So I guess my mission has changed a bit since I took a position at The University of Texas at Dallas.

I started there on December 3rd and am now employed full time doing what I love to do - Web Design!

I'm working in a team environment with a team leader and 5 other coders in the Web Services Department. There are various skill levels represented and each member has their little niche that they excel in.

I (don't laugh) have a Dell laptop that I use in tandem with my Apple Powerbook G4 paired with (2) 19" Dell monitors. Each machine has a 19" to extend the desktop, so it's a sweet setup.

I have dived in and am involved already in 2 major projects as well as having just worked on the Fall 2008 Graduation this past weekend.

The school is on break until Jan. 5th, so I don't go back until then. While I am on break I have started a major re-design job for the Dallas Jewish Community Foundation's website.

I will continue to help my freelance clients finish up the sites I was working on. Then I will take on freelance jobs as I have time available, with the ok of the University.

The opportunity came from a job ad I answered on Craigslist while I was in San Antonio working from the hotel. The benefits are really good and the people I am working with are really nice.

Adobe has created a new development platform for developers called Adobe Air that allows you to use small applications independent of your web browser.

So why is this important or useful for the everyday computer user?

Well, when you take an app, say Facebook, and run it from Adobe Air, it is totally independent of the chosen web browser. If Facebook crashes or if another tab on the web browser crashes, you don't have to restart everything.

I discovered Adobe Air when I went to a local DFW Adobe User Group meeting. They kept talking about Air this and Air that, so finally I asked what in the world Adobe Air was.

The explanation I got was that Adobe Air was the ability to take applications on a trip of their own and let them do things by themselves. This sounded kinda cryptic to me, so they said to just go to the Adobe site and check it out for myself.

So when I got home I did and discovered I had already installed Adobe Air when I had installed an app I tried out for Twitter called Twhirl, that lets you run Twitter in its' own little window and that would let you do a lot more with Twitter than you could through the web browser with the app.

On a Mac, how is it different from using an app in Dashboard?

The important things here are that the apps can run on different types of computers, unlike Dashboard apps. So, if by chance you use a PC at work and a Mac at home, the Adobe Air app would be the same on both machines - platform independent.

So how do I use Adobe Air apps in a real world situation?

First off, it is not the best solution for every task. Some tasks are still better off done in a web browser, like using Gmail. I spent a bit of time going through the available (tons) apps and paring the ones I use down to just 23 apps. Of those, I only use a few on a regular basis.

I use Adobe Air apps for things like using a stopwatch to time certain client events like a client phone call. It's a real small quick app that does just that, but does it well. Some other apps I use on a regular basis...

Facedesk (for Facebook)
Flickr Desktop Search
clDesktop (Craigslist)
Analytics Reporting Suite (Google Analytics - very slick interface)
Snippage (Allows you to make your own apps from the web browser)
RoadFinder (Does both Google Maps and Yahoo Maps at once)
Pixus (Measures screen pixels - great for Web Designers)
HTML Scout (Has all sorts of Web Design helper stuff to inspect pages)
Scoop (RSS reader that can sync with Google Reader - just installed and testing)

All of these apps can be found by going to the Adobe Air Marketplace and searching for your next favorite application. Did I mention that all this is FREE!

Anyone wanna share information on what their favorite Air apps are?

This is my 1st real test of working freelance remotely (on a trip out of town) with just my Apple Powerbook G4 laptop and a wifi connection.

I am in College Station, TX with my wife, a co-worker of hers and my brother-in-law. They all came for a continuing education 2 day workshop for engineers. I came along just cuz I could and wanted to keep ruthie company. We like to travel together.

Now I have worked remotely before from a hotel room in San Antonio, TX while Ruthie was at a conference there, but I was working full time as an employee of Hitchfinder.com and I pretty much had to be connected to the office so they would see I was actually "on the clock".

This time I am working for myself, so it will be interesting to see how I fare at self control in keeping myself "on target" in getting some actual work done here on this trip.

