If you’re working in a creative field, the current debate over unpaid interns will be giving you a major case of deja vu: creatives are asked to work for free all the time. Web designers are asked to build or revamp sites in exchange for expenses; illustrators are urged to contribute their best ideas in exchange for exposure; and writers are asked to write in the hope that one day, they might get paid for it.

To some, working for free is a necessary evil in creative industries. To others, it’s just evil.

So who’s right? Should you ever work for free?

The short answer is “umm, it depends”.

Who’s asking?

Not all free work is the same: there’s a big difference between helping out a local charity and working for a commercial organisation who’s paying everybody else but you. The people who’ll give you the opportunity to work for free tend to fall into the following categories:

• Friends and family
• Charities
• Firms offering work experience and/or internships
• People who’ll be first against the wall when the revolution comes

On the face of it, you’d need to be pretty hard-hearted to refuse to help out a friend or a family member, but that depends on the job: knocking up a flyer or a quick WordPress installation is one thing; designing a whole corporate identity or creating an entire ecommerce platform is something else entirely.

If you’re considering offering a helping hand, make sure you’re not being taken advantage of – a friend’s business is still a business, and pays all its other suppliers. Why not you? – and make sure that you’re not clambering merrily into the Bottomless Pit Of “Come To Think Of It, Could You Also…” Make sure everybody knows in advance exactly what you’ll be doing and how long you’ll be doing it for.

Charities are another apparent no-brainer. Everybody loves charities! But once again, things aren’t quite as simple as they might appear. Your local Save Our Hospital or We Hate Tesco group is almost certainly flat broke and would appreciate your help, but some of the bigger charities are enormous organisations that can afford to pay enormous sums of money to design agencies, web agencies, marketing firms and so on. If you’re given the opportunity to work for free by one of those agencies, find out whether they’re charging the charity. If they are, you should be getting paid too.

Work experience and internships can be an excellent way of learning new skills, getting an insight into your chosen industry or just packing your portfolio with new and interesting work. Which is just as well, because you’ll be lucky to be paid more than expenses.

The trick to assessing such opportunities is to ask, “what’s in it for me?” – so for example a three-month internship where “you’ll gain practical experience in the creation of 3D scenes and other visualisation tools” is a nice wee opportunity to move beyond making demos and into a real-world environment; an internship where the firm wants a Creative Suite guru with design flair to spend nine months doing all their design work for free may be taking the mickey.

The last kind of employer, the people who’ll be first against the wall when the revolution comes, is easy to spot. Their job adverts ask for an astonishing range of skills and experience, they’re often brand new new media businesses, and they can’t afford to pay you right now but promise valuable exposure. They’ll often promise that if you stick with them long enough, you’ll get your reward in riches and unicorns. They’re lying. The only rewards you’ll get are offers of more free work. Try offering that to your landlord instead of rent.

And that’s the fundamental problem with working for free. Graphic designers, 3D modellers, web designers and writers don’t live in magical space palaces where things like rent, council tax and the whole eating-so-you-don’t-die thing don’t matter. As a result, it’s essential that any free work you do is actually going to benefit you, either karmically – by doing a favour for a cause you believe in – or by making you more employable. If you’re unsure whether an offer is either, Jessica Hische has a wonderful flowchart for you.

Image by TheAleiness GiselaGiardino on Flickr [http://www.flickr.com/photos/gi/121409547/]. Some rights reserved.

With this message I would like to encourage you to work with Trees! Tree technology is very much older that OOP. I have managed to combine the Tree technology with the OOP technology and the result it is fantastic.

The fundamental idea is simple: “an object may have its own kind as its children”. The results are a very fast response, even in small devices like pda, supports powerful structure that can cover every strange or fictional analysis scenario.

Of course there some things in which you have to write a lot of code, like storing the tree structure to rdbms database vi recursion methods, because till now there is no database that supports tree representation of data by default. Everyone is invited to talk about this OOPTree technology I found… it functions in several of my projects and I will be very happy to read your thoughts.

Dennis Theot

Google has unveiled a quarterly online publication that’s intended to help people “take time out and consider what’s happening and why it matters”.

The first issue of Think Quarterly is about data and how its power can be harnessed for business purposes. It contains in-depth articles from luminaries such as data expert Hans Rosling and Hal Varian, Chief Economist at Google. It’s a hefty read.

The articles can be viewed in a familiar web-based format, or set out in print magazine form via a beautiful, full-screen Flash viewer provided by Issuu.

