drag’n drop files into richtext boxes (so it’s actually useful)

There’s a ton of howto’s out there showing people how to do the drag and drop into a richtext box.  But recently I had a job that required me not to drag the contents from one part of the form to the other but to actually drag a file (or files) into a RichTextbox control – and process them.

Which… if you’ve never tried this before drops the file as an icon you can click on and open.  Not really useful if you’re trying to process files.  It’s kind of annoying that even after a bit of Googling you’ll get a lot of links that let you drag the text or images or all kinds of stuff from one part of the form – to another part of the form. 

Which is fine if that’s what you need.  But what I needed was to be able to grab several files – of either text or xml – and then process them and display the output. 

Since I can’t share my work code – here’s the training wheels version of the code for you. As you can see we process the XML and display it.  It also does text so … this is fairly close to the final version – which hopefully I’ll take some time and cleanse it from any confidential use info that may be in it and share.  In the mean time – here’s the actual guts of the code that makes it work.

 

Since I’m reallllly running behind – that’s all I can get out this week  - but hopefully it’ll be of use to someone out there.  As you can see – I’m calling the richtextbox dragenter event and customizing it.  The first thing I do is hunt for the dataformats.filedrop type off the event handleer – this allows me to grab the filename and – load it appropriately into the richtextbox.

Anyway… to all out there – here’s the code – have an AWESOME New Year… and I’ll be back on line to annoy all as soon as I can.

 

Imports System
Imports System.Drawing
Imports System.Data
Imports System.IO
Imports System.Collections
Imports System.Windows.Forms
Imports System.Xml
Public Class Form1
    Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
        'This call is required by the Windows Form Designer.
        RichTextBox1.AllowDrop = True
    End Sub

    Private Sub richTextBox1_DragEnter(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As DragEventArgs) Handles RichTextBox1.DragEnter

        Try
            If e.Data.GetDataPresent(DataFormats.FileDrop) Then
                ' Put all file names into a string array 
                'in case the user grabbed more than one file.
                Dim files As String() = CType(e.Data.GetData(DataFormats.FileDrop), String())
                Try
                    'Now we break it down - we only want text files, xml or xsd files
                    'so we trap for that if it's not one of those - we ignore it.
                    If files(0).Contains(".txt") Then
                        Dim f_stream As IO.StreamReader = FileIO.FileSystem.OpenTextFileReader(files(0))
                        RichTextBox1.Text = f_stream.ReadToEnd()
                        'Just for fun we show the name of the file and link it
                        llblFileName.Text = files(0).ToString

                        f_stream.Close()
                    ElseIf files(0).Contains(".xml") Then
                        Dim filename As String = files(0)
                        Dim reader As New XmlTextReader(files(0))
                        llblFileName.Text = files(0).ToString
                        reader.MoveToContent()
                        'Loop through the XML and display it in the richtextbox
                        Do While reader.Read
                            RichTextBox1.AppendText(reader.ReadContentAsString)
                        Loop
                        reader.Close()
                    End If
                Catch ex As Exception
                    MessageBox.Show(ex.Message)
                    Return
                End Try
            End If
        Catch ex As Exception
            MessageBox.Show(ex.Message)
        End Try
    End Sub

    Private Sub llblFileName_LinkClicked(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.LinkLabelLinkClickedEventArgs) Handles llblFileName.LinkClicked
        System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(llblFileName.Text)
    End Sub
End Class

Fighting Tigers in Burma…

is something I’ve never done.  Never really planned to do it either.  In fact, it’s not even on my long range to do list.  Like so many bizarre things you’re pretty sure are never going to happen – it is however – something that I am prepared to do if I am ever dropped accidentally into the back jungles of Burma with a 10 lb honey cured ham locked around my neck. 

