The below example explains the disable and enable f buttons with jQuery.

<div><button id="btnDisable">Disable</button>


<button id="btnEnable">Enable</button></div>


<button id="btnClear">Test me button</button>


<script type="text/javascript" src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js"></script><script type="text/javascript">// <![CDATA[
jQuery(document).ready(function($) {
$("#btnDisable").click(function() {
$("#btnClear").attr("disabled", "disabled");
}); // click()
$("#btnEnable").click(function() {
$("#btnClear").removeAttr("disabled");
}); // click()
}); // ready()

// ]]></script>

Can it be that DOS and I have been involved with each other for 30 years? That sounds about right. DOS has been a hard one to romance, to be sure.

Can it be that DOS and I have been involved with each other for 30 years? That sounds about right. DOS has been a hard romance, to be sure.

Thirty years ago, I was a lowly worker for a Congressional research agency that no longer exists. I was going to write “a lowly IT worker,” until I remembered that we didn’t have IT workers 30 years ago: Information Centers really didn’t come into vogue for several years, until the IBM PC caught on and corporations were scrambling to put them in place of their 3270 mainframe terminals. Back in 1981, we used NBI and Xerox word processors. These were big behemoths that came installed with their own furniture they were so unwieldy. We had impact printers and floppy discs that were eight inches in diameter. The first hard drives were a whopping 5 MB and the size of a big dictionary. But that came a few years later.

At the agency, one of the things that I figured out was how to hook up these word processors to a high-speed Xerox printer that also was the size of a small car. We had to use modems, as I recall: you know those things beeped that used to be included on every PC? When was the last time you used a PC with an internal modem, or a floppy disc? I can’t remember, but it has been probably a decade for both. Remember the hullabaloo when Apple came out with a laptop without a floppy? Now we have them without any removable storage whatsoever: they are called iPads. Steve always was ahead of curve.

Anyway, back to DOS. I used to pride myself on knowing my mistress’ every command, every optional parameter. And we had EDLIN, a very primitive command line editor. It wasn’t all that hard – there weren’t more than a dozen different commands. (Of course they are preserved by Wikipedia.)When a new version came out, I studied the new manuals to ferret out tricks and hidden things that would help me slap my end users who would love to do format c:/s and erase their hard drives.

And new versions of DOS were a big deal to our industry, except for DOS 4, which was a total dog. One of my fondest memories of that era was going to the DOS 5 launch party in the early 1990s: Steve Ballmer was doing his hyperkinetic dance and sharing the stage with Dave Brubeck. To make a point of how bad DOS 4 was Brubeck tried to play “Take Five” in 4/4 time, before switching to 5/4 time as it was intended. The party was held on a boat, giving rise to the opening icon above. Those were fun times.

But DOS wasn’t enough for our computers, and in the late 1980′s Microsoft began work on Windows. By 1990, we had Windows v3 that was really the first usable version. By then we also had the Mac OS for several years and graphical OS’s were here to stay. DOS went into decline. It didn’t help that a family feud with DR DOS kept many lawyers engaged over its origins either. As the 1990s wore on, we used DOS less and less until finally Windows 95 sealed its fate: the first version of Windows that didn’t need DOS to boot.

I won’t even get into OS/2, which had a troubled birth coming from both IBM and Microsoft, and has since disappeared. My first book, which was never published, was on OS/2 and was rewritten several times as we lurched from one version to another, never engaging the business public.

Once PC networks caught on, DOS wasn’t a very good partner. You had 640 kilobytes of memory – yes, KB! — and network drivers stole part of that away for their own needs. Multitasking and graphical windows also made us more productive, and we never looked back. For a great ten minute video tour and trip down memory lane by Andrew Tait showing successive upgrades of Windows OS go here.

But DOS was always my first love, my one and true. I still use the command line to ping and test network connectivity and to list files in a directory. There is something comforting about seeing white text on a mostly black screen.

Yes, we haven’t been in touch in many years, and now when I need a new OS I just bring up a VM and within a few minutes can have whatever I need, without the hassle of CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT. (Here is a column that I wrote a few years ago about getting Windows NT to work in a VM.) But happy birthday, DOS, and thanks for the memories. It’s been lots of fun, all in all.

