Coby Chapple

Why I’m Sticking With Dropbox (Over Google Drive)

2012-04-26T15:07:00+10:00

There has been a massive build-up to the release of Google Drive, and while this new offering from the search giant was always going to be a big one, I firmly believe that there’s a really convincing argument why Dropbox is a better choice for storing your stuff online: privacy, and retaining rights over your content. I’m no lawyer, but you don’t have to be to understand why the implications of Google’s privacy policy are probably something you want to avoid.

Side note: If you clicked through to this then you’re probably the kind of person who would enjoy following me on Twitter. Drop me a line with your feedback while you’re there too!

What you’re giving Google when using Drive

Take a look at Google’s Terms of Service:

Notice the highlighted portion that reads:

When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.

Do you really want to sign over a worldwide license to use, modify, create derivative works, and publicly display or distribute for every document you upload to Google? My guess is your answer is no.

Edit: I’ve received some criticism for selective highlighting here, and I’d like to make it clear that the following also occurs in Google’s terms:

You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.

and also:

The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones.

Despite this, I still feel Google’s policy asks for more license than just what is necessary to provide me with the service.

Dropbox FTW

Now let’s see what Dropbox’s terms say.

Their stance essentially appears to be the complete opposite of Google’s. Notice the highlighted portion in the above image which reads:

You retain full ownership to your stuff. We don’t claim any ownership to any of it. These Terms do not grant us any rights to your stuff or intellectual property except for the limited rights that are needed to run the Services, as explained below.

Bravo, Dropbox! Well done for choosing a stance that supports my rights and privacy. That’s the kind of attitude more businesses should take.

Conclusion

Make up your mind yourself, but for me I know I’ll be sticking with Dropbox unless something radical changes.

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Browser UI Problems, or Why I Use Chrome

2012-03-06T07:34:00+10:00

As a UI designer and web developer I spend a lot of time thinking about interfaces. Generally, I tend to prefer software that demonstrates a similar thoughtfulness — but there’s one particular category of program about which I am noticeably picky: my web browser. So much so, that I’m about to embark on a rant about the problems I’ve encountered, and why one browser continually wins out for me. Read on if that’s the sort of thing you care about.

I spend hours upon hours of my day inside one, so even small UI problems are enough to make me want to jump ship to another browser. To keep me on my toes (and make sure I haven’t missed any massive features or something), I frequently attempt to change the browser I use for a week or so—but so far I’ve always come running back to one browser (often within a day or two): Google Chrome. Let me explain.

Note: I run OS X, so I haven’t included anything here about the UI of Internet Explorer. Even if I didn’t, there’s a whole bunch of other reasons I wouldn’t use IE.

The Omnibar

Chrome’s Omnibar.

To me, it seems obvious that you only need one area for text-based navigation, regardless of whether you are doing a search or entering a URL. If I’m about to start a browsing session, I just want to type what I want and have the browser bring me that however it has to, whether it’s by showing me a dropdown list of URLs I’ve visited in the past, or by me hitting enter and showing me a list of search results. I see no advantage in splitting this bar into one text entry field on the left for web addresses, and a second on the right for searches. Chrome gets this, which is why they designed it to have the Omnibar in the first place. Sure there’s Omnibar plugins available for Safari and Firefox, but the fact that they don’t ship with this by default tells me that the designers of these applications just don’t understand how unnecessary this secondary search box is, and consequently suggests that they don’t care quite as much about this aspect of the user’s experience.

Tab Layout and Window Titles

I find the tab and title layout in both Safari and Firefox a little silly. They have the three window control buttons (close, minimise, and maximise) then a whole bunch of horizontal space, then a window title in the middle, and then a whole bunch more empty space on the other side. This space does allow windows to display longer <title> attributes, but when you’ve got the title already displayed for each tab, this whole horizontal area becomes unnecessary.

Firefox wasting space and duplicating content.

Safari doing the same.

Chrome puts the window’s close, minimise and maximise buttons in-line with the tabs, and does away with the need to display a window title separately. This saves space and eliminates redundant content.

Chrome: no duplication and maximal use of space.

I think this is an obvious solution to the layout, and feels much nicer on my eye all-round. Classy.

New Tab vs. New Window

I use tabs like there’s no tomorrow, but I hardly ever find myself wanting to split my tabs into multiple windows (and even then it’s usually only for a cleaner screen shot or something similar). I assume that most other people also use tabs rather than windows too, and so I get incredibly frustrated every time I try out Safari and get reminded that when right-clicking a link they put the option to open in a new window above the option to open in a new tab. This always catches me out and makes me feel like a moron when I wind up staring at a new window asking myself where all my tabs went.

Safari has the new window option first in the list.

I think it’s always been this way for Chrome, as they got into the game much later. This means that if I right click, I only have to move my pointer one or two pixels and click again (which I can do without thinking) in order to get the link open in a new tab.

Chrome puts the new tab option first.

Firefox has come around too. I think this is a somewhat recently development though.

Firefox knows what’s going on too.

Some might say that moving your mouse a few extra pixels down shouldn’t be a big issue, and they have a point. It’s a small issue, but it’s one that I have to think about every time (i.e. “have I moved my cursor far enough to highlight the new tab option yet?”), and that makes me not enjoy using the software as much. I guess what bugs me about this is that it’s indicative of the understanding of how people browse the web these days and actually use their software. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that tabs within one window is the way the majority of people do it, so browsers should realise this and change the UI priorities accordingly.

Viewing Downloads

Firefox puts downloads into a separate window that I have to move around separately. I have to resize it and clear it and do all sorts of things I don’t want to have to think about.

Firefox’s download manager.

Safari has recently changed from the separate window approach to using a dedicated popover-style dropdown, which is kinda cool and moves with the window and so forth, however it still feels like it’s in the wrong paradigm as far as solving the UI problem.

Safari’s flashy new download dropdown/popover thingy.