Think Quarterly was designed, commissioned and edited by creative agency The Church of London. Founder Danny Miller told us: “In designing Think Quarterly we focused on making something really beautiful, unique and fresh using great photography and great illustration. We’ve commissioned amazing illustrators such as Geoff McFetridge and Adrian Johnson, and we’ve got fantastic photographers like Spencer Murphy. We’re bringing really high quality photography and illustration to what is essentially a business publication.”

Although the site is available to everyone for free, interestingly, Google tells us that it’s intended primarily as a print publication for their clients and partners. A select group of around 1500 will receive hard copies today, and the company says there are no plans to sell it. There is a mobile version of the site at m.thinkquarterly.co.uk.

Rob Mills, studio manager at bluegg.co.uk gave us his take on it:

“As someone who much prefers reading physical copies of magazine and books, I was pretty smitten with the online version of Think Quarterly. Firstly, the content was of interest to me which is a must for anything to hold my attention but it is also a lovely magazine to look at with a great design and attention to detail. It certainly made me want to read on and I’ll look forward to future issues.”

Google may have our search history, but who has our psyche? Gary Marshall investigates the truth behind our online identities

If I wanted to rule the world, I wouldn’t bother assembling a terrifying arsenal of nuclear weapons, or building a robot army. I’d be in the software business – and specifically, the communications software business. I’d be in email clients and web-based Twitter services; social network status updaters and word processors. While each program would be different, they’d all have one feature in common: whenever the user hit Delete or Cancel, the program would send me a copy of the document, message or @reply before zapping it.

Imagine the possibilities.

Imagine the power.

If you think Google storing everybody’s search queries is worrying, my data stash would scare you silly. The emails you decided not to send once you’d calmed down or sobered up? I’d have them. The tweets you deleted because you didn’t want to start a Twitter war? I’d have them too. I’d have everything.

I’d have the status updates you scrapped because you realised you were offering too much information. I’d have the Facebook friend request replies you wanted to send before you decided to click on Limited Profile instead. I’d have the letters you never printed for fear of re-opening old wounds; the angry, unsent emails; and the whistle-blowing blog posts whose publication would render you utterly unemployable.

Google might have your search history, but I’d have your psyche. Isn’t that terrifying?

For most of us, there’s a difference between the person we really are and the person we play on the internet. I don’t mean in a mild-mannered janitor/ Hong Kong Phooey way (or in a mild-mannered janitor/Dennis Nilsen way either). I mean that unless you’re ridiculously honest, American, or 14, then you practise a certain amount of self-censorship. What people see is still you, but it’s a toned-down, smartened up, edited highlights version of you.

Sometimes that censorship is a temporary thing, so you’re posting hilarious things online when in the real world you want to hurl yourself off a bridge, or hurl somebody else off a bridge. Sometimes it’s a self-preservation thing, where you know that telling the truth about your boss will change nothing other than your employment status. And sometimes it’s because the whole point of your online identity is that it lets you leave behind the bits you don’t like.

I think that last one is why I loathe the popular social networks so much. It’s not the constant attempts to monetise your life, or what seems to be constant chipping away at user privacy, although of course that’s annoying. It’s that slowly but surely they’re filling up with the very people I, and perhaps you, went online to get away from in the first place – so while my database is entirely imaginary, social networks are proving to be the human analogue. It’s easy to create a better, brighter You 2.0 online – but it’s hard to stop old acquaintances from turning up to scribble on your blank canvas.
Gary Marshall has been writing for .net since the stone age. www.bigmouthstrikesagain.com

Berlin-based artist Aram Bartholl has been embedding USB sticks in walls in New York to create an offline filesharing network, with the locations of the “dead drops” posted online. Tanya Combrinck finds out why

.net: What made you decide to do this?

AB: It evolved from a series of projects. I find it very interesting to mix up the digital world and the physical world, and I have undertaken a couple of other urban interventions where I placed objects from the digital space in the street. This project has this “spy” theme, so it’s about hidden treasures and things like that. I’m interested in the vision of people holding their laptops to a wall and embedding data literally in the wall, in concrete. We are living in a time of super-connectivity, and I like the idea of breaking it down to a more simple way of connecting. I like this idea of infiltrating the city itself with data.

.net: What kind of reaction have you had?

AB: I get a lot of different reactions, but overall people totally like the project, which is good. Some people are concerned about viruses, but the point is that the dead drops are public and you can’t control them. That’s the whole idea. It says a lot about how we perceive public space on the internet and public space in the city. The internet has viruses on every corner; every click could be a virus. We all know that, and even so, we feel fairly safe. But the moment the data device is out in the street, people are frightened that something dangerous could happen. It’s true that there could be danger, but we need to make sure that our computer security works properly all the time. It’s interesting to see how people think about what could happen in one place as opposed to another.