I will finish this post tomorrow night and fill you in on how I did over the course of the day.

...

Well, I was pretty productive. I finished a comp of a 10-page site for a client for his massage business. It is a re-do of an old site.

I did also play a bit though. I dropped Ruthie and crew back off after lunch at Fatburger (big juicy 2/3 burger) and went to 3 pawn shops looking for items to sell on eBay, but did not find anything.

So I am declaring the day a success.

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I happened upon a very cool Firefox extension called Ubiquity tonight.

It works on Mac or PC platforms and allows you to do a huge variety of tasks.

I installed the extension, restarted Firefox and began the fun. There is a long list of commands you can issue. I suggest copying the list to a text file or printing it out for reference or you will be lost.

So, you ask, what does this Firefox extension do?

If you have used a Mac and have tried Quicksilver, you have a taste of what is possible here. On my Mac, I use the keystroke combination of option and space bar and a little black window shows up on the top left of the browser window (in the site area, not the menu area).

This is where you type the commands. If you had an address highlighted and type the command "map this", a small map will show up, which you can click on to make it a bit larger and then you can move around the map, zoom in or out and what not. If you were writing an email (works with Gmail only for now) and you highlighted an address, you could then click to have the map inserted into the email.

Another example is you can post to your Twitter account from any browser page. It even counts down the 160 characters for you.

It does calculations, you can browse Flickr photos, you can search Google, Wikipedia, Ask.com, Amazon, eBay, YouTube, do translations, define words, look up the weather in anyplace and so much more.

I could go on and on, but really, just check this extension out! It is very fast too.

It's one of those things that could be a real important part of your work flow if you get in and learn the functions and use this. It's not for everyone. I showed it to Ruthie, my wife, and she kind of guffawed and said "who's going to remember all those commands?"

I'd love some feedback on this one. I think it will be one that catches on. Gotta use Firefox of course, but why in the world would you not be using Firefox?

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Back a number of months ago I started using this online invoicing and time tracking program from a company in Toronto, Canada called FreshBooks.

As a new user they offer you the use of the program for FREE and the only limitation on the free account is that it is limited to 3 clients.

This is perfect for me, as a freelance web designer, as I can now track the time I spend on each client and their project and the program automatically inserts that time into an invoice for the client.

You can choose to have the invoice emailed to the client or have it sent via snail mail. It is very customizable for each client, project, billing rate and you can even add your logos to the online program (as I have) to let your client log-in and view their invoices online in a custom site that you can design to have it look like it is your own online invoicing application.

It is pretty easy to set up, but if you want to customize the look it might take you a few hours to fully set up the site. The help section is easy to use and does actually help.

You can have it send late notices and create reports. It is a serious time saving application for the freelance professional.

Since I now have more clients I happily needed more than the 3 free clients and upgraded to the $14/month plan, which lets me control up to 25 clients at a time, all with unlimited number of invoices you can send, full customer support (M-F 9-6 EST), data backups, unbranded emails and more.

There also is a very cool Mac OS X widget that allows me to have the small widget open in Dashboard and log time for any client and project I want, then submit those hours to the online program, all without having to be logged into the online web site of FreshBooks. And you can start and stop this timer many times before submitting the hours worked.

I urge you to go to FreshBooks and test drive the program yourself. Yes, my links to it are affiliate links (I try to be up front about this), but this only costs them a portion of the signup cost (nothing if you are just trying out the free version).

I stumbled across a discount of 30% for the service by signing up for a membership at a freelance help site called Freelancer's Union. They have health insurance, a job board, events, freelancing advocacy and a directory of freelancers. You should join this just for these benefits alone. The discounts are a bonus to membership. So if you want to get 30% off any level of service you buy with this great freelancing invoicing and time tracking tool, go there and sign up first.

Note: I did wind up having to call to get them to give me a code to get the 30% off, but the customer service people at FreshBooks were so nice and helpful, it only took a couple of minutes for me to save about $50 a year off the service.

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