Chrome has worked out that we already have a way for managing multiple screens and windows in an easy to digest way: tabs. So, naturally, they put things like the download manager, preference panes, extension management — all into their own separate tabs that you can open, close (or pin!) like everything else. Way to re-use UI elements! I’m also presuming this makes the job of designing and implementing the actual contents of these windows easier on the developers too, as it means the contents can essentially just be developed using just HTML/CSS like any other tab’s content.

Chrome makes the download manager just another tab.

Status Bars

Safari makes the status bar either shown or not shown, and ignores the idea that it’s appropriate to show it in certain contexts and then hide it at other times. Boring.

Safari with the status bar turned on.

In Chrome and Firefox, the status bar appears when it makes sense (like when hovering over a link). It doesn’t go full width, but just enough for the URL or message in questions. This seems like a much better solution that simply showing or hiding the status bar at all time. It’s worth noting that this contextual status bar actually covers content in the bottom-left corner of the window that a user might actually need to see. If you move your cursor to the bottom-left corner near the status pane, Chrome promptly slides it outside the window so you can see what’s underneath, and slides it back again once you move your mouse away. It feels like a really natural response.

Chrome sliding the status bar out of the way.

In contrast to Chrome’s nice treatment of this, Firefox abruptly swaps the status bar over to the bottom-right corner instead. This solves the problem, but in a much more jarring way from a UI perspective.

Firefox flips the status bar to the right when you get close with your mouse.

It’s a really small aspect of the browser, but it’s these details that tell volumes about which team of developers have thought more about my experience as a user, and which teams just did what was easy for them.

Show me the damn close button

Close buttons on tabs are always visible in Chrome and Firefox, but Safari hides the close button for tabs, and forces you have to put your mouse over the favicon to reveal the close button. Why there? Who knows.

… and keep it still!

If there’s one aspect of browser UI has always been a major point of frustration point for me, it’s that closing 40 tabs quickly can either be a piece of cake or a major mood killer depending on which browser I’m in.

Chrome (and as of quite recently, Firefox) puts the close button of the next tab in the sequence directly under the mouse pointer so that you can close that tab without moving your cursor (and thus without thinking). It continues to do this until you move your mouse pointer away from the close button, then and only then does it proceed to resize all the tabs horizontally so they fit within the window’s width. This is how all browsers should behave, without question.

Firefox seems to have caught on that this makes sense, but Safari still insists on being oh-so-helpful by resizing the tabs so they fit nicely horizontally after each close — meaning that I have to do the dreaded hunt-and-peck after each click until all 40 tabs are closed. Lame.

Other nice touches in Chrome

Perhaps the most helpful thing Chrome allows me to do is to re-open recently closed tabs from a handy wee menu on the new tab screen. Not only does this bring back the tab just as it was, it also preserves the history state such that I can restore a tab and click ‘back’ to visit previous pages I’d visited in that tab before I closed it.

This has been really helpful on a number of occasions. On a recent excursion to try out Safari again, I accidentally closed a tab that I actually really needed to reopen, and it frustrated me so much it spelled the end of that excursion very promptly.

There’s quite a few other things that Chrome does that I think make a lot of sense from a UI perspective. As I mentioned earlier, all of Chrome’s settings, downloads, and other panes are all available shown in their own tab. What’s cool about this is that they’re also available via a URL (i.e. “chrome://downloads”), so if I really wanted to I could add a bookmark in my bookmarks bar.

That’s a wrap

There’s plenty more I could probably go into, but for now I think that’s a pretty good breakdown of the problems I’ve encountered in Safari and Firefox, and why I tend to keep coming back to Chrome as my browser of choice. Everything I’ve mentioned is a small enough problem for many to easily dismiss, but I believe it’s these details are what make it a pleasure to use a piece of software rather than a chore.

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Open Source Needs a New UI

2011-12-07T19:28:00+10:00

As a freelance web developer, I’ve seen and used my fair share of open source web applications (and desktop software), and I’d like to point out something that I see all too often in open source projects: the user interface almost always lets the project down. Let me explain…

The Problem

I’ve used a considerable amount of open source software (web-based and desktop), and I feel that a large portion of them are let down by their UI. The functionality is brilliant, the code is great, and the product is useful, but the user interface often just lacks the smoothness and level of polish that people tend to expect these days if they’re to download an application and give it a fair go.

First Impressions

Most of the time, it’s not even the software itself, but rather the promotional site—the face of the project—that makes me cringe. For example, as I explore the web, I come across sites for open source projects on a daily basis — recent examples from my browsing history include Cyberduck, FileZilla, GnuCash, BambooInvoice, GitX, and Vim — and while the promotional sites convey all the necessary information, most of these sites look stuck in a much older paradigm of thinking about web design. It’s not just a handful of projects, though—I actually think it is by far the rule rather than the exception with open source projects in general. Surely it’s not the best first impression to be making about your software.

The Products Themselves

It’s not just the promotional websites though—if you look at the actual software products themselves in many open source projects and compare them with the commercial applications they’re essentially competing with, it’s usually the UI that is the separating factor. Take ProjectPier for example: it’s functionality is significantly similar to that of commercial projects like Basecamp and activeCollab (which is actually a direct descendent/fork of ProjectPier that went commercial, by the way), however ProjectPier’s UI feels miles behind to me. Despite moving to a new theme in their more recent releases, the default UI (and most other themes available too) is still reminiscent of websites that were all the craze before YouTube was around. It’s a similar situation when you look at projects like Cyberduck and Filezilla compared with commercial FTP applications like Transmit and Forklift; or for Git GUI apps GitX compared with apps like Tower and Gitbox; and I could think of numerous other examples in just about every other problem domain too. What it boils down to is this: as a consumer of software, it’s the quality of the UI that sways my decision in almost every case.