There’s another reaction from the US cultural side. The sexual implications are very vibrant there, and they say it is some kind of electronic glory hole. I think it is typically American that they immediately come up with a metaphor from that direction! It’s funny, I didn’t intend it, but it’s true. I like the picture of people taking their very expensive laptops and bending down to the curb to try to find something interesting.

Overall, it’s a very successful project so far, lots of people are interested. It’s still in its early stages; I’m still figuring out what to do next.

.net: What have people put on the dead drops?

AB: It’s a secret! You should go there and take a look. The whole point is that it’s a dead drop and it’s not on the internet, so we don’t know. It’s very much about the thrill and the idea of what’s on there and what could be on there. My friend, who is a musician, said he could release his new album on there, so everyone who wants it would have to go to that place. There are many possibilities for using them to find new ways to distribute data.

.net: Are you going to make any in Berlin?

AB: Yeah, sure. I will continue with it here, and everywhere I travel. The next phase will be to encourage everyone to make their own dead drop in their home city. I am going to put up a how-to manual. I hope it will spread over the world!

London-based web designer Inayaili de León explains how to create an HTML data table using clean and semantic markup

Styling CSS tables is one of those menial tasks that no web designer seems to particularly enjoy – after all, who wants to have to deal with loads of grey, amorphous information for a few hours?

Thankfully, the days when we were using tables to lay out entire websites are long gone. Still, they are the right choice for styling certain types of data, so here we’re going to try to make the act of styling a table a bit more exciting. With some advanced and uncommon CSS selectors, we’ll style an HTML table to make it look less boxy.

Starting with a carefully laid out markup, we’ll also ensure that everyone can access the data within our table, even if they’re using older browsers that can’t render the finer details.

Finally, we’ll explore the power of often underused CSS selectors to avoid adding unnecessary classes or ids to our markup, keeping it as clean and simple as possible. And with a little help from some CSS3 properties – such as text-shadow, border-radius and border-image – we’ll keep the number of images used to style the table to an absolute minimum.

About the author:

Name: Inayaili de León
Site: yaili.com
Areas of expertise: CSS and user interface design
Clients: Telmap, iSites
How do you like your coffee? Skinny caramel macchiato, 1 shot

Click here to download the support files
Click here to download tutorial PDF

Given the renewed debate following Paul Allen’s actions – and its impact on innovation – is it time to abolish the patent system?

SEO guru
David Deutsch
Fortune Cookie

Patents are a critical business tool used to protect intellectual property. Without patents, no legitimate business would ever be safe from being copied.

The cases that are happening now are simply abusing the idea of intellectual property rights. You can’t own every aspect of an idea, just the exact idea that you indicate in your patent.

My father patented the T-shirt with blinking lights in 1980. That didn’t stop Nike from creating the Sneaker with blinking lights.

David Deutsch is head of SEO at Fortune Cookie

Internet playboy
Drew Curtis
Fark

If you followed the same logic, given that large money managers are just using the stock market as one giant casino instead of an investment, we should get rid of the stock market. Patents still need some work, though. In fact, what they really need is a fast-track way to file a “this patent is fucking stupid” case.

The main issue here is that when you try to defeat an awarded patent, burden of proof is on the plaintiff. I think the assumption that the patent office is capable of properly researching all aspects of highly technical patents needs to be thrown out.

Drew is the owner of Fark.com

Activist
Oxblood Ruffin
Hactivismo

I’d favour revision rather than outright abolishment. Patents should be allowed for 10 years or until you double the money you put into R&D, whichever comes sooner.

Oxblood Ruffin is the founder of Hacktivismo

Ecommerce specialist
Nick Vincent
Neoworks.com

US patent law is certainly becoming an industry in itself. At least here in the UK, the whole concept of software patents remain an informed debate rather than an open chequebook for firms with deep pockets and expensive lawyers.

Nick Vincent is a senior ecommerce consultant with software solutions company Neoworks

Ecommerce expert
Ben Dyer
Actinic

It’s a sad day: here we have one of the world’s greatest tech innovators, a man who co-founded arguably the most important company in modern history, acting like a patent troll.

So is it time to abolish the patent system? Yes: it’s archaic and completely ineffectual for today’s digital economy. I’m sure there are lots of web developers reading this; how do you have any idea that the code you’re lovingly creating isn’t already filed somewhere? The answer is, you probably don’t, unless you scan the archives on a regular basis or spend a fortune on patent searches.

