Sam’s random musings

5 Challenges of Working From Anywhere And How To Overcome Them: ”

Following on from Skellie’s excellent Web Worker series, in this post I’m going to outline some of the most common challenges faced when you work from anywhere and how you can overcome them.

Here are some of the challenges you’re likely to face if you plan to work from anywhere - and how to overcome them…

• Unstable internet connections
• Lack of office equipment
• Difficulty sending & receiving snail mail
• Managing clients across multiple time zones
• Too many distractions & disruptions to focus on work

There are some great tidbits that apply even if you are a work at home freelancer and not a RV’n fool like Lance the Wanderer

(Via Freelance Switch.)

‘I just bought your hard drive’ - The Red Tape Chronicles - MSNBC.com:

“One year ago, Hank Gerbus had his hard drive replaced at a Best Buy store in Cincinnati. Six months ago, he received one of the most disturbing phone calls of his life.”

So the basics in this story are that he returned a drive to BestBuy and a few months later he got a call from someone who had bought the drive at a flea market, and used the information on the drive to get in touch with Hank. Hank had been assured by BestBuy that the drive would be drilled with holes and disposed of in a secure matter. Needless to say there were no wholes and the drive still had a lot of personal information on it. If you have to return a drive, clean it or watch them clean it. Get it back and really really wreak it!

Mac and PC: “”

Awsome!

(Via Mind-NOX.)

(Via Bug Bash.)

A date parsing ninja of a javascript: “”

Really nice parsing of things like

today           tomorrow    July 2008
next friday     last April  2004.08.07
6/4/2005        8:15 PM     22:30:45
+5years      

(Via .)

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p>Sun To Acquire MySQL: “

By Tim O’Reilly

  <blockquote><a href=http://www.sun.com>Sun Microsystems</a> announced this morning that it has agreed to acquire open source database leader <a href-http://www.mysql.com>MySQL AB</a> for $1 billion in cash and assumed stock options.  (Disclosure:  I am on the board of directors of MySQL, and O'Reilly co-produces the <a href=http://www.mysqluc.com>MySQL User Conference</a> with MySQL.  In addition, O'Reilly produces the <a href=http://www.java.net>java.net</a> community site for Sun.)

now there are plenty of readings out there in the the webosphere on this, I for one just hope that the licensing issues get resolved in a way that makes a lot more sense. For a great open source database to have such a convoluted and misunderstood license scheme is a real PIA

(Via Planet MySQL.)

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p>Create custom iPhone and iPod Touch webclip icons: “>Dan Dickinson has posted a super-simple way to ensure that those who visit your site with an iPod Touch or iPhone will get a nice-looking webclip icon. When I say simple, I mean it:

• Create a 57×57 PNG.
• Name it ‘apple-touch-icon.png’
• Throw it in the root folder of your website. (Not the root of your server, the root of your web documents.)

That’s it. Note that your icon will receive the glossy treatment as well as those rounded corners, so keep that in mind.

Now that is simple clean and cool

Sam D

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)