Let’s face it no one plans for something like that.  Just like most people don’t plan on losing their jobs until it happens.  Money’s tight and we keep hearing that there are no jobs.  Read Mini-Microsoft’s latest rumors that Microsoft is going to lay off… Or you can read the same story in – frankly dozens, maybe even hundreds of web journals out there.  We’re all going to lose our jobs.  No one is hiring.  And we should all expect to have it take up to 3 years or more before we can find work where and how we once did.

In fact if you read the dishrags you’ll put your chances of financial survival right up there with fighting tigers naked in the jungles of Burma.  But that’s not reality.

I won’t say things aren’t serious – or that there aren’t going to be some serious “resource actions” at places like Microsoft – or IBM or a hundred other places out there.

But the Job Market isn’t as dead as people claim.  It’s not great like it was – but it’s also not the dead zone everyone is making out.  Don’t believe me?  Here…

Dice… 963 new jobs in the last 7 days.

Now, I know that in my area – Hotjobs has 81 new jobs.  And … Monsters got around 120 or more.  And I still get between 3-9 emails a week about jobs.  Many of which I can’t take due to NDAs or certain companies bizarre rules about not being able to work there for over 365 days in a row – that’s weird – but there are still jobs there for someone. 

Over the last 10 years I’ve never gone more than a month or so without being able to get a job.  Is it because I’m just … sooooo cool?  No.  It’s because I learned a long time ago that just because a job isn’t perfect it’s still a job. At the end of the day you don’t have to take it home with you, and even if it’s not “your dream job” like the ads say – it still pays bills.

So pay your bills and find something better.  The bottom line is that – it’s all about survival.  Just like fighting tigers.  You do what you need to do and you learn new skills if you need to so that you can survive.

No, you’re not going to find a dream job in this economy.  But you may – if you’re careful – find something that keeps you going until you do.  Survival isn’t about surviving better than others – it’s about surviving to better your own circumstances, so that your life it’s about survival.  So that it’s not waking up to a fear of your life – as you know it – suddenly vanishing. 

There are reasons to be afraid, but losing your job isn’t a reason to be afraid.  It’s a reason to hone your skills – sharpen your abilities.  It’s a reason to become better at what you’ve been doing that you’ve ever been.  It’s a reason to learn not to be afraid, not to let yourself become depressed, not to lose track of your goals. 

Your goals.  Not the company you work for.  But yours.  It’s a reason to learn about what your goals are.  But it’s not a reason to panic.  It’s not a reason to be afraid.  There are jobs.

The economy is bad – but it’s not some nightmare.  Bad economies and job cuts are cycles.  If you hone those skills, keep your outlook positive, and you never stop trying to better yourself – you will always be able to find work.

That’s not me saying that – it’s my father.  Because of him I’ve kept that attitude and I’ve always kept myself in work.  If I didn’t have it – I’d find it.  It was his gift to me.  One that I have kept and that’s kept my family well. 

If I can give one gift to people – to friends who are approaching this Christmas season with trepidation, with stress, with fear.  It’s that you don’t have to be afraid.  It really will be all right, and hang in there.  We have the skills, the knowledge, the drive and the ambition to not just survive but thrive.  Because we – are the people – who do not ever want to fight tigers.  We have too much work surviving what is real – to give our time to fighting things and preparing for things that are not. 

Just a few thoughts.

We’re not dead yet…

Been a week or two since I updated so this is going to be quick before I lumber off to work.  The recession isn’t as bad as it might appear.  It’s bad – almost every IT company out there decided to put the breaks on a lot of hiring and dropped the expected wages they’re paying.  But the jobs are still there.  Nationally I just got a ping for over 35 IT Jobs that opened since December 10th – most are east coast related (NY, NH, NJ, FL) although there’s a surprising number from TX and IL that I really didn’t see coming.  Most of these are Dev and Engineering – but there’s a smattering of UI designer and PM type roles.

In the NW USA we’re still seeing a remarkable amount of stuff going on – although most is at MS still around 36 jobs posted through Dice and Careerbuilder since Dec 5th.  Once again – MS leads with Test positions and Dev positions, but has a nice nearly equal compliment of PM jobs.

