Well, I don’t work from a static location, so I don’t have a home setup. I adjusted my setup for mobility and have tested and improved my ‘system’ while traveling across Canada for the past couple of weeks. You will find that due to the nature of traveling, my setup is extremely basic, yet practical and functional.

Main Computer

Obviously, I work from a laptop. My HP nw8440 mobile workstation is an older model, but it has been serving me very well. I recently had the screen replaced, switched from Windows XP to Windows 7, and upgraded the RAM. My extended warranty is good for another 18 months, so I’m planning to get a new laptop in about a year from now.

I went with this model mainly because of the screen. When I was researching for a laptop back in late 2007, models with glossy LCDs had conquered the market, a trend I did not wish to follow. It had to be matte for me. Above all, however, I wanted a 15.5″ laptop with a WUXGA resolution. A high resolution is a blessing if you are limited to one screen, but want to open two windows next to each other, as I often do.

The screenshot above shows my laptop and the key accessories. I use an international power plug adapter (red), a mouse (blue), and a neoprene cover amateurishly stuffed into a cotton bag. This picture was taken at a hostel in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Since I’m traveling with buses, trains, ferries, rental cars, and airplanes, I have to keep my stuff fairly compact and well organized. What has worked best for me is using a carry-on backpack that holds my laptop and other valuables while traveling and doubles as a daypack when hiking or sightseeing. The cotton bag around the neoprene cover holds the accessories when the laptop and backpack have to be separated. A dedicated laptop bag would be much more elegant, but not practical since it wouldn’t fit into my preferred backpack.

Network

My network setup is straight forward – a laptop with internal WiFi adapter, free public WiFi, connect and go.

People often ask me whether I have trouble finding an Internet connection. Well, since I rely on it, I kind of organize my trips around Internet access. But frankly, while traveling in Canada, the US, and Europe, finding WiFi has not been a problem. I have found reliable Internet throughout my journeys, even in the most remote places, and in case the accommodation itself doesn’t offer Internet (almost all hostels offer free WiFi, though), you are sure to find a McDonald’s or Starbucks close-by.

The screenshot above shows my view from where I worked in the Gaspésie, Québec. I was literally only steps away from the beach (at least while working).

When I was traveling for a month in 2009, I also wrote this article: How To Stay Digitally Charged and Connected On The Road.

Working While Traveling

Don’t pity me, envy me. I get to work wherever I want and whenever I want. That’s huge and hopefully it will be easier and more common in the future! Working while traveling or rather traveling while working is a challenge, but all it takes is the right mindset and occasionally a good headset.

What has worked best for me is to do routine tasks in the morning, right after breakfast. I work for an hour or two and then spend the day getting to the next destination, sightseeing, hiking, relaxing, chatting, or shopping. I typically do research and write my articles in the late afternoon or evening, along with more routine work. This takes anywhere from two to five hours, depending on the workload, the type of article I’m working on, and how much non-work-related tasks I sneak in. Overall, I spend more time outside or on the road than on the computer.

Web Services & Software

Like James, I’m a web services minimalist. For my job with MakeUseOf however, Google Mail has become invaluable, as it allows me to easily filter, tag, and follow up on emails. For private emails I still rely on Thunderbird. I also use Flickr to share photos and Plurk to keep a minimalist version of a personal diary.

I use two browsers - Firefox and Google Chrome. Chrome is my work horse. It is barely customized, but since it’s fast, even with many tabs open, I use it when researching and writing articles. My Firefox is a ‘custom monster’ in which I keep all my standard websites opened. To write articles, I use BlogDesk and I process all my screenshots in IrfanView.

Conclusion

And that’s all there is to it. No magic, just a plain and simple setup, which travels around the world with me. This piece was written in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. When the article is published, I will be in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Upcoming destinations – Sweden via Germany and Denmark.

Do you take your work on the road? What are some tips and tricks you would share with fellow working travelers?

Image credits: olly

I’ve been using the web-based time-tracker, SlimTimer which is a simple but elegant solution. However, web apps don’t always suit everyone. There are neat desktop applications that offer tighter integration with the OS (and offer free accounts), such as RescueTime and ManicTime, which sit in the background, monitor your activity on the computer and provide charts to let you visualize the time you spend on specific tasks.