In this issue of Ask FreelanceSwitch, we look at getting back into working and overhead. Ask FreelanceSwitch is a regular column here that allows us to help beginners get a grip on freelancing. If you have a question about freelancing that you want answered, send an email to askfreelanceswitch@gmail.com.

Question 1

I’ve stayed home for the last 10 years raising my boys. Picked up a few projects and have done volunteer work. How should I charge for my work? Where I left off? My portfolio is not very strong, but my work ethic is. I’m trying to catch back up.

With a ten year break in your freelancing career, it can be tough to get back into the swing of things. You’ll feel like you need to catch up with freelancers who were working throughout that whole period and the fact of the matter is that you can’t. Your freelancing career will look very different than other peoples’ and that’s perfectly fine.

Without an in-depth portfolio, you’re somewhat starting from scratch here. That means that you’ve got an opportunity that most freelancers who have been working for awhile don’t: you can take a look at different opportunities to focus your work and build the best portfolio you can from the ground up. If, for instance, you want to write copy for restaurant websites, you can target your portfolio specifically to that niche.

You will have to sink some time into building a great portfolio and building up your client list. But since you do have more experience than a freelancer starting from the absolute beginning, you likely will be able to raise your rates fairly quickly.

Question 2

I really enjoy your posts and information for us fellow freelancers. I have a rather interesting question on overhead that I think may be worth exploring.

I am beginning to get super busy with regular ongoing clients (an ad agency commission) and am looking to expand with a new employee, equipment, and an executive suite up the road. What is the best way to determining if I can afford it and will it be alright with my income per month. Also, is there a known figure for a safety net for overhead (i.e. 20% of revenue) for creative professionals? I don’t want to spread myself thin because I think I can afford it but in result I am not allowing for enough profit each month. What are your thoughts?

One technique that could make it easier to decide on whether you can afford each part of your expansion is to set aside the money now: by saving up the amount that you would need to pay an employee for a month, you can immediately tell how difficult that proposition will be.

If it’s tough but feasible when you aren’t getting the benefit of that employee’s work, you’re on the right track. But if it is impossible to get anywhere near paying for that new employee without going out and landing work for that employee to do, you may not be ready yet. After all, there’s always a chance a gig will fall through, or you’ll have a slow month, and you need to be sure that you can pay an employee even then.

In my experience, there isn’t a set number that makes sense as a safety net for every freelancer. The simple truth is that not only do we have different needs in terms of money, but we also are willing to accept different levels of risk. For example, a college student freelancing on the side and still getting the occasional check from his parents can run a much narrower margin than a mom freelancing to pay her own bills and those of her children. Choosing how much to set aside is a matter of preference.

That said, I don’t actually maintain a percentage-based safety net. My approach is to keep enough money in a savings account to cover the next month’s business bills, no matter what I’ve got coming up in the next thirty days. This is above and beyond saving for new hardware or my personal savings. This is just a cushion for my business.

One of the defining features of the next generation of smartphones – which are starting to come out now – will be a technology called NFC (Near Field Communication). Instead of whipping out your wallet at a store, via NFC you’ll simply tap or wave your phone to make a payment. This has major implications for banking institutions and the four main payment networks in the U.S.: Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover. All have been actively preparing for this sea change in how we pay for things.

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Over on our ReadWriteMobile channel, Sarah Perez has been running a series about the impact of NFC in 2011. Here’s her explanation of what NFC is, from the introductory post:

NFC is a newer wireless technology that allows devices to communicate with each other over short distances. The data transfer between the devices occurs through one of two means: either a short wave or, as is more common, a touch or tap.

Some notable phones available now (or very soon) that offer NFC capabilities include the Google Nexus S, as well as the Samsung Galaxy II (select models), Nokia C7, Nokia C7-00 and the Samsung Wave 578. Wikipedia maintains a list here.

Credit Card Companies

All of the major credit card companies have been busy rolling out NFC initiatives.

In May, Visa announced that it will launch a next-generation digital wallet service. The platform will allow consumers to create a digitized version of their actual wallet, in which they load all their cards, whether Visa or not. Even merchant loyalty cards will be supported.

