Here is this weeks installment of the Links. This week’s version is a bit different as there is not much about the home office. What I found this week were tons of post and articles about blogging, social networking and social media. I hope you enjoy it. Why am I focusing on those topics this week? Because I firmly believe those topics are extremely important to your success as a home based business. Please leave your comments and if you provide us with some links for next week, you will get linkage back to your own Web site or blog.

Cook up something brilliant in your home office comes to us this week from Home Office Organizer one of the Business Channels from Sparkplugging.

I get questions from clients and people I talk to about how to get exposure for my blog. Here are 10 free blog directories worth submitting your blog to. The post is from hobo. What I like about this is the fact the services are free. FREE is good for those working from a home office as we try to control our overhead. Give them a look and let me know what you think.

One of the best ideas I saw all week came from a great blogger MIchael Martine who does consulting and coaching and post over at the Remarkablogger. What Michael suggested is to create a blog pack to get blog traffic and increase subscriptions. I joined a blog pack made up of a large group of us on twitter. What I am planning to do is start one here for bloggers who work out of a home office or “shed”. Be watching for details.

Another use of the web and social media I have been exploring is using video to communicate with our audience. Online Video Tool Kit is a FREE set of tools you can use to help you get started. I have watched them and plan to watch them again. They give you a great set of tips to get you started doing your own videos. The tool kit is provided by Jim Kukral, video blogger and veteran Internet marketer. Check them out. Jim recommends the Flip Video Ultra Series Camcorder and I do too. It is cheap, yes CHEAP and actually does a great job.

Google liberates the home office, Part 1-Gmail is the first in a series of post from a fairly new home office blog, Home Office Web Tools. I like this blog and this new series is just one example of why. As you all know from reading some of my recent post, I am a heavy user of most of the great tools Google offers. Gmail being one of them.

To continue on with the Google apps theme, Enhance your Google apps with Greasmonkey scripts comes from one of the first blogs that I read, Web Worker Daily. Right after I read this post last night, I took advantage of most of the tools mentioned. Still diving into using them. But, so far what I have seen they will help.

What I am always amazed at is how I am bouncing around questions and thoughts in my head about something to do with blogging, and Darren Rowse puts up a post to answer that question. I am not sure if I should be happy Darren helps to answer my concerns or questions. Or that I should be upset he beat me to the post. Happy has to be the thought. I have been blogging for over three years now and I still read Darren’s blog Problogger daily. 5 emerging trends in blogging was the blog post that answered one of my questions last night. It is one of Darren’s video post and it really hits home. And watching Darren’s video post is another reason we are planning to implement them Home Office Warrior and Blog for Profit soon. And be watching for a completely new design of Blog for Profit very soon. Along with a new ezine series and other features.

Why twitter matters comes to us this week from one of the mainstream media sources, Business Week. I don’t know what more to say. But be watching for some upcoming post on Blog for Profit and Home Office Warrior on using twitter to promote your business. I think there is a clear set of rules you should follow to successfully use twitter to actually promote your business. And a clear set of rules to not be overloaded with the amount of information you can get on twitter.

On a different note, and one I don’t agree with, ten reasons I won’t use social media sites is from Small Business Trends. I disagree with the position as I firmly believe if done right, following a set of rules you put in place, social media sites can be one of the tools you use to promote your business. And what really got my goat in the post was the statement, “real business people don’t use social media.” I guess those of us who use blogging, twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and other social media tools just aren’t real businesses. We are living in a different world than our parents lived in. Even different than I and those in my generation have lived in before. Totally discounting the benefits of social media to a business is a short sighted reaction to something someone may not understand. And that is why I will continue to post about the advantages, tools and rules for using social media on our blogs. And the name social media is a whole other matter altogether too.

Finally, and another example of what is to come, apps like twitterFone signal the future. Fun application you can use with twitter.

Well that is it for this week, hope you enjoy it and find some useful information contained within. Get me your suggestions for next week before 10:00 a.m. on Friday and I will include them. And as I mentioned, you will get a link back to your own blog too.

Categories: Tips and Hints, Uncategorized If you like this post then please consider subscribing to our full RSS feed. You can also subscribe by Email and have new posts sent directly to your inbox.

I want a Virtual Assistant…now what? Part 1 is the first in a new series over at Home Office Virtual Assistant. As always, Tina Hilton has done an outstanding job telling us about the Virtual Assistant world.

