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The Perks of Being a Freelancer

There are many perks in freelancing. Probably the best among them is that freelancers work in their preferred time and days of the week. They do not have to worry about waking up so early in the morning or missing out from their children’s Parent Teacher Association meetings. They can start their projects at noon and continue until the wee hours of the night while munching on a healthy snack cooked from their own kitchen.

Most freelancers work from home. And since they do not have to report to the corporate world, they can just wear comfortable clothes while thinking in front of their computers. Dry cleaning and wardrobe expenses are significantly reduced. They can focus on getting the job done instead of what they will wear for a presentation in front of a bunch of executives.

Freelancers save a lot on transportation money. Due to the fact that they do not have to leave their houses, they do not spend a huge chunk out of their savings for gas or train tickets. Morning traffic jams do not concern them. The rush hour does not affect them. They can sit back and need not worry about long commutes that tire the employees in a corporate setting every single shift.

When it comes to compensation, freelancers can dictate how much their output costs. Unlike regular employees who have fixed salaries, freelancers can bargain with clients on how much a project would be. The more intricate the details for a project are, the higher price freelancers can ask. The more experienced the freelancer, the higher compensation he can demand. The amount of money that a freelancer can earn in a month is never fixed. It can increase depending on the professional abilities, sample portfolio, relevant job experiences and communications skills of a freelancer.

Image courtesy of [Stuart Miles] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Does A Freelancer Need A Blog?

Freelancers nowadays range from writers to nutritionists. A lot of people think that freelancers are mostly “just” creative types who don’t like to work in the corporate world. And while most freelancers do like the freelance lifestyle as compared to the corporate world, some freelancers actually have no experience in the corporate world and are glad to never have set foot in an office building. But I digress. The real question is, whatever kind of freelancer you may be, do you actually need to blog?

Most people think that a blog should be completely personal or should contain work-related stuff. The thing is that a blog is a great marketing tool whether you’re a writer or a software engineer. It shows that you have a personality to back you up and that you are an actual human being with actual interests. Blogs are kind of like your physical counterpart on the Internet so having one is actually beneficial in the long run.

What to Write About

Most freelancers who wish to blog actually have a lot of trouble starting their own blogs. Frankly, you could write about anything. Just don’t start to rant about your job in a negative way so that you only attract positive comments as well. If you’re a writer who loves food, a food blog is a great place to start. This way, you can keep up with your interests even if you’re too busy. This will keep you well rounded and grounded in the subtlest ways.

Now, you may also blog about your job or you may create a blog that’s focused on your target clients and audience. This is a great blog to showcase your capabilities and strengths. In fact, this kind of blog is ideal as long as you’re committed to keeping it updated regularly. This kind of blog also works as a portfolio of sorts that you can provide as a link whenever a client asks for a sample. 

Image courtesy of [rattigon] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Best Graphic Design Tools for Freelancers

By the time of the Tang Dynasty, printing manuscripts have already been introduced. Despite of the lack in advanced technology then, visuals and texts were distributed on pieces of cloth and papers – a far fry from today’s modern tools for making print and web materials.

 

There’s a big demand for graphic design work in both traditional and online media and it is no wonder that a lot of freelancers are building their career around it. Logos, animation, websites, flyers and other advertising materials are all products of graphic design.

In this post, we give you some of the best graphic design tools for freelancers. 

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is one of the most popular and effective tools in assembling your designs. Just ask most freelancers and they will surely include it in their list. Adobe Photoshop’s CS6 emerges as the most useful graphic design tool.

Its features or add-ons broaden the up-to-date initiative in making visual media. Photoshop has both the trial and paid version, with the paid version guaranteed to have the most competitive design system ever for all freelancers out there. You may download Adobe Photoshop in a customized language.

CorelDraw

Freelancers can take advantage of CorelDRAW’s capacity in managing multiple pages along with multiple master layers. Multipage documents are user-friendly and the Corel print engine enables processing of booklet and other impositions enabling simple printers to use amazing photo finish. 

X Designer Pro 7

As a freelance graphic designer, you will need to edit photos, layout pages for both online and print media and create vector images to ensure the professional build of your output. Xara’s solution - Designer Pro 7

Whether you are starting your career as a freelance graphic designer or already working as one, staying up to date with the latest graphic design tools and practices will surely enhance your visual sensitivity and keep the projects coming.

Source:
www.adobe.com
www.corel.com
www.xara.com

Image courtesy of [KROMKRATHOG] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What's Cooking this Week?

3M Innovation: Flexible Transparent Touch Screens

 

3M, the company that is known for post-it-notes, sandpaper and disks now came up with an outstandingly magnificent innovation of transparent and flexible touch screens. 3M introduces touch sensors with ultra thin bezel, which is five times thinner. It has a flexible electronics and curve that enables its designers to make new innovations out of it.

 

Its films have optimum balance and electronic functioning that makes it highly-controllable. Fine conductive features support variety of applications with heightened boost of display area. It fosters state-of-the-art multi-touch aptitude that is also eligible for high performance EMI shielding applications.

 

 

Google’s Project Glass

James Bond gadget soon on the look as Google launched a state of the art hi-technology invention – a pair of augmented reality glasses that lets you see information right in front of your eye as you wear it.

Google’s Project Glass is made of a solid metal band streaming across the brow-line, on the right mounts a small head-up small display. People behind the Google Project Glass are making this preview of their project to make it open for people’s comments for improvement. The prototype model is just one of the potential designs that are currently in test. There is possible shift for other optional designs while it is still under improvement and study. There are suggestions to make Project Glass be attached in person’s eyeglasses instead to make it more wearable without getting much of attention from others.