When the patent system was invented, it made sense: back in those days, innovation was all about mechanics and specific technical designs. However, today it seems anyone who has a remotely innovative idea, workable or not, can apply for – and more importantly protect – a patent.

The Paul Allen case is really frustrating; the patent is completely abstract and I suspect it will end up being expensively settled out of court.

Ben Dyer is director of ecommerce software company Actinic

Patents expert
Ilya Kazi
Mathys & Squire

The implications of the Paul Allen lawsuit are widespread, even to the inclusion of individuals and small companies working to produce new apps, for example (and we’ve seen a huge increase in these numbers just in the past year as Apple makes it easier and easier for them to get new products to the public quickly and cheaply).

Does this new breed of inventors realise what they might be signing away? Will they regret it later? And will it be too late – as has been mooted even for Paul Allen’s case – if they want to claim rewards in the future?

Ilya Kazi is a chartered patent attorney and partner with international intellectual property advisors Mathys & Squire

Hosting expert
Andrew Saunders
Zen Internet

Absolutely not. The patent system is more important than ever as Western society moves further away from industrial and manufacturing economies towards a knowledge-based economy. Intellectual property, as protected by the patent system, will become the global currency of the future. What we need is a stronger and more unified global patent system.

Andrew is head of product management and marketing at hosting firm Zen Internet

Hosting specialist
Neil Barton
Hostway, UK

In many respects the software industry has broken the patent system. Whereas a patent was once seen as a sign of innovation, now it’s seen as means to secure market share. Consequently, we’re now seeing many software companies applying for patents purely as a defensive measure just to stifle the competition.

Patents do still have their place, but if we truly want to see more creativity and innovation in the market, the current system needs to be looked at before it really descends into legislative hell.

Neil Barton is the director of hosting service provider Hostway UK

Project manager
Ané-Mari Peter
on-IDLE

Looking at the continuing high of innovation right now, the patent system is working well by rewarding innovation investment in exchange for protection from direct competitors. An important aspect of innovation, in particular within the sciences and engineering, is also the sharing of information. Unfortunately the traditional role of patents are being usurped by ‘patent trolls’, organisations that build extensive patent portfolios to gain access to technologies developed by others as well as prevent or reduce the cost of litigation. This blocks off entire areas of research, as has happened with DNA, is starting to happen in software technology and might happen to nanotechnology unless patent law is reformed.

In December 2009, the EU agreed to move forward with developing an EU-wide patenting system. This will reduce the cost of EU patents and bring the EU on a par in terms of volume with the USA. Patent law has in the past continuously evolved to keep up with new technology and scientific discovery: now it needs to evolve to include independent specialist advisors, promoting independent research, a swift legal/appeals process and sharing information to stimulate business practise and innovation.

Ané-Mari is the co-founder of branding, design and web development company on-IDLE

Media & PR expert
Tim Gibbon
Elemental Communications

Technology companies are just a few businesses that rely upon patents to protect their intellectual property, regardless of the stature. Individuals know they need to protect their concepts, ideas and all the detail in between; it’s become an essential element of business more than ever before.

I’ve witnessed over the years how technology companies in other sectors have used patent strategy, acquiring other businesses and their patents along with it. The web analytics sector being a prime example where there was fierce competition at a critical time in that marketplace. There was one firm in particular that issued numerous court actions against many other web analytics businesses citing breach of patents (in 2006, if my memory serves me correctly). Things haven’t moved on, either, with more analytics specialists fighting it out in the courts in 2010.

It would be interesting to learn what the alternatives to the patent system would be, especially for an area that can become incredibly complicated. There is no monopoly on great concepts and ideas, particularly within the realm of technology. Large businesses have legal departments or can budget for representation, but this cannot be said of smaller businesses or individuals. How quickly technology moves now – and the value of it – creates potentially huge problems, more so than for individuals or smaller businesses.

Although perhaps not seen as the perfect answer for international protection, it’s a measure that is works at this time. It should definitely be reviewed and, where possible, improved to create a fair and efficient way to protect all, regardless of their standing.

Tim is director of Elemental Communications

.net magazine

Entries are welcomed from independent web designers, developers and entrepreneurs, as well as larger organisations.

Entrants have until Friday 3 December to submit their entries in six digital communication categories (Culture and the Arts, Lifestyle, Media & Technology, Public Sector, Campaigning and On a Budget) plus eight other categories including Open Source Technology and Digital Entrepreneur.

The Awards are open to individuals, companies or collectives (those with fewer than four staff and a turnover of less than £250,000 can enter for a reduced price). Winners will be announced in March at a presentation ceremony in central London.

