Today marks the relaunch of our sister site, The Netsetter. Along with this site and FreelanceSwitch, the new Netsetter creates a “triple threat” in terms of getting better at what moves you.  All three sites offer practical tips that cover topics that can help those who want to get better at what they love doing.

The Netsetter was a blog started by Envato’s CEO, Collis Ta’eed in 2009 as a place to discuss start ups. The second iteration of the site doesn’t stray too far from the initial concept, but has been retooled by the Netsetter team to appeal to a wider audience.

If you’re a true netsetter then you’re already on your way to doing something that you truly love doing.  With The Netsetter, FreelanceSwitch and WorkAwesome, you have an arsenal of resources available to you that can enable you to do what you love at a whole new level.

Are you a netsetter? Then head on over to the newly-revamped Netsetter today!

FreelanceSwitch

15 Inspiring Home Offices

Patrik Larson takes us for a tour through 15 visually stunning home offices. Are they effective? You decide.

Freelancers from Hell — The Flip Side of Clients from Hell

You know all about clients from hell. What many freelancers don’t realize is that some of us can be just as horrific. James Chartrand discusses.

The 10 Best Web Apps for Freelancers

There are thousands of web apps designed for freelancers and small businesses. In this article we narrow it down to ten of the greatest options out there.

5 Reasons You May Not Be Ready to Student Freelance

Amber Leigh Turner, FreelanceSwitch’s resident student freelancer, talks about five things to get in order before you decide to mix study and freelancing.

5 Ways to Fire a Client

There are just some clients who you no longer want to work with. It could be that the client in question is difficult to work with or it could be more a matter that you’ve moved on from the type of work you’ve been doing for that client. Whether you’ve only done a little work for the client or you’ve been together a long time, it’s never easy to fire a client.

WorkAwesome

It’s Okay to Stare

One of WorkAwesome’s newest contributors, Coe Douglas, discusses how staring off into space can actually help you get ideas flowing and, ultimately, seeing things through to completion better than simply plowing through without stopping.

5 Incredibly Useful Gmail Features

Gmail is one of the most popular email services going these days. But many of us have only scratched the surface of what it is capable of – and how it can help us push through what is generally our biggest “time suck”. Susan Johnston explores 5 of the many features Gmail has to offer.

Procrastination Hack: Aim for Nonzero

Procrastination is often not only misguided, but misunderstood. Trying to do too much can lead to procrastination just as easily as actually doing too little. Aiming for “working in small chunks” is one of the suggestions André Kibbe offers in this piece on hacking procrastination.

7 Power Tips For Productive RSS News Feed Reading

While keeping up with the latest in your RSS feed reader is a way of staying informed, it can quickly deteriorate into a huge time waster. Abhijeet Mukherjee delivers some tips to keep your feed reading from becoming a liability instead of an asset.

11 Productivity Tools for Road Warriors and Telecommuters

Just because you’re away from the office doesn’t mean you need to be away from the things that keep you productive. Carl Natale gives an overview of some tools to have in your arsenal to make sure you’re making progress no matter where you are.

FreelanceSwitch

• Find a Collaboration Partner That Fits Your Style by Patrik Larsson. Learn how to pick your freelance collaborators and business partners.
• Web Writing: Who Sets the Standards by Kristen Fischer. This article discusses how creatives should stay consistent when writing for the web.
• How to Use Old-School Techniques to Get New Clients by James Chartrand. It might be time to look at some old-school methods instead of trying to stay on top of the latest and greatest technology.
• Should You Quote Rates Over the Phone? by Thursday Bram. Thursday makes the case for sticking to written estimates to make sure you don’t get railroaded on the phone.
• Do You Work On the Weekends? by Thursday Bram. Do you work on the weekends? And do you think there’s anything wrong with doing so?

