Telecommuting for Newbies

Having hammered a lot on telecommuting during the infancy of this blog, and then left it alone, to focus on loftier issues absolutely unrelated to freelancers and freelancing, I'm feeling the urge to re-visit the advantages of working from home.

What you get - No commuting hassles, gas bill savings, more time at home, freedom and independence. What you lose - Face time with the boss and colleagues ( invaluable for career growth ), lack of awareness of workplace changes and problems, loss of discipline ( debatable ). That just about sums it up.

Notice one factor. The pluses are all tangible and immediate, meaning you're getting the benefits today. The minuses, on the other hand all refer to problems which might crop up sometime in the future. Put another way, a telecommuter gets his cake, eats it, and might face the scary proposition of starving tomorrow. The office-goer, on the other hand, just gets to look at his cake, and appreciate that the chef is working on the cake and it's going to be bigger and better tomorrow.

The best way, as is often the case, lies somewhere in between. You get to telecommute whenever possible, and report to the office whenever necessary. But this is easier said than done. There are 45 million Americans telecommuting today, and federal and state governments are scrambling to come up with legislation and rules for taking care of the arising issues. Connecticut was one of the early states to jump onboard, and remains today the trailblazer for facilitating telecommuting with it's statewide initiative Telecommutect.

In the end, though, it's going to upto your boss and you to hash out the deal. For example, you could be allowed to telecommute on Fridays and Mondays, leading to an extended weekend at home, with the office work to be done on the remaining days. There's no law which can govern such arrangements, and the undesired side-effects arising from such arrangements.

Also to be noted is whether both your boss and you trust you to have the discipline to get the work done. Second, are you so invaluable to your company, that you can afford to sit at home and be secure that no young whipper-snapper who virtually lives in the office is angling for your job, back at the office? If you can answer both questions in the affirmative, then do the right thing and help your country, save the gas bill and enjoy working at home.

Google Shrugged

• 1996 - Larry Page and Sergey Brin working on building a search technology project at Stanford University.
• 1998 - Yahoo! founder David Filo refuses to set up a company for them, and advises them to start their own search engine company, while Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim hands them $100,000 in initial funding.
• 2001 - Google's corporate journey begins with the start of profitability and the hiring of Dr. Eric Schmidt as CEO. For all intents and purposes, Eric Schmidt remains, to date, the face of Google on Wall Street.
• 2004 - Google files with the SEC for an initial public offering ( IPO ), more commonly known as going public.
• 2005 - With billions pouring in from the IPO, Google starts making strategic acquisitions including the acquisition of Urchin ( now Google Analytics ) and a $1 billion investment in AOL.
• 2006 - Even more acquisitions, including Youtube and tie-ups with eBay and MySpace.
• 2007 - Featured acquisitions include Adscape, Trendalyzer and Double-Click.

Source : Google Corporate Information

And this landscape is dotted with the acquisition and launch or re-launch of new products and services such as Google News, Google Earth, Blogger and Gmail. Today, Google has over 12,000 employees worldwide, annual revenues exceeding $10 billion and a market capitalization of around $143.5 billion.

While you digest all this information, consider the impact of Google on things, both online and offline. Silicon Valley is trembling in it's collective pants, because if some bright new spark from Standford comes along with a brilliant idea, the odds are that Google will either eat up the startup or throw it into the internet dustbin by starting a similar service. Additionally, the best and the brightest minds, from across the nation and the world, are migrating to Google, leaving everyone else to fight over the second tier of talent pool. This was, traditionally, the role occupied by Microsoft. Add to this the fight over the free flow of information with book publishers and Hollywood, the oozing of ad revenue out of newspaper publishing houses and into the waiting arms of Google's Advertising division, and last but not least, civil rights organizations worried about the privacy implications of Google's vast data vaults.

And all this, while the rest of the economy, both online and offline, tanked spectacularly. The net result is that Google had the field all to themselves, and they made the most of it. What we have here, in essence, is an island of stability, growth and innovation, surrounded on all sides by struggling monoliths and has-been's moving steadily into oblivion. This reminds me of Ayn Rand's epic - Atlas Shrugged. With so much stacked on the backs of the Google empire, what happens if Google shrugs?

