Stephan Lamprechts Notizen

Since we covered Posterous on MakeUseOf a year ago, the service has added tons of new features and has grown into a mature platform. Many people love the simple, easy way to email brief text, photos, and audio/video clips to get them on their Posterous.

Beyond this simplicity however, there are some cool things you can do to unleash the power of the platform. In this article, let us look at some Posterous tips for power users.

Posterous Tip #1: Use Posterous on a Subdomain

The Posterous Help describes how you can set it up on your custom domain. But what if you use WordPress or Blogger to power the main blog of your site? In this case, it makes sense to setup Posterous on a subdomain of your site.

If your site is www.yourname.com, you can setup posterous.yourname.com as your Posterous site. Follow these steps to do so:

1. Setup the subdomain as you wish on your domain using tools provided by your domain host. Typically these will be part of your Control Panel or Dashboard.
2. Add a CName Record: “posterous.yourname.com. IN CNAME posterous.com.” You may have to ask your domain hosting support to do this for you.
3. Specify the subdomain in Manage > Settings.

Posterous Tip #2: Selective Autopost

Beyond posting your email and other media to your Posterous blog, you can set it up to automatically post to other services as well.

To enable Autopost, go to Manage > Autopost and add the services you wish. Now, when you email post@posterous.com, your post is automatically sent to all the services you have configured under Autopost settings.

There are times when you don’t want to autopost everywhere. There is no need to change your settings just for such instances. You can selectively autopost, by tweaking the email address.

As an example, suppose you have configured Facebook, Flickr and Twitter under your Autopost settings. Let’s say you use Flickr for all your cool outdoor photographs and prefer Facebook for photographs of people at conferences you attend. You also want to tweet when you post any photos anywhere. When emailing your photos, send your outdoor nature photography to flickr twitter@posterous.com, and send conference photos to facebook twitter@posterous.com.

Posterous Tip #3: Advanced Facebook Autopost

By default, Posterous does not post your photos and videos to your Facebook photo albums and videos. For more fine-grained control over how Posterous auto-posts to Facebook, on the Autopost settings page, go to Edit under Actions for the Facebook service.

First, choose whether you want Posterous to actually update your Facebook status message, or simply update your activity stream. Then, you can choose to enable autoposting of photos and videos if you wish. The Minimum gallery size determines the number of photos that creates a separate Facebook album.

Posterous Tip #4: Advanced Bookmarklet Settings

Using the bookmarklet is almost a must to make the best use of Posterous. The bookmarklet makes it very simple to instantly post text, documents, pictures, music or video from any web page to your Posterous.

From the Advanced Options link at the bottom of the bookmarklet, you can also include tags and choose whether to autopost that item to your other services.

Posterous Tip #5: Use Google Analytics to Track Traffic Stats

Bring the awesome power of Google Analytics to your Posterous blog to see detailed traffic stats. Here’s how:

1. If you haven’t sign up for Google Analytics with your Posterous site URL.
2. Get the Google Analytics Domain ID for your site, which looks like “UA-123456-1” with different numbers.
3. Enter the Domain ID in Manage > Settings > Analytics in Posterous.

Now you can see page views, average time spent on site, referring sites, and a plethora of other traffic stats.

Posterous Tip #6: Use Feedburner For Your Posterous RSS Feed

You can replace the default RSS Feed provided by Posterous with a Feedburner one. With Feedburner, you can keep track of the number of your RSS subscribers, create browser-friendly feeds, add social bookmarking links, and lots more.

To use Feedburner with Posterous, follow these steps:

1. Get your Posterous Feed URL (seen on the right of your Posterous blog).
2. Burn that feed in Feedburner and copy the feed address you create.
3. In Manage > Settings > Analytics, specify the part of your Feedburner URL after http://feeds.feedburner.com/.

You now get all the benefits of using Feedburner for your Posterous RSS Feed.

These are some of the ways to get more out of Posterous. Have other Posterous tips to share? Tell us in the comments!

Das sind einige nett Tipps, wie sich mehr mit Posterous anstellen lässt. Tipp Nummer 1 habe ich auch selbst umgesetzt. Meine Posterous-Funde, die nicht im Blog münden, finden Sie unter http://posterous.lamprecht.net.

