<p>My partner and I officially started our web and graphic design company, <a href="http://www.zigflitz.com">Zigflitz llc</a>, in January 2006 with one very specific goal - to be able to do our work over the Internet from anywhere in the world. My partner and his wife had been (and still are) planning to move to Peru to take advantage of a somewhat extreme form of <a href="http://www.escapeartist.com/Living_Overseas/">geographic arbitrage</a>.<br /> <br /> While developing a client base and in preparation for the day when we're a continent away from these clients and possibly from each other, we've tried many web apps, strategies and services to varying degrees of success. We haven't achieved the goal of being 100% Internet-based yet, but we're nearly there.<br /> <br /> Here are a few strategies and tools that have worked for us and may work for you if you're considering a similar approach.<br /> <br /> <strong>Mail &amp; Calendar</strong> - <a href="http://www.google.com/a">Google Apps</a><br /> <br /> Gmail (with chat) and Google Calendar are the components that we use the most here. I may be preaching to the choir here, but Gmail has consistently offered us the best intersection of control and simplicity in a web-based email program. Gmail's filters, labels, search, IMAP support, built-in chat and the ability to corral all of your email addresses into one smart interface make it, by far, the best email solution for us.<br /> <br /> I also use Google Calendar extensively to make appointments with clients and with my partner(which can be sent via Gmail now!) and to schedule hard deadlines. Google really should integrate a task manager within the Calendar interface, but in the meantime, my next recommendation will take care of that.<br /> <br /> <strong>Task Management</strong> - <a href="http://www.todoist.com">Todoist</a><br /> <br /> Todoist is my favorite of many, many online task managers. My wife and my partner can both log-in and see what the next actions for a given project are, easily change priorities and due dates and quickly add new projects and tasks. This is not revolutionary stuff, but Todoist does it in a lean, simple way that makes sense to me.<br /> <br /> <strong>Web Conferencing</strong> - <a href="http://www.yugma.com">Yugma</a><br /> <br /> A fairly new addition to my trusted list of tools, Yugma lets you do web conferencing very similarly to Webex or Go2Meeting except that the basic membership is free. I've tested Yugma with a handful of clients for concept mock-up meetings and it has worked beautifully. The paid version is still very affordable (around $10/month for up to 10 simultaneous connections) and adds meeting scheduling and a <a href="https://www.yugma.com/demo/yugma-demo.php">bunch of other goodies</a>.<br /> <br /> <strong>Phones</strong> - <a href="http://www.grandcentral.com">Grand Central</a><br /> <br /> Telephone messages can be handled in a very similar way to emails with Grand Central. You can mark certain numbers as SPAM, route calls based on rules that you set up to different voicemail messages or greetings. The possibilities are really endless here. You can have set up information-only messages, use 'click to call' buttons on your website, and not worry about your business cards and letterhead becoming obsolete when you move, due to the unique feature of having one number ring any number of other phones. <a href="http://www.biznik.com/members/daniel-genser">Contact me for an invite</a>.<br /> <br /> <strong>VPN</strong> - <a href="https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi/vpn.asp?lang=en">Hamachi</a><br /> Excellent and simple way to create a secure network over the Internet with little set-up involved. Particularly useful when your partner is in a distant location. Gina Trapani of Lifehacker.com posted really great set-up <a href="http://lifehacker.com/software/vnc/geek-to-live--secure-vnc-with-hamachi-228862.php">instructions here</a>.<br /> <br /> <strong>Accounting and Invoicing</strong> - <a href="http://www.lessaccounting.com">Less Accounting</a><br /> <br /> After a rough start with Quickbooks and realizing that it was not the direction we wanted to go as a web-based company, I finally stumbled onto lessaccounting.com during their beta. The team has been super-quick to contact me to discuss any suggestions or gripes I've had with the service and I can't recommend them enough. They make the process of invoicing clients and tracking money coming in and going out very, very simple.<br /> <br /> <strong>Project Management</strong> - <a href="http://www.basecamphq.com">Basecamp</a><br /> <br /> For Basecamp use to be successful you need to have buy-in from the client, otherwise any web-based project management tool like this will be inefficient. If your client becomes an enthusiastic user, though, Basecamp is a beautiful way to centralize communications, files and milestones into one place on a project-to-project basis.<br /> <br /> A few things I'm still I'm looking for are a simple, web-based <strong>video conferencing</strong>,&nbsp; a better <b>data management/syncing system</b> to use with my remote partner (I'm going to check out <a href="http://www.beinsync.com">BeInSync.com</a> for this), and a better <b>contact management system</b> (<i>Google - please integrate Grand Central and Google Apps with one contact manager!</i>). Anyone have suggestions for these areas?<br /> <br /> Let's talk about how you work remotely with a partner or with clients in the comments.</p> 2008-01-25T18:51:43Z 2008-01-25T19:16:21Z -26.5991 1550 152 true 5 3481 how-to-live-in-peru-and-work-in-seattle-our-approach 22 2008-01-25T19:16:13Z 2008-01-25T19:16:13Z

<p>My partner and I officially started our web and graphic design company, <a href="http://www.zigflitz.com">Zigflitz llc</a>, with one very specific goal - to be able to work over the Internet from anywhere in the world. Here's how we're doing it.</p>

0 2009-02-24T09:43:00Z