Had someone ask me how to tell if companies are gearing up for work or completing projects based on job postings… here’s the tip:  If they need more PMs than they do Developers – they’re gearing up and there’s more work coming.  If they’ve got more Developer positions than PM and Test it generally means they aren’t planning they’re completing what they have on their plates.  This is often cyclical so don’t read a whole lot into it.

If you want a good idea of how to predict work in an economy – check comic books.  They’re a luxury item but they’re one that kids save up for – so if the kiddies have money for comics then mom & dad we can guesstimate if times are really tight.  If kids buy a lot of comics – then the allowance is healthy if they buy fewer – then the allowance is down.  As a result the comics industry has always been a good way to tell how hard hit families are in a financial crunch.  They’re one of those trail indicators you don’t think about but watching their wake tells you the size of the destructive forces applied to children.  Hate to be so cold blooded – but economics suck.

Warren Ellis sent off a ping saying the comics industry’s finally feeling the pinch – and his info seems to match up with mine.  It’s not that financially the industry’s gone south yet – tons of work being done and things are being bought – but the fear of the slow down is causing less work.  His recipe for digging out of holes in the comics industry is the same as mine – raise your game up a level or two. 

What every business from Film & Entertainment (Web especially) to  GM & FORD to Marvel Comics and Microsoft has had for the last decade has been an assumed captive market.  Raise your game and create better products or you’re going to get your corporate clocks cleaned by people willing to raise their game and give customers what they want. 

This isn’t the time to get conservative – this is the time to get creative.  To dig deep take some risks (not financially but creatively) and come up with great product.  Warren’s DOKTOR SLEEPLESS is a good example of a comic built and crafted for fans that’s selling in a market where others are slipping back.

Dr. Horrible (from Joss Whedon) is another example – built for fans it was what fans wanted.  It sold beyond well (waaay past expectations)  for no advertising, no budget, and not a lot of time.  But the quality was there and they created a product they knew their target audience would want.

These are the kinds of products that save companies and that’s the strategy needed to pull it out and win. 

That’s all for this week… back to slaving away…

Oh… and for those who haven’t seen it yet – did a new experiment with Vanishing Point in Photoshop and After Effects… it’s up on the web.  A 20 minute wonder here… but always fun to play.   The original here was a still photo of an alley – near canal street as I recall – a bit of adjustment, and wallah… 3D from flat using Vanishing Point in Photoshop to extract the planes for AE.

To belabor the theme of this week’s blog here … if you haven’t picked up a new skill this week you’re not raising your personal game up a notch.  Find something you haven’t done before – and go do it!  If you don’t someone else will.  If you do – you get to choose what it is you want to learn – what it is you want to do – and you’re a lot closer to doing what you want to do in life.  Remember … you can be a passenger or the guy driving the bus in your life.  Do you want to be the guy who gets to tell everyone where they’re going and when they can get off or do you want to be told?  The choice is up to you.

Whats wrong with Google? How the “special sauce” leaves a bad after taste.

I did a search on Google yesterday off my cell phone and got back a handful of weeks, and in some cases months old results.  Nothing surprising there.  So I fired up my web browser – did the same search and got back a dozen fairly good results.  Then I did the same thing with Live Search on both my cell and my browser.

Believe it or not – I find myself using live search more and more.  Google, the old standby for so many things, has to me become a very commercialized and highly productized set of listings that don’t show me what I want when I want them.  Ironically, Live (which I fully think is going to do the same thing eventually for reasons I’ll explain later) seems to be better for not giving me “canned” results.

Anyone remember the “old” internet?  Back in the days when Google was that scrappy up and coming search engine that could find you anything you wanted?  Back when you’d type in “Madonna and Child” and not get listings for the last 3 bad albums or porn sites and instead you’d get a link to a useful story?  Back when instead of getting some Wikipedia entry that may or may not be accurate you’d get links to papers submitted and reviewed at Universities and works out there that actually had some merit?  Yeah, me too.