Categories: Virtual Assistant If you like this post then please consider subscribing to our full RSS feed. You can also subscribe by Email and have new posts sent directly to your inbox.

Like many of you, I spend most of my working day online using the tools available to do what I do. From keeping my calendar, backing up my work, collaborating with my team, communicating with clients and others, retrieving information and just working.

In order to work online, and to answer some questions I get often. I decide to put together a list of tools I use and some I don’t. There are so many great online tools, there is no way I can mention them all. So leave your comments with your own suggestions.

I am using the Google Calendar currently as my calendar. I have multi-calendars, such as one for my business, home and a new one called “editorial calendar”. I like Google calendar as it will sync with my iCal and than my iPhone via Spanning Sync. In addition to keeping track of where I need to be and what I am doing, I am able to use another great service inside the Google calendar called, Remember the Milk (RTM). RTM is a great way to manage the task I need to complete and it is right in my Google calendar. I can also access RTM via my iPhone.

Jott is another essential tool I use daily. I can use my iPhone to send myself reminders and todo’s directly to RTM. How many times do you leave a meeting or are just driving down the road and think of something you need to do. WIth Jott, I can send myself a reminder and a new todo that goes to RTM and than to my Google calendar.

Two other great tools similar to Jott are reQall and Sandy. I have tried them both and I still like Jott better.

At G2 Web Media we use activeCollab to keep track of our projects and communicate with each other and our clients. Each client has access to their project and know what is going on. Of course the more popular collaboration tool is Basecamp. Both of these work great. If you work on projects and have clients, you really need to check them both out.

The wonderful thing about working online is the great applications and services you find. Backup, backup, backup is a theme I live by. And to do this, I once again turn to the web for one of my tools. Box.net is an online file storage and collaboration tool. Not only can I use it as one of my backups. I can share files with it and I can access it with my iPhone too if I need to. And some of the newer features let you edit documents and photos online. This is one you really should take a look at.

Communicating with clients is always or should always be a priority and one of the web based services I am using to do that is GrandCentral. GrandCentral is a great tool. You give it the numbers you want it to find you at and if you don’t answer, it takes a message. I have mine set to send me both a text message on my iPhone and an email. I can check the voicemail with my iPhone or listen to it from the email. Most of you should be able to get a local number for GrandCentral and what is really amazing, it is FREE.

While I do exchange most items with clients via email, there are times I have to send or receive a fax. I don’t own a fax machine. What I do use is Maxemail. Maxemail is an Internet fax service that allows you to send and receive faxes from your computer without a fax machine or phone line. I have my own toll free number and get my faxes via email. I can send them via email too to the other person’s fax number. efax is another Internet based fax service most are more familiar with. I tried them both and decided on Maxemail.

Since I may need to access my office computer from time to time. Especially those times I get out of the home office and go to my favorite coffee shop. I need a tool that I could do this with. Free is always good too. Most of the time I use my iPhone again to do this and SoonR is the web based application I use. I can access all my files this way. Email them to a client if they need them. Or just review them for my own use. And it is FREE too.

Finally, at least for this post is Google Docs. I am using Google docs more now that you can access your documents even off line. Not that I use it for all my word processing, but it is handy to have an alternative. My main point is however, you can actually do all your work with web based applications and get almost all of them for free. Great for the budget.

Please leave your comments with the web based tools you use in your own home based business. I am always looking for different tools and you may know of some I am not aware. If we get a good list from the comments, I will update the list in a followup post and link back to your own site or blog.

Categories: Uncategorized If you like this post then please consider subscribing to our full RSS feed. You can also subscribe by Email and have new posts sent directly to your inbox.

Guest Post by Alex Johnson from Shedworking.

If you want to create, it’s easier if you have a shedlike atmosphere in which to experiment. William S. Harley and Arthur Davidson created their first motorcycle in a backyard shed. Harry Ramsden began his fish and chip empire in a hut in Guiseley, near Leeds. Technology giant HP began from a garage which is now California Historic Landmark No. 976, Birthplace of Silicon Valley (now preserved at 367 Addison Avenue, Palo Alto). Herbert Frood designed ‘brake shoes’ for cart wheels and tanks in his shed at Combs in the Peak District. Walt Disney’s first studio was in a garage at his uncle Robert’s house in Los Angeles, saved from demolition in 1984 and moved to the Stanley Ranch Museum.

