Looking for freelance projects

Hi all

After years of handling different systems and hardware including servers and storage and also considering the fact that I want to make my life better (and much more interesting) I would like to ask your help with finding freelance projects (those that can pay internationally).

Currently I can do consulting for IT technology on all levels (design, requirements, building), implementing, integrations, customizations and optimizations of complex systems (except programming), blogging and technical writing (without proofing). I'll be thankful for any ideas and leads that you can give me.

Last project I did was to build customized distribution based on Gentoo for small computer based on AMD Geode processor. The distribution comes on DVD (which is based on Gentoo LiveCD) and installs complete system on the computer. It will be available as an optional download.

I will provide as much additional details and information as needed.

Thanks in advance.

A dream that slowly comes true

No, I'm not speaking about becoming insanely rich. That would take a while longer.

I'm talking about my dream of a small and light computer, that I can take with me everywhere and one that could connect to resources I need (read, Internet) from anywhere in the world. And that's all of course thanks to the EeePC 701 and other similar devices. I wrote a piece on it a couple of months ago, but the subject is still hot and is becoming hotter every day.

I just read nice post in NY Times, which describes in funnny humor the way that Asus went. The author says that Asus "didn't get the memo" about how our laptops should be huge, inefficient, expensive and bloated with versions of Windows - and software that vendors like to load on laptops so very much. It should be slow, and its startup time should be long enough to have a cup of coffee.

I'm on the contrary, and as the author says, enjoy fast computing. And if you'd question what 'fast' means for me, then it's subjectively simple: when I work on computer I want it to react immidiately on my actions. If I'm waiting for something to happen, then I'm losing time. So, say, do we need computer to boot in 3 seconds? Yes. Do we need it to boot in 0.1 seconds? No, not really (unless the feature used to save power). Do I want to have 10 hours battery on a laptop? Yes. Do I want to wait until browser is started? No. That is fast in my book.

I've already compared Asus EeePC 701 with other similarly priced devices such as Nokia N810 (and previous models) and OLPC, and said that I'd probably prefer OLPC to Asus in order to read in direct sunshine. But recent issues in OLPC and the comparison I read the other day, slowly but surely tend me to Asus laptop.

It's small, fast, light. It doesn't have moving parts. Battery life could probably be preserved with few tricks. It has plently of room for blogging around, email, reading RSS feeds and web browsing. The advantage of an OLPC screen may seem less important after all.

I won't say that I'd prefer Asus laptop to ThinkPad x61s (or whichever one will be the best when I decide to purchase it), but at the price point of $400 no ThinkPad can be in any competition.

Freakonomics

Hi all

I got a great book as a new years present. It is a "Freakonomics" book by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. It's a marvelous piece of work. The book (I got to about a 1/4) is easily read and fascinating. I like the way it causes me to rethink my attitude and understanding of information; and even more so the sources I get information from.

Levitt is a brilliant economist. He's one of the youngest people to receive an honorary John Bates Clark Medal (which is a kind of a Nobel Price for young economists). He says that's he's not a much of a mathematician, so likes to employ economy tools on other aspects of life. At the top of his list is "crime". He likes asking questions which seem unrelated, such as "What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common?".

Maybe reading this book will help me to develop understanding regarding incentives for Gentoo developers and community. Who knows?

So far, the book is very interesting and easy to read an comprehend. So far - very recommended :-)

Expanding my blog - make the money by blogging

Hello all. In this post I will explain some step I make to make some cash with this blog.

After lots of reading on "making the money blogging" issue, I decided that I need the following things done:

1. Create a quality content that interests people.
2. Make sure to supply that content with high frequency
3. Make sure I have a my own domain.
4. Host the blog with Wordpress.
5. Create the social network around the blog
6. Monetize the appropriate

So, as the quality of the content is the most important and on-going thing, I just keep it at my best. Now, I've also started in different attempts to gain social networking going, and I will keep results posted here as they come.

For the domain name - I've registered one I use now. I don't use Wordpress hosting still, because I can't yet afford it, and I'm not yet convinced that I can just use my own money for that.

