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Keep it Clean

October 28, 2009 By

You may not be working in a crowded office with sneezing co-workers and hacking bosses, but germs can still make their way into your home office.  The Vioguard UVKB50 keyboard keeps germs at bay by using UV rays. #196-keep it clean-vioguardkeyboardThe keyboard, featured on Slash Gear, slides into a tray and is zapped with UV rays.  The company claims that the rays can kill the H1N1 virus and other germs.  Sanitation comes at a price: $899. Until the price comes down, I’m sticking with my hand sanitizer and avoiding crowded offices (and mean bosses too).

Celly Smellys
How disgusting is your cell phone?  Jessica Pohlkamp thinks it’s a germ-ridden mess. Pohlkamp, founder of Celly Smellys, wipes for your cell phone and anything else with an LCD screen, says that your cell phone is dirtier than a toilet seat. Yuck!  Her LCD-safe wipes come in various scents including Berry, Melon and Piña Colada.  Think of it as happy hour for your cell phone.

Filed Under: Home office technology, Working at home Tagged With: , ,

Let There Be Home Office Light

October 28, 2009 By

Green energy is the new black. It’s all about cutting back on energy and taking advantage of energy-saving options.  The lighting in your home office is a good place to start. The more common choices of light bulbs (also called lamps) are compact fluorescents and light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Both options will help you save energy.#196-lighting tips2

An article in the The New York Times offers a few tips for using compact fluorescents.

  • Look for bulbs with the Energy Star label, which indicates they meet at least minimal performance requirements.
  • Be aware that compact fluorescents can take one to three minutes to reach full brightness. This is not a defect.  (Instead it’s something that annoys my family.)
  • Compact fluorescents contain mercury and should not be disposed of in the trash. Many chains, like Home Depot, offer recycling bins for the bulbs. [Read more...]
Filed Under: Home office design, Working at home Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Weird is Good

October 27, 2009 By

Who isn’t looking for a way (or hundreds of ways) to improve their blog?  In the article, “Steal This Trick: The #1 Secret of Confident Bloggers,” writer Sonia Simone goes beyond the expected tips: use strong headlines, review the latest technology and tell stories, among others, and suggests you go for the unusual to draw in readers.  Her tips offer a different view of how to blog.

  • If you’re a blogger, look for a topic that lots and lots of people want to know more about.
  • Instead of being a big fish in a small pond, allow me to suggest another approach. Be a small, ridiculously evolved, very rare and weird fish in a great big pond.
  • If it’s not working, get weirder. Because the Internet is really big, and because you chose a gigantic pond, there will be a fair number of people interested in your topic who also resonate with your particular brand of weirdness.
Filed Under: Working at home Tagged With:

Is Working From Home Child’s Play?

October 27, 2009 By

Is working naked a fad, a fluke or a farfetched idea? I say Hell, no! Even toy manufacturers are jumping on the home office bandwagon and are making models of home offices. I’ve collected toy home offices for years. (It could be worse…a friend of mine collects husbands.) My collection includes:

Barbie My House Armoire Desk SetBarbie my house
Barbie’s a doctor, lawyer, nurse and scores of other professions but at the end of the day, she comes back to her home office. I mean what’s a dream house without a home office? One of the product reviews on Amazon slammed the chair for being flimsy but in Barbie’s world, everything is small and dainty. Why do you think her shoes are the first things everyone loses? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Working at home Tagged With: , , ,

Tweeting Tips

October 26, 2009 By

Any tool when used the right way, should work.  Twitter is no exception. A blog post on the Guardian called “The dos and don’ts of social media” gives some food for thought for when you use social media.

A few of the tell-it-like-it-is tips include:

  • If you make a mistake with Twitter, you’re um, screwed.
  • Don’t use hashtags that have nothing to do with your post, to attract readers. It can backfire on you.
  • If you want to use Twitter, you have to learn to act different and sound human.
Filed Under: Working at home Tagged With: ,

Are You an Overnight Success?

October 23, 2009 By

Hard work does pay off
I remember seeing an interview with a well known actress who was asked about her overnight success. She said that it took her only 20 years. So much for the overnight part.

How long will your overnight success take?

How long will your overnight success take?

Chris Brogan, President of New Marketing Labs, is also an overnight success after years of hard work. In his video,“What it takes to be an overnight success,” Brogan shows the not-so-glamorous, hardworking side of being successful.

Those folks looking for get-rich-quick schemes and for shortcuts to success, soon find out that those gigs are short-lived. Hard work pays off. Just ask Chris Brogan.

Lead, follow or get your ass out of the way
Another successful business guru, John Jantsch, reveals the “7 traits of the modern leader“ on his site, Duct Tape Marketing. A few of the traits Jantsch describes are: [Read more...]

Filed Under: Working at home Tagged With: , , ,

Great Minds Think Alike

October 23, 2009 By

Biz Tech Day, a two-day small business and entrepreneur conference that ends today, features business icons and small business owners from around the country. A few of the speakers include Craig Newmark, Founder of Craigslist.org; Tim Ferriss, NY Times Best Selling Author of “The 4-Hour Workweek”; and Kevin Rose, Founder of Digg.com, among others. Triple Pundit shares tips from Mark O’Leary from Comcast Business Class. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Working at home Tagged With: , , , ,

Are You Working on or in Your Business?

October 22, 2009 By

You have to put out client fires, deal with bummed out clients who need a little handholding and manage freelancers or subcontractors to keep your business going. You’re so busy working in your business that you may not be taking the time to work on your business.

A Small Business Trends article offers some great tips for stepping back and taking a close look at your business. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Working at home Tagged With: , ,

From the Command Center

October 21, 2009 By

Who says that you have to have a traditional office when you’re working from home? Not Peter Shankman, founder and CEO of shankman.com, and the founder of Help A Reporter Out (HARO), the resource for connecting journalists with sources on any topic.

Shankman's command central

Shankman's command central

Shankman’s home office setup includes his assistant’s office in a second bedroom and Shankman’s hi-tech, highly cool, “Couchside Social Media Monitoring Center.” Shankman created the monitoring center in his living room by mounting two Samsung 52” LCD flat screens (that monitor the Interwebs) on either side of a Samsung 50” Plasma screen. Very cool. I wonder how many times he’s asked to host Super Bowl parties?

Don’t even think about calling Shankman a couch potato. You’ll have to deal with his over 53,000 Twitter followers.

Filed Under: Working at home Tagged With: , , , ,

Perfecting Your Elevator Pitch

October 19, 2009 By

When you meet someone for the first time at a business meeting, cocktail hour or when you’re out with friends, what do you say when someone asks you what you do? Do you have an “elevator pitch” ready that describes what you do in only a few sentences? [Read more...]

Filed Under: Working at home, Working with clients Tagged With: ,
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