I wanted to jump into the conversation about personal branding that we’ve been having over the past week or so. I really don’t spend much, if any, time worrying about my personal brand, but when I look at my presence online, I seem to have a fairly strong presence. Despite having a common name, people can easily find me on the major search engines. I didn’t put any work into personal branding to make this happen. Instead, I focused on something more important: content.

I write quite a bit of content across multiple web sites. On my blog, the content shifts based on my interests and has morphed from open source topics to online communities and social web topics over the past few years. On Twitter, I have a mix of personal and professional content. I have a passion for learning new things and sharing the interesting bits with other people, which naturally tends to result in content that people want to read.

When I start working with a new client, I point them to my blog where they can learn about my consulting practice, read my bio, and read some of my content. I share as much as I can on my blog. I have how-to videos for Yahoo Pipes, detailed approaches to online community building and community management, tips for how companies can use Facebook and Twitter, and more. If someone wants to hire me to put together a strategic plan for a new online community, they can learn more about my approaches to online community building through my content on the topic. By reading my blog posts, they can usually get a pretty good feel for whether I would be a good fit for a particular project.

Before you spend too much time worrying about personal branding, spend some time thinking about content. Without a solid base of content, your personal branding efforts might be less successful than you hoped.

How much effort do put into content vs. personal branding?

There are plenty of applications out there that can help you to manage your invoices and accounts receivable online. But what about accounts payable? Managing your outgoing payments from the web can be a little complicated, especially if you need to get approval or send a check. Bill.com offers tools to do just that, making the entire accounts payable process easy to manage, wherever you are.

Bill.com was developed with small- to medium-sized businesses in mind, making it a viable option even for solo web workers. The site’s newest feature, ePayments, has made it possible for you to entirely eliminate paperwork when paying bills: It lets you pay anyone through a direct-deposit money transfer (and avoiding many of the fees associated with other payment methods, like PayPal).

The accounts payable process with Bill.com is pretty simple. You email each bill you receive to a special address that imports it into your Bill.com account. From there, you can send it to the correct people for approval, schedule payments and send out checks or direct-deposit payments. The site maintains a copy of each bill and allows you to upload relevant documents (like contracts) so that each person who needs to approve a particular payment can check on any details without having to leave the site.

Checks get sent out for payments, no matter where you are. Even if your current office is a coffee shop on the far side of the planet, it isn’t necessary to carry a checkbook along. It doesn’t matter whether you’re working remotely and need approval to get a payment out; where you once might have had to visit the person in charge of accounts payable to get a signature approving a particular payment, Bill.com takes care of reminding that person to note his or her approval on the site.

The whole system can be synchronized with Quickbooks and other accounting software so that you can keep your books up to date. You can also simplify the billing process even further. With recurring bills, you can create automatic payments so that you don’t have to handle each step every month.

With Bill.com, it’s also easier to check which payments you’ve sent out and which have been received. There’s an electronic trail in case of any eventualities, whether the concern is a check lost in the mail or a question of fraud. The site also provides positive pay fraud protection automatically (a system typically offered for an additional fee by banks in which your checks are compared to existing payments in order to make sure they’re valid). The security for the site is based on that used for banks. Among other measures, your data is protected by 256-bit encryption. If need be, you can request a copy of any information you’ve uploaded to Bill.com on DVD at any time.

If you have only one user who needs to access Bill.com, the base price is $24.99. You can add 10 additional users for $9.99. There are also fees associated with sending out checks beyond a certain number, as well as ePayments. However, considering that the application could significantly reduce the amount of time your business spends on accounts payable, the price may be well worth paying.

Could ePayments be useful to your business?

When Google recently announced its Google Wave initiative, there were a lot of posts going around the web characterizing it as earth-changing news, although some questioned the effort. Wave combines email, instant messaging, wiki features and more, conjuring up images of a next-generation communications tool. Now, the Google Wave team has posted an update on the project’s status, including information on how developers can start using it early, and when users at large can.

According to the Google Wave team’s post, 6,000 developer accounts have already been rolled out, and the team will sift through 20,000 additional requests during August. You can request a developer account here.

The team has also announced that the service will open to the public on September 30th. The team is currently working on improving Wave’s speed, stability and usability. Wave APIs are also being expanded.