Indeed, why limit yourself to just one? Fuzzy Felt was invented by Lois Allan in one of her various sheds at her Buckinghamshire home and sculptor Henry Moore had several shed studios, none of them very showy, at his home in Perry Green which is now open to the public. They were converted from former sheds, stables and in one case a village shop, but all had good light and were fit for purpose, including good views of sheep. According to the Henry Moore Foundation, his sheds were “at the heart of the creative process, a place Moore could come to think, to work, and to get away from the activities and distractions elsewhere…”.

That there are no rules in a shed is a truth recognised by The MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, USA, which offers writers, artists and composers small studios in which to work for up to eight weeks. The colony, which celebrated its centenary in 2007, has 32 of these shedworking atmospheres dotted around its 450 acres of woodland and fields. Each one is fully, though not excessively, furnished with the tools of the trade – pianos for composers, writing tables for writers, natural and full-spectrum lighting for artists - but there are no phones and messages are delivered only in case of emergency. Among those who have made use of the facilities here are Leonard Bernstein, who completed his seminal work Mass there, Aaron Copeland, Studs Terkel, Barbara Tuchman, and Alice Walker.

Next week: a look at garden office designs

For a copy of The Shed magazine, please email Alex at alex@splashmedia.co.uk or go to Shedworking. for daily updates

Categories: Shedworking If you like this post then please consider subscribing to our full RSS feed. You can also subscribe by Email and have new posts sent directly to your inbox.

Robert Rutkowski who does the “That Credit Union Blog” has more computers and monitors than even I do. His home office is pictured below. I asked Robert if he used a real computer and he said he had one Mac. He also does podcasting on this setup.

Get me your home office snap shots and a brief description of it and what you do. I would like to get this going on a weekly basis again. I will be putting up a couple more this week so you can see some more.

Categories: Home Office Snap Shots If you like this post then please consider subscribing to our full RSS feed. You can also subscribe by Email and have new posts sent directly to your inbox.

Here is this Friday’s installment of the links. Sorry about it being a day late. Busy with clients yesterday and just could not get to it. Remember to get me your suggestions each week for each Friday’s edition. And if you do, you of course get a link out from HOW.

One of the blogs I started ready very early in my followings of blogs is ReadWriteWeb and this week I am giving you two links to two great post. The first one is five tools everyone working online should have (IMHO). I plan to add my own list of such tools soon in a post on HOW. Also be watching for an upcoming post on Blog for Profit concerning the must have applications for a blogger. The next post from ReadWriteWeb is 11 biz dev 1.0 tips. This is another must read post and wealth worth your time.

The Professional Engineer had a post which touches on a subject we talk a lot about and that is a professional service firm working from home. Work at home engineer is a great post talking about how a professional engineer can work at home. Just goes to show anyone can work at home and provide quality service to their clients.

Seven secrets for writing a winning subject line, how to get your customers and best prospects to open your email provides some great ideas on how to get those emails opened and read. Thanks to Susan Cartier Liebel for posting this link on twitter. Just another example of how you can use twitter as a business tool too.

Over at Dawud Miracle’s newly re-designed blog, dawudmiracle.com he is running a series of post about some of the highlights from SOBCon08. One post which really caught my attention was Is your blog serving your business? I plan to make the event in 2009.

Floating home office shed is a funny one from Shedworking. And watch for Alex’s next post on Shedworking tomorrow here on HOW. Just as soon as I can talk the CFO into it, you just might find an office shed in my own backyard.

And for those of you who are limited on space, home offices in not so big houses is a very interesting post. One little bit of information I found very interesting was the fact there are now 28 million of us working from our homes in the U.S. alone. I wonder what that figure might be world-wide. Anyone have any idea?

As most of you already know, I am a Mac user and yes I do have an iPhone. The rummer mill is turning recently with buzz about the new 3G iPhone coming out sometime between May 15th and June 15th. And these are suppose to be pictures of supposed 3G iPhone. We will just have to wait and see.

Well that is it for this week. Remember to get me your link suggestions for next week. And if you provide links, you get a link too.

Categories: Tips and Hints If you like this post then please consider subscribing to our full RSS feed. You can also subscribe by Email and have new posts sent directly to your inbox.

Over at Home Office Virtual Assistant, Tina Hilton has posted part three of three of her How to Sell Virtual Assistance series. Please check it out and thanks to Tina for another great series of post.

Categories: Virtual Assistant If you like this post then please consider subscribing to our full RSS feed. You can also subscribe by Email and have new posts sent directly to your inbox.