OMG Target. Really?

By Brian LaFrance on August 31, 2011

I don’t even know where to start with this. Target launched a new site last week. I guess they’re pretty proud of it, but they’ve managed to completely fail in so many ways.

The Backstory

In 2001, Target elected to partner with Amazon in order to leverage Amazon’s e-commerce technology. This may have made sense at the time, but Target should have started to move toward being off of Amazon by the time the 5 year deal was done. Instead, it has been renewed a couple times and was extended through 2011. The last renewal was announced 2 years ago and Target knew at the time that they were going to move off of Amazon. That means they’ve had at least 2 years to get this right. That’s a LONG time.

The Good

Honestly, I haven’t found a lot that’s good about their new site. It’s possible that getting away from Amazon’s technology will benefit them in the long run and that would be a good thing.

The Bad

There is a lot wrong with this site. It’s definitely not ready for prime time and was either rushed out to meet a deadline or there is a big team of idiots behind it. Maybe both. A quick run through the site exposed a lot of basic items that are being handled poorly. I could probably spend days picking this piece of junk apart, but here are a few things you guys can learn from:
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Filed Under: Featured, Tips

Web Fonts: The Future is Finally Here

By Dawn Wentzell on August 16, 2011

A few weeks ago I saw someone in my Twitter stream retweet an article about using image replacement techniques. My first thought was, “wait, are we in 2007 and someone forgot to tell me?” Sadly, no. It’s 2011, and people are still recommending the use of image replacement.

Please stop! There’s a better way!

A Little History

Fonts on the web have always been limited. Designers have looked for ways to have more than the basic few defaults available for use in their designs. Some of the methods that have been used to get around the limitations in available fonts include:

All-image websites
Flash
Images as headers
sIFR & other image replacement techniques
Cufón

But this can be a point of contention between SEOs, who want content to be crawlable, and designers, who want websites to look attractive. The above solutions aren’t great; images and Flash aren’t crawlable, and sIFR, Cufón and others require the user to have JavaScript. They also make text difficult (or impossible) to select, and don’t support web standards.

These were only supposed to be stop-gaps until something better came along.

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Filed Under: Tips Tagged With: @font-face, Fonts, Typography, Web Fonts

5 Major challenges to working while traveling (and some solutions)

By Roger Wade on June 29, 2011

This series is for the increasingly large group of people who make their livings on their laptops alone, and who realize that many other “digital nomads” are cutting expenses while spending time in cities like Bangkok and Buenos Aires. Honestly, the sky’s the limit, and people who like to travel are roaming the globe paying 2nd or 3rd-World prices while making 1st-World incomes.

I’ve been doing this myself for nearly a year and a half now, almost all of that spent in Asia where US$10 hotel rooms are surprisingly nice and easy to find. I earlier discussed the great things about working while traveling, but of course there are two sides to every coin. Below are five of the “challenging” (rather than bad) things about working while traveling, and tips for overcoming many of them.

General ergonomics of hotel rooms

Those of us who already work primarily from a laptop can easily take for granted that a comfortable chair sitting in front of a proper-height desk will always be easy to find. On the road, they aren’t. Most cheaper hotels in the cheaper parts of the world (Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe) have a reasonably comfortable bed and perhaps a table or nightstand, but none of them have a proper office chair and desk like you’ll find at the Airport Hilton (for US$150 per night).

This is an important consideration when figuring out just how much work you can expect to do. Let’s say an 8-hour day is simple enough when you have a comfortable workspace, and your alternatives are to work while lying on the bed or finding a nearby restaurant with Wi-Fi. In either of those cases you’ll find that 8 productive hours is going to be quite a challenge or impossible.
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Filed Under: Tips Tagged With: Communication, Travel

5 Tips for Communicating with Partners and Staff While Working Remotely

By Roger Wade on June 14, 2011

If you are taking a 2-week holiday then you might actually be doing it to purposely be out of touch with your clients and business partners. And if you do want to stay in touch then email and an international roaming plan for your mobile will do the trick. But for the group of us who are working on the road as a lifestyle, the communication thing can be a bit tricky.

Email will always be a free and easy way of communicating with many people, but there are times when you need a voice call in real time to move forward. These days there are many ways to make and receive a call, and some of them are free or incredibly cheap. If you’ll be working on a laptop most of the time then you’ll have quite a few choices. Also, while timezone differences can also be a problem, they can also be a big help in other ways.

1. Do you even need a phone?

Sometime in the 1990s, pretty much everyone got a mobile phone, and since then millions of people have ditched their landlines so it seemed like the mobile was part of a new 1-to-1 phone-to-person ratio. But when you are traveling, especially many time zones away from the people you’d speak to, it’s very possible that a phone (or at least phone service) won’t be worth the small benefit you’ll receive.
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Filed Under: Tips Tagged With: Communication, iPhone, Travel

Cheap countries with good internet for traveling workers

By Roger Wade on June 7, 2011

The so-called ‘digital nomad’ is someone who relies only on their laptop, their skills, and an internet connection in order to make a living while spending time wherever they want. This new trend seems to be getting very popular lately as more people have exited full-time jobs and are discovering that freelancing can be an excellent option as long as you can keep your costs down while building up your business.

As someone who’s been doing exactly this for about 16 months now, I’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t, and recently I discussed why moving your internet startup to Asia might drastically increase its chances of success. Part of the situation, of course, is to find the right place or places from which to work. I also recently discussed tips for finding good Wi-Fi on the road, but here we’ll look at some specific countries that are cheap and easy to live or travel in, plus provide acceptable qualities of internet connectivity.

For each country I’ll provide a price of a decent and cheap hotel room as well as the price of a basic apartment by the month. There are cheaper places than these, but you probably wouldn’t want to stay or live in them for long.
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Filed Under: Tips Tagged With: Travel

5 Important Tips for Freelancing While Traveling

By Roger Wade on May 25, 2011

As more and more people are freelancing these days (whether it was their own choice or not), an increasing number are also realizing that doing so from New York City, San Francisco, or any other expensive city doesn’t really make sense. I’m among the group of so-called “digital nomads” who has been location-independent for over a year now, saving money and having a great time by traveling all over Asia instead of a more expensive lifestyle in the States.

It’s definitely true that you can actually live on far less in many parts of the world, even in hotels and short-term apartments, but actually running your own freelance “business” isn’t quite as easy as it might first seem. Getting paid a First World rate while partying on Third World prices really can be a great way to get yourself started as an independent professional, as long as you take things like the following into account.

1. Acquire skills and clients before you leave

I’ve seen many people on travel messageboards who plan to take on this lifestyle, and some of them reckon they can save up a bit of cash, quit their fulltime job, and then head out on the road before picking up freelance work. This is (almost always) a mistake. Not only is the freelance market more crowded than you realize, and wages for services probably lower than you realize, but living on the road will be very disorienting at first, making it a tough time to find new work.

Yes, there are always loads of jobs on offer on eLance, oDesk, and even on Craigslist all over the world, but competition for them is so fierce that you are likely to make very little when you take your “admin time” into account. I recently posted a gig for a logo for a website for US$30 and within 3 hours I’d received 33 applications, including many who tried to undercut their competition by taking a lower price. Add in all that time applying for jobs and learning the specs from ones you get, and it’s a tough life regardless of where you are living.

For these reasons, and some others below, you are far better off establishing yourself as a freelancer long before you put your stuff in storage. Do it for 6 months while you are winding down your job, or work like crazy if you are already unemployed, and then set out once you have some steady clients or regular work.
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Filed Under: Tips Tagged With: Freelancing, Travel