Because developers are already using Wave, those with a sandbox account can already find a fair number of sample Wave applications and APIs in this gallery, and in this post. I don’t yet have a sandbox account, but I’m getting a better picture of how Wave applications may look and feel just from viewing the descriptions of many of them. If you’re interested in finding out what Wave is like, Solid State Group Technical Director Ben Rometsch has published detailed first impressions of the service, gained through his developer account, here.

One of the sample Wave applications lets you embed Wave(s) in a blog post or on a web page. That seems like an interesting way to build on the basic commenting system present on most blogs; I might find ways to use that in my posts here. There are even games built around Wave.

The Google Wave team is poised to put up additional posts this week summarizing what went on at Google Wave Federation Day in Mountain View, Calif. I remain skeptical about Wave necessarily being a huge game-changer, partly because almost anything Google announces immediately gets an overwhelmingly positive reaction. Still, the more I see of the development action going on around it, and the more specifics on applications I see about it, the more interested I am to see what it’s actually capable of.

When I first digested the news of Wave, I was reminded of all the companies that have tried to deliver the “universal inbox” over the years. These were supposed to be where all your email, voice mail, instant messages and every other type of communication got aggregated, and none of them really took off in a big way. Looking at the types of applications coming for Wave, though, makes me think differently about it. Could it improve how blogs work? Could it take the idea of a wiki to the next level? It looks like we shall soon see, and it also looks like more of an application platform than it did before.

Have you tried Google Wave? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Having easy ways to share information with your teammates is absolutely crucial when your office is wherever you happen to set down your laptop. Various tools have emerged that let you share a dashboard of sorts with your teammates. Many of them have the ability to share files, to provide instant updates on what you’re doing, to assign tasks to team members — but one feature that I’ve been looking for just hasn’t made it into many of the tools I’ve tried. Bantam Live has made good on that missing element: the ability to manage shared contacts.

Customer relationship management (CRM) software is a crucial component of Bantam Live’s dashboard, and for good reason. Whether you’re building a web site or selling a product, you never do it in a vacuum. Instead, there are a wide variety of people that must be contacted at various points. Bantam Live does far more than just keep a central file of phone numbers and email addresses, though: for every given contact, you can track their social media presence on sites like Twitter and LinkedIn. At a glance, you can see what your contacts have been up to and communicate more effectively with them.

Bantam Live takes other cues from social media, too. The first opportunity to interact that you see is a field for status updates. Those updates show up in a real-time activity stream, along with newly created and completed tasks, notes, events and updates to contacts. You can easily interact with each item that appears in the stream, accepting event invitations, commenting on status updates, and so forth.

The learning curve for using Bantam Live is very shallow, making it a practical system to use for short-lived teams. Bringing together a team to put up a major web site but not really planning on working together after it’s complete? Bantam Live can provide a simple way to bring together your team for a few months. You can import an address book’s worth of contacts, add in your tasks and get to work quickly. Even bringing in new team members should take only a matter of minutes, including training them to use Bantam Live: the interface is simple to use and fairly intuitive.

Bantam Live is currently in beta — although its slick interface can lead you to believe otherwise. During the beta period, even large teams can use it for free, and Bantam Live’s creators encourage you to use it with a team: the system is set up to focus on interactions, leading it to be less useful for solo users. However, there are plans to roll out a version for single users, complete with appropriate features, this fall.

Considering how important this sort of information is to everyone working on your project (as well as how interesting your competitors might find it), the fact that Bantam Live uses SSL security on its application at each level is reassuring.

If you’ve tried Bantam Live, tell us what you think of the service in the comments.

Facebook’s not just for keeping tabs on friends and filling out quizzes — it can also be used as a highly effective business tool. It’s great for marketing your products, landing gigs and connecting with your customers.

Here are 32 ways to use Facebook in your business.

Manage Your Profile

1. Fill out your profile completely to earn trust.
2. Establish a business account if you don’t already have one.
3. Stay out of trouble by reading the Facebook rules regarding business accounts.
4. Install appropriate applications to integrate feeds from your blog and other social media accounts into your Facebook profile. (Although you should be careful before integrating your Twitter feed into your Faceboook profile, as a stream of tweets can seem overwhelming to your contacts.)
5. Keep any personal parts of your profile private through Settings.
6. Create friends lists such as “Work,” “Family” and “Limited Profile” for finer-grained control over your profile privacy.
7. Post a professional or business casual photos of yourself to reinforce your brand.
8. Limit business contacts’ access to personal photos.
9. Post your newsletter subscription information and archives somewhere in your profile.