Megas judge Martha Lane Fox said: “I look forward to the MediaGuardian Innovation Awards this year. The new emphasis on digital communications and technology innovations will showcase a captivating mix of new tools and future opportunities.

“Most importantly, the awards address the increasing relevance of technology and innovation across different sectors, helping more and more people with new solutions for everything from shopping online to bringing about social change.”

For full details of the awards, head to www.guardian.co.uk/megas plus you can check the latest developments on Twitter at @guardianmegas.

Much of a modern web creative’s time is spent on the go. We pick our top 20 apps for mobile devices that you should download and install right away

We’re in the middle of a mobile app boom, with thousands upon thousands being released every week. Some are silly, some are serious, and some just plain suck. But there are a few that web designers and developers simply can’t do without. Here we unveil the cream of the crop: the time-savers, the speed-boosters and other tools that will make your working life a whole lot easier – whatever your mobile platform.

20 WhatTheFont
FREE iPhone

Apps like WhatTheFont are more proof we’re living in the future. While we can’t yet point at something and have our robot butler tell us riveting facts about it, we do have apps that attempt to figure out what they’re seeing to save us time. With WhatTheFont, you take a photo of some text, confirm the characters and wait for the app to identify the font. Unsurprisingly, it’s not always accurate, but it’s often close – and for those times when it’s bang-on, it’ll save you hours, despite costing you nothing.

19 PHP Cheat Sheet
59p Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, Palm Pre

Concentric Sky offers a small pile of code-oriented cheat sheet apps for a range of devices. While they are, according to certain experts, rather variable in terms of quality, they also happen to be cheap (typically 59p), accurate enough, and can prove useful in certain situations. Karl Stanton, a developer at FiNew York, is pretty happy with PHP Cheat Sheet: “It’s handy when you’re developing and don’t have an internet connection – on a plane or a train – and you need some PHP help.”

18 Convertbot
£1.19 iPhone

There are two reasons why Convertbot is worth installing on your iPhone. First and foremost, designers often have to juggle units, and Convertbot happily enables you to convert data rates, lengths and units relating to typography. Secondly, as Kicker Studio’s principal Dan Saffer says, the app offers a major additional draw: “I’m a big Convertbot fan, not only for its practical use, but also for its example that there are ways of manipulating data in a small space that don’t have to be boring.” That sounds pretty good to us.

17 ConnectBot
FREE Android

For developers at the more technical end of the spectrum, tools tend to veer away from the graphical and towards the practical. An app in this area recommended by a couple of contributors is ConnectBot. According to its web page, this app aims to “create a secure connection through which you can use a shell on a remote machine and transfer files back and forth to your phone”. Yup, it’s a Secure Shell Client, but it’s a good one and it happens to be free.

Unfortunately it turns out that iPhone users are somewhat out of luck regarding the free aspect, but we hear good things about TouchTerm for Apple users wanting some SSH goodness. There are two flavours of the app available – the basic one is £2.39; the pro release is £5.49 and it adds a slew of extra features. Visit jbrink.net/apps. html for more info.

16 Sherpa
£2.39 iPhone

Basecamp, from 37signals, is a web-based project collaboration tool that’s hugely popular among designers and developers. Many iPhone clients accessing Basecamp have sync issues, but Sherpa is robust. You get access to projects, messages, to-dos, milestones and contacts, and your information is secured using SSL.

15 Creative Whack Pack
£1.19 iPhone

Occasionally, apps are worthy of note not because they’re useful tools or powerful programs, but because they can inspire you. Amy Hoy, Webnographer for slash7 (slash7.com), is a big fan. “It’s a deck of cards with the creative principles from Roger von Oech‘s book, A Whack on the Side of the Head,” she explains. “When you’re stuck or want a dose of inspiration, you pick a card and apply that rule to your thinking.” She has a pack of the physical cards, but, “with this app, I can use them whenever I want – and the descriptions are even fuller than those on the real cards.”

14 View Web Source
FREE Android

Most web users don’t care about source code, so it’s perfectly understandable that mobile browsers don’t shoehorn a View Source option into streamlined user interfaces. For developers, though, the ability to peek under the hood is of paramount importance. On Android, View Web Source enables you to load the source of any URL of your choosing, search the resulting text, and also copy and paste the code. The free HTML Viewer (atomicwebbrowser.com/?cat=8) does broadly the same thing if you’ve got an iPhone.

13 Reeder
£1.79 iPhone

Web designers and developers like to keep track of what’s going on in the industry, and most of that information comes from blogs. To that end, RSS is a huge time-saver, meaning you needn’t visit dozens of sites daily. Reeder is a Google Reader client that you probably don’t need, but once it’s installed you’ll wonder how you ever did without it, thanks to the app’s great interface, offline caching and excellent sharing features. Android users should check out Feedr (feedr.podzone.net).