However, if you’re more of the privacy-concerned type of user, you might be interested in TimeEdition, an open-source, cross-platform time tracker that requires no installation. The download for Windows is 5MB in a zipped file so it’s not exceedingly enormous. It can export data to Excel, iCal, Outlook and Google Calendar.

With TimeEdition, you don’t just track time for an activity. You log customers, projects and tasks, so in other words, to track any task, you’ll have to create a new customer first, then a project, then a task, which you can do by heading into the drop-down menu for each field in the main window, or selecting the appropriate entry under View in the menu bar.

You can still use it even if you aren’t working for a client. You could just list yourself to track your different projects.

While TimeEdition has a more customer-project-task system that might be too specific for the non-freelancer, it’s very easy to use. The program itself has a simple GUI, and sports a single button to start or pause the timing. To see more features that make this application really appealing, read on.

Track How Much Time You’ve Spent On A Project

What makes TimeEdition very useful is the fact that you can view how much time (specifically, minutes) you’ve spent on a single client, a specific project or task while TimeEdition is running and counting for you. That means you can stop timing or recording and resume the timing later without having to break a sweat to manually calculate time spent yourself. You simply have to go up to the View menu and select something other than Daily Records (default) which you’ll want if you’re looking to see how much time you’ve spent for the whole day. The other options include viewing by current session, in whole, or in retrospective (Project countdown).

To view project countdown, you have to edit your project and estimate how much time the entire project will take, or just make sure for your future projects, to input your estimated time in the right field when you are creating a new project.

You can also choose to not track anything after your computer is idle for a specific time, by going to Extras > Options.

Google Calendar Integration

For those that want to time how long an event lasts, TimeEdition will be a great tool to download as it can create an event in your Google Calendar after an event is done timing. This would be very handy if, say, I wanted to keep track of how many hours of studying I did over a whole semester, I could use TimeEdition to track studying habits, and then create charts with Youcalc, like this person did. If you use Google Calendar to journal your day or track hours spent on a project, TimeEdition can help you create events after timing your activities.

Depending on whether you have Windows or Mac, this window will show you options to create events in desktop calendars, such as Outlook and iCal.

Exporting Or Backing Up

If creating events in Google Calendar is not enough for you, you can also export your record in iCal, CSV, Excel or even XML formats. Just go to the File menu and select Export. You can even choose to export record from a specific time frame.

You can also back up your records by going to File > Backup Database. The file will be saved as a .edb, which is TimeEdition’s database file type and can be restored by going to File > Restore Database.

While it’s not an automated solution like RescueTime or ManicTime, TimeEdition is an easy time tracker and integrates with other popular services, all while being open-source and available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Got any other excellent alternatives to TimeEdition? Feel free to comment!

Addressing the some of the downsides of Paypal, other businesses have ‘stepped up’ to provide their own payment services. They range from smaller startups to well established players throwing their hat in the online payment arena. Mostly the service that would work best for you depends most upon what you actually use online money transfers for. With Paypal, many people only use a certain aspect of it while never touching others. Let’s go over a few of these online payment services and check out the differences and why you might use one over another.

1. Venmo

Venmo is a Philadelphia-based startup in the mobile payment arena. Starting as a cell-phone based payment system, you can also send payment or a bill to a friend whom you have already connected with or to any cell phone, email address or twitter handle.

Much like Paypal, you carry a balance and your payments or charges credit and debit that balance. You add more funds by linking a credit card or bank account and Venmo uses bank-grade security throughout the transaction process.

Venmo started as a “Friend” payment service but you can also sign up as a business as long as you have a cell phone to coordinate payments. For Friend-to-Friend transfers there is no fee. Staff writer Steve is already a great fan of Venmo and I have seen its use expanding to more and more people.

Venmo is still invite-only but they were kind enough to set up a special invite code for MakeUseOf readers. Use ‘makeuseof‘ while signing up to gain access instantly.

