All posts by Joe Wallace

editorial

How to Respond to Writing Job Ads on Craigslist

I will be the first to point out that there’s a high signal-to-noise ratio on Craigslist, especially for writers. That said, you can sometimes find real opportunities there, and I’d caution new writers against dismissing it out of hand. When I worked as Managing Editor at Gearwire.com, I once put out a call for writers that had almost no effect other than making me laugh. I did manage to hire one good writer, but a good 90% of the responses I got went instantly into the trash. Here’s why:

Continue reading How to Respond to Writing Job Ads on Craigslist →

gear

Offi Modern Laptop Desk

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Ever hear that horror story about the guy who was working on his MacBook Pro in bed? Apparently the Mac got so hot that it ignited the mattress!

Whether or not it actually happened, it does make you think about all that heat…laptops do get awfully warm on the legs at times. This laptop desk by Offi is great for writing in bed, on a rug by the television, even in a beanbag chair. It keeps the machine–and the heat– off your body and provides a nice, stable platform for typing.

That arm on the side is great for a cup of coffee or tea, and the whole thing can also double as a handy breakfast-in-bed tray. We love any design created for the insomniac writer who doesn’t want to leave the comfort of the bed. Keep this and your laptop in your snooze room and you’ll always be able to send out a quick query from that warm bed.

Buy the Offi Laptop Desk for $189.00

gear

Zoom H4 Handy Recorder & Sony Headphones

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The Zoom H4 is a Freelance-Zone favorite. This is recorder is an affordable broadcast-quality unit that can record every format from .wav to MP3 in all sizes and quality settings. Need a mono 44.1 .wav track? Easy. How about an ultra-high quality MP3 audio file? 24 bit/96khz? YES.

Whether you just need audio to reference for a written article or need to get soundbites for FM, podcasting, film, or television, the Zoom H4 is the unit for you. It has built-in high-quality mics and pre-amps, and you can use any combination of mics you own with the handy XLR/unbalanced TRS inputs at the bottom of the unit. You can get 380 minutes of CD-quality recording time or more than 30 hours of record time in MP3 format with the included two-gigabyte SD card. 

The Sony stereo headphones that come with the Zoom H4 are comfortable, and great for field recording, podcasting, radio shows, anything a writer could possibly need headphones for. If you’re looking for a great combination of recorder and headphones, look no further. This is the one.

Buy the Zoom H4 complete with Sony Headphones and two-gig SD card for $379.00

Continue reading Zoom H4 Handy Recorder & Sony Headphones →

reading

Small Business Taxes 2008

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Granted, this book won’t apply to many writers out there, but if you’re a professional blogger, writer’s website owner, or have your own small press imprint, chances are you need a book like this even if you have someone preparing your taxes. Not all tax prep services are created equal, and the ones that just want your business might not be motivated enough to look into all your possible deductions and other tax advantages. When it comes to taxes, knowing is half the battle, and that’s where Small Business Taxes 2008 comes in. 

Some writers miss their most obvious deductions. Do you get inspiration or story ideas from television? Do you blog about current events discussed on the talk shows? Are you using your cell phone for business? If you’re not asking about your cable bills and cell phone payments as a tax deduction, you should be. If you’ve reviewed any music or DVDs this year, you could be writing your “entertainment” expenses off as well-within reason. How many photos did you take to submit with your articles last year? How many memory cards and battery replacements did you purchase for the camera? Your wheels are turning now, aren’t they? We thought so…

Buy for $12.21

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TheStreet.com Speculates: Another iPhone Price Cut

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If you’re like us, it’s killing you that you don’t have an iPhone yet. That said, some of us Freelance-Zoners aren’t early adopters of ANYTHING, and until iPhone functionality improves more than a few of us will be waiting for another iteration of this wonderful gizmo before we invest any freelance dollars.

If you are an early adopter but haven’t picked one up yet, there’s an interesting report from TheStreet.com, where reporter Priya Ganapati speculates another fifty dollar price cut could be coming. According to Ganapati, Apple needs to boost demand for the iPhone, and could go as low as $299 if it really wanted to–but it doesn’t need to boost demand quite that much, so the higher price point is still in your future.

TheStreet.com video is interesting from a writing perspective because it indulges in one of my personal pet peeves–a news outlet interviewing one of its own reporters as a subject matter expert. I’ll give props to TheStreet for not dressing up this clip as anything more than pure speculation, which I can’t say of some of the major networks out there. Attention writers; if you want to speculate go ahead and do it. But do NOT follow the very bad examples of network news types who interview their own paid staffers and present them in ways that don’t tell the whole truth.

Pay attention the next time you see a reporter interviewed by one of their fellow reporters. You’ll notice that no special claims are made to insider knowledge, but by the same token the networks deliberately fail to point out what’s obvious to any professional in the industry–there’s no news happening here, this is reporter speculation only, not even so much as an anonymous tipster source to lend weight to the discussion. These interviews by omission have the potential to be quite misleading.

Getting back to Apple for a moment, I find it telling that they keep chopping away at the price of the iPhone. If that doesn’t send a clear message NOT to be an early adopter unless you have scads of cash floating around, I don’t know what does.