And, for the monetizing I currently use Google AdSense, WidgetBucks, Kontera and Amazon, and I don't have enough statistics yet, as I just started. Google Adsense is my oldest (for more than a year), so I might have some idea about how good it is.

And today I signed for Smorty. Smorty is an additional house that offers bloggers and advertisers to find each other. As they define themselves, you "get paid to blog, get paid for blogging, blog advertising, advertise on blogs, blog for money." You sign to a service and it shows you available opportunities you can take, to make a buck.

As in many other similar services, you trying to get as many visits as possible to your blog, and this makes your blog a more attractive place to advertisers. Then you get more and more opportunities, and as such - you make more money :-)

Great isn't it? So, I will enlist Smorty in my list of money makers for now, and until proven otherwise. More updates will follow.

Make money by blogging

Dear reader,

I've been using computers since I was 9, and that makes a little more than 20 years in total. I've been internet junkie for as long as I got my first broadband connection 10 years ago. But what I've been unable to do is to earn any considerable amount of money doing so. That's why I decided to change this blog a little bit, which potentially should help me build an additional source of income.

I was reading so many blogs for the last year, where authors explain how they make money, that it seems so easy to do. It's not - when I try to do the same on my own blogs, it just provides me with pale $0.01 of income on a good day.

So I made a decision. I am going to read and research on every source I can find regarding what can I do with my blog. And this is what this blog will be about. I will build this blog with 2 types of content: a Linux and technology related as it has been until now (and especially my take on Linux/Technology and its effects on society and enterprise computing), but also with the explanations about creating it. I will post each step I will perform to making this blog a one with more income than 1 cent a day.

First step is already done - I moved this blog to a new domain (not Blogger), while still leaving it working on Blogger's platform. Feedburner feed was updated with a new domain, and other services are up to be so as well. The next step would be to make enough money to pay for hosting and then move to a hosting with Wordpress. At the moment I'm looking at Bluehost as the most favorable by Wordpress Hosting, but this definitely could change (hosting I'm aiming to is ~$7 a month, so I would need about $80 now).

So please wish me luck :-) (and buck).

Any comments, suggestions and feedback are welcome at any time.

Accounting Web 2.0

I have another blog of mine, where I express more targeted opinions. I said there once, that I intend to find a way for additional income, such as from blogging. While the bloggins thing is not going that well as I would like it to be, I have few friends which I help with their projects, and for that I'm getting some money. It is a sort of system consulting and integration help. I help them specifically with creating a little customized Linux distribution. But this doesn't come easy. To save on the taxes, I've opened my own business, so I'm independent now :-). Now, the only thing I have to deal with, is of course taxation authorities.

According to the law, I have to prepay the income tax and insurance tax on a regular (bi-monthly) basis. But, well, I tend to forget. Besides, will all the receipts and invoices, I can loose myself. I was trying to find all sorts of different reminders, to-do lists, apps and what not.

In this post I review a web app from LessAccounting - LessAccounting.com

This specific application is a recent Web 2.0 app. It's developed in Ruby using Ruby on Rails development platform (which I personally know almost nothing about yet, but drool over it each time I see apps developed using it). It is intended to list everything you need whilemanaging small business (like I have), including but not limited to:

• Invoices
• Proposals
• Deposits
• Expenses
• Funds transferring, etc.

A fast walk-through on the site:

The main site is very cool and intuitive, and I like the color theme. I also took a look at the main site, LessEverything, which I liked even better. It shows everyhting one need to know what is it about and what it is for, and explains a bit about the company. I like they like Mac laptops (17" each), because I like them too :-) (Yea, I might not be objective on that).

The registration was very easy. It took me about 3 minutes to get registered and be logged in.

The app navigation is also very easy. I can do all things I would like to from the main dashboard, and it is very convenient. I created couple of invoices and made transfers according those invoices. All worked as necessary.

What I miss in the application: while everything here is in one place which makes it easy to find any information I need and fast, what I would like to see is Reminder and Scheduling working with some sort of email or SMS services. At least I couldn't find whether it's possible to define such a thing. But, well, it is almost the main reason I started to look for applications to manage my stuff.

So, would I recommend using Less Accounting? Yes, if you can afford yourself to check it every now and then.

Regarding me - I haven't decided yet.