2. Amazon WebPay

Amazon released their payments service back in 2008. Originally meant for merchants, they have also added a “personal” aspect to it named WebPay where you can send or receive money online or via cell phone. The Amazon Payments/Personal website has more details on the requirements for signing up.

3. Google Checkout

Google Checkout is definitely aimed at merchants more than anyone else. It takes the payment portion out of the transaction so that you simply send a buyer of your products to a checkout page which is powered by Google Checkout. When on that page, a buyer will enter their payment information – and then be sent back to your site with a confirmation of purchase.

4. Skrill / Moneybookers

Moneybookers is widely known as a replacement to PayPal which is also more international-friendly than some of the other providers. Moneybooks is beginning a transformation to Skrill – a rebranding and refocusing of their payment platforms. Their rates are usually cheaper than PayPal, but then again less people use it so that is the tradeoff you have. I’ve heard of a lot of folks turning to Moneybookers when PayPal has crossed them and they are mostly happy with their move.

5. 2Checkout

2Checkout is a payment processor which acts as a “middleman” between you (as a seller of items or services) and the payer. 2Checkout can accept credit cards, checks, and even PayPal itself as a form of payment but ads a management layer as well handling the whole checkout process. I’ve seen many merchants using 2Checkout as a payment provider on eBay stores as an alternative to PayPal. There is a $49 signup fee; so this is mainly meant for those with some higher volume sales and not casual transactions.

6. Traditional Merchant Accounts

Finally on the ‘merchant’ end again, you can do what other businesses have been doing for decades and apply for a real merchant account. Having a merchant account gives you, with the use of a payment processor such as Authorize.Net, the ability to accept credit cards directly. There are some downsides to this. There is often a monthly fee that the other providers above to not charge, and you must be PCI compliant which is a whole other issue. However if you perform a lot of transactions and need to integrate a payment solution into your own shopping cart or system, then this is the only way to go.

Ask your local bank about merchant accounts, alternatively there are a ton of options available online (check Google) but frankly there are so many options it is hard to tell from the web which will work for you. Ask your friends for recommendations and do your homework to make sure you are going with a reputably provider (I’ve used BluePay, and they have been good but fee-expensive).

Which One Is For Me?

The answer to this question depends a lot on how you use the online payment service. If you simply transfer money between friends – as a sort of IOU – then Venmo would definitely be my recommendation. If you are selling items to ‘strangers’ they might be put-off by Venmo simply because they are not well known, and in this case going with a bigger name such as Google or Amazon may work best. Finally if you are a high volume merchant or just do a lot of business, it would be wise to evaluate the other options to see what works best with you.

Do you have any other recommendations for PayPal alternatives or experiences with the ones above? Let us know in the comments below!

Image credit: Shutterstock

Here’s a collection of business blogs aimed at entrepreneurs and small businesses. These have been chosen for their insights, advice, presentation and overall appeal to business people. Hopefully you’ll find these blogs cover all the business management advice and business trends analysis for your needs.

1. Harvard Business Review

Harvard Business Review is a staple in any entrepreneur blog collection. The blog delivers timely business analysis and professional management advice.

2. Young Entrepreneur

When you’re just starting our with your business venture, things can be a little tough. Young Entrepreneur focuses on the things you’ll need to know – financing, bootstrapping, identifying opportunities and making sales.

3. 64 Notes

64 Notes gets straight to the nuggets of gold by bypassing straightforward management tips and filling each post with those eye-opening things that change your business from alright to amazing. They also write a lot about how to avoid being the start-up that failed.

4. The Personal MBA

The Personal MBA is a blog dedicated to teaching all the tips and tricks you would have learned if you had done a degree in business. It recommends books, summarises books and draws on advice given freely by great minds in business. If you follow this blog you will learn a great deal about managing your business.

5. Instigator Blog

Instigator Blog is a very insightful blog, mainly discussing thoughts relevant to small business and entrepreneurs, written by an entrepreneur as he works on his business.

6. Fast Company

Fast Company is a major business blog, covering business news and trends. It’s vital information if you want to know where business is heading.

7. Entrepreneur Blog

Entrepreneur Blog is a site dedicated to providing business insights to entrepreneurs. It will analyse business failures, successes and trends, while offering sensible advice for any business owner.

