Random Pearls [4] on Management, Freelancing, Blogging, etc.

In today’s link collection, you’ll find some highly useful links on business management, freelancing, blogging and design.

Value Based Management- MBA in a page! A management portal specifically aimed at the information needs of senior executives with an interest in value creation, managing for value and valuation.
Five Tips for Finding Writing Time – Bloggers will find these tips pretty helpful, I’m sure.
Web Worker 101: 7 Business Basics – Some cool tips for SOHO owners/freelancers.
The 10 Biggest Mistakes Freelancers Make, and How to Avoid Them – THIS is a pretty important read FOR EVERY FREELANCER. It’s really difficult to stop making these mistakes but once you learn to avoid these mistakes, you’re gonna rock.
DEL.ICIO.US TOOLBOX: 180+ Del.icio.us Tools and Resources – The Mashable guys have recently been creating amazing lists, full of highly useful tools and resources. I hope this del.icio.us list has something pretty useful for every AVINASH 2.0 reader.
YUI Compressor – YUI Compressor is a JavaScript minifier, a Yahoo! creation. Yahoo! developers have been developing pretty cool stuffs for us Web developers and that’s something I like about Yahoo!
Readr: Latest News Feed Aggregator – Readr is a very simple tool that lets you add all your feeds from around the web and list the updates in one place, known as the �News Feed�. Plenty of Web 2.0 services are supported. I tried it and really loving the way it works. Awesome site for every person who is interested in the modern web and has got active profiles on gazillions of sites (like me!).
EASTER EGG: Flight Simulator Hidden Within Google Earth – I’m damn sure that Google Earth users are gonna love this Easter Egg. It’s amazing!
GTD for Bloggers: The Art of Stress-free Blogging – This one is coming from Web Worker Daily, a really cool article for bloggers.
Playing with terminals – This one is for all the Linux users who wanna know more about terminals. Ignore it if you already have too much knowledge about the way Linux terminals work.
Late 2007 Web conference and event roundup – Roger Johansson of 456 Berea Street has created a list of a few Web related conferences and events coming up in the next few months, in different parts of the world, with different speakers and programs. Check out which one is closer to you.
PHOTOSHOP TOOLBOX – 80+ Photoshop Tools and Resources – One more list from Mashable.
The Right Width for Your Blog – ProBlogger
Facebook Profile Cleaner Greasemonkey script – If you’re one of ‘em who have started to dislike Facebook profiles full of external tools, this Greasemonkey script is for you.
FIREFOX GOD: 300+ Tools and Resources For Firefox – Over 300 Firefox tools. You really don’t wanna miss it, do you? ;)
Joost Becomes Widget Platform – Check this out, dear Joost fanboys. Joost has released version 0.12.0 of its P2P TV client this week. The new release offers end users a bunch of bug fixes, but there is something special for developers: Joost has opened up its API and now makes it possible to develop third-party widgets that can be installed within the client

I hope that all the article links included in today’s link collection are enough for a week but don’t worry. I’ve decided to post my favorite article links every day so don’t miss any link collection update on this blog.

Miniblog

§ Need a smooth programming language to start writing your applications? Choose Python. I was reading Steve Holden’s blog where I found this humorous peace on Python vs C++. (0)

§ What’s the use of spending tons of money in building such a site that’s completely useless for mobile users?

I used to love Streamy since the day I received an invite to try it. Its developers are very intelligent for what they’ve come up with – a really powerful platform for power bloggers. But Streamy is attractive and all that only if you’re using it from your desktop/laptop/tablet pcs. I don’t know how does it work on iPhone & similar gadgets but I never got it to work on my Nokia Eseries phones.

The reason? – It’s too AJAXY. While all other web feed readers (including full web versions of Google Reader, Bloglines, etc.) work perfectly well on my Eseries devices, Streamy won’t even load.

You’ll face two problems while trying to use Streamy from your mobile phones. First problem is that Streamy doesn’t have an interface for mobile users (like Google Reader Mobile, Bloglines Mobile, etc.) and second, even the full web version doesn’t work.

I had stopped using all other feed readers since I became a Streamy member but their poorly built design (from the accessibility point of view) leaves me no choice but to switch back to my ex-feedreader.

Note: I still recommend Streamy over other web feed readers, if your only device to access the Internet is a computer. (0)

§ Raw HTML is a WordPress plugin that allows you to put any code or script in your posts and display it to the visitor unmodified. Note: The plugin is new and I’ve not tested it on any of my blogs so use it at your own risk. (0)

§ Money For Nothing is Seth Godin’s new ebook for people who have more talent than cash.

It turns out that the new playing field enforced by the search engines is eliminating many of the shortcuts that used to be effective. In other words, the best way is the long way. The long way is to create content that is updated, unique and useful. Again and again we see that sites that do all three manage to get more than their fair share of traffic. So, I guess the title of the ebook is a bit misleading. The clicks don’t cost money, but they do take effort. That’s good news for people who have more talent than cash.

(0)

§ � using Shorty. From the page:

Shorty is a simple tool for creating shorter, human- readable links from long URLs. You install Shorty on your server, so the links you create with it never go away. You can also manage your links and see how often people click on them.

Check out the live demo.

(0)

§ Question: What is an SSB (Site Specific Browser)? Answer: An SSB is not your usual browser. It lacks navigation, menus, tabs, and even the address bar! These browsers are designed to work exclusively with a single web application. In other words, you can think of an SSB as a stripped-down version of Firefox. I won’t go in detail about Site Specific Browsers and the idea behind ‘em ’cause this topic has already been discussed by too many awesome people. I’ve been playing with SSBs ever since I created the first SSB bundle for Streamy. The Streamy bundle is meant to work only with WebRunner (now Prism) ’cause currently, WebRunner is the only SSB application that can be installed on Linux, Mac and Windows platforms. Mac also has Fluid, a free SSB application available only for Mac OS X. If you’re a Web 2.0 startup, you should try one of these applications to create a desktop version of your Web application. Since SSBs like WebRunner are open source apps, you can easily modify the code to add additional functionalities. (0)

§ So many people blog about new Web 2.0 startups. People take inspirations from these startups and come up with their own unique ideas to launch new Web 2.0 companies. Many people like being copy-cats. They not only take inspirations from big players, e.g. Digg, but also try to copy the whole concept. No matter if you’re a copy-cat startup or someone with an unique Web 2.0 business concept, once you launch a company, there’s always risk involved. A small mistake in the idea-execution-process and you end up biting the dust. What can you do to save your company from getting lost in history? Learn from the deads. Yup. That’s the answer. Try to catch the weak points that sent so many companies to the TC deadpool and learn from their mistakes. (0)

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