 

Some of the features of Google Project Glass are providing real time information like weather and transit; it has the ability to send messages and take a picture just using your voice, and do location display of the whereabouts of a family member or friend. In a note, this glass is also seen to be capable of a 3G and 4G wireless connection.

Google however is admitted that Project Glass would definitely take long time to be perfected and released for public consumption. As for the present, it is just more of a concept than an actual product. On the other hand, it would sure take a hit as soon as it is made available in the market– a run down for Apple and Microsoft.

 

Quad-Core Mobile Phones/Tablets Processors

Multiple running of applications in your computer unit heightens the workload of the Central Processing Unit (CPU). This makes the data processing, control and logic components work double time; it slows down CPU run time, makes the microchip overheat that causes permanent damage to the motherboard.

By cutting down the load of the computer processor, gadgets such as a personal computer, laptop, mobile phone, and tablet will run faster and efficient.

In the development of latest gadgets being more portable and sophisticated in designs, internal processors are also updated to suit with these evolving change and sets more efficiency on the use of more applications.

Nvidia Tegra3 Quad-Core

From single-core, dual core was developed, then out of it, the quad-core. The next level core made versatility for smart phones and tablet PCs.

Nvidia introduces Tegra 3 quad-core processor - it puts quad-core processors into tablets and mobile phones where only desktop and laptops only benefited not very long time ago. This Transformer Prime has indeed made tablets run very fast and set more quad-core devices to be launched. Quad-core is the combination of two dual-core chips into a four core unit.

The use of a four-core processor needed lesser energy with its battery-saver CPU core and is cooler than the recent core chips. It makes processing faster and opens door to more advance applications. Its design improves touch responsiveness and reduced power consumption. Truly, we have evolved onto the next generation of computing.

 

New Microsoft Office 365 Launched

The new Microsoft Office 365 is being faved by Microsoft’s new and existing customers more than ever. It has so far becoming their fastest growing Microsoft product in the company’s history. Aside from big companies, more and more small businesses prefer it for their business office operations.

Microsoft Office 365 built collaboration on Cloud to make office workplace across the global network communicate and work together in a seamless manner. Microsoft has made 30 new updates with Office 365 to make it more powerful with more effective data management. Some of the new features include the following:

Lync Support for Mac

Mac users can already enjoy instant messaging, presence and videoconferencing.

New SharePoint Business Connectivity

It allows users to link to the information of their company’s business applications like customer relations management.

Support for Phone 7.5

Users can already access their documents in SharePoint online using their Windows Phone.

SkyDrive

With Microsoft’s own cloud storage SkyDrive, users can have simpler central application sharing, file management and easy uploading with HTML 5. You can share documents in an instant; connect with any contact using email services and social networks and drag and drop multiple files between browsers.

 

What's cooking this week?

Samsung “Phablet” 

Samsung has launched its new 5.3-inch Galaxy Note which combines a phone and a tablet. Phablet runs on an Android Gingerbread 2.3 Operating System and has an overlay of cool features. You can use it in taking screenshots, rotate photos, and switch into a phone by pressing a hand on the display to mute a phone call or pause the audio and video that you play.

Samsung Phablet includes a stylus called S-pen which is pulled out at the bottom compartment of the phone. The stylus can be used in writing notes or for sketching and drawing. It can even replace the virtual keyboard where your written notes can be converted into a text provided it is clearly written for the handwriting recognition system to read.

Samsung Phablet’s physical attribute has a big size for a phone but small for a tablet. It weighs 6.3 ounces which may be bulky to carry. Samsung Phablet has usual Android features with a camera of 8 megapixels. It has great components for emailing and social media sites, web browsing and downloading with the superfast and new AT&T 4G LTE network. Samsung Phablet has 1.5 gigahertz, with dual core processor and it is priced in the US market for $300 on a 2 year contract.

iPad 3, Finally!

The iPad 3 release date has been a long awaited event not just for Apple lovers but for freelancers as well. Finally, later today Apple’s popular 9.7 inch tablet will be unveiled for the world to see, or should we say to the selected few who were issued invitations for the iPad 3 keynote event to be held today at 10 PM PST in San Francisco, USA.

IPad 3 is rumoured to have a new A5X SoC with increased graphics performance and RAM, a 2048 x 1536 Retina display, a quad-core A6 system on chip and LTE features.  Now, that sounds power packed.

CNET also released a video about the top 5 features to expect in iPad 3. Check out the video below.

 

Defending Your Systems Against Cyber Attacks

Cyber threats can come in many forms. Whether you are running a small or large business, your system is still susceptible to cyber attacks. As information technology evolves in advancement, there are also counterpart threats going along.

Doing layered security approach can help to prevent if not lessen the risks.

Email is one of the primary means of communication and sharing of files. Its enemies are spam mails and hackers so it is an essence that you install an anti-spam protection and/or use hosted email services.

Internet connection is the foremost port gateway to cyberspace, where many of the unknown threats and viruses come from. These viruses may not be visible until you encounter system failures that could not be fixed instantly. Filtering web contents and installation of updated antivirus software system is a great antidote to this.

Protecting your computer from misuse or incautious operation is also a prevention protocol. Different media devices that are inserted in ports like USB, CD, DVD, portable players etc. can become a source of virus. Doing a consistent system scan and system cleaning is a great prevention.

Performing system vulnerability tests are good to expose the weakness of the current system protection that you use. Employing other system protection softwares if you see your current system inefficient is likely.

Last but not the least, train users on these layered security approach. If only for the most, users are the one responsible on either careful or mismanagement of use of the computer system.

 

image: Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net