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Ein schönes Portal, optisch ansprechend gemacht. Die Idee ist so neu nicht, aber dennoch verdient das Angebot eine Chance. Soweit ich weiß, sind dort auch die Macher von Chefkoch.de involviert.

We’re well and truly into the “business end” of the year. The business end is also the thin end: time, patience, concentration and stamina are all wearing thin right now.

Recently, I’ve overheard a few web workers who say they’re sick of working remotely. It can be isolating and lonely and grueling; when you’re frustrated there’s no one to vent to; the office ignores you until they decide to load you up with yet another new task; and so on.

All this may be true. But there are other truths, too: working remotely can give you considerable flexibility and help you get more out of life. If you’re feeling a little jaded right now, why not reacquaint yourself with the sunnier side of remote work by indulging in some of its great advantages?

These are the things I enjoy the most about working remotely — they’re the things I do to remind myself how lucky I am to live the way I do. A warning, though: following this advice may lead to a sense of acute well-being, good fortune, or even smugness. Make the most of it, but try not to brag to your on-site colleagues too much…

1. Start the day in bed.

Forget bouncing out of bed at seven: arrange your affairs (and family, if need be) so that you can wake up as late as you wish.

To optimize the sense of decadence, grab a coffee and your laptop and head back to bed to take in the news, sift through the morning’s emails, and check your schedule with a sense of leisure.

When you do finally arise, you’ll likely be more relaxed and feel more positive about the tasks you need to do today.

2. Work from a luxurious location.

Just how remote is your remote work? If you find yourself chained to your desk, it might be time to rediscover the real joys of being off-site.

What’s the most decadent location in your area? It might be on your balcony, a nearby beach, an upmarket cafe that makes great pancakes, or the domed reading room in the historic library down the road.

Whatever it is, head out to spend a little time working in the most beautiful, calm, relaxed location you can think of. While you’re there, take a moment to appreciate just how lucky you are not to be stuck in the cube farm.

3. Talk to a local.

Isolation is the bane of many remote worker’s lives. So why not break the trend today? At lunchtime, step outside and say hello to someone in your area.

Where I live, the only place I’m likely to see another person is at the general store. Fine; I’ll stroll down there to buy milk or an ice cream (more decadence!) and have a chat with the shop keeper. You may be lucky enough to have neighbors, or see strangers passing along your street: say hello and ask how they’re going.

Much has been said to the effect that going out of your way — and your comfort zone — to make contact with another person can lead to feelings of wellbeing and involvement, and boost your self-esteem and mood. It’s also unlikely to be something that would happen very often on the lunchtime-busy streets outside a city office. Just as well you work remotely!

4. Optimize break time.

It’s not just what you do with your breaks: it’s when you take them.

As a remote worker, you don’t have the boss or your colleagues tracking your every move, so you can take a break when you need to, rather than at an approved time. Make the most of that: recognize when you need time out, and take it.

There is, of course, the question of what you’ll do with that five — or fifteen — minutes. I like to spend my breaks doing things I can’t do in an office: digging something out of my vegetable garden for dinner, playing with a pet, or collecting eggs. Going for a run at three in the afternoon is, to me, a great indulgence of working off-site.

5. At 5.01, do something you love.

Those poor saps in the office rarely knock off at five, and then they still have to spend time in traffic or on transport once they finish up for the day.

Not you! Finish on the dot of five — if not a shade earlier — and make sure that at 5.01 you’re engaged in something you truly enjoy. My first choice would be to sip a martini on my deck, looking out across the countryside, but your idea of heaven may be to play with your kids, catch an early movie, or spend an hour or two mucking around on the drums before the guys arrive — exhausted from work and commuting — for band practice.

Make the most of those extra hours, and you’ll remember why working remotely seemed like such a good idea in the first place.

Try any or all of these tricks and you’ll likely find you have a reinvigorated appreciation for your remote work setup. How luck you are to work remotely! Who’d ever want to change that?

So, kann man sich die häufig schlecht bezahlte Arbeit der digitalen Boheme aka digitales Prekariat auch schön reden. Da, wo nur noch “Content” produziert wird und niemand viel Geld für diese Arbeitsleistung ausgeben möchte, ist es wohl angemessen, sich die Isolation des Remote Workings zu verschönern.

Mache ich immer wieder gern. Mir andere Arbeitsplätze anzuschauen. Bei Lifehacker gibt es eine schöne Auswahl davon.