Photo by urban_data.

This is a guest post by Evan Meagher. He writes about tech, design, music and gaming at evanmeagher.net.

If blogs are to be believed, it would seem that every aspect of the web worker’s life revolves around one Apple product or another. The image of the hip MacBook Pro-clad designer has become a meme to the point of becoming clichė. As a web worker, it seems like I should be subscribing to digg’s Apple feed, drinking copious amount of tea, and listening to bands that no one has heard of.

The last two are fine, but why not break the mold and use an operating system that no one’s heard of too?

Sure, Apple’s built its reputation on being the hipster brand of choice, but one of the nice things about Linux is the ability to customize virtually any aspect of the operating system to cater to your workflow and computing habits.

For the purpose of structure I’ll break the article into two parts. The first will discuss how Linux can be just as application-rich, in terms of usefulness, as OS X or Windows. In the second half, I’ll cover various productivity-boosting apps and features that allow you do accomplish virtually any task with a few simple keystrokes.

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Photo by Joi

Home offices are really nice, but they do come with one obvious limitation: they don’t work outside the home. Lugging around a printer, filing cabinet, business journal, desktop computer, stationary and a receipt spike doesn’t really facilitate an ‘anywhere’ workstyle.

The idea of shrinking an entire home office down into an object fifteen inches wide, ten inches long and one inch deep makes the obvious sound implausible. There are now digital equivalents to every aspect of the analog office. With laptop in hand, you can take your home office with you anywhere in the world.

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When you want to find the best of anything, Google shouldn’t be your first port of call. SEO is certainly useful for some webmasters and bloggers, but from a searcher’s perspective, it can mean that top results aren’t as good or as relevant as they could be.

If you’re looking for reading material, doing research on a particular topic, or collecting themed links, I’d suggest you use Del.icio.us. Take your topic and think about the keywords people would use to categorize content on that topic, then search for those keywords using the top right-hand searchbar on the main page.

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Nick Cernis shares his number one tip for defeating long emails: stop them before they arrive. By using a contact form rather than a raw email link, you can set the maximum number of characters allowed in the form. When the emailer reaches your limit the form won’t allow them to type any more, necessitating a quick edit to prune the email down to size.

To set the maximum number of characters, add a maxlength attribute to your email form with the following code:

<input name=”message” type=”text” />

becomes this:

<input name=”message” maxlength=”500″ type=”text” />

Replace ‘500′ with your chosen character limit. It’s also essential that you add a caution about the character limit before emailers start typing away.

via Nick [Put Things Off]

It’s hard to believe, but I only this week bought my first USB thumb drive. I’ve been using it as a data-carrier between my Macbook and PC (which sit next to each-other on my desk, at the moment) but I can’t help but feel as if I’m not exploring the full capabilities of my versatile little titanium gadget.

If you have a spare or unused USB thumb drive, here are five uncommon ways you could use it:

1. Digital business card. Amazon sells metallic Cruzer Micro thumb drives for $9.95.When meeting a prospective client or networking with someone who’s worth the investment, hand them a micro thumb-drive containing your portfolio, your resume, your contact details, a PowerPoint presentation demonstrating your qualifications, or anything else you think will wow. The small investment will absolutely be worth the impact.

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A workstream is a live updated record of work you’ve completed. When doing group work with remote colleagues, it allows you to keep track of what everyone else is doing. When working solo, it helps you keep track of your own productivity. You can learn more about workstreams in the free sample chapter of Connect! by Anne Zelenka of Web Worker Daily.

Adding an item to your workstream can help the achievement of finishing a task hit home. It can also help keep separate tasks mentally distinct and prevent them from bleeding into one another.

A workstream is quick and easy to set up. As it turns out, an account at any good microblogging service has the potential to become a quick and easy workstream. In this post, I want to provide some simple steps you can follow to start workstreaming with microblogs.

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