Category: Uncategorised

The Mission

For a while now I’ve had two burning desires both which I have held off from due to timing, one because I wasn’t ready and the other becase it wasn’t ready.

The first like many of you is the desire to start your own business it could be a product or service, physical or digital whatever it is you just know you have to get on with it at some point and make the leap.

The timing is right due to a number of huge changes in my life but all of them were partly planned and I’ve had the good fortune to transition neatly to this point

The second is going to sound rediculious but for me it symbolised much more. I really wanted to buy a Chomebook! You know the sub standard, always in the cloud, dirt cheap laptops that Google have been promoting for a number of years.

These devices have been growing in both popularity and raw power and the best of 2016 really got me thinking that I could finally make the switch and leave behind Apple’s overpriced gear once and for all and get back to basics.

For the last ten years I’ve relied heavily my top end Mac Book Pro as a graphic powerhouse to support my freelance graphic design business. Both the machine and the work have done me proud but it’s time to move on.

Working from home, coffee shops and co-working spaces all over the world has been a true freedom of the last decade and while design is my first love it’s not something I really want to build a business out of anymore.

My skills and passion have grown towards helping people build businesses, specificly small or startup businesses and I’ve slowly transitioned through design and advertising, web design, marketing and finally digital business consultant.

If I’m to fully make the transition I have to take the leap of faith and make a change. And for me that change is hearlded with technology. I fully belive that Chromebooks can meet even the above average business owners needs and want to put my money where my mouth is.

It’s not essential to go out and purchase a new machine just to start a business but for me there are just to many distractions on my day to day workhorse and the limitations of the Chrome platform are a relief and outright restriction from my old working methods and routines.

If I can bring foucs to my new venture by removing many of the daily work tasks that I would have normally done in my old ‘job’ then I can move on and really apply myself to the task in hand.

This is if you will my resignation from my life as a design profesional. Which brings me to my misson…

Can I start a business from scratch with a sub-$500 Chromebook?

Yes, of course you can if you have any device these days and access to the to internet then you can do everything that the Chromebook can do and if that works for you then great, but if you are starting out on your journey it’s always good to start with a blank slate, whatever it is, it will discourage distractions and allow you gain a sense of distance from other areas of your digital life. It should feel like you are walking into a new office full of possability.

Publishing content to your site the easy way with Blogo

One of the biggest roadblocks for myself was always having to go into the admin area of my site to create a post. It might not seem like much but for someone who spends their entire day in the WordPress dashboard the last thing I want to do is log back in to my own site and get creative.

Personaly if nothing else, having the editor once removed from the core WordPress platform seriously helps me focus. If I’m in the admin area there are a hundred other things that I know I could also do instead of actually writing. I’m sure for most bloger it’s the other way around, happy to leave all those plugin updates and error messages for years (seriously somtimes when I first access a clients site I can spend an hours on the housekeeping alone) but for me these need to be dealt with pronto. And their in lies the issue with all of these distractions I rarely enjoy the writing process, even if I do I’ll put off publising an article because I have to ‘just sort xyz out first’.

Okay I can hear you screaming ‘why not draft it out in Evernote and paste it into the WP editor when you are finished? This has rarely worked I must have a hundred or so unfinished articles sat in a junk folder in Evernote. The disconect always gets the better of me and I’ll move on without publishing. I’ve tried several third party Evernote connections but they never feel fully functional and they normally required an additional login to the WordPress admin before finally posting an article just to double check that it all looked correct.

I’m at a loss why Evernote never made the logical connection of allowing blog access direct from their app even if it was a premium feature. Their loss, Blogo’s gain! Installation and setup are a breeze, download from the appstore and connect to you WordPress site by logging in with your regular username and password. Within a few seconds all posts and to my supprise pages were instantly available for editing.

Let’s see how robust ‘Blogo’ really is.

First up it’s OSX and iOS only but that sits well with me and it’s nice to finally have a decent editor for both my iPhone and iPad, lets be honest WordPress have really slacked on the whole mobile experience.

Blogo – Feels like Evernote, makes blogging painless

First up: Text

Inception Blogo heading styles