8. The Entrepreneurial Mind

The Entrepreneurial Mind is a business blog written by a Belmont University professor of Entrepreneurship. His academic insight into the world of the entrepreneur is a great balance to the news and trends offered by other blogs.

9. Creative Web Biz

Creative Web Biz is a great blog for all the artistic entrepreneurs out there. This is a place for those people who are entrepreneurs, but don’t much care for all the business management advice and trends. This blog is entirely focused on how to get that art out there and sold. Highly recommended for musicians, artists, and makers of other crafts.

10. Work Happy

Work Happy is a blog offering advice for anyone in business for themselves. It’s useful for freelancers, small business owners and entrepreneurs alike. It features a lot of video presentations from entrepreneurs to keep things interesting.

Bonus: Entrepreneurship Interviews

Entrepreneurship Interviews added itself on to the list by being a wealth of information in the form of interviews with entrepreneurs. It’s not much to look at, but there is a lot to be gained by listening to what other entrepreneurs say candidly about their own business ventures.

More Blogs

If you’re keen to see some more great blog lists from MakeUseOf, read on:

• Four Best Inspiring Blogs Every Life Hacker Should Subscribe To
• 3 Personal Finance Blogs That Will Get You Out Of Debt
• The 10 Most Stunning Photo Blogs
• 6 Best Web Design Blogs To Follow
• The 6 Best Blogs For Architectural & Interior Design Ideas

If you know of other great blogs for business people, let us know in the comments!

Image Credit: Shutterstock

There are downsides, however. You only get paid when you do work, and finding work is completely up to you. You also need to be a keen businessman in addition to being talented in your field, because there’s no department to take care of the finances for you.

But perhaps the hardest part of freelancing is the lack of people to talk to: you get no real “water cooler” conversation.

Such conversation not only keeps you human, it also allows you to vent about clients and co-workers who are particularly annoying – not to mention commiserating with others who are experiencing crazy situations with clients.

If you find yourself missing such conversation, particularly the so-bad-it’s-funny situations, keep reading for a couple of great freelancing online spots to read during your ever-so-rare downtime.

Clients From Hell

A lot of people don’t understand the concept of freelancers. For example, some people think paying a freelancer is optional. Others make so many demands that it would almost be better if they did the job themselves.

Clients From Hell documents situations like these; conversations so frustrating it’s funny. If you’re having a particularly stressful day dealing with your clients this is the stress relief you’re looking for. It features golden tidbits like this:

Not Always Right

We’ve all heard the adage: the customer is always right. It’s supposed to promote an agreeable customer service mindset that allows you to always make the client happy. Sometimes that’s hard, however.

Not Always Right documents such difficult situations, and they’re almost all hilarious. For example:

The site is less specifically focused on freelancers than Clients From Hell, obviously, but it fills the “insane stories heard at work” niche quite nicely. Expect a wide variety of crazy stories from a variety of different industries.

Passive Aggressive Notes

This freelancing online destination is not directly work related, but very much in the same spirit as Clients From Hell and Not Always Right. Focusing on the crazy little notes people leave each other, Passive Aggressive Notes includes gems from work and home alike. Check out this masterpiece, for example:

Bonus Sites

Didn’t find what you’re looking for? Check out this list of great lunchbreak websites for onlines freelancers for more sites worth checking out. And, of course, our own Geeky Fun page is always good for a laugh or two.

Conclusion

Months ago I had a phone conversation with a tech-support client, and it went like this:

Client: You fixed my computer, but my Internet still isn’t working all that well.

Me: Okay, how do you connect?

Client: I connect to the Linksys.

Me: And that’s not working anymore?

Client: No. I can connect to it, but the Internet doesn’t work.

Me: Check the router and make sure it’s plugged into your modem.

Client: I don’t have either of those. I just use the Linksys.

Me: Okay, so you’ve been stealing wireless from your neighbor…

Client: No. I’m using the Linksys.

Me: Linksys is just the default name for a router. It’s your neighbor’s Internet, and you’ve been stealing it.

