At first you only skip a day here or there. But eventually, days turn into weeks and months. This is only natural, considering the busy lifestyle that most freelancers have.

That’s why, when it comes to backing up their data, freelancers really love the automation and convenience that comes with online backup services. You just install the software once, and you never have to think about it again until something bad happens. You can just feel safe knowing that it’s there, working in the background for you.

However, there are MANY different services to choose from. And prices range from FREE to $10 per GB. With so much variety, how can you pick a solution that’s right for you? Well here are a few features that freelancers should keep in mind when looking into automating their data protection:

Automation and ease of use
Because freelancers work alone, they don’t always have access to reliable technical staff. For this reason, you’ll want to pick a solution that installs quickly and runs fully-automated in the background while you work.

Also, since your time is the only product that you have to sell, you can’t afford to spend hours learning how to use a new application. It has to be intuitive enough to start using right away. That’s why any new software you buy has to be very easy-to-use in order to minimize the learning curve and prevent any problems down the road.

Continuous protection
Every freelancer has had the experience where they’ve pulled an all-nighter, working 12-hours straight for an important deadline, only to have something disastrous happen at the last second.

In order to prevent this, you’ll want to select a provider that offers Continuous Data Protection (CDP) capability. CDP simply means that the software will back up your data files every time you save instead of waiting until a scheduled daily backup time. This means that your potential “window” for data loss will be kept to only about 5 minutes instead of 24 hours.

If you decide to go with a CDP solution, make sure that it also offers block-level uploads. Block level capability allows the software to analyze your files, and only upload the portion that has changed since the last save point. This can significantly speed up your backup process and minimize the load on your internet connection.

Laptop-specific features
Most freelancers travel a lot, and often end up in places that may not always have the most reliable internet connections. Make sure that the solution you select offers laptop-specific features that can protect you on the road.

One such feature would be the hybrid capability to create both local AND remote backup copies of your data.

In other words, the solution should give you the option of creating a local hard drive partition which can be accessed in an emergency… even if you don’t have internet access. And of course, this should automatically synchronize with your online data backups as soon as you connect to the internet again.

And if you’re working out of an area that has only a slow internet connection, the CDP functionality we’d discussed earlier should ensure that your data still gets backed up without causing a significant burden on your connection.

Security and privacy
Often, freelancers will deal with very sensitive information. Make sure that the online backup service you select offers proper encryption.

But more importantly, make sure that the application you select allows you to encrypt the files with a password that only YOU know. In other words, make sure that the online backup provider can’t access your encrypted data once it’s on their servers.

Not all providers offer this feature. So make sure to ask before signing up.

So there you have it! If you want to protect your freelance business from data loss, just make sure that the solution you pick offers:

• Automation
• Continuous Protection
• Laptop-Specific Features
• Proper Security

If you follow this simple checklist, you can feel confident that you’re making the right choice for your business.

About The Author: Storagepipe Solutions offers online backup and backup software for freelancers & other small businesses.

The site allows freelancers to bid on as many projects as possible without the hassle of signup or account upgrade fees. You are protected by their escrow payment system, and you can withdraw funds the minute you are paid. Go ahead and build a profile to find Jobs for Freelancers today!

Please visit BidHire, who sponsored the post above.

This is why choosing the right host for your site is very crucial. And to actually look for a host that is free and that is reliable just makes the task even more challenging. Here’s the good news though, there really are good free web hosting providers around. You just have to be very picky to be able to point yourself on the right one.

A few basic things to consider:

1. Check if the hosting company has been around for at least a year. This is a better way to avoid yourself from signing up on a hosting company only to find out after a couple of days or so that they aren’t reachable anymore. This could definitely cause your website a big problem especially if you don’t regularly do backups for your site and other issues.

2. Look for a host that says no banner ads. Some free web hosts, in exchange for the free service that they would provide your website, put tons of ads on to your site. Often times, this really could cause irritation for your visitors.