WorkAwesome

• Handling Interruptions Realistically by André Kibbe. This article outlines how to deal with situations that keep you from finishing your tasks in a realistic way.
• Habits That Annoy Your Cubicle Mates by Ana da Silva. Keep in your co-workers good graces by learning what not to do if you share workspace with them.
• 9 Ways To Improve Your Writing by Carl Natale. Brush up on your writing skills and learn 9 ways you can take them to the next level.
• How to Ask Your Boss to Work from Home by Mike Vardy. While you know you can get more done at home, you may have a challenge ahead of you convincing your boss that’s the case. Gearing up the courage to ask is the first step, but read this if you want to have some tips on how to ask.
• The Benefits of Working from Home by Ana da Silva. If you’re on the fence about whether you want to move from the office to home, consider this piece on The Benefits of Working from Home, which details some of what you’d have to look forward to.

Lewis is an experienced writer and veteran of presentations, and is one of our own WorkAwesome writers since launch who has posted regularly on the subject of delivering effective presentations.

Hit the break for more about the book.

From the back blurb:

In Rockstar Presentations, author Joseph Lewis shares tips, tricks and wisdom on public speaking with no fear, no cue cards and no worries!

Whether you’re giving a blockbuster keynote or teaching a handful of co-workers how to do something cool, this book was written for you.

You’ll learn:

• Why everything you’ve heard about avoiding stage fright is wrong
• How not to fail at PowerPoint
• The secret techniques separating awesome presenters from the rest
• How you can use the same strategies employed by Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill to give great presentations

There’s 138 pages of distilled knowledge in this book, but we haven’t stopped there: we’ve thrown in three PowerPoint presentation templates, created by Lewis, to get you jumpstarted on the road to effective presentations.

Click here to buy the book. For immediate notification of future launches and a limited-time discounts for new books, sign-up for the Rockin’ List today.

Lewis is an experienced writer and veteran of presentations, and is one of our own WorkAwesome writers since launch who has posted regularly on the subject of delivering effective presentations.

Here’s some more about Rockstar Presentations from the back blurb:

In Rockstar Presentations, author Joseph Lewis shares tips, tricks and wisdom on public speaking with no fear, no cue cards and no worries!

Whether you’re giving a blockbuster keynote or teaching a handful of co-workers how to do something cool, this book was written for you.

You’ll learn:

• Why everything you’ve heard about avoiding stage fright is wrong
• How not to fail at PowerPoint
• The secret techniques separating awesome presenters from the rest
• How you can use the same strategies employed by Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill to give great presentations

There’s no exact date for the launch yet, but it will be sometime next week. For immediate notification of the launch and a limited-time discount code for the book, sign-up for the Rockin’ List today.

Every month we’ll be running a two week ‘Session’ on a creative topic. Our first Session, beginning today, is on Character Illustration, and future Sessions will be on varied topics like interface design, illustrative typography and creative freelancing. Unlike regular Tuts+ content, Sessions content is more theoretical, opinion based and will often cross many disciplines.

Depending on the Session, each specific article will fit into one of our ten educational sites (including FreelanceSwitch and WorkAwesome). So they will be published on the appropriate site, while our central site Sessions.tutsplus.com/Creative will provide the hub for each Session. There you will be able to track each Session, grab the monthly wallpaper, participate in a community project, subscribe to the RSS feed, follow CS on Twitter and give feedback (or praise!) for the Session.

Sessions is a bit of a new take on teaching online and is one we hope will be really successful. It’s going to really take advantage of the increasing diversity of our Tuts+ network, meaning that for example we could have a session on web design that might have a ‘freelance web design’ post on FreelanceSwitch, a ‘build a web design’ post on Nettuts+, a ‘optimize a web design for the iphone’ on the upcoming Mobiletuts+ and much more!

Because it’s so new, you can expect to see us tweak and improve the model over the next year or so. The content is all free, and like the rest of Tuts+ will remain so. At some point we’ll investigate adding either a bit of premium content to each Session or possibly extended courses for subscribers to help pay for it all!

Finally each Session will feature cover artwork by a talented designer or illustrator. The artwork will be downloadable as a wallpaper and will help give each of our Sessions a bit of personality!