It's a long story, and worth examining. If only to correct a few misconceptions about Google's outsized shoes, it's influence and it's intentions.

The best indicator of Google's influence and intentions came in early 2006, when it was disclosed that the Justice department had demanded access to the databases of the major search engines. I have nothing much to say about the merits of the data request. Make note of two factors here. Firstly, that Google was the only one who refused, and was willing to go to court. Second, had it not been for this bit of backbone from Google, no one would have known about the whole thing. Which doesn't mean that you can sleep easy after handing over all your information to Google - But it is indicative of how responsible the company is, and more importantly, that Google is capable of standing upto, and facing down, powerful forces.

There is a lot of truth to the fear in Silicon Valley that Google is a big bully now, and all startups need to stay as far away as possible, to avoid being squashed. Question is, is Google filling the void, or is it just raking in the ad revenue? Their myriad research projects and idea incubators, where Google employees are given wide latitude, suggest that it's not all about money, and the next big thing just might hatch out of Google labs. There's room for debate here, but it's early days yet.

Then there's the ad revenue being sucked out of print publishers and into Google's ad services. The simple fact is that most print publishers are hopelessly out of date, as far as online news is concerned. If they have nimble websites, which appeal to users more than online portals and blogs, they could tranfer their revenue from print to the web, keeping it inhouse, instead of losing ad revenue to other online sources. As for the book publishers and Hollywood whining aout copyrights, it's a losing battle for them, as the recent Digg DVD DRM episode showed. Information on the internet cannot be hidden behind a lock and key, and the sooner they realise that, the better.

If you put together Google's ( attempted ) free wireless project for San Francisco with the net neutrality debate, you realise that Google is light years ahead, in terms of predicting the future, planning for it, and nudging others in the right direction.

Nuff said. The point here is that change is a reality of life. The old way, with Microsoft and General Motors, is on it's way out. Google is the today. And there'll be someone else tomorrow. I'm thankful to Google, for being a responsible and not-so-evil today. For your sake, and mine, let's hope that we don't collectively cause Google to shrug, at least until the next Google comes along.

Reference Links:-

Explore Google - Listing of Google Apps, Services and Products
The anatomy of a large scale hypertextual web search engine
IPO / The boy wonders not all googly-eyed ... well, not yet
Google Inc. SEC filings - Yahoo! Finance

The Penguins Are Coming!

This is no joke. I firmly believe that once an idea takes hold, it's going to flourish, no matter what. This particular mess started with Penguin books launching their colloborative book project "A Million Penguins." More on this bunch of penguins later, but today I stumbled onto another similar project in the works - A Writers Year. Guess what? Both projects are based in the United Kingdom.

While it would give me infinite pleasure to recount the magnificient online projects unrolled by the British ( Operation Clark County comes to mind ), it would be unfair to declare the penguin and similar episodes a disaster at this early stage. I mean, just the fact that thousands ( if not a million ) people, have co-written the book, will generate a lot of buzz. And in today's buzz-oriented world, the one with the most buzz hogs the NYT best seller list. Point is, what's the future after the novelty wears off? If there's a hundred similar projects going on, and a dozen new collaborative books out every month, who's going to interested? End of the day, the books will sell based on the content. So, it might be fair to analyze if a wiki-book will be better than a book by a single author, all other factors being the same.

The obvious advantages -
Abundance of talent and ideas, and the best will remain, while run-of-the-mill passages will be stricken out by informed writers.
Speed - If enough people are working on it, and they get the hang of it, an army of writers could churn out a book in a mtter of days. They could flood the market with their books, and hope for the best.
Money - Pretty soon, someone is going to start making money out of this, and then it'll be time for all the would-be penguins to jump in and demand their slice of the igloo.
The Blog effect - Today, it's difficult to differentiate between readers and writers of blogs, and generally speaking, they're one and the same. It's likely that the penguin thing is going to end up the same, with readers, book buyers and writers all ending up hopelessly mixed.