What we get now is something that’s been shoved through Google’s “special sauce” which gave us the decent search results.  This is good but the problem is that what the Goog’s been cooking up is only as good as it’s ingredients.  The ingredients are being tainted like bad chili by SEO specialists.  These are people that know how to get a page ranked higher – specifically on Google.  Part two of this is also that once the chili is “cooked” it is also vetted by Google’s multi-billion dollar a year advertising program.  So that whatever we search for is sorted in preference based on whatever advertiser has had the SEO juice to flood Googles special sauce with whatever spices are needed to make their results come higher in the list, and again by the usual “paid results get higher rankings” thing.

Don’t get me wrong – I have no issue with Google trying to make money.  I have no issue with anyone trying to make money.  Making money is a good thing.  But you can’t make money if you’re not providing a service which people will use.  Currently many people are moving away from Goog to Live and other search competitors.  This is due in large part because they aren’t getting what they need from Google.

What’s the Goog doing to try to fix this problem?  A lot.  They’ve got people working on the Special Sauce every day to remove these SEO artificially injected ingredients.  But the fact is once you go commercial you can’t go home again.  Just as Microsoft’s #1 real security problem is they own 95% of the desktop market – who wants to code exploits for only 5% of the market or less?  Googles search woes are owed to the fact that they’re the big dog of search.  Google will be faced with these cooking marauders as long as their the top dog in search.  Each time they “fix” the problem – someone will change the ingredients on it again and again.

Live being down on the list isn’t faced with this problem quite so much.  They also have a different approach to the way to they deal with the problem.  They have the advantage of seeing where Google’s method isn’t working so they don’t have to rework an existing model.  They have created completely different models of search technology that take into account SEO modifiers that outsiders use to adjust things.  It’s by no means perfect, but of late I’ve found it’s as good or better than the Goog. 

Time will tell if this pays off for them, but for now, I and many others are taking advantage of their approaches to get us the information we need without the bad after taste of excessively adjusted SEO results.

Reuse and recycling work

I just did a short bit on color correction in video in the previous blog, I demo’d a couple of different things you can do with the same clip to get different color corrections and other basic work with some filters that you can do quickly to get some cool effects with one very badly shot grainy clip.

Probably what I should have mentioned is … never delete your clips when you’re done.  Catalog them and save them.  Even the bad stuff can be often reused on other projects.

A good example is that grainy bad clip.   Since I had the time this morning while waiting on a phone call – I came up with a couple new effects for that same clip.  I saved them because I thought they might be useful.  Each time I do that I save myself some time.  I may not necessarilly use the clip again, but by adding tags to it in my catalog – the next time some one asks me if I can do a cosmic face effect – I can pull that up. 

Here’s the clip….

Making it look like it should…

I’ve had a few emails about getting video to look right.  Shelly and a few others out there know I don’t have the best of cameras – I do almost everything on a old Sony DCR TRV280, which is just barely considered a digital camera.  So – why do my quickies look different than the stuff that Shelly’s getting with her brand spankin new HD camera?  Which isn’t to say her stuff isn’t good – she’s got a great eye, and chooses her shots wisely.  But it does bug you when your visuals aren’t 10 times better than a 8 year old $500 camcorder. 

I also generally don’t take more than 10 minutes to shoot a quickie clip and I also don’t use a lighting kit.  It’s a worst case scenario – but when Shelly and I compared footage recently – mine looked better.  So how did I do it?  Simple.  I retouch my video.  It’s something I’ve always had do to – and just assumed everyone did it these days.   It’s believe it or not the most common and best money maker for anyone who has a budding small video business like our friend Shelly.

With video blogs, video resumes and even local tv commercials for anyone who does video work it’s probably going to be your most common work even though it’s something that most people never think to charge for when they bid a video project.  Cleaning up bad camera skills will take up most of your time.