Session 1: Character Illustration

Sessions is already bubbling with activity. You can download a gorgeous desktop wallpaper by Ryan Putnam (Rype), take part in our ‘Create an Antihero’ community project, or dive straight into the fully-illustrated Principles of Cute Character Design by Sascha Preuss, exclusive to Creative Sessions.

Advertising: FusionAds

Our Creative Sessions hub-site displays only one ad on every page – an excellent opportunity for your product to cut through the noise and reach its target market. Create a campaign with FusionAds to be seen on Creative Sessions and many other high quality creative sites.

If you’d like to advertise elsewhere on the Tuts+ network, we are big fans of BuySellAds and you can purchase ad spots by heading over and searching for your favourite site!

The Prizes

We have some software from Marketcircle to give away. WorkAwesome readers can get their hands on a copy of Daylite and Daylite Touch, while FreelanceSwitch readers could receive a free copy of Billings. We’ll be giving away three copies of Daylite and Daylite Touch this week.

We’re also giving away ThinkGeek products (because they’re awesome). In each article throughout the week, we’ll tell you what that day’s ThinkGeek prize is, and provide you with special instructions for entering for that draw.

Since this is a week so many people take off work and away from the Internet, it’s a great way to show your dedication and work ethic. Publicize your entrepreneurial spirit by entering awesome giveaways all week!

How to Enter

To win a copy of Daylite and Daylite Touch, leave a comment on this post telling us the most important lesson you learned in 2009 about getting ahead in the office.

Make sure you use a valid email address with your comment, so we can let you know you’ve won.

Marketcircle develops software for the Mac only. If you’re not a Mac user, we’ve got ThinkGeek giveaways lined up throughout the week, which you can enter by following the instructions on our regular content this week.

Conditions

• Employees and contractors of Envato, past and present, can’t enter (but you can bathe in the residual awesomeness of having worked with us, which we feels makes up for it).
• I select the winners at my sole discretion, based on how awesome I think the entries are.
• Entries close on Christmas Day, Australian timezone (that’s the 25th of December, in case you didn’t know). You can bet your mother’s uncle I won’t be checking them on that day, but that’s when the deadline is!
• You must be 18 or above to enter. Sorry to be a bunch of Scrooges, but Santa has monopolised the youth market already.

Merry Christmas!

As promised, I’ve republished the stories the winners submitted in this post. These are stories about embarrassing events, so as you’d expect some of these are a tad crude. My general opinion on office stories is: the cruder the funnier. If you disagree, this is definitely not the post for you to read! Just a warning.

Bob:

Got my first big job and apartment in the city in April of 2005.  I didn’t know what to expect and only knew 1 person so you can assume that I was pretty nervous.  The night before I had a hard time sleeping and my stomach was anxious, but I was ready to take on the word, dark suit and all.

After getting through the HR paperwork, I met my boss who mentioned that she had to leave to meet a client that afternoon and the other remaining members of our team were out of the office on vacation, business, etc (I worked on a team of 4).  She offered to make it up by taking me to lunch when she returned.

So I decided to venture out downtown to try and find some lunch on my own and get the lay of the land.  I wasn’t too familiar with my surroundings and Arby’s was a familiar, slow-roasted friend from my past. Little did I know that this Arby’s was one of the most foul restaurants in all of the area.

After eating lunch, I decided I better use the restroom before heading back.  I had a little gas so I did what every self respecting man would do and tried to help it out.  As I pushed the door to the restroom, a shart (urban dictionary it) of career crippling consequences let loose into my new navy blue suit.  I nervously jumped into the stall to assess the situation (btw, the lock did not work on the door).  As I looked down in horror, I came to a cross-road.  I would be meeting many other members of the organization later that day and I could either pull them up and hope for the best and be referenced as the poop guy for the rest of my time there or maybe I could commando it.  I decided to take the road less followed.  I pulled off the underwear, gently folded them up into a square and placed them behind the basin of the toilet (this place didn’t even have trashcans in the johns).  I commandoed it across the street to Macy’s, bought one pair of underwear, changed in the fitting rooms and was back in the hour allotted to me for lunch.

