Archive for the Business Category

Posted on Business

Hourible: the time tracking tool I use

I made a new online tool!

Okay so new is a bit of a stretch. It’s based on an internal tool I’ve used at altered effect for years now, but I’ve cleaned that up and now it’s available for public use:

Time tracking is the horrible. (see what I did there?) But does it have to be? I don’t know.

It’s one of the great mysteries of life, and something I worry we’ll never know the answer to.

Long story long, I wasn’t happy with any of the time tracking solutions I found so I settled on something quick and easy – using Google calendar. I was already comfortable using it, and I it was surprisingly intuitive to just drag events to the appropriate size in order to keep track of how much time I spend on projects.

It actually works wonderfully, but when it comes for invoicing you need to add up the hours.

Or do you? Trick quesion – you do, but Hourible does it for you!

Over whatever time frame you like. Plus, you can easily filter the events. Since I use Logipar any chance I get, Hourible supports logical operators in the filter string. It sums up your hours for you, and you can take a deeper look to see how they’re broken down.

Of course, you still need to make the invoices then. Which you can do manually if you prefer, or Hourible can generate them automatically with the click of a button. Which… is a lot less work for me than making them manually. It’s quite convenient actually.

All that and Hourible is free as you want it to be!

Give it a try if you want, especially if you regularly work on multiple projects or for various clients. Maybe it’ll help.

hourible.com

Posted on Business

Newspaper ads

It’s mysterious lack-of-website aside, Altered Effect is quickly becoming a design company. Which is cool! Design can be fun — and, you know, suspenseful.

Clients are definitely clients, but like many I suffer an urge toward diversity in task.

Am I traveling toward a lopsided portfolio, if ever one exists? Will I lose credibility when it comes to programming complex web-systems and sweet interfaces? It could happen — though, frankly, I doubt it. It would surprise me if many noticed or cared. Still, it’s time to get more programming contracts if I can figure out how.

That being said (up above, in case you missed it), I am very confident in my ability to program, less so to design. So all this design is hopefully a good sign!
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