The trend is corporations increasingly substituting contractors for full time employees. Besides not having to pay benefits, there is no unemployment security, fewer rights (e.g. medical Leave of Absence), and diminished job security. Use them and drop them – that’s the new mantra. It’s not just the economy, either, as though it’s coming back. There’s [...]
I’ve noticed a lot of people describing getting several interviews, even multiple interviews in person, only to get a form letter rejection. Sure, sometimes it’s a fake listing. Employers do it all the time – a listing to invite external candidates when really an internal one is what they want. Often, it’s that they have [...]
Have you ever owned a piece of equipment for which you had strong emotional feelings? It might have been that 65 Chevrolet, or your first mitre saw, or an early lugabout PC. For me, most recently, it’s the ScanSnap S300 scanner. Before I explain why, allow me to explain how this scanner differs from all [...]
What is Pixily?: Pixily is a service that scans your documents with a high degree of privacy and archives them securely online, or makes them available for download as PDFs. By documents, we could be talking about almost anything. I tried the free trial, and put them through their paces, sending the prepaid envelope with [...]
Skype, by the way, has flaws, but it’s really made having a phone number superfluous except for anyone that will only use a regular phone or isn’t on the net a lot or doesn’t take it with them where they go, or have it waiting there for them already. Image via CrunchBase Case in point: [...]
I’m not officialy a social entrepreneur. I aspire to be, but I’m not, yet. As a micro-entrepreneur, it’d be a stretch to suggest otherwise. I do have people that work for me all over the world. And my contribution is to treat them with justice and fairness. To be honorable. Arguably, I’m not changing the [...]
Definitions are really only descriptions. They’re always less than the thing they describe. So here’s a definition written as a description: thinking involves considering other options to every assumption you’re working with. Thinking involves treating your premises as subjective, not objectifying them. Thinking involves, out of principle, never absolutizing your own perceptions, but ever challenging [...]
I’m deliriously happy. Happy to be wrong, that is. The other day I said Google didn’t know how to do “to do” lists properly. They don’t. But that’s beside the point – it seems google has figured out that I don’t yet know how to do “to do” lists. In the same way, I used [...]
You’ve seen them – the blog articles that are just fluff with a sales pitch. “You too can make millions. Buy my system, and get started today!” Or it’s like a book, but it doesn’t ever tell you what to do with this knowledge. I’m always telling my clients to blog, but how to write [...]
My Filofax is back! I confess, I’d let it sort of decline. Partly when I got really busy and started spending 18 instead of 16 hours online – and partly because I fell in love with my netbook and cloud computing. Still am – deeply – but they just don’t do it all for me [...]
I used one of the very first netbooks from about 1994-1998. There have been micro-laptops that fit in your palm for perhaps 20-years, but I’m talking about one of the first subnotebooks that was internet friendly: the Compaq Contura Aero (thumbnail photo at right – from the Computer Museum in Germany). I had the top [...]
Thomas Friedman’s book, “The World is Flat” has been filling my mind for some time now; I bought the 33-CD latest edition. It’s been completely worth it. I really don’t like the writing style. It’s always either too precious, too patronizing, or just too slow and laborious, if not pained and redundant. The fake ethnic [...]
So you want a low cost, collaborative workspace with big capabilities, and not much to learn? Here’s a recipe: Web-based: you want to access it from anywhere and not have it be dependent on your own hardware. Besides, you’re not lugging around a 20-pound laptop are you? You’ve been good, and upgraded to a netbook [...]
The World is Flat is one of those lovely life-changing pieces of literature that, if you can get past the author’s infuriating writing style, is worth the significant time investment. If you’re an entrepreneur, at the least, consider it brain-food, that unique energy that courses through the dendrites of our neural networks, and comes out [...]
Projects can swiftly get out of control, and can easily lose momentum. By that time, however, they’ve already started to take a toll on the confidence of stakeholders, participants, and clients. Because of this, the ability to implement effective projects requires excellence, support, and commitment at each stage of the build. The things project leaders [...]
The previous post talked about online business receipt storage (No More Shoeboxes). When tossing out shoeboxes, I think I spoke too soon. I’ve since surveyed what seem to be the contenders: Shoeboxed: Very nice. Excellent for receipts and business cards. Allows you to e-mail or scan them. A bit slower than I’d like on navigation [...]
The IRS, according to Revenue Procedure 97-22, permits businesses (and individuals) to store receipts and other records in digital format (and destroy the paper versions), provided certain standards are met, namely w. regard to clarity, indexing system, etc. This makes me very happy, since I’m busy going nuts with a shredder. Thermal paper fades, paper [...]
Daniel writes prolifically about subjects ranging from work to social justice, does literary writing, and is Marketing Director of Free Agent Source. Daniel founded JobHacker (formerly the Rules of Work) blog when the bottom fell out of the mortgage market, and the US economy started its death rattle.
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