To this day, I’ve never been back to Arby’s.

Ash:

My very first job was as an Office Assistant with a prestigious advertising company. My role involved various office duties but mostly mediocre ones like getting groceries for the office, photocopying, running errands etc.

One day I was sent to go pick up the CEO’s Porsche 911 from the repair shop. ‘No problem’ I thought until I got there and discovered it was a manual drive with me only being able to drive an automatic. I rang up my boss in a panic and she quickly dismissed it saying ‘It’s easy’ and ‘I don’t have time for this. Just drive the damn thing back here’.

So I managed to crawl my way out of the repair shop, slowly crawl my way across town (stalling the car many times in the process) and make it to the parking lot at my work. Just as I thought ‘Victory! I’ve done it!’ I put the car into the wrong gear and slammed the car into the parking lot / office wall. Everyone in the office rushed out to see what had made so much noise and all raised their hands to their mouths in horror when they saw me in the CEO’s Porsche all smashed up.

I wasn’t fired and he had insurance so it was OK in the end. I did use the opportunity to remind my boss to never, ever make me drive a manual car for work again though.

Chris Offner:

I’d been hunting for jobs, and found one at a local community college in Texas; things were going well. I just graduated with my degree in Graphic Design, and things were looking up when I had met with the coordinator of the Student Activities department. We completed the interview, and everything had gone well. I got the job, and met me coworkers that share my office. One of them, I’ll call “S” (in her early 40’s), sits right behind me, while the others are nearby, in clear eyes view.

“S” is a competent user of Windows Live Messenger, and was chatting with a friend of hers over matters foreign to me. “Girls…gosh” I was thinking, but my photoshop project had reached a halt. I needed a bit more information before I could proceed. I turned around to ask her a question, and we got in a heated conversation about working here, and problems that we face, when I notice her monitor blinking. My eyes wandered around the room, and finally made their way to her monitor. Her friend, (who’s name I could see) had sent her an instant message, “He’s just jealous because he doesn’t have a big cock like this one”. I tried to act coy, but she noticed that I was looking behind her, and when she turned around to see what I was looking at, she exited the Instant Messaging window as fast as she could and we both started laughing hysterically for the better part of 10 minutes. She explained to me that her friend had tried to send a picture of a “well-endowed” man to her husband, and it had never gone through. She was interpreting his lack of response as anger, and was explaining her point to “S”.

Needless to say, I now ask if I can turn around before I ask her any questions face to face.

Enjoy your prizes, guys.

If you missed out on winning this time, Embassy Suites Hotels is running a competition that’s similar — you post your most embarrassing office party stories. The winner will receive an office holiday party at Embassy Suites (that’s a little fancier than a file folder with attitude!).

We recently published an article that tells you what not to do with your PowerPoint designs, and we’ll be publishing much more on making presentations and PowerPoint work in the near future.

In the meantime, our fellow Envato site, Web.AppStorm, recently published a stellar list of resources for making your presentations more effective and beautiful. From the article:

When going through all the effort to get in front of a crowd, you need to ensure that you communicate effectively. In the past decade, the majority of us have most likely had to sit through a bullet point infested presentation that completely failed to keep us engaged. Or worse, awake.

There are many aspects to giving a good presentation and being an engaging public speaker. The good news is that the web is full of good resources that can help us improve in these areas. By now, most presenters are aware that lots of text in your slides is a no-no and knowing your content is priceless. But even that isn’t enough.

Here are a list of resources that can help you take your talk to another level. Enjoy!

Keep Your Audience in Focus – 16 Resources for Effective Presentations

Speaking of Mac wallpapers, if that’s your cup of tea be sure to check in with our sister site Mac.AppStorm’s set of 50 Mac Desktop Wallpapers and 50 iPhone Wallpapers.

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