Also this year, Visa teamed up with Samsung in order to bring NFC-enabled mobile payments to the London 2012 Olympics. With any NFC-capable phone, mobile users will be able to pay for purchases using only their phone at over 60,000 locations in London.

In April, we profiled the latest from Mastercard. They’re working on SIM-based solutions, embedded solutions and the continued deployments of NFC tags.

American Express has a digital payments and commerce platform called Serve, which recently announced its first carrier deal since launching in March of this year. The company’s new partnership with U.S. operator Sprint will allow Serve’s mobile wallet application to be made available in the Sprint Zone for customers using select Android phones.

Mobile Banking

Banks are also ramping up for the mobile payments revolution.

At the end of March, we reported on a NFC mobile payments pilot program by Wells Fargo in San Francisco. The trial used Visa’s In2Pay microSD solution. There are NFC-enabled mobile wallet services under development from other U.S. banks too – including Bank of America, Chase and U.S. Bank.

Square & The Startups

As well as the banks and credit card companies, startups like Square – the mobile payment solution founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey – have been making hay in the mobile payments sun this year.

Square provides a dongle-like device that you attach to your mobile phone in order to make payments. Unlike many of the other solutions we’ve discussed in this post, Square is not powered by NFC. This year, Square got an investment from Visa. Later, in May, it announced the Square Register. The aim with that is to make real world buying as easy as a one-click Internet purchase, a la Amazon or iTunes.

As of May, Square had shipped 500,000 card readers. It did one million transactions in May, to the tune of $3 million in processing per day. The company is on track to process $1 billion in transactions within a year.

Other products to watch in this space include Card.io (you pay by holding your credit card up to the phone), Zoosh (uses ultrasound instead of NFC!), Zong (acquired by eBay in June, it’s a middleman connection between merchants and telephone companies), Payfone (which American Express invested in) and Sage (mobile payments for small businesses).

Carriers & Google

Operator-led mobile commerce initiative Isis is another mobile payments heavyweight. It has so far formed relationships with Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover. Isis is NFC-powered and will enable people to use their phones to pay for transactions at point-of-sale, just by tapping or waving their phone.

Finally, it wouldn’t be a web-related battle if Google wasn’t involved. Sure enough, the Google Wallet is "coming soon."

As you can see, it’s a very busy space right now – possibly a bit too crowded. Let us know how you think it will shake out over the rest of 2011 and beyond.

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Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

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According to the announcement from MongoHQ:

We are still road-mapping our integration process, so it is important to note that there will be no immediate changes for our users. We are working closely with the users at MongoMachine to inform them of this as well. As we move forward, we will work with each of them, providing support and solutions that meet their needs.

We’ve seen surprisingly little in the NoSQL market so far this year. The biggest event was the merger of CouchOne and Membase to form Couchbase. Also, platform-as-a-service provider DotCloud acquired DuoStack. Both companies provided MongoDB (and other NoSQL) hosting as part of its service.

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At OSCON today, a panel of educators talked about their experiences using App Inventor in introductory, college-level computer science classes. Eni Mustataraj from Wellesley College, Ralph Morelli from Trinity College, and Dave Wolber from the University of San Francisco talked about the ways in which they had utilized App Inventor in the classroom.

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“Anyone Should Be Able to Tinker on Their Smartphone”

App Inventor was created with the idea that anyone should be able to tinker on their smartphones and that anyone should easily be able to design and develop their own apps. Built by Google, with input from MIT professor Hal Abelson, the tool aims to help promote an interest in programming and computer science by giving non-experts an easy way to get started. It’s no surprise with Professor Abelson’s involvement, that App Inventor borrows heavily from that other entry-level MIT programming project Scratch.

Like Scratch, App Inventor uses a drag-and-drop visual interface that allows you to assemble build block commands and from these, build your app. Although there are some limitations with the library, programming with App Inventor means no syntax errors – one of the most frustrating things novice programmers face. Furthermore, as your Android connects to your computer while you work, App Inventor also greatly simplifies not just development but also the testing of apps.