Connect and share with others

10. Obtain a Facebook vanity URL so that people can find you easily.
11. Add your Facebok URL to your email signature and any marketing collateral (business cards, etc.) so prospects can learn more about you.
12. Post business updates on your wall. Focus on business activities, such as “Working with ABC Company on web site redesign.”
13. Share useful articles and links to presentation and valuable resources that interest customers and prospects on your wall, to establish credibility.
14. Combine Facebook with other social media tools like Twitter. For example, when someone asks question on Twitter, you can respond in detail in a blog post and link to it from Facebook.
15. Before traveling, check contacts locations so you can meet with those in the city where you’re heading.
16. Research prospects before meeting or contacting them.
17. Upload your contacts from your email client to find more connections.
18. Use Find Friends for suggestions of other people you may know to expand your network even further.
19. Look for mutual contacts on your contacts’ friends lists.
20. Find experts in your field and invite them as a guest blogger on your blog or speaker at your event.
21. Market your products by posting discounts and package deals.
22. Share survey or research data to gain credibility.
23. Use Facebook Connect to add social networking features to your web site.
24. Suggest Friends to clients and colleagues — by helping them you establish trust.
25. Buy Facebook ads to target your exact audience.
26. Read up on Facebook Beacon to see if it might be useful for you.

Use Network, Group and Fan Pages

27. Start a group or fan page for product, brand or business. Unless you or your business is already a household name, a group is usually the better choice.
28. Add basic information to the group or fan page such as links to company site, newsletter subscription information and newsletter archives.
29. Post upcoming events including webinars, conferences and other programs where you or someone from your company will be present.
30. Update your group or fan page on a regular basis with helpful information and answers to questions.
31. Join network, industry and alumni groups related to your business.
32. Use search to find groups and fan pages related to your business by industry, location and career.

How do you use Facebook for business?

Here at WebWorkerDaily we’ve written a lot about Twitter and its increasing usefulness for productivity, business and networking. As it grows in popularity, there have been a multitude of businesses that have been formed around the service. One such service is Idea Anglers, a community for entrepreneurs looking for help in shaping their business ideas.

It’s been a real pleasure to watch Idea Anglers take form right before my very eyes. Founders Neal Rohrbach and Bradford Shimp met in a weekly Twitter chat and began exchanging occasional tweets in the weeks that followed. An off-handed comment by Bradford about being an “Idea Wrangler” led Neal on a domain search, and thus the business was born.

According to Rohrbach, Idea Anglers “is an online collaborative community for small biz or individuals, where we turn ideas into successful businesses.” Using a combination of a library of exclusive content and access to a network of hand-picked guides and fellow members to lead the way, Idea Anglers is a service for anyone who has an idea for a business, but could use some guidance to get things going. It’s a place for collaboration and networking. Other benefits will include access to webinars, e-books, discounted services and other collaboration features.

Even though the site was born and developed on Twitter and using social media tools, the scope of expertise and information available through the service will be much broader. With guides specializing in marketing, copywriting and other forms of communication, the idea is to cover all the areas that might be a barrier to bringing your idea to fruition.

The site is still in pre-launch phase, but an initial group of guides has been published. There’s also a Depth Finder Questionnaire, giving you the chance to help shape what will be available when the site goes live.

No pricing information is available for the subscription-based service, but the intention is to make some of the individual content available on a per-item cost basis as well.

Has social media helped to shape your business?

We’re on a personal branding kick here at WebWorkerDaily, and like all self-promotion, it makes me feel a little uncomfortable. I’ve never been one to toot my own horn; it’s part of the reason that I escaped the corporate world, and all of the ladder-climbing and interviewing bluster that goes along with it. I find that working on the web actually allows me to stay away from most of what I would consider “personal branding,” especially since much of the work I do involves providing content for sites that are not my own and already have strong brands of their own.

The key to providing that kind of content, and to other kinds of writing that are less focused on the byline and more on the product, like ghostwriting, is not to have too strong a brand yourself. Content producers are often encouraged to sidestep the limelight so as not to cast a shadow on the blog or product brand they’re contributing to. Doing so is easy if you’re naturally a shrinking violet, but it also means treading a thin line between being a good supporting cast member and being altogether too forgettable.

