• Camino’s Mike Pinkerton Working on Mac Version of Google Chrome
  More Google Chrome coverage, this time on the Mac version, on The Blog Herald
• Google Chrome: Initial Reports Round-up
  Round-up on the Google Chrome coverage, on The Blog Herald
• Maybe it is Time for a Super Premium Version of Akismet?
  Editorial on Akismet and comment spam, on The Blog Herald
• Captions Coming to YouTube
  Feature story on subtitling on YouTube, on The Blog Herald
• Finding Harmony Between Categories and Tags on Blogs
  On how to use categories and tags on blogs, on Devlounge
• How to Create a Mobile Site with MoFuse
  A tutorial about just that, over at Nettuts

Also, don’t forget the interview with Collis Ta’eed over at BloggerTalks. We’re talking about the Envato network, paid content, their new theme marketplace, and branding, so you should definitely read it.

Don’t get me wrong, I love freelancing. It fits me. That being said, I rarely recommend anyone to start a freelancing career, I rather tend to tell them that I’ve got a masochistic trait. Or something like that.

However, I do believe I’ve found the perfect freelancing gig. Sadly enough, no one have offered it to me yet, and I’m not sure if it is available for the money required to make it all go round.

So what is it?

Wiki page writer. As in doing pages for Wikipedia or similar.

What? Why?

Think about it. You get to write about a niche topic, and get to do it in-depth. This means that you either have to know a lot about it, which in turn probably means that you’re already passionate about it, or that you’ll have to do a ton of research and learn about the particular topic. Imagine that, getting paid to write, and getting paid to learn new things.

Ideally, it would be a gig where you could spend half a day, perhaps even less, working on it, otherwise it would be too much of a chore (although it is, of course, being work and all), and that would bring the fun from it. It is not all that hard to research topics, but having to do it on a tight time schedule, the traditional freelancing way, will make it tedious and stressful. That in turn will result in a more stale piece, which might not matter in a lot of cases, especially if you’re doing news reporting, but for an in-depth niched wiki page you need to be passionate and interesting in your writing, from start to finish, and the contractor will have to pay for that. In other words, let there be deadlines, but don’t smother the writer.

I could see this line of work being more common as we go along. Mahalo already pays for wiki content, and Google’s Knol (which I’ve written about previously) shares the ad revenue. Content is money, and wikis are on a march. Actually, they have been for quite some time, but I think Wikipedia made everybody scared to enter the market just because they are ad free and so ridiculously big. That didn’t stop Wikipedia hotshot Jimmy Wales to start Wikia though…

Anyway, I think this would be a perfect freelancing gig. Getting paid to learn something I’m somewhat intrigued about, and then write an in-depth piece about it. While I doubt any of today’s players in the wiki sphere will be willing to pay what I’d want for this type of work, I do believe we’ll be seeing more and more ads on various online job boards with a somewhat similar job description.

• Blogger Arrested Accused of Leaking Guns n’ Roses Songs
  Antiquiet blogger arrested by the FBI, on The Blog Herald
• Design Critique: The TechCrunch Redesign
  My thoughts on the TechCrunch redesign, on Devlounge
• WordPress Tip: Group Posts by Date in Listings
  Get better control with your post listings using the_date, on Devlounge

Most of my posts on The Blog Herald were news posts this week, so I’ll just point you to my author page for more on that.

• 12seconds.tv Release API, I’m Still Not Convinced
  Post on the 12seconds.tv API, and some thoughts on the service, on The Blog Herald
• Twitter Turns Up the Heat On Spam, Hires People
  Analysis of Twitter spam fighting tactics, on The Blog Herald
• Newsletters on Blogs, Annoying or Open-minded?
  A post on RSS and e-mail subscriptions on The Blog Herald
• The Cloud + The Netbook = A Blogger’s Best Friend?
  Editorial piece on netbooks and the cloud over at The Blog Herald
• Site is Down, Reddit Style
  A short reflection on “site currently offline” pages on Devlounge

I also did an interview with Ryan Caldwell of Performancing fame over at BloggerTalks. Not exactly freelancing, but you should read it anyway.

Don’t forget to stalk me for more goodness. Expect another part in The Green Knight short story this weekend, by the way. Have a great weekend!

I went with the 900 model sold in Sweden, because I wanted a Swedish keyboard so that I can sell it when I want to upgrade to a better machine, which I know I will. Initially I wanted the 901 model, but since delivery times from the UK was too long to fit my needs, I went with the crappy 16 GB version you probably shouldn’t get. It was cheap though, so just the fact that I can work during my current trip pays for it in time well spent. Or it should anyway, we’ll see how well it turns out, as I’ve spent less than an hour on the train so far…

Anyway, I bought the Eee PC 900 for a reason, or several really:

• I’ve wanted a truly portable laptop for quite some time. My MacBook is a good machine, but heavy and cumbersome to actually use on trips.
• I wanted a fairly cheap small laptop that I could throw in my bag, no fuss. So SSD and no media bay or stuff like that, just the bare essentials, lightweight.
• I’m all in the cloud, so why should I bother with big hard drives? In fact, I barely need them at all, with the iPod as my music player, and USB/memory cards should I want to watch movies on my laptop.
• I have found that I write better fiction away from my desk, which I probably associate way too much with work (it is all about fooling the psyche, as you know), so why not make sure I can move my fiction writing to where I want to?

