Pajama Entrepreneur

Years after the publication of Dan Pink’s Free Agent Nation, we are finally seeing better arrangements for people who don’t necessarily want to work out of their home all the time, but who can’t afford to rent a full office for themselves.

Co-working is a fancy term for sharing an office with several people who work for themselves. Typically these people are web designers, consultants, advisors, etc. According to this article in the International Herald Tribune, many co-working spaces are popping up around the world to serve the needs of this growing class of independent worker. The example given in the piece is the Hat Factory in San Francisco. You rent desk space and share an office (including printers, fax machines, full kitchen, Wi-Fi) with other people for the recession-friendly price of $200.

Advantages:

• low cost: office space rentals for $200 and up
• social: dispels the loneliness and isolation of working alone at home all the time
• concentration and productivity: if you have small children at home, having an office allows you get work done
• meeting space: gives you a place for meetings with clients

In Amsterdam, there have been a lot of co-working spaces opening up. Indeed, recently, Dutch designer Marcel Wanders announced that he and his business partners are turning the former Amsterdam Central Library into creative workspaces, a hotel, cafe and museum.

I like the flexibility of co-working and the low cost, of course, not to mention the social and networking aspects of being around people in your profession. Even though our homes are well equipped with broadband and we can work at home just as easily, I miss the camaraderie of the office environment.

Since everyone is making a list at the end of the year, I decided to create one, too. Here’s my top 10 most useful applications — things I couldn’t live without in 2007. Some are online apps, others are software that you download to your computer. I have a Mac Book Pro running Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5.1).

(1) Gmail: Google’s online mail application has reduced the amount of spam I receive to nearly zero. The mobile client is stable and fast. You can use Gmail to send and receive emails from other email addresses. Since your email is stored online, even if you lose your laptop or the hard drive dies, you always have access to it.

(2) Google Docs and Spreadsheets: perfect for sharing documents and spreadsheets. Like Gmail, you never worry again about your hard drive dying or losing your data.

(3) Backpack: create to-do lists, keep reminders (that send SMS or emails to you so you never forget anything) and keep an online calendar that syncs with Apple iCal. Backpack is one of the excellent online applications developed by the wonderful 37 Signals. They are known for Basecamp, the project management and collaboration application. There’s a free and a paid version.

(4) Transmit: fast, easy-to-use FTP software for the Mac. I’ve tried others, but this one is the fastest and most intuitive.

(5) Wordpress: the best blogging software around, with a huge community of developers of plug-ins, themes, widgets, etc. Wordpress powers this blog and other blogs I have set up in the past. Wordpress also has a hosted service, called Wordpress.com, for those who can’t be bothered to set up, host and maintain their own blog. Created by Matt Mullenweg, it is used by thousands of bloggers and big media companies.

(6) Netnewswire: RSS news reader. I don’t like online RSS readers because it takes forever to load the feeds. I like Netnewswire’s clean interface.

(7) Skype: this application has saved me thousands of Euros in phone calls. I can’t imagine life without Skype. I have no more long distance phone bills and since most of my contacts are on Skype anyway, it’s much easier to reach people or IM them.

(8) Gizmo Project: like Skype, Gizmo Project allows you to call people for free (if they are also Gizmo Project users) or to call landlines and mobile phones for low rates. Most of my contacts are on Skype so I use Gizmo Project primarily for calling landlines and mobile phones. I use it also on my mobile phone because unlike Skype, Gizmo Project has software for the Nokia phones. So when I am abroad and in the vicinity of a Wi-Fi network, I avoid roaming charges by using Gizmo Project on my mobile phone via Wi-Fi. I buy $10 units and it takes me months before I use it up. Another true money saver!

(9) Ad Block Plus plugin for Firefox browser: This plugin blocks obnoxious advertising on web sites. No more miserable flashing banners, video ads that suddenly play and blast out your ears, nasty advertising animations. My web surfing experience has improved dramatically since I installed Ad Block Plus.