Learn From the Best

If you want to portray yourself as a top content producer, look at what other people who are already where you want to be are doing. In a lot of cases, you probably won’t be familiar with the most important players in your chosen field. People like Christina Warren, Adam Frucci and Luke Plunkett might not be familiar to you, yet they produce a lot of the content you’ll see on TUAW, Gizmodo and Kotaku, respectively. The key to their success? They identify and assimilate the brand and voice of the publication that they’re working for, instead of being memorable in and of themselves.

Content is King

It’s an oft-quoted maxim, but it remains true, especially for those trying to get gigs as content producers. Any kind of technical/ghost/content-writing position will be more focused on the meat and potatoes of your actual work, and a lot less on you and your credentials. I often have to remind myself to include my educational background when applying for new writing jobs, even though I have an MA in writing, because my portfolio is so much more important to the outcome of my application.

The best way to foreground content is to build up your portfolio. Ideally, you should get paid work, but if you’re just starting out, you might have to do some things on spec/for the byline just to build up a bit of a content bank.

Personal Blogging and Social Media

It might be difficult to see how you can still put your own blog and your various social media profiles to use in building a self-effacing anti-brand, since they are arguably focused on you as an individual by default. You can still make sure these tools are redirecting focus to your content, too, by making them operate like hubs and launchpads rather than resumés or personal promotion tools.

For your blog, make sure you go minimalist, and write entries that direct readers to either other places where your paid work appears, or to contextual articles relevant to your target industry that will help establish your authority in that field. For your social media accounts, the idea is much the same. Share relevant links, engage in meaningful conversations, and generally keep the focus on what’s going on in your field rather than on your achievements and track record.

It’s Not Me, It’s You

I know this kind of approach won’t go over so well with a lot of you out there. We Westerners tend to be individualistic, and part of that means taking and receiving credit for our contributions. The fact is, though, that a lot of those looking for content providers want exactly the opposite: someone who will do the work and quietly step aside (or point back to the brand) when that work draws attention. It may not be glamorous, but it pays the bills, and that’s all that counts in my books.

Do you think avoiding a personal brand is ever a good idea, regardless of what kind of work you do? Do you think it’s even actually possible?

Image by flickr user pulpolux

There are some great things about being self-employed and working from my home via the web. One of them is that I can give myself permission to take time off whenever I need it. The flip side of that freedom is that because I am self-employed and work alone from home, there is no one to cover for me while I take time off. If I’m not doing the work, it doesn’t get done. If I want to completely take time off, I have to work extra hard before my break to create advance content to schedule for my readers while I am “off.” Then when I come back, I have to scramble to catch up with an inbox full of email and RSS feeds at the same time I’m diving back into my regular work.

The entire process of essentially working double-time before and after my time off is so exhausting and stressful that most of the time, it completely offsets any benefit I might get from the time off itself.

But we do all need mental breaks to recharge. I can’t just not take breaks because taking them is too much work. So to cope with this challenge I’ve developed a system of being able to partially dial back my level of work activity. This gives me some of the mental feeling of taking time off without the break itself causing a stressful workload.

There are essentially two partial activity levels I can use to manage my workload while giving myself a mini mental break:

Light Day Mode. I still work on content but only on “fast and easy” items that are low effort. These are typically light reads, so this is a good mode to keep me in touch with my readers after a heavy news cycle, without wearing them out, too. I also manage feeds and emails, but leave routine site maintenance tasks for full work days.

Avalanche Prevention Mode. This is the mode I use on weekends (or any other day that I take a complete break from maintenance and producing content) to keep from having a massively full inbox awaiting me on my return to work. Essentially, it consists of just staying on top of incoming feed and email items. This work can be done from either my computer or my iPhone, making it easy to keep up with no matter where I am or what I am doing.

These modes aren’t just helpful when I need time off for rest and relaxation. They are also useful when I am working but not on my usual schedule, such as when I am away from my home office traveling for a trade show. Some days at trade shows I am working full speed and producing content. But on days like in-transit travel days, I adjust to one of my partial activity levels to try to avoid returning from an exhausting business trip to a mess of built-up work in my office.

Breaks are necessary, but if preparing for them and recovering from them causes more stress than they alleviate, it pretty much becomes a self-defeating exercise. I find that instead of long, complete breaks from work that are hard to prepare for and recover from, that mini mental breaks work better for me.