Getting it right

There are, however, plenty of great examples in the open source world of good UI design in terms of both promotional sites and software products. Here are a few examples (not an exhaustive list though, by any means) of projects I think are getting it right:

There’s also a few community projects to do with the open source community in general, which are placing a focus on the UI of open source in general. The most readily available example of this is MoveTheWebForward.org which aim to make it easier for people to get themselves involved in the open source community. Sites like this are fantastic, but I don’t think it’s just the web that needs to be brought forward—I think it’s the UI of many aspects of open source software too.

Maybe this is just a rant

Who knows? Maybe I’m just being an elitist snob because I’m a designer for a living myself—but I wonder what effect a focus on improving the UI of open source software would have on the rate of uptake of open source software projects, especially by users who are less technically minded (and thus more interested in the elegance of the UI than the elegance of the code). Is there a preconceived notion held by the open-source community that paying attetion to design (especially of the promotional websites for projects) is superfluous? Or is it just a shortage of time, effort, and contributors? Do we need to get more designers involved in open source to balance out the focus on development?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic, so if you’ve got an opinion about what I’ve said share it in the comments below.

Disclaimer

If you happen to be involved with one of the project’s I’ve used above as an example, then I apologise—open source software has made my life a great deal easier, and for that I’ll always be grateful. My intention is not to offend, or to belittle the valuable contributions people have made to the projects mentioned above, however I stand by my point that open source UI in general has a long way to go to catch up to its commercial counterparts.

We Lost a Hero Today

2011-10-06T13:02:00+10:00

Today I found that Steve Jobs—the man behind Apple as it stands today—has passed away. I believe that he’ll go down in history as one of the great innovators of all time. The influence he and Apple have had on the way we use technology on a daily basis is simply staggering. He raised the bar to new heights for technology and will remain an inspiration for entrepreneurs, designers, technologists, and many others for generations to come. Here’s a few brief things I’ve got to say about Steve Jobs.

Some may say he was just a CEO and a capitalist, but I believe such views are short-sighted. Even the President of the United States made the observation that “much of the world learned of [Steve’s] passing on a device he invented”. If the significance of that statement (let alone its author) is lost on you then you need to find yourself some perspective.

I obviously have no personal connection to Steve, but nonetheless I feel like I owe him a great deal. My first computer was an Apple Macintosh LC, and I have no doubt that it was largely responsibile for sparking my passion for working with computers, in turn paving the foundations of the career I now find myself pursuing. I didn’t really appreciate until today the degree to which Steve, and Apple has influenced my life for the better. And I know it’s not just me either: there’s now a whole generation of technologists who understand and value quality design, thanks largely to Steve Jobs.

Seth Godin hit the nail on the head today when he said that “It’s one thing to miss someone, to feel a void when they’re gone. It’s another to do something with their legacy, to honor them through your actions”, and I completely agree.

If there’s anything to take away from Steve Jobs’ inspirational life, it’s this: get off your ass and go make a dent in the universe, do work your proud of, and don’t settle until you’ve found out what it is you love to do. Your time is too precious to do anything else.

How to Start Freelancing (Part 3)

2011-10-06T08:03:00+10:00

Over the past week or so I’ve posted a couple of articles on how to get started as a freelancer (part 1 and part 2), and today I’m going to finish up the series by touching on all things money-related (i.e. pricing, estimating, invoicing, and budgeting), how to find ways to continually improve your skills, and how to stay motivated when the whole freelancing decision starts to feel like it was a bad idea (and it will!). Let’s get into it!

Thinking about money

As a freelancer, you’ll have to wear lots of hats. The most important decisions you’ll need to start making are those about money. If you’ve been used to simply getting a regular paycheck for the last few years, chances are this isn’t something you’ve put a lot of thought into. Here’s a few insights into the money side of freelancing.

Pricing your services

How much should you charge? This simple question is one of the toughest to answer, because it differs so much from person to person, from client to client, and from project to project. It’s just something you’ll have to fine-tune over time for yourself, but here’s my thoughts on pricing.

Hourly rate vs. per-project

There are two main methods you can use for pricing your services:

Charge your clients with a simple hourly rate.
Price everything on a per-project basis.

While the first option (hourly rate) is definitely the simplest, I’ve found it has a number of shortfalls:

Some activities are more effort-intensive than others, so it’s hard to accurately reflect that in your pricing when you only have one hourly rate.
You’re removing the incentive for you to get the project done any sooner.
Accurately estimating the amount of hours in any given project is notoriously difficult (see my comments in the section below on estimating).
It doesn’t leave you any room for negotiation.
It’s harder to incorporate expenses you may incur (stock photography, printing costs) into a quote for your client.
Clients will usually expect to only pay you after you’ve done the work.

Here’s why I think it’s better to quote prices on a per-project basis:

Clients like to know exactly what it’s going to cost up-front.
It’s in your interest to get the project done efficiently so you can get paid.
There’s always room to negotiate if your initial price doesn’t suit the client. For example, if your initial price is too high for the client you can offer a lower price and simply agree on a smaller scope, fewer deliverables, or other compromises which keeps everybody happy.
It’s easier to ask for a deposit up-front, or break the bill into part-payments for the client as each phase of the project is completed.
You can include expenses and costs into your price which gives the client a nice simple price to look at rather than seeing your hourly rate plus all these other “expenses” (which can be a turn-off).

How to come up with a price

In order to effectively work out a price for a project, you’ll need to start off with using your own (internal) hourly rate, which you can calculate yourself. When working out how much you need (or want) to earn, be sure to factor in all of the following:

Rent, food, phone, power, and internet costs.
Entertainment, subscriptions, and travel costs.
Business-related equipment (computers, printers, cameras etc.)
Insurance expenses (health, business, income protection, professional indemnity etc.)
How much you’d like to be putting away each month (you do want to save some money as well, right?)
Income/business taxes (definitely don’t neglect these!)