*silence*

Reading sites like those linked to above makes me feel sane: I’m not the only person who deals with situations like this.

How about you? Do you find such sites entertaining, or just in bad taste? Discuss below, or just share some more funny sites for freelancers!

Time Clock MTS is time tracking software targeted towards businesses, so it does provide these advanced features. Larger businesses will have to pay for Time Clock MTS after the trial period (30 days) expires, but any individual user or business that only needs to track three employee records can use it for free indefinitely.

Creating Records

When you first start Time Clock MTS you need to set up the administrative account. The admin account is responsible for creating and maintaining all of the employee records in the Time Clock MTS database. In a larger business it would be very important to keep this account protected, but for our purposes it is generally not as important. Still, the program requires that you set an admin account when you start it for the first time.

Once you’ve handled that you’ll want to enter yourself into the database. By default you are not logged in to the admin account, so click on File and then click Log In As Administrator.

Now click on Employee Maintenance and then click on Add An Employee. The detail with which you need to fill out this next section will depend on your usage. If you are self employed and you only need to keep track of your own hours it is less important. If you are filling out information for an employee, however, you’ll need to use more detail.

By default, the Employee Information part of the record will appear first. The other sections are Payroll, Contact and Tax information. The titles of these sections explains what each handles.

Tracking Jobs

Once you have entered at least one employee record, clocking in and out is done by selecting the employee record and then clicking Clock In or Clock Out.

But what if you want to keep track of the hours you are spent doing a specific task? Time Clock MTS lets you accomplish this, as well, but to do so you need to set up a Job Code.

Go to Tools and then click on Options. This will bring up an option interface with numerous sections. Scroll down until you see the Job Tracking section and click on it. Now click on the icon furthest to the left (it looks like a clean sheet of paper) to create a new code. You will be asked to assign a code and name the job.

Now go back to Employee Maintenance and click Edit Selected Employee. You’ll see a job tracking drop-down menu. Click on it and select either optional (to make job tracking something you can do, but don’t have to) or compulsory (to force job tracking whenever someone clocks in). If you do enable job tracking you will have to enter the appropriate job code when you clock in.

If you want to know how much time you or an employee has spent working on specific tasks you can do so by generating a Payroll Report. You can do this by selecting the employee record and then clicking on View Employee Information in the main window. A drop-down menu item will display the option to generate a payroll report. A new window will appear that included a Report Options section with a drop-down menu. Click on it and then select Job Time Report. This will display the amount of time spent on a specific job code you entered.

Conclusion

Time Clock MTS is great time tracking software to keep track of your time and the time of others working for you, in a professional manner. It has a large number of in-depth options, including the ability to export payroll reports to Excel. Compared to some, more mobile options – such as Toggl – Time Clock MTS feels clunky. However, Time Clock MTS lets you use all of its features for free so long as you don’t exceed three employee records. Toggl, and other services, require that you pay in order to use all of the features available.

What time tracking software do you rely on to keep track of your billable hours?

After receiving 618 votes, Android sustained a landslide victory over iPhone. The poll tallied just shy of 900 votes overall, with a mere 218 votes going to the iPhone. A surprising number of votes went to the little guys – the “neither” option collected 62 votes.  The most fascinating thing about this poll though, was the comments. Many MakeUseOf users have done their research and listed positives and negatives for both Android and iPhone, yet often the final decision rested on one little detail they couldn’t live without. Both iPhone and Android have some adjustments to make, obviously.

Results and this week’s poll after the jump.

As you can see, Android is clearly the most popular choice with MakeUseOf readers.

And now on to this week’s question: If you could freelance online from anywhere, where would you live?

We realise that there are a lot of people who can telecommute or freelance from home these days. So, if you don’t need to be anywhere in particular for work, where do you want to be? Will the next ten years herald a mass exodus to beach resort towns? Forest areas? Will remote villages (with broadband) suddenly find themselves alongside an army of quiet freelancers?

Let’s find out! Tell us where you would go if you could work from anywhere.

If you’ve chosen “other”, please do let us know what sort of place it would be. Don’t worry about specifics, but let us know the main feature of the places you’re drawn to. It’ll be great to hear all of your ideas!