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My-Tuts could have been killer
Seems Nick killed it with his lack of maturity and dedication. Maybe I’ll have to revisit the scene one last time.
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A few Basecamp gripes
I’ve been using Basecamp a lot to organise all the projects across Rolled At and here are a few of my gripes with the web app. Don’t get me wrong - it’s close to perfect, but there are things that bug me about it.
1. Remember me!
Why doesn’t it forward me from the log-in form if I’m already logged in?
2. Backpack has a better calendar
I want to be able to set events, not milestones. I don’t want to have to tick off a milestone when staff member X comes back from holiday - it should just happen.
3. Why are write boards and the chat still separate?
It’s a separate product, we know that, but why is it kept separate on the product that is the overall offering of all the products offered by 37 Signals? I’d certainly be annoyed if the to-do lists where still kept separate like this. I feel it removes from the overall together product by keeping these separate, especially in terms of making it feel like it’s a single product.
4. No education in Textile
I feel this is the only part of Basecamp we as users have to teach our clients and people we invite in to use the system with us. The helpful small guide that was there a while back has been removed, luckily there’s guides out there on the internet but it would be nice if users had the chance to know that Textile was being used, and have a quick guide on how to use it available.
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Qualities of a great freelancer
The following are qualities that I consider core things I look for in freelancers I use when outsourcing work and getting things done. They are also the things that each and every freelancer working on jobs for Rolled At possess.
Personality
You may remember the guy who bored you to death on the phone, but you’ll remember the one you related to and laughed with a whole lot more. They’ll also become a pleasure to work with and you’ll use them more often. I can’t tell you how put off I am by the lack of a personality in some freelancers I talk to.
A love for the job
Clients don’t want their leg humping, but they do want someone who wants to do the job they have available. Someone who wants to see the product of their work come alive at the end of everything.
Chances are if you don’t love making websites, the ones you’ll be creating won’t be very good once your finished. The first question I ask anyone when I talk to them the first time when I’m adding a freelancer to my list is ‘do you love what you do?’ and if the answer isn’t yes with a convincing follow up statement then they don’t last passed that first question.
Patience
Can you wait for a job or are you going to be asking me every day about it? Are you going to blow off a huge list of insults at a client when they merely suggest a small change? Patience in my mind, is something that every freelancer needs in order to be a freelancer. You need to be patient in order to wait for a client getting back to you, to hear back from a job follow up and patient with your work too. If your forever complaining that something is going wrong instead of simply looking for a solution then your going to be closing doors instead of opening them.
Flexibility
Don’t work with frameworks? Someone else’s code? Pre-built scripts? Other people’s CSS/XHTML? These are all basic examples of lack of flexibility in some areas. Whilst they aren’t vital ingredients of a web development freelancer they do effect your ability to get work if you aren’t a specialist or established.
A speciality
The freelancer who specialises in one area and becomes a guru is someone that can - providing the speciality is of importance - become a cornerstone of a business. A talent in one area can be what gets you hired over someone else for a particular job, and it can be something that allows you to make more money that someone who generalises over multiple areas of knowledge. They do a better job, they have more experience and in most cases they take less time to get things done.
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R.I.P. Tutorialized
Tutorialized was an inspiration of mine when I started out on the internet with Pixel2life and I’ve been lucky enough to get to know Kurt directly since leaving (after years of seeing him as an unapproachable figure, it’s strange). Whilst I’m not still directly involved with the tutorial community I do hear a lot of things about it. I still get a lot of the complaints and the news bulletins I got from people two years ago, so I’m almost up-to-date with everything that goes on. I heard this from Kurt himself, and on the 19th of May Kurt announced that Tutorialized (the number one tutorial listing on the internet) had been sold, the new owner being Developer Shed.