12 Dolphin Browser
FREE Android

Android users who feel restricted by their default browser could do worse than check out Dolphin Browser, which emphasises speed and the social aspect of the web. The browser offers multitouch pinch-zooming where possible, and you also get gesture-based commands, tabs, the ability to save cache to an SD card, YouTube video downloads, and easy share with the likes of Twitter and Facebook. RSS feeds are detected and easy to subscribe to, and there’s also integration with Read It Later. The lack of location awareness is a pity, but otherwise this is a great alternate browser.

11 Hipstamatic
£1.19 iPhone

Hipstamatic makes our list because of its potential to inspire you, although it also has the ability to provide interesting photography for your websites once you’ve mastered its nuances. It essentially turns your iPhone’s ropey camera into a decent digital Lomo. The tactile nature of the application’s interface is a major plus point, although it’s also just one of many great iPhone toy-camera apps – we also recommend checking out QuadCamera and Toy Camera (both by artandmobile.com).

10 SketchBook Pro
£4.99 iPad

Although Adobe Ideas (see number five in our list) is the sketching app that’s most caught the imagination of iPad owners, illustrator Michael Heald (fullyillustrated.com) has fallen for Autodesk’s professional-grade painting tool, SketchBook Pro. “Lugging a laptop around can be a pain, so having a competent iPad sketch tool is a no-brainer. Once I got SketchBook Pro, I instantly fell in love,” enthuses Heald. “Initially, painting with your fingers seems strange and archaic compared to a stylus, but you soon enjoy it. Precision was my initial worry, but once you take into account that the iPad can zoom in and out very quickly using multitouch, the accuracy issue fades. It’s also a brilliant tool for throwing down rough concepts in front of clients, since it’s often easier to sketch out an idea than explain it.”

9 AndFTP
FREE Android

If you’re caught short while out and about and need to make a swift change to a website, AndFTP provides you with a capable FTP client. You get upload, download and resume support, the ability to open files on your device and all the usual important features you’d expect from a desktop FTP client – including the ability to rename files, copy and paste, and set up permissions. Jealous iPhone and iPad users should skip immediately to number three on our list for a nice surprise.

8 Opera Mini
FREE Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows Mobile

Having mobile browsers that render web pages in the same way as desktop browsers is great until you find yourself with a slow data connection. In such situations, its worth having Opera Mini installed. In layman’s terms, it shoves pages through Opera’s own servers, compresses them, and then flings them back at your phone faster than downloading the same pages using your device’s native browser. The app also includes features from its desktop cousin, including tabs and Speed Dial. Due to iffy JavaScript support and questionable security it’s unlikely Opera Mini will usurp your primary browser, but in those situations where 3G and Wi-Fiare conspicuous by their absence, it’s a great app to have.

7 Color Expert
£5.99 iPhone

Unless you’re one of those rare people who has a perfect eye for colour, it’s a good idea to have some kind of colour wheel lurking. Of late, digital colour wheels have become somewhat rare and are often pricey if they offer more than a basic feature set. Color Expert for iPhone somewhat bucks the trend – it only costs six quid and yet it’s packed with features. You get an interactive colour wheel with multiple schemes, an image picker that draws a palette from any photo on your device, a basic swatch book and the ability to export palettes. The latter is a little slice of magic – the palette email you receive from the Color Expert app is beautifully laid out, and you also get an Adobe Swatch Exchange (ASE) file to drop into your design app of choice.

6 WordPress
FREE Android, BlackBerry, iPhone

Plenty of designers and developers have been bitten by the WordPress bug and use the tool for a blog – or even to deal with client website content management. Although you can use their dashboard via your mobile device’s browser, that’s a route for masochists only. Instead, if you’ve a WordPress blog and an Android, BlackBerry or iPhone, download the relevant app to write and edit posts, and manage comments and images.

5 Adobe Ideas
FREE iPad and iPhone

Despite the ongoing spat between Apple and Adobe, the latter company has created Adobe Ideas for the iPad and iPhone. Adobe refers to the app as “your digital sketchbook, letting you capture and explore ideas anywhere you go”. It’s essentially vector finger painting, enabling you to add an optional photo layer to sketch on top of. Designer and developer Dan Rubin (superfluousbanter.org) has certainly found the app useful: “It makes a great sketchbook for quick ideas, without having to scan or photograph them to send to people. I’ve used it quite a bit to jot down rough wireframes while on conference calls, and then email them to everyone for confirmation. It works like a dream.”