Do you have a way of taking a partial break? How do you sneak a mental break?

The project milestone sheet is an incredibly important document for freelancers and their clients. It defines all the most important tasks, who is assigned to them, and when they are due. In other words, it serves as the map for your entire work process. As Darrell noted in a previous post, even small projects need to have these milestones set.

So how can you create a milestone sheet that works?

Deliverables and dates. The most important items on the milestone sheet are the deliverable items that will come from both you and your client. From planning to development to project conclusion, every significant step should be noted.

Apart from the developmental stages of the project, here’s what you should include:

• Contract signing;
• Payment schedules;
• Submission of existing relevant documents from the client (previous marketing materials, business vision and objectives, etc.); and
• Ample time for the client to review your work and send feedback.

If you’re located in a different timezone from your client, identify the timezone that the schedule is based on. This isn’t such a big deal when there’s only a 2-3-hour difference — unless the project you’re working on has strict hour-by-hour deadlines. But for time differences of more than eight hours, I usually set the deadlines according to the client’s timezone by default. For my own schedule, I also have a personal copy based on my own timezone.

Identify the client’s area of responsibility. You can do this through color differentiation when there’s just you and the client (a trick I picked up from Justin Hartfield’s post on Freelance Switch). If you’re working with multiple people, it might be better to tabulate the schedule based on deadlines, the expected item, and the name of the person responsible.

Include consequences of deviating from the schedule. The end of the project milestone sheet should also clearly describe the consequences of failing to follow the set schedule. If delays in providing one deliverable will impact the rest of the scheduled items, make that clear. Don’t make this the “fine print” of your schedule. It should have the same font size as the rest of the text on the milestone sheet. After all, it’s equally important.

Make sure the client reads it. To increase the chances that my client reads the milestone sheet, I attach it to an email that doesn’t bring up any other issues. The email simply states something like “Attached is the schedule for the project. Please read it carefully and let me know if you want to make any adjustments. Is the time frame adequate for you?”

A short message like that works for the following reasons:

• You’re talking about one thing only so your clients won’t be distracted with other issues;
• You’re calling it a “schedule,” making it sound less intimidating to non-corporate clients or clients whose first language isn’t English; and
• The client can’t answer your parting question without looking at the schedule you sent.

Follow up. I might come off as repetitive, but for typically forgetful clients, I mention the milestone sheet every time I’ve completed something. I also tell them what comes next, whether it’s additional work I have to do or I’m waiting for something from their end. The frequency and phrasing of your follow-ups depends on the client. When you’re working with clients who are more attentive to schedule, sending out frequent and repetitive reminders won’t be necessary.

If there’s a deadline looming for something that your client is accountable for, such as comments on a draft or payments, it helps to send reminders a day or two before the due date. For tech-savvy clients you can do this through your project management software. In most situations, sending email reminders is enough.

By applying these tips, you can make large projects more manageable, and tasks easier to track. Also, with a good project milestone sheet, even the most difficult clients become easier to work with.

Do you use a milestone sheet for your online freelancing practice? What tactics have worked for you so far?

Image by lusi from sxc.hu

Here are some interesting posts from around the ‘Net to catch up with over the weekend:

• Freelance Switch: “10 Ways Freelancers Can Get Help and Support”
• TheAppleBlog: “Mozy vs. Carbonite: Mac Backup Smackdown”
• PCWorld:”Why IT Folks Hate Microsoft”
• Smashing Magazine: “Quality-Price-Ratio in Web Design (Pricing Design Work)”
• Harvard Business Blogs: “Why You Need to Fail”
• Business Pundit: “The 12 Qualities of True Business Professionals”
• TIME: “Yes, I Suck: Self-Help Through Negative Thinking”
• Seth Godin: “How to make graphs that work”

What are you reading this weekend?

We’ve covered many third-party Google Calendar hacks and add-ins in the past, but earlier this week Google announced the launch of Calendar Labs. Calendar Labs works similarly to Gmail Labs,  offering “official” experimental hacks and extensions to Google Calendar. You can access it from your Settings page, which now sports a brand-new Labs tab.

Here is the current lineup of hacks and extensions available in Calendar Labs:

Background image. Enabling this feature lets you choose a background image for your Google Calendar. You can choose which image to use from your General Settings page.