3. Look for a host that offers free technical support to their free hosting customers. This is very helpful especially when you’re not that very technical yourself. A company that has a good support system is often a sign that they are indeed providing a good service for their customers.

4. Look for a host that guarantees at least 99% uptime.. To actually know if a host is reliable is really very hard to determine.. Since usually you’ll just get to know about a host’s reliability once you have been with them. So your best shot is at least go with a host that gives high guarantees for their reliability.

Free hosting provider I recommend

So far, I’ve been with a few free web hosts and have experienced some of the worst. One free web hosting provider I highly would recommend is Doteasy.com. There are other free good web hosts too, but I have to admit, Doteasy has better offers than others.

Doteasy is a free hosting company that is well established, so that gives me an assurance that my website is safe and secured. They also strictly implement banner-free, this means no annoying ads on your website. Aside from that, I find their support team very reliable especially at times I’m having trouble on my site. I can’t be more thankful, because they still are very willing to help me even when the problem was basically caused by me. And as for their reliability, for a free host, I can say that I hit the jackpot with them. They guarantee 99.9% uptime and they have kept my website up and running all the time.

I get all of their great service for free, this is certainly a very good deal that I just can’t pass up. As of the moment, I can’t think of a better host or just even close on providing the service I get from Doteasy. And to get your own free web hosting account with them, you just need to click here to sign up and open a free account.

How It Works
Install is a quick and painlessly delivered through the Adobe AIR system. Just a couple clicks and less than a minute later, we’re ready to go. When you startup the software, GTime asks you to enter your Google account login credentials. From there onward you can create new timesheets or access existing ones. For a website redesign project I’m working on, I found it best to correlate one ‘timesheet’ to that unique project and client. This timesheet is stored on Google’s servers as a spreadsheet, and its individual records are accessible either through the GTime software or direct on the web in your Google account.

There are two options for creating and categorizing a timed task, which I did today for creating a new website logo for the project. The first option and easiest for my style is to use GTime’s simple start / pause / stop timer. The ’start task’ button helps you track timed tasks as you work on them, and immediately lets you enter that time record into your timesheet when you click ’stop’. The entry I made showed the date, hours spent (1.45), and let me add a category (Graphic Design) and a task note (logo redesign for client X). The second option is to view all task records for a timesheet, and manually create and/or update the record of your choice. This works well for recording time spent away from your computer, like at a client meeting.

One of the nice features that I enjoy is the reporting module. For each project, you can get a weekly or monthly view of how much time you’ve spent within each category of work. For my web redesign project, I know that coding isn’t my strongest area of work, and it’s hours are disproportionately large vs. my graphic design category. With this report, I can use accurate time data to make an informed decision on whether or not to outsource development for future projects.

Recommendation
Overall, this utility does the trick for me – it saves me time from my current spreadsheet-input process, and is much cheaper than the competition at $20 USD for a single lifetime license.

I definitely recommend this tool for the individual freelancer who needs a better way to manage their time. Whether you’re billing clients by hour, or merely want to see an overview of where your time is spent in a given week, the 14-day trial of GTime is definitely worth a shot. You can download the free trial at http://gtimetracking.com and give it a whirl.

Product Features

• Software works on PC, Mac and Linux platforms
• Very fast install with no server software
• Secure and reliable, with smooth usability
• Start / pause / stop tray timer for recording tasks
• Immediate and automatic synchronization between Google and GTime
• Lowest-cost option vs. the competition
• Leverage all the features offered by Google Docs
  • Export your timesheets from Google to Excel, Open Office, PDF, CSV, HTML, Text
  • Ability to share timesheets publicly, or privately with other Google users
  • Automatic timesheet backup and versioning

If you’d like to learn more about the author of GTime Tracking, check out freelancer Nicholas Bilyk’s blog.

It is absolutely easy now to find a company that proposes services if you want to create website yourself. You can compare all their services and draw a conclusion taking into consideration their informative and designing aspects.