4 Things
£11.99/£5.99 iPad/iPhone

We like Things a lot, but we only recently realised just how popular it is within our industry. This innovative to-do manager was propelled to its lofty position in our list by enthusiastic cries from a number of designers. For example, Keith Robinson (dkeithrobinson.com), calls it “the best to-do and productivity app I’ve used”, adding that it’s “well designed, works well in conjunction with the desktop and iPad versions and is one of the apps I use most on my iPhone”. Designer Jonathan Snook (snook.ca) agrees, saying that “Things is simple and straightforward and I often find myself using it to keep track of notes as well as to-do items.”

Much of why Things excels is down to a well-considered workflow model. You can tag items or make them part of a larger project, but the main benefit is its ability to help you focus. New to-dos are collected in the inbox, and you define what you want to achieve today, soon (via the Next category), soonish (via Scheduled) or at some point in the distant future (Someday). It’s a simple, effective means of organising tasks and your time.

3 FTP On The Go
£5.99/£3.99 iPad & iPhone/iPhone-only

Picture the scene: you’re on the train and a client calls. They’re in a right old state – their website’s broken, and you, the designer, are at that very moment the subject of their ire. With your iPhone, you can use Safari to check out the site in question and maybe figure out why it’s not working, but with FTP On The Go, you can access servers, download files, poke around with them, make edits and upload changes. The app also includes built-in backup and local storage, the ability to upload images from your device’s Photos app, a browser for previewing changes you’ve made, and a master password feature for protecting server login info. The new Pro version on the iPad also makes use of that device’s extra screen space, and comes across a little like Coda Lite rather than the kind of simple app you might expect to get in return for the small sum of six quid.

2 Dropbox
FREE iPhone, web

Although a number of online storage services exist, Dropbox is the one that’s most transformed the life of web designers and developers. Many use Dropbox to seamlessly sync files between a number of Macs or PCs. However, the service’s online component means documents can potentially be accessed via any mobile device as well. If you’ve got an iPhone, the free Dropbox app enables faster access to your files, although it doesn’t automatically download them. Instead, you browse them online and mark items as favourites for offline use.

Many file types can be browsed on- and offline – the latter being handy for catching up with reading proposals. “On the iPhone, I do find myself using Dropbox to interact with files while on the go,” says Rubin. “It’s just a viewer, and an editor would be useful – although I think I’d mostly wait to work on documents until I got back to my desk.” If you only use Dropbox for basic syncing of the odd document, the 2GB free service should be more than enough. But you can also upgrade to 50GB ($9.99 per month) or 100GB ($19.99 per month) of storage.

1 Evernote
FREE Android, BlackBerry, iPad, iPhone, Palm Pre

Windows Mobile (premium service $5 p/m) If you’re a designer or developer, chances are that you spend a lot of time inside your head, thinking about stuff and coming up with ideas. Although this is a key part of day-to-day creative work, ideas are often lost because there’s no easy way to record them for later retrieval. Evernote is therefore a perfect service for people in the creative web industry, as it enables you to collect, store and access all manner of things – web pages, photos, ideas, chunks of code, screen grabs and sounds. It then organises them all automatically, and you can further refine your notes by tagging and placing them into notebooks.

But what makes Evernote take pride of place at the top of our list is the company’s understanding that people want to take their ideas anywhere and access them on the move. So along with enabling access to your notes via the web and desktop apps for Mac and Windows (and Web Clipper for Safari/Mac, Internet Explorer/Windows, Chrome and Firefox, which provides a quick way to store chunks of websites), Evernote provides clients for iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Palm Pre, Windows Phone and Sony Ericsson X1. Therefore, regardless of which mobile device you favour, chances are you’ll be able to use it.

Evernote’s chosen a freemium model. This means that for free you get a basic service, which should be fine for most users – a 40MB per month upload allowance, sync of images, audio, ink and PDFs, and text recognition inside images. Pay $5 per month and your limit is upped to 500MB, plus you get sync for any file type, search within PDFs, SSL encryption, optional collaborative note editing and a bunch of other benefits.

Whether you’re promoting your company, product or personal brand, Brad Haynes explains how to make the most of social networking

This shouldn’t be a big surprise: people act the same on social networks as they do in real life. Think of it like walking in the door of a big party with the friend of a friend of a friend. Facebook, Twitter, Ning communities, and those people at the house party all exhibit the same general rules of social interaction.

Those first few parties as gawky, pubescent kids were hard. And since there’s no finishing school on the internet, let’s run back to Mama to see what advice she has to offer.

