, but in total “Radically Transparent” is a very practical and comprehensive textbook on the topic of online reputation management. It won’t go over the heads of those who are inexperienced in the online marketing, but at the same time I believe even the most experienced online marketer will come away from “Radically Transparent” having picked up a few new tips and techniques.

If you work in marketing, this book would be a good recommendation for clients reluctant to implement online reputation management. For freelancers or small business owners, reading this book (and then sticking it on your bookshelf for references) will give you a great background in reputation and crisis management.

Although the book uses the stories of the online reputation problems of several large companies like Dell and JetBlue as examples, the lessons it contains aren’t limited to large companies — the authors translate the such experiences to apply them to the management of an individual’s reputation. Personal reputation management (or personal branding) is especially important to freelance web workers. Their online reputation is usually just as important as their off-line reputation.

In a way, the core message of the book is a slightly down one because it takes a somewhat fatalistic approach to the inherent negativity of the Internet. The core philosophy underlying the need for proactive reputation management is the assumption that it is “inevitable” that all of us will have our reputation attacked at some point. Unfortunately many of us can attest to the truth of that statement.

Interested in reading “Radically Transparent” for yourself? Chapter 1 is available for download as a PDF from the Radically Transparent web site.

Have you read “Radically Transparent”? Are you proactive about your reputation online?

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