So you could say I’m filling two needs here really. One is that I want to be able to bring a laptop on trips, and actually do some working/whatever on it while traveling, something that I find hard with the MacBook since a lot of trains, airplanes and whatnot are too cramped for a full laptop. The other is that I want to help myself write more fiction, which I do by fooling myself into be more positively attuned to writing, by doing it away from my desk. The portability and simpleness of the Eee PC helps me do that.

The Asus Eee PC 900

I went with the 900 model, as I said, because I do want a screen that can manage web sites well enough. with a resolution of 1024×600 pixels, sites might not look great, but they’ll fit horizontally at least. That means I can use it as a blogging machine, since I’m all in the cloud anyway.

It’ll be interesting to see how this will work out. One initial goal I’ve set for myself is to get a new version of a pen-and-paper role-playing system out to the people using it, possibly releasing it later on as well. I’ll do all of my writing on that using this Eee PC. I also intend to do some fiction writing, of course, including the final edits to the Orn story The Green Knight, as well as the third Stiel Uthrom story.

We’ll see how it works out. Right now, the keyboard is making life hard for me. I’m a touch typist and find that it doesn’t really work that great, and due to the size of my hands, neither does my finger setting – I just can’t fit it in and types with 3-4 fingers per hand instead. I am at a reasonable speed though, getting better, so it might not be an issue.

Netbooks are the future for me, and I doubt I’ll be replacing my MacBook at all when it clocks out for good. One strong desktop computer, and a truly portable netbook, possibly a 10 incher to get room for a better keyboard, that is probably the setup I’ll be looking at in the future.

• Are You Designing for the Smaller Screen?
  Talking about designing for smaller screens on Devlounge
• BlogDay 2008: A Short Interview with Nir Ofir
  An interview with BlogDay founder Nir Ofir, on The Blog Herald
• Talking Niche Hosting With the WarhammerBlogs.com Founders
  Interview on The Blog Herald
• Lijit CEO Todd Vernon on Securing $7.1M, and the Search Ad Network
  Interview on Lijit VC money and ad network on The Blog Herald
• Open Salon: Blog for Tips
  About Salon’s new blog network, on The Blog Herald
• Amazon to Recommend Stuff on Your Site (Products Too)
  News post on Amazon Associates related posts/pages widget

I’ve had a rough week with lots of stuff going on behind the scenes. That’ll probably be pretty obvious next week, I think, depending on when various gigs go online.

I’d also like to apologize to my Twitter followers for not getting the Asus Eee PC 900 post up yet. I’ve played a lot with it, and have lots to tell/brag/bitch about, but it has just been too much to wrap it up. The planned fiction update this weekend will probably not appear either, I’m traveling and unless I find decent wifi I won’t be able to wrap it up accordingly.

• Cymbolism: An Interview with Mubashar Iqbal can be found over at Devlounge
• Gawker Media Takes a Pop at Los Angeles Times’ Record Month over at The Blog Herald
• Teens in Tech, the WordPress.com for Teens over at The Blog Herald
• Blogger.com Marks Blogs as Spam, Unmarks Them over at The Blog Herald
• The Blog Herald Relaunches over at The Blog Herald, see my design post as well
• Integrating and Customizing Lijit for Your Site is my first tutorial over at Nettuts

I’ve been twittering as well, of course. This week, I haven’t been all that active on the Hive forums, still easing back from the summer pace I guess. That’s it for the week. Stay tuned for a fiction update this weekend!

Not that kind of goal...

It is not just todo lists and planning that can make your week a little easier, and increase your productivity. As you probably know, I have my own strategy when it comes to managin my week all figured out, I wrote about it in the post Using Weekly Planning to Increase Productivity, and unless you have read that one already, you probably should do so before moving on to this one.

By setting up weekly goals in conjunction with your todo lists and scheduled work, you’ll be able to get those more fluid tasks under control as well. This is how I do it.

What’s a Task and What’s a Goal?

It might not always be so obvious as one would think, to separate the tasks from the goals, and unless you know what you’re dealing with you won’t know how to manage it properly. That leads to further stress, since feeling insecure is never a good thing.

• A task is something that gets done in one swipe, checked off, and that’s it. Tasks go on the todo lists and into your planning.
• A goal is something more fluid, something you’ll have to return to, or work constantly on to achieve. You can’t really put it on the todo list because it’ll be hard to check off, and it’ll just add stress when you see it floating from one day to another, again and again.

There are a number of things that might be somewhere in-between. Let’s say I’m working with a new design. I can’t just put up “finish the design” on my todo list, so that implies that it is a goal. However, if I take my work on the project and split it into smaller pieces, I’ll have “deliver the mockup”, “send alternate logo”, “make dummy xhtml site”, and so on. These are things I could, and should, put on my todo list. I would have a hard time if I just put up “finish the design” as a goal, that would mean I’d have it hanging over me all the time, while splitting it up to make it into manageable tasks would make it a lot more rewarding to work with.