Personality matters

There you are, standing by the pool. Mama says: “Are you wearing the right clothes? Are you smiling? First impressions are pretty important.”

A quick scan around the room reveals that some people are more popular than others. So let’s take a look at some of the people you don’t want to be:

1 The Wallflower: This person might have something interesting to offer – but doesn’t. He or she is likely to go home alone and unnoticed. They think: “I’m here, I just wish someone would talk to me. I’m really interesting if you get to know me.”

Mama says: “Just because you’re at the party doesn’t mean you’ll make friends. You have to jump in there and say something.”

Creating a Facebook fan page or Twitter account is just walking into the room. You’re going to have to engage with others if you want to develop relationships.

Next time you hear, “Everyone’s doing social; so should we,” consider: do we have valuable content worth sharing? Do we have the resources to share it regularly, to monitor brand mentions, and to respond to them? If the answer to each is “yes,” then say something, and start a conversation.

2 The Loudmouth: This one overcompensates for a lack of anything valuable to say with sheer volume. He constantly demands attention.

Mama says: “Don’t be a blabbermouth. Learn to listen.” Self-serving social behaviour will always fail.

Businesses and individuals that shout non-stop about themselves miss the point of online community. Remember, you’re mixed in with friends and family in your fan’s feeds. The people with whom you’re sharing already have a real relationship with your consumer.

3 The Flashy One: This one sparkles. People gather, confident they’re near the centre of the party. But they soon discover how inaccessible, intimidating, and generally vapid this person really is.

You see this a lot online: a new website, new social push, everything’s flashy and exciting. However, often the honeymoon ends because not enough thought has been put into maintaining the relationship.

Mama says: “Beauty is only skin deep: it’s what’s inside that counts.” Make the relationship go past the surface by offering up real value in the form of advice and resources. After you gain the trust of a few, others will come flocking.

4 The Poseur: Blathering on with buzzwords and namedropping like crazy, this one is the know-nothing who thinks they know it all …

Mama says: “Just be yourself.” Your voice is the biggest reflection of your brand, so be genuine. You’ll avoid a lot of embarrassment and flack if you just go with what you know.

These are just four of the types that generally are not successful in social situations. You can easily think of others. So what’s the secret to being popular? According to Mama, it’s simple: “Treat people the way they want to be treated.”

Think about relationships you’ve had in the past, both good and bad. I’m sure you’ll agree that a healthy relationship involves a whole lot of back and forth, growing and changing, listening and listening, and listening some more. Your online relationships needs to be engaged in the same way. It’s not a campaign – it’s a commitment.
Respond quickly

Comcast, a cable company in the US, is notorious for frustrating customers with bad service. That’s why customer service manager Frank Eliason started reaching out to disgruntled customers publicly via Twitter (@ComcastCares). Frank monitors all the tweets relating to Comcast and follows up complaints as quickly as possible. Often, once-angry customers respond with appreciation. They enjoy the instant gratification they receive from the simple gesture of acknowledgement. It doesn’t take a huge effort on Frank’s part, but it goes a long way in protecting the brand. And Frank does all this out in the open for everyone to see. Transparency builds trust. Let your audience see the man behind the curtain.

Listen to your audience and speak to individual posts and people directly. Share and retweet the best from your audience. Face it: they’re more interesting than you.
Be adventurous

Don’t be afraid to get outside yourself and try something different. Pepsi scrapped its Super Bowl ad in order to support the ‘Get Fresh’ project. The plan was to provide $1.3million to people, businesses and non-profits with ideas that will make a positive impact. The audience was invited to submit ideas, vote on their favourites, and win money.

The campaign has continued to gather online press after many Super Bowl ads have been forgotten. Pepsi has benefited from embracing the idea that the audience has something more interesting to say than it does.
Know your audience

Make sure you know who you’re talking to before you open your mouth. Each type of person requires a different approach.

A restaurant chain recently began a social push on Twitter. An assessment was made that its audience was “young and urban”. Slang and acronyms (LOL, OMG, etc) were used as support.

Before long, the audience lashed back viciously. Many were offended in thinking the business saw them as uneducated teenagers. And while some of the audience might indeed talk like that online, they didn’t want to be pigeonholed in a category perceived as unprofessional and immature.

Importantly, after receiving the bad feedback, the company acknowledged the mistake. They apologised. And they fixed it. Now their Twitter account is gaining the followers they want.

So, welcome to the party. Remember the basics of human nature and social interaction and soon, you won’t be just another face at the party. You’ll be throwing your own. Mama will be so proud.