Once you’ve got that worked out on an annual basis, you can break it all down and work out what you need to be earning roughly per hour, day, week, and month. You should then combine that information with the following factors about the project you’re quoting on:

Who is the client? What kind of budget do they have behind them?
How much exposure is this work going to have?
How much money is this project going to earn the client?
Will this work be re-used by the client down the track?
How easy will the client be to work with? Is there just one person to communicate with? or are there committees and red-tape involved too?
How exciting is the project for you?
Is this the kind of work you want more of? or is this what you’re trying to move away from?
How many other projects will you have on at the same time?
How many other projects do you have in the pipeline if you don’t win this one?
What have you charged for similar projects in the past? How fair was that price for how long it took to complete the project?

Don’t do discounts for exposure

Notice that nowhere above have I mentioned whether or not the project is likely to generate more work or not. As a freelancer (especially when you’re starting out) chances are you’ll have tons of clients ask tell you that “the project will be excellent for your portfolio, and will bring you more work”, so you feel obligated to charge less. That’s bullshit, and here’s why: If you were buying a car, and said to the car dealer “I tell you what, I’ll pay you one quarter of the price, and I’ll let you put a bumper sticker on the car saying I bought it at your dealership. How about it?”, he’ll simply tell you to get lost. The same goes for just about every business: architects, retailers, you name it; so why should it be any different for designers and developers?

Sure it’s great when people see your work and ask you for something similar for them, but that is no reason to charge less for the work—if anything, the fact that the client recognises that the project is something other people will want for themselves is proof that it has value!

Basic principles

Simply put, here’s a few one-liners to keep in mind whenever you’re starting at a blank quote for a client.

If your quotes are always getting accepted, then you’re probably not charging enough.
Do you want clients telling people how cheap you were? Wouldn’t it be better if they said how valuable you were instead?
Have confidence in the value you offer.
Be prepared to pass on good projects.
Don’t race to the bottom.

Proposals, Estimating and Invoicing

When it comes to putting your estimates in front of clients, it can be difficult to know how much detail to go into. In my experience, you can pretty much judge this by the way the client approaches you about the project.

Proposals

For bigger, more involved projects, I recommend providing detailed proposals which cover things like:

Providing an overview of your understanding of the scope and strategic goals of the project.
Breaking the project up into distinct phases with indivudal cost estimates and timelines.
Detailing the specific deliverables which will result from each phase.
Outlining a billing schedule so the client can see what they’ll be billed, and when.
Getting the client to agree to your terms and conditions and signing off their approval of the proposal before you start work.

Estimates

Going into that much detail will just be overkill for many of your projects, though. A lot of the time, simple providing a one-page, itemized estimate is all you’ll need to do. The trouble is, us mortals aren’t known for being great at accurately estimating how much is involved in anything, so you should always keep this in mind when you’re preparing an estimate of any kind.

To make your estimates more accurate, I suggest you break each task down into subtasks, and then break each of those up into smaller pieces again. The smaller the units of “stuff” you have to guess at, the less likely you are to be out my a major factor. Don’t be afraid to spend an extra half-hour on the estimate breaking things down as far as they’ll go, because it could make a big difference to the amount of money it earns you on the other end.

Up-front deposits

One thing I’d advise you to do is establish a limit over which you’ll insist on a deposit before commencing work on a project. It may put the client off (and simply look petty) if you ask for a 20% deposit on a $120 project, but on projects at the larger end of the scale it’s always a wise move to get some money up-front in case the client does a runner and doesn’t want to pay (it happens more than you’d expect). Once you’ve dealt with a client once though, you usually get an idea for what they’re like at paying your invoices on-time, so it’s something you can make a call on at a per-client/project level.

Invoicing

Once the project is complete (or the current phase is over with), the next stage is to actually bill the client. When I started out I felt awkward asking for my money. I’d kind of try and slip it in with another email and just say “Oh, and by the way: here’s your invoice”, but looking back I wish I’d just had someone tell me this: Get over it. It’s just business. My advice? In your email to the client, write a paragraph summarizing what you’ve done for them and how they can access the deliverables, and then write a seperate sign-off paragraph that essentially just says: “Please find your invoice attached. If you’ve got any questions, please get in touch.” Over time, this is something you’ll get better at, but just try to get over this money-shyness as soon as you can.

Regardless of what software you use for invoice, it’s all pretty self explanatory in terms of putting together your invoice template. Here’s what you should make sure to include:

Your name and logo
Your contact details
Invoice number, date, and total amount due (nice and big up the top somewhere).
The client’s name and billing address
How long the client has to pay, and the final due date.
An itemized list of what you’re billing them for: item/service, description, qty and rate (if you’re billing by the hour), item total, other expenses, subtotal, taxes etc.
Your payment details (bank deposit instructions, paypal, cheque mailing address, etc.)
A friendly note thanking them for choosing you.
A reminder of what other services and products you offer.
Any legal terms relating to deliverables/licenses not transferring until payment is received in full (at the bottom, small).

If you’re looking for inspiration, check out the Invoice like a Pro article on Smashing Magazine, which shows some great examples of good invoices.

Stay tuned for Part 4

I was going to try and squeeze everything else I wanted to say into this post, but it’s getting rather long so it looks like there will have to be a fourth post! If you haven’t already, you should check out Part 1 and Part 2 in the series too. If you’re enjoying these posts you should get in touch with me on Twitter and leave your thoughts and comments below. See you soon!

How to Start Freelancing (Part 2)

2011-10-05T15:45:00+10:00

Not long ago I posted how to start freelancing (part 1), which covered the initial stages of making a transition to working as a freelancer. In this second post, I want to share some of the things I’ve learnt about self-promotion, time management, tools, and how to stay productive. It took me about six months to start to get into the swing of things working for myself. If you find yourself floundering for the first little while, here’s a few tips that might help you get back on track.

Self-promotion

The first thing you’ll want to do is get more business. Sounds simple enough, but as someone who is just starting out, the hard part is working out how to do this without spending bucket-loads of cash on advertising. It’s certainly achievable—all you need to do is find other ways to tell people who you are and what you do.