When to Use Goals

The whole idea with setting up goals is to remind you to get some things done beside the todo list. Goals shouldn’t be too imposing, and you shouldn’t beat yourself up if you feel they are sliding across the days. That’s the whole point, you just can’t put them properly on a todo list!

I’m following too many people, so I’ve set up a goal to go from following 370 people, to 350 this week

I’ve got a goal for this week, for instance. I’m a dedicated Twitter user (among other things), but sometimes I feel the amount of information is getting out of hand. I’m following too many people, so I’ve set up a goal to go from following 370 people, to 350 this week. I could say 300 right away, but I honestly don’t want to pressure myself into un-following too many people too fast, which could mean that I lost contact with the wrong people due to me being stressed about my goal.

I think that’s a nice goal. Something that I’ll be able to manage over time, without having to nail down on a particular day. I can just look at the update from someone I’d consider un-following, check the history, and then decide. I’ll do it as a part of my twittering, which is something I do daily.

Compare that to last week’s todo list, and you’ll see the difference.

The Essence of Setting Weekly Goals

I find that setting weekly goals helps me to increase my productivity. There simply just are things that won’t work on a todo list, but I still want to get a nice overview, without the extra pressure. You shouldn’t set your weekly goals to high, it is better to overachieve than to fail, and remember, we don’t want stress, so be sensible and start out small.

I hope this helped. If you have a way to manage your day, do share in the comments!

One of the things I intend to tackle with this redesign is the way important content gets pushed out the door, we’ve got great weekly specials like WordPress Wednesday by the excellent Lorelle VanFossen (interview over at BloggerTalks), and Movable Type Monday by Arvind Satyanarayan (also interviewed over at BloggerTalks). This kind of content needs more attention, and I intend to solve that.

I have written more extensively about the new Blog Herald design already, so you should read the relaunch post if you want to know more about what I think and why I did this or that. It’ll be interesting to see what people will think about it, and also how it will evolve in the future. In fact, the site should look better in a few months time, because there are more ads up than was ever intended, and when the agreements and campaigns have been honored, I’ll be fighting for taking away the extra ones again.

Screenshot of the new Blog Herald design

What do you think? Let me know over at The Blog Herald, or drop me a note in the comments, I’m very curious as to see how this one will be handled by the blogosphere.

However, given the amount of e-mail I’m getting (not overwhelming, just enough for me to consider as a “problem”, for lack of better word), there is some interest as to what I’m up to, so I figured I’d try and do monthly status reports for a while, see how it fits. I might also work as a spur for me, something I’ve tried before with the OrnTales.com project, now a part of this very site.

So this is the first status report, tackling July 2008, even though there are a few days left. I doubt everything will change in that time, but if it does, I’ll let you know for sure.

I’m keeping client work out of this, being design gigs and freelance writing. While those are projects too, at times, they are not my projects per se, and this is not the place to talk about them.

The tdhedengren network

As you can see at the top of the page, the tdhedengren network consists of my blog, the interview blog BloggerTalks, and Living Hyboria, being a blog dedicated to the MMORPG Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. Truth be told, only my blog and BloggerTalks are up and running for real, while Living Hyboria is trudging along while waiting for me to roll out a design and organize it a bit. There is also a fourth site involved, being Live Arcade Review which is dedicated to reviewing Xbox Live Arcade (ie. downloadable) games. This one’s been around for some time, but have been on hold until now. Or rather, that was the plan, but my Xbox 360 got RROD’d, so the relaunch will have to wait a bit longer.

BloggerTalks is doing great, although I’m taking a bit easy with the interviews over the summer. The frequency at least, because the likes of Natali Del Conte and Duncan Riley are no small fish. I’m happy with it, it keeps pushing out great content, if I may say so myself, and that was the goal.

The very site you’re reading, tdhedengren.com, is working out as well. There is still work to be done, especially with the pretty important portfolio, and I’m hoping to get that up to date in a few weeks time.

My Fiction Writing

While the blog projects are easy enough to talk about, my fiction is perhaps not. I have put it all here, under one roof, as a part of the relaunch of this site, but also to give myself some more room. July has not been a month full of writing for me, however, although I have polished my plans for Orn, got some new ideas that might or might not end up as one or several short stories in the autumn, and so on. I did get the first part of The Green Knight short story published, that’s something at least. Expect more in this story on a weekly basis in August, probably on Fridays or Saturdays, I haven’t completely decided on the schedule yet. The story is more or less done, however, so I’ll be wrapping it up in the coming week so that I can focus on other things.

Other Projects

I have some Swedish projects running, such as the former blog network turned super-group-blog Pakten, but they are all laying low over the summer months, not much to mention there.

There is a slightly larger project as well, but as I haven’t announced it at all yet I’ll just keep quiet. It’s been in the works since the last version of tdhedengren.com, and I expect to unveil it late August or in September, depending on things yet to be determined. Needless to say, I’m excited about it.

That’s July 2008 for you. I hope the insight will help in some way, perhaps inspire your somewhat, or just cure your curiosity.