Working as a freelancer, I have to monitor job boards, twitter keywords and other news channels so that I’m the first to know when someone needs a Rails developer for a contract project in Montreal or elsewhere. I manage all this information through RSS feeds with the help of Google Reader.
On some rare occasion, I stumble on a job listing site that has no support for RSS feed. This is the case for the Working With Rails job board. Apparently I’m not the only one complaining about the lack of a RSS feed for the job board.
I did some Google searches and found Feed43, a nice little web app that lets you build a RSS feed for any pages on the web. It’s free, intuitive and fairly easy to build your own RSS feed if you’re a little tech savvy. If you’re also looking for Rails gigs, feel free to use my generated WWR job board feed!
Posted: September 9th, 2008 | Author:Pierre Olivier Martel | Filed under:Freelance, Tools | Comments
The good thing about freelancing is the freedom you have to choose the best apps for the job. The last few days I’ve been looking for apps to manage my time and source code. Since I might develop from my desktop, from my laptop or from the client site, I restricted my choices to web applications.
Managing time
When you bill your clients by the hour and work on a irregular schedule, you need a good way to track time and know exactly how much you spend on each task. Also tracking the overhead internal work I do (client relation, marketing, training…) and for which I don’t get paid can afterward help me find the right hourly rate to charge my clients.
I had a few requirements in mind before starting evaluating time tracking applications :
Simple, simple simple… and fast!
Provides some kind of desktop widget (ideally a Google Desktop Gadget) to track time.
Manages multiple clients, multiple projects and allows for estimation tracking.
Provides a way to do reporting for the client in order for him to follow the advancement of the project.
I tried quite a few web applications that all match more or less what I wanted to achieve and three of them stand out of the pack :
Toggl : This also looked like a promising solution. Toggl has pretty much all the features I was looking for but I didn’t like their pricing options. They only have two kinds of subscription plans: Free and Premium. The free subscription doesn’t include all the features I was looking and at 20$/month the premium subscription cost more than I was willing to pay for a time tracking tool.
Tick : This is the one I finally settled for. Real easy, intuitive and fast. I also tested the email customer support and I always got quick replies. Tick provides a desktop widget running on Adobe AIR and easy client/project/task customization. The only downside is that I wasn’t able to find an easy way to produce reports in HTML, PDF or email format to keep my clients updated on my work. But at 9$/month for the freelancer plan, this is a good bargain for what I need.
Managing code
Since I don’t have a server at home, installing a source control repository on my developer computer was out of the question. And installing a server at home doesn’t protect me against thieves or natural hazard. So I had to find a hosting service that provides hosting for Subversion. A quick google search helped me find quite a few.
Since I’m currently supporting only one project that needs source control, I wanted to start out with a free plan that I could later upgrade when the business catches up. Unfuddle and Code Spaces are two solutions that offered just what I was looking for with even more features like bug tracking, project management and wiki solutions.
Comparing their free plans, I settled for Unfuddle since it offers unlimited repositories and 200MB of free storage, which is more than I need right now. Registering a new account and setting my repository worked like a charm. My source code was checked-in in less than 15 minutes.
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How about you other software freelancers out there. What apps are you using to manage time and code? Any other good alternatives to what I mentioned?
About me
Passionate web developer living in Montreal and hacking in Ruby on Rails available for contracts and freelance work.
Working as a freelancer, I have to monitor job boards, twitter keywords and other news channels so that I’m the first to know when someone needs a Rails developer for a contract project in Montreal or elsewhere. I manage all this information through RSS feeds with the help of Google Reader.
Passionate web developer living in Montreal and hacking in Ruby on Rails available for contracts and freelance work.