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.

Famous Dutch designer Marcel Wanders has been hired to do the interiors of a new creative class hangout in Amsterdam, which will be in the former public library on the Prinsengracht. The building will house a cafe, ateliers, work spaces, museum and design hotel.

In the past few years, the city has realized that there’s a need for more ateliers and work spaces for the growing number of entrepreneurs who work in technology, advertising, media, etc. And of course, their counterparts abroad need a cool place to stay when they are in town.

Let’s hope the library has a superfast connection to the Internet (gigabit, anyone?). I know the new public library, which is a magnificent space, has very fast connections.

Anyway, this is a great addition to the city.

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).

Here’s a little tip I’d like to share with you. If you live in a city and use Wi-Fi at home, you will probably encounter interference from a lot of neighbors’ Wi-Fi networks. The intereference can have a significant effect on the performance of your network, slowing down the speeds at which you send files around (internally among various devices in your house or office), or download/upload files on the Internet.

If you upgrade your Wi-Fi access point to one that uses 802.11n and upgrade your computer and other devices to ones that have 802.11n (or at least get an 802.11n adapter card for older devices), then set your new 802.11n base station to use the 5GHz frequency, you will find that your network’s performance will improve because there’s very little interference on that frequency. Most people do not have 802.11n yet.

My setup: I bought an Apple Airport Extreme base station (with 802.11n) two weeks ago. The Mac Book Pro that I bought last June already has 802.11n built in, so all I had to do was to set the base station to send and receive at 5GHz. The network is now very fast because there’s no interference from my neighbors who are all using 2.4 GHz.

Glenn Fleishman, who wrote the book Take Control of your 802.11n Airport Extreme Network, says he is still waiting for inexpensive 802.11n adapters for the older devices (laptops, etc.) in his house so he can have all of them use 5GHz. I’m waiting, too.

I am tired of office supplies stores and catalogs that sell the same ugly office accessories - pens, pads, calendars, pen holders . You know the ones I’m talking about: cheap and ordered by the bulk and totally depressing to look at. Fortunately, there are alternatives. Check out See Jane Work, an online shop where you can find gorgeous desk calendars, binders, pens, organizers, and whatever you need to create an office environment that inspires creativity.

In the past few weeks, I have attended two conferences, Mobile 2.0 in San Francisco and Nokia’s Mobile Mashup in Palo Alto, on the supposedly new world of mobile Internet, a paradise where everyone can use these incredible applications on their mobile phones AND access the Internet in all its glory. Unfortunately we’re stuck with a basic reality: expensive data plans and the attendant roaming charges when you go abroad. Until I can get a cheap, flat-rate, all-you-can-eat worldwide monthly data service plan, I am not going to use these applications. Of course, I already use Google maps, search and visit a variety of websites on my mobile phone using Wi-Fi when I can find it. But Wi-Fi is not yet everywhere and it’s still sometimes a hassle to use: login screens that make you type in long characters (on a cell phone this is very unpleasant), having to pay every time you log on to a different network. Until we have cheap flat rate plans and no roaming charges, I’m afraid it’s a waste of time to develop these apps and attend these events.

UPDATE: SFR, the French operator, launched their version of “unlimited” mobile 3G Internet access. Click here to see the press release and here to see the article with video clip on Journal du Net. Several problems with this:

• There are 3 different tariffs (39, 49 and 69 EUR) with various services, like mobile TV associated with them. I find it confusing.
• You have to sign up for 12 to 24 months. What if you just want access when you are in France occasionally?
• Works only with certain phones.

If this is the mobile operator’s way to encourage mobile Internet use, good luck.

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.