Until you try out their services, you never know what they propose. The best way to evaluate the Program is by a free trial usually proposed by every developer. But you have no idea about their Customer support service using their designed templates, tools and websites.

Everybody knows that pretty often we are welcomed by the pre-sales department, but after the deal closes we get only permanent delays, different troubles and many excuses or even no support from the company. The same problem may appear when you decided to create website and selected a company for your website creation. Some of the website creators even do not include the webmaster Support to the offered Service Package or sometimes they customize your site for extra fees. Their calling operators seem to be absolutely useless when you ask them to check your site and fix some problems. General instructive answers will never help you in an individual problem even if it is a small one.

So, that’s why it is very important to choose a reliable Support Team, not only comfortable Admin Panel and well-designed templates when you decide to create your own website with online site creator. Do not rely only on your own skills, especially if you are sooner a newbie than an expert in this field, you will feel much better if you have professional team for this purpose. It does not matter how the whole system works and how many clients can manage for the best results. You just want to get a skilled webmaster to give you a hand if required while you create a website.

Site2you proposes their great Support as a part of the routine process, while you create your web site, not for additional fee or as complementary service. Their Support Service Team is known for excellent customer care on every phase of the procedure. You may receive all information about their Product via email, chat, phone or interactive system which allows you to communicate with the experts exactly when you create a website. Favorable and caring staff will assist you with your particular problems during the subscription, editing procedure and after site creation completion. You will be sure that your website will be completed and maintained afterwards by a qualified professional Site2you team.

Consider all possibilities and feel free to query the Support Service Team about any issues concerning creation of your website.

Why I Chose Seo-semantic-xhtml.com:
I was quite impressed by their client list, which includes Sony Pictures, Columbia, and Mobile Illumination. Equally as impressive was their portfolio and coding style. SEO-Semantic-XHTML.com’s customer service was online so I showed them my design, discussed their process and Money back guarantee. After about a 20 minute discussion, I awarded my job to them.

Other perks:
They are in a similar time zone to mine (they are in PST, I’m in MST), which was a huge advantage over other providers. Also, their quality guidelines include w3c validation, and compatible with safari, IE, firefox, opera and chrome. Above all they have 100% Money back guarantee.

The Process:
I filled out their online order form, selected my package, and uploaded the design. Once it was done, I received a message from them confirming my order and delivery schedule.

Pricing:
Their packages start from $75. They offer three options based on the different markup selection i.e. HTML strict, XHTML transitional, and XHTML strict.

Support:
seo-semantic-xhtml.com has excellent customer support. They have ticket management system to handle all queries where I could login to see the status. They were available over IM,email,etc and reply was pretty quick too. I dont remember a single time when it took them more than a few hours to reply back.

Portfolio:
To see samples of their work, please visit: http://www.seo-semantic-xhtml.com/portfolio.html

What I got:
I received my files before the due date! And I was dually impressed with the quality of work – the code kept my design the same, it was w3c validated and working fine on all the browsers I checked. I must say they have done a quite good job.

Conclusion:
I would definitely recommend them for their XHTML coding. Their quality of code is good, delivery is fast, and charges are very reasonable vs. the competition.

Fell, who previously built and sold email marketing firm Pure for $7.8m last year, has been working on his latest project for the past 18 months.

Crunch.co.uk allows freelancers to manage their entire accounts, invoicing and expenses on a secure and user-friendly website, with the benefit of having an accountant at the end of the phone. It’s the first time traditional accountancy has been combined with the experience of a new media team to build one online package dedicated to freelancers, for a fair monthly price.

Customers receive an initial healthcheck with one of Crunch.co.uk’s accountants when they first join, and have a team of accountants available to talk to for ongoing advice. One advantage of using Crunch.co.uk is that it helps to convert Sole Traders, which freelancers are often classed as, to a Limited company set-up – by doing this it looks to save users on average £2,000 to £4,000 each year in taxes. Limited companies can use a tax efficient dividend method while Sole Traders are taxed at full rate on all income.