Whether it’s removing camera shake, or getting the colors back in a face, or removing an over exposure, or just (believe it or not) removing acne - - if people know you can do that, they’ll want it and you can charge for it.

Lets face it – people prefer to have colors that don’t make them look like they’re in a zombie movie… unless they’re in… a zombie movie.  In some cases, you may have people ask you to do that as well, but they’ll never ask if they don’t know that you can do it.  So you’ll need a good demo of color correction and adjustment techniques that you can do.  The practice of this kind of work on a variety of clips will help you get a good idea how how long it takes to do this work, and what you should be charging for it.  I’m not going to go into details on how to do color correction because it will depend on the software and the hardware you have. 

If you’ve got Ulead or some lower end semi-pro software the techniques will be completely different than say Adobe or Pinnacle or others.  So – do a bit of searching on the web for color correction for your software.  Keep in mind you’ll need to know that the colors you’re producing may be different so – practice, view the footage on different monitors, practice, practice.  The steps may seem similar but there’s nothing worse than a blog that tells you to use a $5,000 piece of software that you don’t have so I won’t do that to you.  But a bit of research and you’ll get what you need.  I’ve seen great tutorials on everything from Movie Maker to AE, and even some very high end stuff like Lyric and others.  All free – all very good.

A good example of this is that I did two versions of the demo for this blog – one in an un-named very expensive program I’m currently demoing to see if I want to buy it (I probably will) and another in the freebie Microsoft Movie Maker.  I know MM inside and out – took me 10 minutes and I had a clip ready to publish that the end result is the one you see in the link below.  The $5,000 program… spent 20 minutes, and the results were… less than satisfying because I really don’t know it well yet.  It decided to do a number of things for me I didn’t ask it to – and the footage quality from it is … well blurry, soft, and worse than the Movie Maker stuff or if I’d just rendered it directly from another program.  So – practice.  Learn, practice.  When you’re ready to use the big boy toys … use’em.  But never show off your stuff unless it’s of a quality you want people to see.

In some cases – it’s nothing more than just loading up the footage and adjusting some color curves to get the values right for the shot.  In others you’ll need to do some masking.  For example the color corrected shot above – the face is color corrected with one set of curves, the background received another.  Similarly in the day-for-night shot shown here I had to pull out the face and go with an almost pitch black.  (I might also want to add some shadows from a 3D layer … it depends on how far you want to take it.) You get the idea.

Each of these requires a different level of color correction and adjustment.  So – make sure who you’re doing this for knows that there is a big difference in price between the kind of work needed for a wedding and the kind of work needed for a network TV commercial shot.  That price is how hard you have to work to make it look good.  Never show someone a “miracle” shot that took you 40 hours of work, and allow them to think this is nothing more than clicking a few buttons… Miracles=expensive, basic band aids = cheap.

And if you’re looking a highly advanced techniques for color correction – you may be looking as spending as much time as you would to animate something in a full video composite. It’s a big part of your cost, and even if it is just your time when you’re running a business it’s something you have to be willing to cost out for – which we tend to forget when we’ve taken a hobby or something we enjoy and turn it into a business.

I recommend that you learn all you can about color correction, often the most subtle color corrections on a clip are the most difficult to pull off. There are a whole slew of things you need to consider – the main character of the shot will require a different lighting than anyone else (masking and overlay), the background may need to be softened or sharpened and color corrected as well (another set of masks and overlays as well as curves), will you be needed to track the masks in the shot using motion tracking – and do they need to have some shots that will be rotoscoped? 

Sure – you can make it look like a million bucks, and for a good customer, client or friend – it may well be worth it.  But most will not expect you to create a miracle shot.  Just a good simple clean image that looks nice, gives a good flesh tone and definition. 

And… It also helps if the person you’re shooting… doesn’t look like they haven’t slept since they got off a flight from Chicago two days ago because they’ve been doing all nighters writing a video camera application on the side for kids… but that’s another project, and will require I shave, eat, and maybe get some sleep.  :-)  Over all – your cheapest solution is of course to consider your lighting, take a white balance and shoot it so it doesn’t require correction if possible.