(10) Super Duper: this is the best backup software. It is easy to use and fast so there is absolutely no excuse anymore not to back up your hard drive every night. Tech support is very good. I emailed their support team and got a response within 24 hours (they solved my problem — which had nothing to do with the Super Duper software but with errors on my hard drive).

Farhad Manjoo, Salon’s tech columnist, did quite a bit of research and showed that Macs are indeed cheaper than PCs. Moreover, their eBay resale value is higher:

Even for computers, brand matters. This week I compared prices of several machines from Dell, Gateway and other PC vendors against Apple’s lineup of Macs. In most cases comparable Macs sold for within $100 more than the PCs. But the Apples had something extra: that logo, the design, the history . . .

I switched to the Mac in 2002 and I don’t understand why people still use Windows PCs.

Microsoft launched a unified communications platform (merging email, instant messaging and telephony) that Business Division President Jeff Raikes claims will put an end to telephone tag:

“The era of dialing blind, the era of playing phone tag, the era of voice-mail jam…that era is ending . . . I don’t want to get in touch with your number. I want to get in touch with you.

Sorry Jeff, but actually most of the time, I don’t want to talk to people. I want them to leave a message in my email box which I can either read or listen to in order to determine whether it is worth responding to. Based on what I hear and read, I will respond.

Why do companies love offering products like this - a hodgepodge of stuff that does not really solve a pressing problem? Right now my problem is I get too many emails from business contacts, friends, family, email newsletters, etc. The last thing I need is people managing to reach me via phone interrupting my already busy day.

I want FILTERS, intelligent ones, and I have a few solutions already using email, but nothing is optimal. Messages from close friends and family go into a mailbox marked “read right away”. I have various mailboxes for different levels of urgency. But what I certainly don’t need is a solution that allows people to talk to me whenever THEY want, not when I want.

I have not been posting much over the past couple of weeks because I was ill for several days and then very busy with projects. There are so many conferences this month, one of which is my own Muniwireless event in Silicon Valley.

Mobile 2.0 in San Francisco (Oct. 15) in San Francisco: new mobile apps and business models

Web 2.0 Summit (Oct 17-19) in San Francisco: but I will only be hanging out in the lobby. Here’s an article in the SF Chronicle about how to make deals and meet interesting people without actually going to the trouble of paying for the conference and seeing the sessions

Muniwireless Silicon Valley (Oct 21-23) conference in Santa Clara: all about citywide Wi-Fi networks

I am such a fan of free open Wi-Fi, but even that won’t get me into a McDonalds (I hate fast food in general). Nevertheless, it is a step in the right direction for European public hotspots which are still dominated by large carriers charging a lot of money for access. The Netherlands’ KPN offers Wi-Fi via its HubHop service, seems to be everywhere, including unfortunately the train stations. Swisscom Eurospot is also in a lot of hotels and charging piles of money.

Signs of change: the Stagecoach buses between London and Oxford, as well as the National Express between London and Cambridge, offer free Wi-Fi on all their buses (click here to read article on Muniwireless).

Now let’s see if other cafes, restaurants and public transport authorities follow. After all, their primary goal is to get butts into those seats. If Wi-Fi can help, then offer it as an amenity.

If you are a pajama entrepreneur like me, you don’t have the luxury of hiring an IT manager for the office, especially if you have a home office. That means YOU are the person in charge of setting up and maintaining your Wi-Fi network, securing it, etc. So, I am pleased to see that Glenn Fleishman has just released updated versions of his very popular, highly readable books: Take Control of Your 802.11n Airport Extreme Network and Take Control of Your Wi-Fi Security. Go to Glenn’s site to get the discount code and order online. They are e-books so you can download them, print them at home or read them online. Very handy if you are traveling or work out of different offices (and it costs much less for their publisher to update because they don’t print them).

His “Take Control of your Airport Network” book which I bought a few years ago saved me a lot of time and took the mystery out of wireless networking.