Real-life networking

Nothing beats speaking to people face to face about what you do, why you’re passionate about it, and discussing how that might fit into their needs. Pretty much any major centre will have a plethora of business groups and networking functions where local business owners and other interesting people meet for the sole purpose of meeting people like you. It works both ways too—chances are you’ll need to find yourself an accountant, local printers, or maybe a lawyer (depending on what it is you’re doing), and networking meet-ups are great places to find out who might be able to fill these needs for you.

Remember also that networking groups are full of people who run businesses, and have done for years. These types of groups can be a great source of people that you can ask for help and advice about any stumbling blocks you come across.

Get a website

You need a website, but not as much of one as you think. This is especially true if your work involves the internet in any way. Here’s all you need on your first site (and most others, too):

A nice, big, engaging headline.
A large, honest, friendly photo of you looking smart.
A short paragraph that says who you are, what you do, and why you’re passionate about it.
A section explaining how people should contact you.
A link to your Twitter account (optional).

Anything else probably isn’t necessary, at least to start with.

You’ll also need to grab yourself a domain name—preferably just your name (for example: ’cobychapple.com’), as you can always re-use it in the future even if you stop freelancing. Also, try and secure just a straight ‘.com’ domain unless you’ve got a really good reason to make your domain name country-specific (hint: the fact that you live in the country or that most of your customers are in the same country as you isn’t a good reason). You shouldn’t limit yourself to one country unnecessarily. If a site tries to charge you more than $10 or $12 for your ‘.com’ domain, chances are you can register one cheaper elsewhere (Google is your friend).

Hosting can also be pretty minimal while you’re just getting started. You can get cheap, basic plans for around $3 or $4 per month, and that’ll be more than you need to start with. There are ever some places (such as x10hosting) that will offer you a hosting account for free. There’s usually a few catches, such as having to receive at least one visit every month or something similar, but if you’re worried about expenses then the trade-off is worth it.

Twitter, Facebook, and the rest

In my experience, social media won’t be that helpful when you’re starting out as a freelancer. It’s very easy to get into the habit of pouring hours into “building your online persona”, all the while forgetting you could be spending that same time earning money. That said though, following other people who practice your craft can be a great way to keep your finger on the pulse and stay abreast of new developments in your industry. Just don’t fall into the trap of thinking a presence on these sites is worth it for its own sake. Remember why you got into freelancing in the first place? Chances are spending more time on Facebook or Twitter wasn’t your priority.

Self-management

The biggest change I noticed when I started freelancing was how much energy I had to devote to self-management. Keeping all your tasks, tools, processes, projects, budgets, and clients in sync and under control is no mean feat. Not only will it be a big change from what you’re used to, but as a freelancer its a constant juggling act that you just get better at managing over time. Here’s a few things I try to focus on to stay on top of things.

Getting things done

As a freelancer, you’ll be on the receiving end of a seemingly un-ending stream of things that need your time and attention. Without a good system for dealing with the incoming stream of cruft, you’ll find yourself snowed under before you know it. Over time I’ve worked out my own system for task management, which is largely based on David Allen’s ‘Getting Things Done’ (GTD) methodology. By following the GTD way of capturing and processing tasks, I’ve noticed a dramatic increase in the confidence I feel in my ability to at least feel on top of things. However, there’s a lot of things David prescribes which don’t fit in that great with my own workflow, so my advice is you do some reading on this model for handling to-do’s (again: Google is your friend), and then simply adjust it as you see fit for your own processes.

The other main principle that helps me stay on top of tasks is to use lo-fi tools wherever possible. There’s plenty of fancy software that’ll help you manage your workflow, but in my experience you’ll spend more time getting the software set up the way you like it and less time actually ticking off tasks. Simply using a pencil and paper for sketching drafts and outlining projects, having a simple Casio calculator on your desk ready to at a moments notice, and keeping a physical in-tray (which gets cleared daily) for incoming bills, post-it notes and other cruft are all things that will speed up your processes and save you having to fight with steep learning curves in expensive software.

That said, there is always a place for great software—but again the emphasis should be on tools that get out of your way and let you focus on the task at hand. Here’s some of the tools I use and some free alternatives for those who don’t want to fork out the money:

Things for task management (free alternative).
iA Writer (and it’s built-in Markdown support) for quickly outlining emails before sending, and just about any other task that involves writing on the computer (including this post) (free alternative).
Billings for estimating and invoicing (free alternative).
Dropbox for syncing files between my various devices, and sharing large assets with clients (this is free anyway).

At the end of the day, you need to earn money, so always remember that if the tool is getting in your way, get rid of it. Low complexity tools (especially pencil and paper, when they’re applicable) are almost always your best shot at getting things done quickly.

Time management

Stop watching TV! People I talk to always complain about having no time. Many of these very same people spend at least 10 or 15 hours per week watching television. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to be able to blob on the couch every now and then, but giving up watching TV (or at least cutting down) will dramatically increase the amount of time you have available. Especially if you’re looking to make a gradual transition from employment to freelancing, your best bet will be to give up TV for two months and spend 2 hours each evening getting your freelancing up and going.

I’ve learned that big, solid chunks of time on one project at a time is the best way for be to stay productive. This may just be the way I work, but my experience is that it always takes me about half and hour or so just to get ‘in the zone’. Once there, I’ll have about 2 hours or so where I’m productive, and then I’ll start to fizzle out again at which point I make a conscious effort to wind-down and start thinking about what I’ll work on next. The mental cost involved in switching tasks makes it almost impossible to get any serious work done on a project if I’m having to chop and change every half-hour or so. Eliminating sources of distraction and interruption (like email, phone calls, twitter and so forth) and knuckling down for a couple of hours at a time is likely to be the best way to make use of your time.