Engaging Non-Engineering Students in Computer Science

The professors at OSCON today all spoke of the success stories they’ve had with App Inventor. Wolber, for example, said that he used App Inventor in his CS 0 class, a course at University of San Francisco that fulfills the math graduation requirement but that is often taken by students who loathe math. He boasted a high number of students – all non-programmers and non-CS majors, who went on to take subsequent computer science courses. He pointed to students being able to design apps that combined their passion for their phones along with their interest in building apps that were personally useful. “Students love their phones,” he said, “and when they realize they can build apps, they are highly motivated to learn.”

Professor Morelli said that his students were tasked with building apps that were socially meaningful. Indeed, both of these elements – the personal utility and the social good – may be key to engaging certain populations that wouldn’t otherwise be interested in programming.

App Inventor’s Uncertain Future

Despite the praise from the educators at OSCON today and from others who’ve used the tool in their classes, the future of Android App Inventor is uncertain. It remains a Google Labs project, and with the impending closure of Google Labs, it’s not clear what will happen to App Inventor.

Google, for its part, wouldn’t comment on what will happen to App Inventor when Labs shuts down.

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The results are part of Capgemini’s Executive Outsourcing Survey, and follows the firm’s launch of its social media management service. Harris surveyed 302 senior executives at Fortune 1000 companies.

More than half say that social media is a part of their company’s customer care operations, but 64% of those said that the marketing department is solely responsible for social media marketing. Most (74%) executives in the study were simply unsure how many employees are dedicated to customer care via the social Web.

Most (57%) see social media as a means for “inviting customer input on product and services, lead generation, responding to complaints, internal reporting, and measuring customer satisfaction.” However, there’s still a sizable minority (13%) that believe social media is just a fad and is not important to their company’s success.

Photo by kioan

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In many of these cases, the funds or the accelerators want to put in $100,000 to $500,000 in select ventures but are having a hard time finding mature entrepreneurs to support.

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I am pretty sure that the pipeline in your community will be of a significantly higher quality within six months.

During this week’s roundtable, we had three startups presenting.

iFood.tv

First, Vikrant Mathur from Menlo Park, California, discussed iFood.tv, a video recipe network where chefs, cook-book authors, etc. share their videos and over three million culinary arts enthusiasts consume them. An ad-supported network, the company has achieved over $1 million in revenue and is profitable. It is currently evaluating options and strategies for growth and the possibility of additional financing. Today’s discussion was largely about those options. I like the company a lot and being an enthusiast of the culinary arts myself, I look forward to using the site.

In fact, on a small side note, I want to draw your attention to a series that is currently running on my blog called The Next European Renaissance in which I have discussed culinary arts as an area where I’d like to see more innovation that is enabled by technology. The series is a followup to my earlier series, Silicon Valley: The Next Decade where I discussed the Valley’s next renaissance. While I was in Europe recently, I had a chance to think more deeply about the role Europe ought to be playing in that and other Renaissance movements around the world.

PartingOut

Next, Kevin Fullerton, from Graham, Texas, pitched PartingOut, an online exchange for after-market auto parts that are beyond the top 10 to 20 that most parts dealers sell. Kevin is a 1M/1M premium member and he has a deep understanding and domain knowledge of the ‘salvage’ business as it is called. Kevin has come up with a rather subtle idea for tapping into the parts that are beyond the top 10 to 20, where most of the market is focused. I look forward to working further with Kevin on building this business.

Healthcare e-Market

Then Dr. Adarsh Patil from Bangalore, India, presented Heathcare e-Market, again, an online exchange for the medical tourism industry where patients and providers around the globe would transact to find the best solutions for the medical tourism needs. The business model Adarsh is proposing is a per lead compensation structure, which seems perfectly reasonable. However, the business is at a pure concept stage and most of the details are yet to be fleshed out. I like the idea, but to go from idea to financing, there is a long road for Adarsh to travel still.

You can select the business you like best of those discussed today through a poll on the 1M/1M Facebook page.

The recording of today’s roundtable can be found here. Recordings of previous roundtables are all available here.