“Our research has shown that freelancers’ accounts cost well over £1,000 per year, while we will do the same thing and more for £59.50 per month,” said Darren Fell, MD of Crunch.co.uk. “This seamless integration of software and human has not been done before – with ongoing advice and support available as part of the online package, Crunch.co.uk offers the most cost-effective and unique accountancy service for freelancers, contractors and one person businesses.”

Crunch.co.uk will be updated every month, in a rapid expansion of its features. An iPhone application will also be released.

Fell continued: “There are currently 1.4 million self-employed people in the UK* so we have a big target market. We’ll be releasing some very exciting features that will simplify and join accounting processes together – things that should have been connected years ago, and that will make accounting ridiculously easy for freelancers. We’ve been completely supportive of this community since we launched advice and networking website www.FreelanceAdvisor.co.uk in February last year, and the site now attracts 10,000 followers each month. The interest in Crunch.co.uk shows that freelancing is surging – in the current climate more people are being made redundant and deciding that the freelancing lifestyle is for them.”

Crunch.co.uk is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

For every busy web designer and developer, there comes a moment when they want to kick the clock so hard that it stops time in its tracks. For our businesses, time is money; however, we cannot just stop taking on additional orders because we have too many- or do we? If your answer is often ”yes”, I’ll tell you something that might change your perspective for the better. Suppose, you have multiple web designs ready for coding, project submission dates are coming on quickly, and your inbox is brimming with yet more web design orders, what would you do?

Do you push back delivery dates?  That’s not so great for your client relations.  Do you divert all your resources toward timely delivery?  Clients are happy, but you increase your stress and can push back other high-priority tasks.  When situations like these happen, hiring a conversion company may be your best choice.

That’s where xhtml.pixelcrayons.com steps in with its PSD to XHTML conversion services.  According to its clientele, case studies, and my own test with them, you know exactly what you are getting, when you are getting it and how much it will cost. 

PixelCrayons is an online service that offers effortless manual conversion of static design files into high quality XHTML. Essentially, the idea is that they can return professional-grade XHTML design within 8 hours! You can send your designs in PSD, JPG, GIF, PNG, AI and even HTML markup. Here are the two coding packages they offer, in addition to the various add-ons including layout options, markup options and integration services:

The Basic Package – starting at $99

• Markups: HTML 4.01 Transitional, XHTML 1.0 Transitional
• W3C Validation: CSS, XHTML & HTML 
• I.E 6.x / 7.x, Mozilla Firefox, Safari

The Professional Package – starting at $199 

• Markups: HTML 4.01 Transitional, HTML 4.01 Strict, XHTML 1.0 Transitional, XHTML 1.0 Strict
• W3C Validation: CSS2 (Advanced CSS Code Structure), XHTML & HTML Browsers Compatibility: I.E 6.x / 7.x, Mozilla Firefox, Safari 2.x/3.x, Opera, Konqueror
• Includes: SEO Semantic Code, Load Speed Optimization, Complete Presentation Separation, Maximum Cross-Browser Compatibility

Work Process

Placing an order is quite simple, and the order form is self-explanatory. Just fill in the required blanks, and then wait for next 8 business hours for your XHTML design. You may upload your file in various formats (PSD, JPG, GIF, PNG, AI, ZIP or PDF) and can also have it integrated with CMS/ Blogging Engine/ Shopping Cart of your choice. If you want to mention specifications about your file, you can use the Special Comments Box. After uploading the file and completing the order form for the chosen package, an order-confirmation e-mail is sent to you with your order placed in the queue.

Client Support

The response time is quick and thorough. You would be asked questions regarding file related issues and other clarifications on design implementation and stuff. After a quick review of the work you need and clarifications over phone and mails, your markup will be available to you within 8 hours. They also have instant chat options where you could directly communicate via Yahoo!, AOL, MSN, Skype messengers.