Attach Google Docs. This feature lets you attach a document, spreadsheet, and or presentation you create in Google Docs to any event you create in Google Calendar. You must share the documents you attach to a Google Calendar event in order for others to view them. If you are on a project team that uses Google Docs then this could be a very useful feature as you will able to attach media agendas and other project documentation directly to a Google Calendar event for review by the team.

World clock. This Labs feature places a reconfigurable world clock on the right-hand side of Google Calendar, with adjustable settings that let you choose the World times you want to appear in your calendar view. With many colleagues spread out across the world, I set up World Clock on my Google Calendar so I can get a better appreciation of my colleagues’ time zones.

Jump to date. Enabling this Labs feature lets you jump to any date with ease.

Next meeting. This feature provides a countdown to your next Google Calendar event.

Free or busy. Enabling this Labs feature lets you view which of your friends are free or busy (note: you and all your friends must share your Google Calendars in order for it to work). If you are on a project team where members use Google Calendar, this experimental feature should come in handy to help better communicate everybody’s availability for conference calls and meetings.

What features do you want to see join Google Calendar Labs?

You don’t need an expensive marketing firm, or even a friend who works in marketing, to manage your personal brand online. Some of the most powerful tools for monitoring your brand are the free email alert mechanisms available at your search engine of choice.

Setting Google Alerts. While I’ve been known to egosurf my own name online every once in a while, setting a Google Alert on my name means I don’t have to do it so much. Every time Google finds a web page with my name on it, it emails me. Setting up a Google Alert is simple. Go to your Google account and choose “Alerts.” Type your full name in the Search Terms field. Then choose the type of search. I recommend a comprehensive search because then you’ll receive Google Alerts with results that span online news, blogs and other web sites. You then have the option to set the frequency that you receive Alerts. Finally, you just need to specify the email address that should receive the alert and click “Create Alert.”

Setting Yahoo Alerts. Yahoo Alerts works similarly to Google Alerts. Go to Yahoo Alerts and sign in to your Yahoo user account. Click “Create an Alert” and then choose “Keyword News.” From the Keyword News Alert home page, enter your full name in the “Include” field. Next choose how you want the Yahoo Alerts delivered, and the delivery method (via email, Yahoo Messenger or mobile device). Finally, click “Save Alert.”

Reacting to the Alerts

Using automated alert systems to help manage your personal brand online is not as fun as ego surfing for your name but is a much better way of tracking where your name shows up online. For example, when my first WebWorkerDaily posts went online, I received a Google Alert for each one.

On the flip side, with a name like Will Kelly, I receive Google Alerts for articles about Kelly Slater (the surfer), Kelly Ripa (the talk show host) and Kelly Clarkson (the singer) just because the articles contain the the text “Will Kelly.” So do expect some false alerts if you chose to use Google Alerts or Yahoo Alerts. I also recommend using rules in your email application to route alerts to a specific folder to stop them clogging up your inbox.

How do you monitor your personal brand online?

Just in case you missed any of them, here are the five most popular posts on WebWorkerDaily this week:

• The Open Source Opportunity

In a tough job market, there are opportunities for people with open source skills.

• 33 Ways to Use LinkedIn for Business

Is your LinkedIn account mainly sitting idle? Meryl explains 33 ways to use LinkedIn to find gigs, sell products, expand your networks, grow your business and gain free publicity.

• Tales From a Tweetup Novice: What I Did and Didn’t Get from the Experience

Darrell’s been to two tweetups (real-life gatherings of Twitter users) recently. In this post, he shares what he found good (and bad) about both events, and shares tips for tweetup organizers and attendees.

• Twitter for Business FAQ

Thinking about using Twitter in your business? Meryl answers some of the most frequently asked questions.

• Personal Branding Is Important, Like It or Not

In the first in a series of posts on personal branding, Pamela explains why some people have a problem with the term, and why the concept is important for everyone.

We’d like to say thanks to this month’s WebWorkerDaily sponsors:

• Rackspace: Experience fanatical support.
• Mozy: Back up your photos, music, and files with Mozy for as low as $4.34 per month.

Recently, I went to check on an open-source drawing program called Draw, which used to be from Cumulate Labs, and was a pretty good tool for creating diagrams; effectively an online equivalent of Microsoft Visio. When I went to the site, I found that it’s been transitioned to a project from Autodesk Labs and is now called Project Draw. It’s still a great online diagramming tool, and you can use it for free, and watch an introductory video, here. While it’s not quite as full-featured as Visio, it’s more than enough for my drawing needs and has a slick interface.