I would very much like to hear about your business, so let me invite you to come and pitch at one of our free 1M/1M public roundtables. We will be holding future roundtables at 8:00 a.m. PDT on the following dates:

Thursday, August 4, Register Here.
Thursday, August 11, Register Here.
Thursday, August 25, Register Here.

And if you want a deeper relationship with me, you are very welcome to join the 1M/1M premium program. If you have any questions about the program, please, first study the website, especially What to expect from the 1M/1M premium program and the FAQs. You can also take the 1M/1M self-assessment test here. If you have additional questions, please email me and I would be very happy to respond. Please note, that I work exclusively with 1M/1M entrepreneurs.I also invite you to join the 1M/1M mailing list for the ease and convenience of getting updates. This way we can stay in touch and it will help you to decide if 1M/1M is a program for you.

About Sramana Mitra

Sramana Mitra is the founder of the One Million by One Million (1M/1M) initiative, an educational, business development and incubation program that aims to help one million entrepreneurs globally to reach $1 million in revenue and beyond. She is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and strategy consultant. She writes the blog Sramana Mitra On Strategy and is author of the Entrepreneur Journeys book series and Vision India 2020. From 2008 to 2010, Mitra was a columnist for Forbes. As an entrepreneur CEO, she ran three companies: DAIS, Intarka and Uuma. She has a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Incubator photo from Geograph
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The company was founded on the premise that “it shouldn’t be easier to manage 1000 friends on Facebook than it is to manage a single server in your cloud infrastructure.” To this end, it has created a social network like interface for monitoring and interacting with computer networks from both desktops and mobiles.

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Here’s a look at the mobile client:

Nodeable not just generates activity streams for important system events, but it builds in tools for managing common processes.

Nodeable reminds me of some of the IT software-as-a-service companies that have cropped up in the past few years, such as Loggly, Spiceworks, Netuitive and Prelert. But Nodeable isn’t just aggregating server logs or providing monitoring tools – it’s trying to completely recreate the way server admins maintain infrastructure.

Here’s an illustration from the Nodeable website of its value proposition:

I don’t know yet how Nodeable’s analytics hold up against Netuitive and Prelert in terms of predicting problems and solutions. But this is certainly one to watch.

Nodeable is based in San Francisco and raised $2 million in funding from True Ventures.

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“Social” is an easy word to throw around these days. Olanoff wishes the Web didn’t take it so lightly. He’d prefer we talk about social good or social reform, rather than social media. “I don’t know what the phrase ‘social media’ means anymore,” he says. “I don’t think anybody does. I’ve always felt that what was missing [from that phrase] is the social part. The human aspect of it is severely lacking.”

Back in 2009, Olanoff and his friend Mike Demers, who also recovered from Hodgkin’s, created Blame Drew’s Cancer!, a website that aggregated tweets marked with the hashtag #BlameDrewsCancer, which he used as a way of confronting his Hodgkin’s lymphoma head on. The meme resonated across the social Web, resulting in a partnership with Lance Armstrong’s LIVESTRONG campaign and creating new opportunities to support the struggle against cancer.

Yesterday’s launch of I Had Cancer, a full-fledged social network, extends the idea, championed by Olanoff and countless others, that, on the social Web, the people are more important than the platform. Olanoff was not involved in the creation of the site, and he thinks that’s “great, because I can use the service like I use any other service.”

Maliet Lopez, the creator of I Had Cancer, survived Type 2B breast cancer. After recovering, she “wanted to help the next person who was affected,” so she started a blog to chronicle and share her experience. The team at Squeaky Wheel Media picked up her story and approached her, and they built the idea into a social network. The site connects survivors, fighters, and supporters using geography, chronology, and type of cancer. It features a question-based discussion board, as well as a bulletin board called “Dear Cancer,” which is reminiscent of Olanoff’s “life-hack” of confronting his cancer personally.

Directly or indirectly, cancer affects just about everyone, as does the effort to stop it. Uniting us around a worthy cause is the way Olanoff wants to restore meaning to the word “social.” He recommended that we share a link with you to Alex’s Lemonade Stand, which is a foundation working to put an end to childhood cancer. You can learn more about Alex’s Lemonade Stand and find a link to donate at AlexsLemonade.org.

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