Unfortunately Developer Shed have taken over the site and it is dead upon their arrival. With seven advertising spots (three to four advertising the same thing at any one time), two implementations of the ‘White Papers’ service and with a couple of search boxes added by Developer Shed, it’s no wonder I’m hearing so many complaints about the site after they have taken it over.
It’s sad to see another of the great tutorial sites fall from the grace of the audience that held it so highly in regard. But I’d like to congratulate Kurt on the money he made from the sale as I don’t think anyone can doubt that he deserves every single penny of the money he received for building what was the best tutorial listing web site on the internet and something I held very high respect for until Developer Shed left their mark.
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A lesson brought to you by a six year old
The beauty of this video is that your expecting a typical cute performance from a six year old on a reality television talent show. What you get is the best damn singing performance by a young kid, and your jaw on the floor. She has never had a lesson, and learnt from singing with a £40 karaoke kit. And has apparently preliminarily agreed to sign a seven figure deal from Simon Cowell already, what can I say? She deserves it.
The lesson for freelancers and wannabe developers/designers here is that natural talent goes a long, long way and being self taught can be a good thing.
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Too many screens?
Samsung 32″ HDTV (arrived last week), 15″ MacBook Pro (arrived today), 20″ Samsung monitor along side a 20″ iMac. Very messy everywhere at the moment as I’m organising everything in preparation for moving out.
The MacBook Pro arrived today with a nice cold metal feel to it out the box, taking an entire minute and a half to get fully running and on the internet - very cool.
It’s my opinion you can never have too many screens. But I’ll let you guys decide.
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I Love Laughter, the new Funholio
Launched I Love Laughter a week or so ago silently in the background. It features a new layout, a few more pictures (I say a few, but not too many more), a new statistics page (mostly for my own enjoyment) and some new embed code boxes underneath each picture as it is generated.
There’s a few bugs no doubt and the colour scheme isn’t perfect - but it’s a quick update to the successful Funholio side project in a few hours during an active night off.
A sample of the laughter:
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Rolled.at looking to expand once again
I’m gearing up the start of a recruitment drive for Rolled.at where there are a mass amount of opportunities for both starting and established developers. We work primarily in PHP/mySQL but are starting to see requests for ASP.NET, C++/C#, Python and Ruby on Rails. We are also in need of web designers.
The prices we charge depend on the people quoting for the particular job and we require everyone to have a instant messaging contact address for initial enquiries. Whether you charge very little or a lot - we are interested in speaking to you about opportunities Rolled.at can offer.
I can’t stress enough at this point that agencies should not bother applying and that we are only looking for English speaking people in the US/Canada, Great Britain, Europe or Australia.
Rolled.at isn’t a tied down contract and you are free to work for yourself on any other projects that may come along. We require non-disclosure agreements for all projects during the development/design process and expect freelancers to be able to self-manage the projects given to them to an extent.
We are looking for people with any of the following
- Experienced PHP developers for large jobs, and young developers looking to become established by doing smaller jobs and working their way up
- Deep CSS/XHTML knowledge, with the ability to code PSD’s or PNG’s into XHTML Strict and CSS valid layouts
- Experience with vBulletin or Invision Power Board, modding or skinning
- WordPress, Expression Engine or Movable Type experience
- Established web designers
- People with experience in ASP.NET, C++, C# or Ruby
- People with experience with frameworks such as CakePHP, Code Igniter or RailsIf you have any of these qualities and are interested in being handed work on a freelance basis - feel free to send an e-mail over to jay@rolled.at with some details about yourself and what it is you can do - and your availability for any work.
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100,000 pictures generated on Funholio
Funholio has just reached 100,000 pictures generated out today which is a nice milestone for the site. I’m thinking of selling it soon so I can fully concentrate on work related projects, so if anyone has an offer - feel free to get in touch.
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Added my latest Twitter to the sidebar
I’ve added the ‘Latest Twitter’ into the sidebar on the left with links so that people can be kept up to date with random small things I post onto there throughout the day.
Edit - site finally fixed now too.
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