I tried Project Draw in Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera, and it worked well in all of them, even though Opera isn’t listed as a supported browser. As seen in the screenshot below, the basic shapes you can use for diagrams are on the left. You just drag and drop them to place them in your drawing, and then resize and rotate as necessary. Text tools, fill tools, font tools and more are along the top of the screen.

With Project Draw, you can save your diagrams in a variety of formats, and export them in many formats including DWF, DWFx, PDF, JPG, PNG and SVG. If you happen to use Autodesk’s AutoCAD software, you can also include your CAD designs. Project Draw lets you share diagrams via email, directly from within the program. Under the “Try it” button on this page, you’ll also find a series of helpful YouTube videos about using Project Draw.

Project Draw even has offline support, via Google Gears. The app is good enough that I’ll be using it alongside one of my favorite free drawing tools, a great Firefox extension called Pencil.  If you’re interested in doing flowcharts, spatial diagrams, software design charts,  organizational charts or other types of drawings, it’s worth looking into both of these free tools.

What tools do you use for drawing flowcharts?

Email is a great tool for office communication, but is it really the best way to keep track of discussions? There are other choices, like communicating via IM or using wikis. Yet another option is ShareFlow, a new app from Zenbe, the people behind the popular Zenbe Lists iPhone app and web service.

ShareFlow is basically a threaded comments system for your business. And it just so happens that a threaded comments system is exactly what most office communication needs. It’s also free for an entry-level account, so is priced perfectly for my budget. The best part? Each plan includes access for unlimited users, so organization size is immaterial when it comes time to picking a plan.

Registration and Initial Setup

The second-best part? It takes all of about 10 seconds to sign up, which regular WWD readers will know is a huge benefit in the opinion of this registration-weary reviewer. Once you’ve signed up, you’ll see that ShareFlow most closely resembles Facebook’s redesigned home screen, minus the interminable stream of annoying surveys.

Once you’ve been invited to partake in a “flow” (a conversation), or created one yourself, you can post comments, files, emails, events or maps to the ShareFlow stream. You can add other users to your flow by clicking the “Invite” link, at which point they’ll receive an email from which they can view the flow (and easily sign up, if they don’t yet have an account, without being redirected to another page).

Posting and Content

Users will have to keep their ShareFlow window open, or subscribe to an RSS feed for the flow in order to receive updates, since emails are only sent for invitations, and not for subsequent additions/changes made by flow contributors. At first this seemed puzzling, but when I considered that ShareFlow is meant to be an email alternative, it made much more sense. Plus, with RSS support built in, there’s absolutely no reason to ever miss any updates.

The ability to post other things, like files, emails, events and maps is a huge bonus, and Zenbe implements all of these features very well in the app. It doesn’t overwhelm you with options; it just asks for exactly the right amount of information required to complete the associated function. Clicking on “files” instantly opens a file browser window and upload dialog box, for instance, and “map” allows you to type in an address and then automatically retrieves the best-guess Google Map for whatever entry you make. This is all achieved without leaving the main dashboard window.

If you’re unable to access the ShareFlow web interface, you can also add updates via email, thanks to a unique email address created for each individual flow. When I tried this out, ShareFlow recognized and posted the emailed update to the flow almost instantaneously.

Filtering and Organization

Some nice extras are the ability to flag any post in your flow with a variety of icons, which provide great visual shortcuts for finding specific kinds of content. If you’re not crazy about a manual approach, you can also apply filters using a drop-down menu in the upper left-hand corner of the ShareFlow interface, which allows you to view only emails, pictures, movies, etc. Like every other feature in the web app’s arsenal, the filters here manage to be simple without sacrificing usefulness.

Conclusion and Pricing Options

With a free account, the only limits you’ll encounter are file storage space and the number of active flows you can have at any one time (five as of this writing). If you find the service handy, you might quickly find yourself reaching that cap. Tiered pricing plans ranging from $20 to $80 per month will get you between 25 and 200 flows, and a lot more storage, too. This is definitely one time I can see myself springing for the expense sometime down the road, so long as I can actually corral team members into switching from email to a much more conversational flow communications setup.

What’s your current team communication tool of choice?