Unfortunately due to the number of electronic items the average geek, freelancer and employee travels around the world with, it’s hardly surprising sometimes these items get lost or stolen.

Whilst costs can be covered by either business or home insurance, it’s not much fun filing a police report and having to deal with file and data loss.

Now you may actually have the chance to track your Apple product, whether it’s an iPhone, Macbook or any Apple computer with isight built in there are some fantastic anti-theft software available to reunite you with your hardware.

• iPhone iredhanded or undercover
• MacBook, MacBookPro, iMac undercover

Accurately locate your stolen Mac

Undercover uses advanced technology developed by Skyhook Wireless to locate your Mac based on Wi-Fi positioning. In addition, it also transmits network information, enabling their recovery center to accurately track and locate your stolen Mac within a range of 10-20 meters.

The software also sends screenshots of your stolen Mac at regular intervals. These screenshots will sooner or later reveal the thief’s identity (e.g. when chatting, reading and writing emails) making it much easier to work with the police in order to recover your Mac.

See who’s using your Mac

Undercover will transmit pictures of the thief and his surroundings every 6 minutes, making it even easier to identify the current user. It’s like having a private detective working for you.

MacBookPro recovered in only 3 days

Orbicule recently posted a story on their website about how a MacBookPro was recovered in just three days, thanks to the network information, iSight photos and screenshots (which captured the thief’s email address) provided by Undercover. If you or your users carry around expensive Mac portables, Undercover might be just the insurance policy you need.

The cost for this? £41 for up to 5 Macs..

Apple’s response to reporting a lost Apple product discussions.apple.com – Basically, there isn’t one, but the message is using the software here makes the chances of recovering your products much, much higher.

There is also a windows equivalent of this type of software, in case anyone you know may need this anti-theft protection at lojackforlaptops

Possibly what every person that works full-time realises after they return back from work after a long break is ‘I must take more breaks, and give myself time to relax’

Relaxing is a time to reflect. When you are away from your professional environment you will find that burdens are not so troublesome.

So, get out into the daylight, go cycling, go to visit the sea, go and walk up a mountain, go to a concert, a non-techy event. Doing one of these or all of them results in broadening your horizons and enriching your life..

‘In this age of mobile phones, cybercafes, wifi and satellite links its harder than ever to escape, and live life off-line’

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There are a number of ways a freelancer can promote themselves in today’s marketplace. Whether you are starting out, or want to find ways to boost your reputation and awareness in your community.

1. Traditional Press [off-line]
A traditional press release to digital press publications still works, eg: new media, revolution etc. In my experience it is sometimes better to either call or e-mail the features editor and float an idea for a story with them and see if they like it. I would maybe spin a bit of an angle on it maybe try and make it really personal like a profile piece or focus on some of the really unique parts of the work you did.

Worth covering local business press too, as there are likely tons of local businesses that might have need for you – again pick off the important ones and make personal contact with them.
I’ve written articles for a number of local papers, and magazines, it doesn’t make you money, but it gets you noticed – people will pick up your thoughts and comments from the article and mention your piece when you meet them.

2. On-line Content placement
Offering something that other sites will be happy to publish eg: Top Tips for finding work written by Award winning digital freelancer Jim Callender etc etc with a link to your site. Have a list of sites that you could approach to do this. A great way of getting deep links into your site, with keyword rich text links with your name or services on.

3. E-mail newsletter to past and current clients
Possibly the most difficult as the design needs to be done to suit your clients requirements, ie: ‘give something that makes your client want to make contact with you, buy something from you.

4. Have goals, short and long-term
Before you do anything, think about what your objectives are. In particular for brands or personal brands, identify the keywords that you’d most want to be associated with. Try to think of keywords that people would search for, are long-term, and aren’t some made up name that no one would seek.

5 .Develop a unique brand
I really don’t think URL’s are as important as they used to be, often folks will Google your name to find you, and the fact that we disperse to so many websites (Facebook / Twitter / Friendfeed) it comes down to how you write, what you write and say.