Consulting Tips – more notes from the field…

In keeping with posts for those who want to start a consultancy – I asked consultants on several forums what they considered were “Must Haves” to be consultants.

Mind you, most of these people travel (a lot) so there’s a section here for just travel needs. 

On the professional side of the house – your professional needs – you had the more common items.  Business Licenses – which many states have not just a requirement that Consultants be licensed, but also they have additional State and in some cases local taxes for that profession.  Some also require that you have Professional Liability Insurance as well – so check your state to make sure you have that covered.

They also reminded me of the need to actually have contracts on hand – something that when a client is ready to sign on the dotted line, you can have them sign on the dotted line.  Some pointed out they need not be physical contracts – you can always print one up a at a Kinko’s.  But talk to an attorney about getting a good basic contract for services that you can fill in the blanks for (generic standard form) and if you offer a specific service which requires additional language often enough, have them draft up one of those as well.  No one specifically mentioned an attorney but you get the impassion it’s not a bad idea to swing by one and get their take on your business as well.

One thing they all do seem to agree on and I second – is that you find yourself an accountant, or at the very least really good accounting software and learn how to use it so you can hand that over to an accountant for taxes.

Next came another lesson I found interesting – get several bank accounts and use them for their purposes.  A Business account for day-to-day business activities.  A Savings fund for “rainy day” and “misc” unexpected expenses that come up.  A second savings fund for taxes (you may as well earn interest on it if you have to pay it to IRS).  A personal account for you – and place 10% from every check in there.  That’s yours, once its in there – pretend like it doesn’t exist.  Don’t touch it – don’t think about touching it – once every so often, you should take that and roll it into a 401k or other plan for your retirement.

• Professional Needs
• Business and Professional Licensees 
• Contracts (Standard form and Specific Clause)
• Personal Insurance
• Health
• Life
• Professional (Consultant) Liability Insurance
• Accountant (or Good Accounting Software)
• Way of calculating and handling taxes
• Bank Accounts:
• Business Account
• Business Savings Fund 1 (Misc)
• Business Savings Fund 2 (Taxes)
• Personal Account Savings (Bonus/Benefits

Next, we ran into suggestions for Business Needs – specifically equipment.  A good laptop and a desktop – and make sure you set aside a small budget to buy yourself a new one every 18 months was a really great tip. 

Cell Phones were next.  Some said Blackberries others iPhones, Win Mobile… bottom line – any good cell phone that can keep you in touch with your mail.  But a very very wise consultant also tossed this one out as a great tip.  For about $30 you can also get a pre-paid phone and for about $5 a month he keeps just enough minutes on it to keep it always ready.  Get one – keep it and it’s charger in your luggage.  If you lose or damage your regular cell – you’re never without one.

Home offices everyone had suggestions – but the most common is to have at least a quiet room you can work from and take calls.

Presence was another area people had opinions on, some said a blog was all they needed, others said they had a fully professional website.  Still others just a page, a blog, and so on. 

Here’s my take.  For $15-45 a month you can get yourself a nice website and have your own domain and your own email address to that domain.  (Office Live can even get you started for free – and move everything over to a paid site. The free site comes along with project and document repositories you can share with customers and coworkers and clients even).  I personally pay about $39 a month for mine and I never use half of it’s features. 

One feature I do use – and I use a lot is the Online Shared Folders.  I often back up my most recent work there.  Anyone who’s ever lost a laptop – had something crash and burn – knows that losing what you’re working on is harsh.  Do that 1,000 miles from your back ups and at a customer site is devastating. 

Skydrive is free and you get 5 gb.  There are dozens of other locations out there.  Windows Live Mesh is a personal savior to me.  Between that and Skydrive and my Office Live folders I’ve got a good 30 gb stored in the cloud that can never be destroyed and I can access from anywhere – even an Airport Kiosk. 