On a side note, I’ve recently heard a lot about many big companies (including Google) getting interested in the benefits of napping, and I’ve started experimenting with a 20 minute mid-afternoon nap between about 1 and 2pm. It’s been a great experience so far, and I definitely notice an increase in my afternoon productivity since starting.

The other side of time-management is making sure you stay focused on being a normal, fully-functioning human. To stay sane while freelancing, it is vital that you take a break for lunch, stop at 5pm, and spend quality time with your family, loved ones, and also make sure you get some time to yourself when you don’t have to work.

But wait, there’s more!

In case you missed it, this post is the second on the topic of how to get started as a freelancer. If you haven’t already, you should have a read of how to start freelancing (part 1). Be sure to cheack out Part 3 too, which covers how to deal with money, pricing, estimating and invoicing as a freelancer. If you’re enjoying these posts, I’d love it if you followed me on Twitter and shared your thoughts and comments below.

How to Start Freelancing (Part 1)

2011-10-03T19:53:00+10:00

It has been over three years now since I made the switch from being a full-time employee to working as a freelancer, and I haven’t looked back. I’ve learned a great deal in that time about how to go about working as a freelancer, and I’d like to share some of these points with you over a couple of posts. While what I’m going to talk about will resonate most with those who want to work as freelance web developers and designers, I believe there is enough common ground with other fields that you should find these tips helpful regardless of your craft.

Before you start

While there’s no prerequisites to becoming a freelancer, there are a number of things that you should put some serious thought into before you dive in that will save you tons of grief downstream. Here’s a few key things to consider.

Know why you’re doing it

The first thing you need to do is decide what it is you want out of it all. Working for yourself is no walk in the park, and without being 100% clear about exactly why you want to work for yourself, you’ll find it very hard to stay motivated. You might be doing it so you can have time to work on your own projects, for certain financial or logistical goals, or maybe it’s because you want to challenge yourself and build a new skillbase. Whatever the reason, you need to be clear on it in your own mind before you jump off the cliff.

Establish stop-loss criteria

I suggest you sit down with your parents, your family, your life partner, and your close friends, and ask them the following question: How should I know when I’m broke?

It’s absolutely vital that you have some idea of when to cut your losses, and the best people to help you decide where your limits lie are those who know you best. At the end of the day it is the people closest to you who stand to be affected most if things don’t go according to plan. Do yourself a favour and listen to them.

Starting

What most people don’t realise about freelancing is that you can (and should) start right now. You don’t have to quit your job, you don’t need a fancy office, special equipment, or permission from anybody. All you need to do is make it known that your services are available, and then be prepared to start working on some projects should you find a client or two.

Take advantage of the time you have before you get your first clients, too. While you don’t have deadlines to worry about, put together a simple website, do up some basic business cards, get yourself a Twitter account, and start writing some simple, focused, conversational copy that you can use to promote yourself online, and when you’re talking to people about what you do. You should also get your tools and workspaces set up for what you need, and start thinking about what else you’ll need to run your business, such as filing and folders for client documents, accounting and invoicing software, registering yourself as a business, and all the other odds and ends you’ll inevitably need to get done.

Don’t let yourself get bogged down in preparation though! The perfect time to start will never arrive. My advice: dive in and learn to swim as soon as possible.

Finding your first client

I can almost guarantee you that networking will be the best way to find your first client. Tell your friends, family, neighbors, acquaintences, colleagues, and anyone else who’ll listen what you do, and chances are there will be someone, somewhere in your immediate network (or they’ll know of someone) who is after your services. It also doesn’t hurt to stick up a few flyers on community noticeboards, or to have a search on Twitter to see who’s looking for a freelancer.

You should also keep in mind that people’s needs change over time. If you can’t find anyone who needs your services right now, get in touch with people again in a month’s time and remind them, and before long you’ll have your first client.

But wait, there’s more!

Enjoyed this post? Next, you should check out How to Start Freelancing (Part 2), where I talk about self-promotion, self-management, using lo-fi tools, and time management. Or you can skip ahead to Part 3, which covers money, pricing, estimating and invoicing. I’d also love to hear what you think! Hit me up on Twitter or type a quick comment below.

Ruby Development Stack Guide Roundup

2011-09-29T10:20:00+10:00

With the release of OS X Lion, a number of web developers seem to be facing fresh installs, and it appears many are taking the opportunity to re-evaluate their development stack. Recently, I’ve noticed a number of posts and tutorials floating around on the topic of how to set up a fresh development stack for web app development, mostly aimed at Ruby on Rails developers. I thought I’d pull a few of these resources together, mostly for my own reference, but also in the hope it might help others out when faced with a blank install. It’s also interesting to note how some of the more common tools people use in their stack are changing—one example being the shift from using RVM to rbenv for Ruby version managment, which I’ll talk about too.

Guides

Here’s a few of the guides and write-ups I’ve come across recently.

Setting up a new machine for Ruby development

37signals are naturally very interested in optimising their development practices, so it is definitely worth nothing the post Rails creator DHH published on SVN about the tools they currently use: Homebrew, rbenv (with ruby-build), Bundler, rake setup, and Pow.
2011 Rubyist’s guide to a Mac OS X development environment

In this article, Dan Croak of Thoughtbot walks through how he goes about setting up an OS X Lion laptop to use the OS X GCC installer, SSH, dotfiles, Zsh, Git, Heroku, and Thoughbot’s laptop scripts (covered further below).
Modern Ruby Development

This write-up by Andrew Carter provides another very detailed description of his stack of choice and a walkthrough for configuring Ruby and Rails applications. Andrew’s stack includes Xcode 4, zsh, Homebrew, rbenv (with ruby-build), Bundler, Pow, Capistrano, Rails, and Git.
Rails Ultimate Install Guide on OS X Lion

Carlos Rodriguez walks through a full install of Xcode, Homebrew, Git, zsh (with Robby Russell’s fantastic oh-my-zsh distribution), RVM, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Pow, and a few other gems.