By commenting on the right channels means you will be noticed, and people will regularly take time to read your thoughts if you continuously put out good advice. It takes time, but you will notice uptake in people subscribing to your RSS feed, and number of people ‘following you’ on social networks.

6. Get personal
If you want to stand out, you should add your picture to your blog, and develop a visual icon that demonstrates who you are. While not everyone shows their picture (Virgin comes to mind) Richard Branson developed an icon that represents his business and brand.

7. Attend ‘real time’ events
One thing you will find very useful when trying to get noticed is to attend local and International events. I attend 2-3 tech events every week, which is easy to do here in Brighton, UK.

By doing this, I’m able to meet folks who were passionate about the web, and developed a network to interact with online during the day, and one I’m very active with now. It’s also a great way of finding leads, new clients and also suppliers that you can collaborate with and take on larger projects.

8. Lead events
You’ll soon start to notice a gap in the events you’re going to: a particular topic isn’t being covered, or a particular style of a topic isn’t being approached (unconference, workshops, networking) and you can start to quickly develop your own events. Many people are doing this, in particular blogger ‘geek dinners’, or barcamps.

9. Be interesting and genuine
Given the large number of people talking about the same thing you are online, you’re going to need to differentiate. Sure, standard business strategy but it’s amazing how few fail to do so. Many simply quote what others say, adding very little value, instead, you need to consistently be intersting. Here’s a few approaches: conduct analysis, respectively disagree with the mainstream, break news, compare and contrast services, develop lists or indexes of companies or topics.

10. Archive your achievements
As you develop your repertoire of speaking at events, leading events, or being quoted in articles or top blogs, start to create an archive that links to all these achievements. You don’t need to make it totally visible, but you’ll want to be able to share this with decision makers (next job, speaker selector, media, recruiters) to indicate on one page how you stand out. Linkedin.com is a great way to keep colleagues, peers and clients up to date with what your aims, and goals are.

Constantly measure and adapt, using buzz-monitoring and web metrics
Monitor what you are doing, understand your visitor statistics to you site, find out the most popular blog posts you have written, ego search on twitter with your name, and in 12 months time you will be able to review what has and hasn’t worked.

Any others that you think that I’ve missed, comments are on.

Good luck and all the best for a successful 2009!

Ever wondered what the colours around you made you react, or feel . Well, without getting too ‘new age’ colour therapy has been shown to improve your life.

Just by adding a splash of colour to things around you, at home and at work can improve your state of mind and well being.

Walls – Putting up some orange can galvanise your brain. Studies have shown that people are more productive in orange rooms! Its a useful mix of energising red and creative yellow that does it apparently. Will it stop us wasting time on facebook and twitter? We will have to get the paint brushes out to see!

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We’ve returned from our annual weightwatchers trip. Where we (my future wife and I) (try to) shed a few pounds, we decided to use our bikes this year.

The plan: To cycle the Sustrans West Country way bike route from Bristol to Padstow. A 300 mile part traffic free route which leads us from Bristol to the quiet and country lanes of Cornwall.

We camped throughout the journey, apart from our night on Exmoor where where had the luxury of a B&B in Dulverton.

The trip took us 6 days from start to finish, covering 3 sets of interesting hills – The Quantocks, Somerset. The Exmoor National Park, Devon, and various Cornwall hilly bits.

We were covering about 50 miles a day on average, and carrying around 80 litre capacity clothing, food and camping equipment.

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Work can all too often take over our lives outside the office with various ways to ’stay connected’.
However, I encourage you to make your office hours more productive by offering the following relaxation techniques every geek can use.. try the following tips that I use, you may find they will allow you to see things differently and achieve your work/life goals more successfully and more effectively.

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When I was leaving SxSw earlier this month, I picked up an American magazine called .Inc.

It caught my attention as it had Ev, the Co-Founder of Twitter being interviewed.

I definitely recommend you check out the Magazine, or the website which are both fantastic. On the website you will find a whole multitude of feeds you can subscribe to, depending on what type of business information you are looking for.

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