Nerve wrecking.

That’s what it means. And I don’t mean the actual travelling. Its the before leaving for the trip that’s nerve wrecking. From planning & scheduling to informing to trying to do everything yourself. It’s just mind boggling, stressing and frustrating!

It’s not supposed to be so stressful. I get it. It’s just not that easy to do y’know? A couple of weeks before I left, I read an extremely well timed guest post by Alex Fayle on Men with Pens in which he gave some excellent advice on planning a freelance vacation. 

Half of it was about dealing with ongoing projects and hiring someone to take care of your email etc. I didn’t have the time to sort it all out so I decided to finish up all my ongoing assignments. I also emailed all the people who needed to know that I was going on a break. 

Till here, it was all hunky dory. 

Then I took a pill of stupid and decided to take on my blog and schedule three week’s worth of posts for The Base instead of getting guest posters to contribute. I’d realized there was too little time and I had to do everything myself. 

Even that would have been fine because I did manage to set up the scheduled posts. But then my trip got extended by a week and it didn’t occur to me that I’d need to schedule more posts.

Yeah, math was never  my strong point. The result was my blog being neglected for an entire week.

As is obvious, I forgot to repeat to myself: I am not the centre of the universe. Had I asked for it, people would have helped me. We have twitter nowadays for god’s sake!

I’ll be travelling again later this year and for longer than a couple of weeks. I’m already working out the details even though I’m months away from it. 

Ever had trouble like this while on a break? What’s your worst vacation story as a freelancer? Come on. Make me feel better.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, freelance business, Freelancing

The five part series on twitter that I did in february sent a lot of twitter related search to my blog. Out of the all the search phrases, I’ve narrowed them down to 8 most common phrases. The first four were answered in Twitter FAQ Part I.

Here are the next four. I hope this helps you guys get answers faster without having to read through a lot of content.

Preset Tweets

You can preset tweets by using a service called Tweetlater. It’s an online service that lets you schedule tweets which are then sent at the specified time.

Replying to a tweet

To reply to a tweet on twitter, all you’ve got to is add a ‘@’ sign before their username. Remember, type their username and not their real  name. Mine’s @samarowais. That’s my full name so it’s easy. But I know a lot of people who have very different username’s.

If you’re using a Twitter desktop application, then you won’t even need to type @. All you’ll have to do is click on the reply option.

DM tricks for twitter

DM stands for Direct Message. It means that other users will not be able to see or reply to this message. It can only be replied to by the person you’ve sent it to.

Sending a DM is as easy as replying to a tweet. If you’re twittering from the web, simply type ‘D’ before the username. Example: D samarowais ( D[space]username) followed by your message.

Remember that you don’t need to insert an @. Just the username after D.

Further Reading: 10 Twitter Tips and Tricks

Twitter Desktop Option

While twitter may have started as a browser based service, it has out grown it’s browser days. There are plenty of desktop options available if you want to use twitter more frequently and efficiently than a web browser allows.

For Twitter desktop options, check out Top 5 Twitter Desktop Applications.

Technorati Tags: Social Networking, Twitter, Twitter tricks

This Sunday, instead of linking to a number of posts, I’m linking to a report by Chris Guillebeau.

279 Days To Overnight Success is for writers, bloggers and other online artists looking to succeed in their online ventures.

On a side note, I love the layout of the website!

Technorati Tags: Blogging, link love, Writing

This picture was taken by me on my  first visit to Al Qasba, Sharjah last year. The fountain is just one part of an area that is described as the cultural hub of Sharjah.

There are countless resturants and cafes along with an amusement park area for kids and boat rides for anyone who’d like a trip around the canal.. Al Qasba also boasts of Sharjah’s tallest ferris wheel (which isn’t all that tall) and is called the Eye of the Emirates.

The place is lively, colorful and always bustling. It’s one of my favourite place to hang out in the evening.

Interesting trivia: Al Qasba is built around a canal.

Technorati Tags: Al Qasba, Eye of Emirates, Sharjah, UAE

Ever since I did my 5 part series on twitter, I’ve been getting a lot of search results related to it. Most of the search words were answered, but its understandable that people don’t have the time to go through an entire post for a piece of information that isn’t highlighted.

Here’s a list of questions that have landed people on The Base.

How to Create Twitter Hashtags?

Creating hashtags is easy. All you have to do is follow @hashtags from your twitter account and then add a # symbol before the word you want to create a hash about. 

I recently tweeted about a competition I won over at WahmBizBuilder. I tweeted something along the lines of  ”I won the Seth Godin Book content from @wahmbizbuilder! ” Now if I wanted to create a hashtag for the word ‘contest’, I’d writer it as #contest.

I hope this make it clear. For more information, check out the Twitter Fan Wiki for hashtags.

What Does RT Stand For?

RT is short for Re-Tweet. Retweeting means repeating someone else’s tweet for more exposure or simply because you like it.

If you’re twittering from the web, add ‘RT’ before your tweet, then copy and paste the tweet of your choice.

Does replying to twitter help you be seen?

It most definitely does! Replying to other users on twitter helps you engage in conversations and network. Not only are you ‘being seen’ by other people, but you’re also building your personal brand.

Just be friendly and mind your manners when interacting with other twitter-ers and you’ll see your follower numbers increase.

What is twitter and how do you use it?

Twitter is a social networking web service that lets you communicate with people. There’s a catch though. You have to communicate your message in 140 characters or less.  It may say that it’s meant for friends, family and co-workers to communicate, but that’s not how most of its users use twitter.

Twitter is used to network with people with similar interest as yours. If you’re a writer, you’ll start following writers and interact with them. Not only will you get to know some pretty amazing people this way, you’ll find plenty of opportunities to build relationships.

Technorati Tags: Social Networking, Twitter, twitter questions, Twitter tricks