Emerging trends

While reading through the above guides, there’s a few trends you’ll probably notice in the tools people seem to be chosing. Here’s a few of the things I’ve noticed.

Homebrew

Mac users are taking up Homebrew left, right, and center—and rightly so. In case you haven’t heard, Homebrew is a solution to package management for Mac OS X far superior to MacPorts and Fink. If you aren’t using it, you’re losing out.

OSX GCC installer instead of Xcode.

Kennet Reitz has created a standalone OSX GCC installer as a solution to the problem of having to install Xcode just to get the compilers on your system. This saves a massive amount of money, time and effort for anyone who needs to compile software, but doesn’t need or want to pay for and download Xcode. I haven’t used this myself yet, as I’ve got Xcode 4 on my system, but the project looks like a great solution to a problem many people face.

rbenv and ruby-build instead of RVM.

Sam Stephenson from 37signals created rbenv as an alternative to RVM for managing different versions of Ruby on one system. It provides the same sandboxing functionality as RVM, but is far less complex, obtrusive, and doesn’t override core system commands like RVM does. Sam also has another project called ruby-build, which makes it easy to download, compile, and install different versions of ruby. When these two tools are used together, they feel much more intuitive than RVM.

To me, RVM feels like a tool people use just because that’s what people have used in the past, and I think that is a silly reason to use anything. I’ve been using the rbenv/ruby-build configuration instead of RVM for a while now, and while I’m not a hardcore user of all the functionality they provide, I really do appreciate the simlicity of the tools. Heaps of people still use RVM, and there’s clearly a good community around that tool, but my prediction is more and more people will start switching to rbenv before long.

Pow

Pow is a brilliant lightweight Rack server created by 37signals, which can be up and running very quickly. It lets you run all your development applications at their own .dev url (e.g. http://testapp.dev/), with indpendant worker processes letting you server multiple apps simultaneously without running rails server. It’s just a simple one-liner to install, too, which is always attractive. It seems to be the development server of choice for many developers, so it’s definitely worth a look if you haven’t seen it yet.

Zsh and oh-my-zsh

OS X uses bash as the default shell, but also comes with zsh installed and available as an alternative. Zsh can be a bit confusing (I haven’t really taken the time to get my head around it), but to get up and running quickly I’d recommend checking out oh-my-zsh, a zsh distribution put together by Robby Russell, that comes with a whole bunch of great plugins, themes, and helpful scripts to make it easy to get started using zsh. While not necessarily part of the development stack, I’m noticing quite a few developers mentioning that they use zsh as their shell of choice.

Tools and scripts

In addition to the guides, I’ve also come across a couple of interesting projects which aim to help automate the process of getting a development stack up and running without fuss.

Thoughtbot’s Laptop Script

As I mentioned before, Thoughtbot have put together some scripts on GitHub which aim to automate the process of installing a Ruby/Rails focused development environment on either a Mac or Ubuntu laptop. Here’s what the script installs on a Mac (quoted from Dan Croak’s guide above):

Homebrew (for managing operating system libraries)
Postgres (for storing relational data)
Redis (for storing key-value data)
Ack (for finding things in files)
Tmux (for saving project state and switching between projects)
ImageMagick (for cropping and resizing images)
RVM (for managing versions of the Ruby programming language)
Ruby 1.9.2 stable (for writing general-purpose code)
Bundler gem (for managing Ruby libraries)
Rails gem (for writing web applications)
Heroku gem (for interacting with the Heroku API)
Taps gem (for pushing and pulling SQL databases between environments)
Postgres gem (for making Ruby talk to SQL databases)

Thoughtbot use these scripts at their workshops to help people get set up en-masse, so while the stack it includes is very specific, and may not be what everyone is after, it’s clearly battle tested. When I get time, I’d like to create a fork of this which uses rbenv/ruby-build instead of RVM, and a few other tweaks I have in mind.

Cinderella

Cinderella, by Corey Donohoe is a “fully managed development environment for open source hacking on Mac OSX”. It uses a combination of Homebrew and Chef to give you:

MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, Solr, memcached and MongoDB
Ruby (via rbenv).
Python with pip.
Node.js with npm.
Erlang.

I haven’t used it myself, but it seems like a very simple, straight-forward way to get a functional stack installed. Also, this is obviously better if you’re looking for a Python, Node.js, or Erlang stack, as the Thoughtbot script above doesn’t include any of those technologies.

Summary

If you haven’t thought about your development stack for a while, there are so many great new tools around that you’d be silly not to consider having a look at what your options are. I plan on eventually putting together my own laptop script (probably as a fork of thoughtbot’s ones) for use in future upgrades, but for now all the tools seem to be pretty painless to install on their own, or using tools like Homebrew. I’d say the tools and stacks available are only going to get better with time—which is really exciting, because they’re great already.

A Distributed Mentoring Movement

2011-09-18T16:44:00+10:00

A few weeks ago I came across Nick Disabato’s /mentoring page, and thought to myself “What a fantastic opportunity this is!” I did a bit more digging into the /mentoring project, and found that the idea came from Diana Kimball whose original page kicked it all off. She put her template (along with a few wiki pages with some guidance and advice for mentors) onto Github, and there’s already been quite a few people who’ve taken it up and put up their own pages.

My experience so far

I’ve approached a number of the people who’ve put up pages whose experiences, areas of interest, and mindset seem to overlap my own, and the response I’ve received back has been amazing. I’ve set up what might turn into a weekly skype check-in with one mentor, have had some interesting and fantastically helpful email correspondence with a two others, and have had some excellent feedback (and an offer to be put in contact with a further connection) from another. I’m humbled at the willingness of these people to offer their advice, opinions, and guidance to me. If any of you guys are reading this, thanks a bunch for your help and advice—you’ve all been a much bigger help to me than you know.

