Get out of the couch, turn off the tv, don’t watch a show about some interesting imaginary life, this is your opportunity.

Instead, have some coffee or tea and work on something you wanted to do on a long time.

Go pick those ideas you have kept on a piece of napkin or in a paper-sheet in your drawer and build something tonight.
Don’t wait any longer, you’re going to be sleepy tomorrow but much happier.

Write, draw, design, program, build something tonight. Go!

Some of you might be a little uneasy about going to a coworking space for privacy issues or noise but I can assure you, it was one of the best decisions I’ve took.

Moving was first of all, an economic decision, we save alot of money by renting two desks and we don’t have to worry about spending time paying electricity, water, internet, cleaning, taxes and other legal stuff related to the working space. If there’s a leak in a pipe or some other trouble we don’t lose time taking care of it.
We also have access to a bigger and nicer working environment which we couldn’t afford on our own.

Second of all, it’s a great opportunity to meet other professionals and companies, some of them similar to ours and others in completely different areas. This is big because it enables us to create… Wait for it… Synnergies.

“What kind of enterprise class bullshit are you shooting?” is what most of you are thinking right now but really, making connections and talking to people lets you take better understanding of your products and company. Tell them what you’re doing. What’s your passion. What can you teach them.

And by sharing knowledge with other professionals you’re learning more and showing off your skills in the process. That makes it more likely for you to be referenced if someone is looking for a person with your talent.
And if there’s other people with the same profession as you, that’s a good opportunity to learn from them or work together to reach a bigger client. You can virtually scale your company depending on the projects with your fellow coworkers.

More likely, a coworking space will have professionals with a variety of skills which you can offer to your customers, like for example: translation services or copywritting. So get to know who are the best and partner with them, once again, you can offer these based on the client and project.

It’s more productive than staying at home and you get a perspective of what’s going on very different from being isolated. There’s people you can talk about your products, experiment them and get insight from diferent professionals.

It’s like being able to stare at the forest instead of being focused on the tree all the time.

Most coworking spaces have very diffent working environments, culture and rules but also have a trying period which you can use to get to know the place. Use it to see if it’s the right one for you.

I did and I don’t regret it.

So tell me about your experiences. Do you prefer working at home? Have you tried a coworking space? Comment below and share.

Think Orange was invited to create an iPad version which would be truthful to the original content and adapted to this new medium.

The opening ceremony went very well, the book is very well made and the drawings are imaginative and creative, so we were very happy to be able to create an app for the book.

We decided to not go with the current over-the-top crazy animations pattern that some apps feature and in some cases just distract you from the original writing and magic of the book.

We had 2 computers on the book launch running the iPad app on the simulator (no iPads for sale in Portugal yet, ouch!) and people could interact freely and play with the book.

It was also a good opportunity to observe some behaviours from grownups and children when dealing with the interactive elements on the app.

A very good experience overall, the app should be available very soon. In the meantime I’ve created a Flickr image gallery with preview screens of the application and some photos of the event. Enjoy!

Anyway, just a quick reminder to tell you that our first experiment at Think Orange went online last week: Roadie.

Roadie is a free service where you pick the artists or bands that interest you and we’ll generate a customized RSS Feed or iCal with their new releases.

Right now, importing your artists from Last.fm is a bit slow as well as generating the feed for the first time but once it’s on your feed reader it’s good to go. Add it to your Netvibes, Google Page or favorite feed reader and never miss another release.

With Roadie done it’s time to look forward for new experiments and projects, expect 2010 to be very busy.

Special thanks to Bruno Afonso for the design.

Update: Roadie was mentioned on The Next Web and Read Write Web. Thanks!

Here’s some screens, enjoy:

The phone is the first Samsung carrying the Android operating system (Android OS v1.5 without customizations) and has a nice3.2″ capacitive AMOLED touchscreen (but no multi-touch gestures), Wifi, 3.5mm headphone jack,  8GB of onboard storage, Accelerometer and lot’s of other fancy characteristics. All this on only 116g of weight.

Some photos:

Lot’s of stuff in the box, including a NDrive gps licence for Portugal.

You can see more photos in my Flickr account.
Liked

It’s Android, baby. Very easy to use and with lot’s of apps available on the Android Marketplace. Speed is also a plus because it’s 3G enabled with HSDPA 7.2 Mbps and supports Wifi (b/g). Browsing the web is a sweet experience.

The screen is gorgeous.

Disliked

I can’t buy Android Apps in Portugal, so that leaves a part of the Android Market incomplete. Not nice.

Camera doesn’t have any options, just press the button and take a photo. Since it’s a 5MP camera, they could have improved it more.

2-3 seconds and the screen is locked. Annoying.

Could have been further customized by Samsung.

Overall

A great device, it’s no iPhone killer but worth the price considering the specs and the software.

I haven’t tried the GPS maps  and I can’t comment on the battery life  but I’ll probably do a follow up post on worthwhile apps to download so send me some suggestions if you know something worth trying.

There’s no amount of pictures and videos that could capture the fantastic scenery and peace of quiet you get from visiting this wonderful place.

Anyway, here’s some photos I posted on Flickr, but I recommend you go there for at least 4 days.