I’ve been invited to write a column on a new site called Freelance Advisor, which is run by Darren Fell of pure360, who is currently working on a new venture, crunch.co.uk. This site is aimed at helping people based in the UK (although lots of advice can be used anywhere) to get started as a Freelancer. Its content is growing fast, and its well worth subscribing. Its not technical specific either, so can be used by anyone.

My column will focus on lifehacks, and time management techniques which I use to get things done quicker and more effectively. I’m always learning new ones, and adapting them if needed. There’s plenty on this out there, but I’m going to present exactly what works for me, rather than a huge unmanageable bunch of ideas and concepts. Hopefully it will help some people out. The first post introduces GTD, 4 hour workweek and remember the milk.

Web Apps

First off, I’ve started using a fantastic little app for organising your life this week - rememberthemilk its immensely usable, and lets you list the things you have to do, organised by project if you wish. You can set due dates, and have tasks recur on a regular basis. It has plugins for iPhone, facebook and netvibes. Great for gtd fans.

Speaking of netvibes, that’s another tool i’ve only just discovered. A little like OS X’s dashboard, it lets you save a webpage full of widgets which can provide you with all sorts of data in one easy location. I’ve got mine set up to report on all my email accounts, facebook - see if I’ve got any messages and what people are up to, and myspace. Its my homepage, so now I only need to check one location for all these things, and no multiple sign ins.

Ruby

If you haven’t come across it, check out Why’s poignant guide to ruby. Its a strange little manual about the language Ruby, but its more like an art scrapbook than a programming book. Great for fans of David Shrigley who are also geeks!

Wallpapers

Smashing Magazine have released a list of some of the best free wallpapers on the web. Unlike most, these actually are really nice, and fit large screens.

Life changing stuff

I’ve started to read the Tim Ferriss book - 4 hour workweek. In it Tim explains how he managed to live the life he always wanted to by following a range of techniques and really thinking “outside the box” as they say. Now he only does 4 hours of uninteresting work a week and spends the rest of his time doing whatever he pleases (which is not lazing around). Check out his blog, and I recommend the book too - out in UK in April.

Software Design

UI Patterns is a great little site which is attempting to group together often used interface techniques. If your improving or building an app its a great place for some inspiration.

Typography

James Whittaker’s vertical rhythm calculator is an excellent tool to help you to write stylesheets that ensure the text is sized correctly and well spaced. This stuff’s easy enough to work out, but he provides a good explanation as well and links to the source compose to a vertical rhythm article, also worth checking out.

This sIFR tutorial will get you implementing flash fonts in your website far quicker than the instructions that come with the tool.

Coding

Snipplr is a new resource of code snippets, each one a function written to solve a problem like auto complete, edit in place, etc. It will take some time before this grows into something really useful, but its design is far better than most sites of its ilk and it covers PHP, RUBY, javascript, CSS, HTML and Objective C.

SEO

SEO Browser is a great tool which lets you see webpages as a search engine does, run all tour sites through it.

User Interface Design

UIE have written a couple of features on how to avoid making mistakes when building account sign in features in your apps. Lots to think about, especially for e-commerce sites.

Design

Two finds this week - tablecloth is a piece of javascript which styles your tables and adds visual functionality, ideal for tables of data. CurvyCorners is one of the easiest ways I’ve seen yet of making rounded corners with Javascript and no images.

In absence of the del.icio.us plugin I used to use to present the links (its unchangable default of daily posting was a bit much) here are my links for this week.

SEO

The SEO world has been filled with talk of googles wikipedia beater Knol this week, not sure about it myself, I don’t think we need an app like this.

Randfish alerted subscribers to an excellent tool for viewing websites the way the spiders do - seo-browser.

Design

Sitepoint have a detailed article on typography, Web Designer Wall present a small and focused article on emphasizing certain text using contrast and flow.

Web designer wall present some inspiration in their Best of CSS 2007 article.

Save the pixel is a new e-book from webdesign from scratch. Its £15 and is aimed at people wanting ‘to create simple, easy-to-use, and appealing web sites that really work. The link also links to several older e-books, that just cost a pound or so.

Coding

Vitamin explain how to create sexy stylesheets - some great advanced stuff on creating the best CSS code, and laying it out in a way thats easy to update.

Its been covered before but Sitepoint’s PHP Pagination article presents an alternative viewpoint.

Beanstalk is a hosted subversion environment ‘making it easy for anyone to setup, browse, track, and manage Subversion repositories’ - its free and allows for limited space with 2 users. Ideal if your working on on app with a friend.

Ext JS 2.0 is yet another Javascript library, it looks very complete and professional though, so worth a little look.

Other

How to be a rockstar freelancer is an ebook on becoming a freelancer from freelancing blog freelanceswitch. Looks pretty comprehensive and well designed. Its £29.00 though, a little steep perhaps. I’m more interested in How to be a rockstar wordpress, which should be released soon. You can sign up to a release date mail list with discount voucher for that book on the same link.

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