I think the whole /mentoring idea is fantastic. As someone who (living on the Gold Coast, Australia) feels noticeably removed from where it seems all the action happens, it’s amazingly helpful to be able to connect with, and receive guidance from real people who have been in my shoes, worked through the problems I’m currently facing, and have a broader (and more current) perspective of the industry.

Spin-offs

I decided that I should put up a mentoring page too—I feel like I’m at the very start of my career still, and really don’t know who would want to seek me out as a mentor, but I figured it can’t hurt to advertise the fact that I’d be open to people connecting with me if they wanted to (check out my /mentoring page). After I tweeted my link, Diana (who started the movement) got in touch saying that she really liked my design portfolio, and asked if I’d like to help put together a dedicated site for the project.

I’ve wanted to start getting involved with open-source projects for a while now, and while this isn’t a piece of software, I’m quite enthusiastic about the opportunity to contribute so directly to a project I genuinely believe in. I don’t have a lot of spare time at the moment, but over the next little while I’ll be working with Diana when I can to put a face on the project (you can check out a very rough, preliminary outline of the page here).

Get involved!

If you’re in a position where you’d consider making yourself available as a mentor, or if you’re someone who’s potentially looking to connect with a mentor yourself, check out the project on github and get stuck in!

Blogging With Octopress

2011-09-18T15:41:00+10:00

So one thing that has emerged from recent discussions I’ve been having with Wes Beary (the guy behind the fantastic fog gem) is the topic of actively blogging, and the notion that it’s something I believe will be will be very beneficial to me in a number of ways. I’ve had a couple of stabs at blogging before, but I never really built up enough momentum (or enthusiasm) for it to transform it into an enjoyable, long-term habit. There’s a number of factors that’ve contributed to this lack of traction, but I feel as though Octopress—a tool I’ve recently discovered—goes a long way to removing many of those barriers.

Blogging Barriers

Here’s a few of the barriers I faced in the past.

Time commitments

I don’t have much time to dedicate to setting up and maintaining a blog. I know my way around Wordpress pretty well, as I use it as my CMS of choice on many freelance projects, but I still feel like I have to put in a fair bit of time in order to get the blog to a state I’m happy with. I guess I need something that suits me better pretty much out of the box.

Design paranoia

As a designer, I find it hard to be comfortable with the way my blog looks without spending a fair bit of time customising the design. I like the theme wordpress comes with, and many of the other readily available themes are great too. Despite I feel like they all include more than I need to get started, and consequently I found myself configuring plugins and widgets instead of what I should be doing: writing posts.

Content creation & control

Blog-focused CMSs like Wordpress are fantastic, and have great UIs for creating content (I love the new fullscreen mode), however I’d prefer to write copy on my computer, and manage things locally so that I’ve always got a copy should something go awry with my hosting account (it’s happened before). Knowing I’ve got things backed up (under version control in Git, for example) would be nice too.

Enter Octopress

Octopress is a blogging framework which lets you create, manage, and deploy a blog using tools like ruby, rake, markdown, compass (sass), and all sorts of other nice tools us geeks like to use—living up to its byline—“a blogging framework for hackers”—in style.

After only a handful of commands, I can have a fully fledged blog ready and waiting for me to start creating content without any extra configuring needing to be done. Here’s how Octopress addresses pretty much all of the barriers I listed above:

It’s very quick to set up a blog.
The out-of-the-box configuration is almost exactly what I want.
It’s already got my tweets and github repos in the sidebar.
It has tweet and +1 sharing buttons at the bottom of posts.
It uses Disqus for comments.
It has Google Analytics tracking built in.
I can write posts and pages using markdown in my favourite editor.
It has fantastic support for code snippets and syntax highlighting (using the fantastic Solarized colour scheme, by Ethan Schoonover).
I can manage everything (including deployment to services like Heroku) with Git.
I’ve got a local backup of the entire blog should anything ever go wrong.

Perhaps the biggest drawcard for me though is the default theme. Everything is set in PT Serif (one of my favourite free fonts) in a nice big point size, everything is nicely spaced and laid out, and the whole thing is completely responsive—try resizing your browser window or viewing it on a mobile device! Simply put, this is a default theme that I have no problem living with (for now). What excites me even more is knowing that when I do eventually find time to dive into the design, all my favourite tools are already built in. Marvelous.

Installation & deployment

So setup wasn’t entirely smooth sailing for me. My Macbook is setup a little differently than many people’s—I use rbenv (by Sam Stephenson from 37signals) for ruby version management instead of what most people use (rvm), and I also run zsh (more specifically: oh-my-zsh) as my command-line shell rather than the usual bash. The issues I had were entirely my own fault, and actually was caused by some left-over junk in my $PATH from when I used rvm, which I didn’t get rid of properly when I switched to rbenv. Also, for anyone else out there who uses zsh, you’ll need to add alias rake="noglob rake" to your ~/.zshrc (as documented here) in order for the rake tasks for creating content to work. I suspect that most ~~people~~ hackers giving Octopress a shot won’t encounter any problems at all.

As for deployment, I’ve chosen (like some others) to publish this blog on Heroku—a brilliant stack-as-a-service solution which lets you deploy small-scale applications (like blogs) for free. If you haven’t experienced Heroku before, head on over there and learn to use the damn thing, because chances are it’ll save you a whole bunch of time, effort, and money next time you need to deploy a web application. The workflow is entirely manageable with Git alone, and to deploy Octopress to Heroku, the only change you need to make from default is to remove public from your .gitignore file, type git push heroku master, and you’ll be live in seconds.

Parting thoughts

Overall, Octopress seems to fit into the whole “convention over configuration” philosophy more than other solutions I’ve come across. It’s not for everyone, but that’s what’s so great about it! It’s built by (and for) people like me, so I feel as though I’ve got a much better chance of getting into the swing of blogging on a regular basis using Octopress. Its also the sort of project I eventually hope to contribute back to somehow, whether it’s by contributing code, publishing a theme or two, or even just blogging about my experiences using it. I’ll be sure to keep you up to date.