Anyway, let's hope the book world is not invaded by an army of penguins, and for once, the well-meaning British didn't screw up the works.

Book Review - The Assault On Reason - Al Gore

The Assault On Reason, by Al Gore

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For the record, I haven't read the book - Yet. What I have read are a series of reviews of the book and the possible, but not-likely, Presidential bid of former VP Al Gore. So, without further ado, I'll give you the links to the reviews, and selected quotes from the reviews. Followed, of course, by own critical analysis of the situation and the book.

WashingtonPost - E.J. Dionne - Free to be Al Gore
Gore's book, "The Assault on Reason," to be released today, is about "the strangeness of our public discourse" as mediated through television. He thinks the Internet may revive the art of reasoned argument that has been lost in our obsessions with "Britney and KFed, and Lindsay and Paris and Nicole."

New York times - Michiko Kakutani - The Assault On Reason
As for his conviction that the Internet can help re-establish “an open communications environment in which the conversation of democracy can flourish,” it plays down the more troubling aspects of the Web, like its promotion of rumor and misinformation alongside real information, and its tendency to fuel polarizing, partisan warfare.

Boston Globe - Jim Sleeper - Gore's 'Assault' makes his case for an open market of ideas
He notes that Internet openness is reviving the mental stimulation of reading and writing, and its interactivity is reviving Revolutionary-era pamphleteering, generating new "committees of correspondence" and strengthening a "meritocracy of ideas" instead of letting conglomerates corner the "marketplace of ideas."

You can read the growing list of reviews here.

Everyone has something to see and say in the book. The anti-war, anti-Bush crowd are hailing it as truth to power. MSM critics are hailing it as a kick in the butt for the media's performance in the past 6 years. Political junkies see it as Gore's return to politics. Me, I see it as one more Gore prophecy - The importance of the internet in politics. As for Gore, this is one smart cookie. He's got just about everyone, except for President Bush, eating out of his hands. That said, there's one thing neither Gore nor his army of supporters can change - He's not in the White House, and he's never going to be.

The Sound of Quality

I've been doing some research for a client the last couple of days. I sent him a file, with my findings yesterday night. I come back in the morning, and I see a reply from him. See for yourself - "I am sending another $50 to you via paypal. Based on the quality of research you're providing me, I would be more than happy to pay more than the contractual amount..."

And this after he paid me $50 yesterday. I tell you true, what makes me jump like Tom Cruise is not the fact that he sent the money. It's the fact that he sent it wiithout my having to ask, plus he's willing to pay even more now for further research than the amount agreed on.

End Note : Quality matters. I broke my head for a couple of days over a subject I knew squat about, and kept banging until I came up with stuff that provides value for money. I could have sent sub-standard work, and kept what he owed me. But I didn't. And that proves two things:-
1. That talent, hard work and perfection gets rewarded, even in this sick internet world of instant gratification and overnight hustlers.
2. I'm good.

ByGosch

Take on editor Ann Gosch, who runs ByGosch editorial services in the News Tribune.

"I didn’t even know enough about the subject to know what questions to ask to learn about it," she said.

At that moment, Ann Gosch the freelance writer thought maybe she should become Ann Gosch the freelance editor.

See Editors vs. Writers

"Besides, everyone who puts words on paper can use an editr, right?"

Guess this is one writer who sorely needs an editr ( so do I ).

In other news, if you have great voice and nothing much else, you might want to read "If They Mention Voice-Over Work, It's Just All Talk" by Howard Leff in the LA Times

And Sean Stubblefield, writing for the Student Operated Press, has this to say:-

"And, unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of people seeking freelance writers don’t really comprehend the intricacies of being a writer...or how gifted a writer you may be, a real writer can’t be expected to instantly churn out meaningful or useable material on command. A freelance writer can’t make a living with these kinds of jobs."

Sean, find a new career or grow up. The reason people hire writers is because they don't know squat about writing or writers. Nuff said.