Work Quality

The emailed markup is sent as a zip file that would include XHTML files and a folder containing CSS files, JS files and images. The quality of the markup speaks for itself, the coding is kept clean and semantic, and the CSS files are nicely organized.

Conclusion

Their manual coding provides cross browser compatibility, with equal clarity in all versions of IE, Firefox, Safari and Opera. The prices are economical and quality is surpassingly good. I think it is an excellent service if you need (and have the budget for) extra help in coding your designs, while maintaining the high-quality standards of your own work. So all in all, do I recommend Pixel Crayons for XHTML Conversion? Certainly yes, if you need a cost saving, time-saving and convenient conversion.

Overview
Laptopical is a brilliant resource for people who are looking for a new laptop to replace their old, worn machine. It’s for people who live in the US (I’m assuming from the currency symbols), and is great when it comes to looking for honest, solid reviews on what laptops are worth it, and which ones are “not so worth it”. Personally, I’m looking for a new machine to replace my rather old laptop, preferrably something with a good amount of RAM and can run Windows Vista (yes, Windows VISTA) without breaking a sweat – so let’s see how laptopical does in my search for a new laptop.

Usability
Quoting on general aesthetics the website is clean, and everything is tidy and ‘uncluttered’. These are exactly the qualities needed in such a site so you can open it out to be used by all age groups, and it seems laptopical has hit the nail on the head with its well thought out layout. You’ve got RSS feed and search in exactly the places I’d expect (top-right), along with the most recent laptop post which is larger than the other posts. All these traits are a sign of a well-built site.

Usability Grade: 8.5/10

Service Level
The information the site gives is relatively good – all the core specifications needed when deciding what laptop to buy are available. Personally, I wanted to try out a Macbook Pro as I wanted to try a whole new OS and a whole new style of computer, this is what I was taking a look at.

At first glance, after going through the specification I thought that it was a little dissapointing that all I got was a paragraph of information on the laptop, it’s specifications and then nothing else – but then I realized I could carry on scrolling down, to a full review on the laptop. The review itself was pretty personal in terms of it was based on a real individual’s thoughts and feeling on the laptop, not some nonsense quoted in order to sell the laptop. That’s what I like about Laptopical:

“The only problem with the 17-incher-it’s got mercury in it.”

Very bluntly put indeed.

In terms of making your action to purchase the laptop at hand, the website does not just provide you with one option to purchase, but multiple options. This is pretty good seeing as that one choice could be out-of-stock in that particular laptop.

Another great feature – pros and cons. The most simplest, but most effective way to represent any laptop is to have a list of the advantages and disadvantages for the potential buyer to think about, and I think that information on pros and cons that Laptopical provides is very valuable indeed.

Service Level Grade: 8/10

Summary

Usability: 8.5/10
Service Level Grade: 8/10

Verdict
I think when it comes to finding a good laptop to purchase, Laptopical is the way to go. It’s got a very good reputation as a laptop reviewer, and I would recommend it to all who are looking for a laptop to suit their needs and are in search for an honest opinion.

Results

Here is a screenshot of what the results looked like at the time of this post:

As you can see, Drupal came #3 with 11% of the votes, Joomla came #2 with 18% of the votes, and the giant Wordpress came #1 with an absolute massive 71% majority win. The results of the poll clearly show that Wordpress is the best loved CMS out there, or maybe there are ones I haven’t included?

You could argue that the poll was a little unfair, seeing as each CMS has a slightly different core use. For example, Wordpress is predominantly a blogging CMS, but it’s now used for practically anything and everything. So yes, maybe I should choose a more fair poll next time.

What’s dissapointing though is that I thought Mambo would at least get a vote or two, but I guess it doesn’t rank too highly, at least in the view of freelancers.

What Next?

Well, I’m going to be putting up the next poll for Freelancer Magazine shortly. Again, I want to make it as engaging as possible, so if you have any good ideas for a poll don’t hesitate to leave a comment on this post, and I’ll take a look at your suggestion. We hope you enjoy the next poll as much as the one currently!

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