Your presence is who you are as a company.  Put the money out and do this right. 

Next… here’s a blast from the past.  Business cards.  Put your name, put your email, your phone and your web address on it.  Nothing else.  No titles.  Keep it professional and simple.  People do keep them – and people DO remember you when you hand them out.  Simple cards like I mention here you can get from Overnight Prints or other Web printers for 250 for $10-12. 

Next part of your presence is your online identity.  Google yourself.  If you don’t like what you see – then get rid of it.  If you have a myspace page that you wouldn’t share with a customer – get rid of it.  I don’t care if it is your “personal” space.  Clients and customers may see it and they won’t care if the reason you were stripped to your underwear singing LaVida Loco was at a college party 10 years ago. 

Scrub your own google records.  Or accept that someone else will.  Some people have the opposite problem you google them and there’s nothing.  SO – get that website up.  And while you’re at it hit the rest of the social network sites and build up a presence that speaks well of you.

We’re talking LinkedIn, Facebook, and some other professional sites.  I would avoid MySpace and similar sites like the plague as in my experience they’re hard to maintain.  By “maintain” – I mean this – if you go out to blogger or wordpress and create a blog (seperate from your web site) you can then use the RSS feed from that blog to actually feed your blog postings to many social websites at once.

This particular blog entry will feed Facebook, LinkedIn and 3 other sites I’m on.  I post once… and I’m updating 3+ web presences.  Kind of like being your own personal syndication system. 

And since we’re mentinoning LinkedIn, there are now an abundance of “professional” boards out there.  Xing, Ning, Ling, Ting, Ping, Pong, you name it the list goes on and on.   Pick the ones you actually want to participate in and do so.  Spreading yourself too thin is a mistake. 

One thing you may want to do – is open a PayPal account to do on line transactions. 

Many online freelancer sites work with PayPal so if you’re going to doing any work from them – I’d suggest you have one.  You may want to look into some of these as they’re not bad places I’m told to get bits of side work. 

I found LimeExchange, TechRepublic and Guru.com to be fairly good places.  Nothing I’d survive off of – but there is work there. GetAFreelancer.com seems to be over run with competition that is questionable at best … and always willing to bid at minimum wage or lower.  Just my experience – your actual mileage may vary.

• Business Needs
• Equipment & Supplies
• Computer
• Cell Phone
• Cards
• Office (at least a quiet room)
• Presence
• Website
• Email
• Blog(s)
• Shared Folders
• Cards
• PayPal
• Accounts with OnLine Providers
• LimeExchange
• TechRepublic
• Guru
• Others (GetAFreeLancer)
• Social Networks
• LinkedIn
• FaceBook
• (Xing,Ling,Ning,TheLadders…)

Lastly we come to Travel needs for a consultant.  Every good consultant needs a passport. It’s an official 2nd form of ID, it’s needed for travel and in general it’s handy to have and kinda cool.

You may not be traveling to Brussels – but instead to the suburbs so make sure that you have a travel budget.  Set aside enough cash as you build your business so that you at least have enough cash to pay for regular car maintenance for your vehicle and 1 tickets air fare to somewhere.  (Use it for a vacation at the end of the year was a great tip someone mentioned.)

Get an emergency credit card – basically a card that has a very very low balance on it (paypal was suggested by one person).  If you don’t like that – it was suggested that you always keep $300 cash in your suitcase.  Basically the idea is always have that ready in case of an emergency.

The same goes with a spare change of professional clothes (most said they just kept them in the wrapping believe it or not).  And with the rest of the back ups they also said to make sure you have spare chargers for any devices you depend on a lot.

• Travel Needs
• Passport
• Travel Budget account (1 trips worth)
• Car Service (Regular Maintenance)
• Decent Luggage
• Emergency Credit Card(s) ($300 limit)
• 1 Set of Spare Clothes (Unopened)
• Backup Power / Cables for any equipment (Laptop, Cell, etc.)
• Throw Away Cell Phone