One of the hurdles most web workers – and certainly all freelancers – need to conquer is how to accurately and quickly keep track on the time spent on tasks.

Try as you might to plan out your day with the work you know about, inevitably things come up and interruptions occurr. For myself and thousands of other people, the solution to that dilemma is the Emergent Time Tracker (ETT) created by David Seah.

I found David’s web site a while back through StumbleUpon and I immediately knew it belonged in my Google Reader. David’s work clearly embodies his goal:

In practical terms, my work revolves around making sense of the world, using my writing and graphic design abilities to clarify the ambiguous. The model I follow is pretty simple: I write about that which catches my eye, relate it to what I know, and then express the resulting insight in words, images, or tangible products.

The ETT is available in two formats: Printable PDF and a very beta online version.

I printed out a some of these and for a long time was using them on a daily basis. Based on 15-minute increments, it helped my bosses keep tabs on what I spent my day on, it helped me keep track of all the interruptions that took place and, at the end of the day, make it simple to calculate and log my daily billable hours.

Have you used the Emergent Time Tracker before? Which format do you prefer? What other time-tracking solutions do you rely on?

Like many creations, Postable was created by someone who was continually annoyed by something stupid. Using text areas in for blog posts – or just managing web content in general – is the fact that seem to randomly have a case of stupidity where it won’t translate certain symbols into their HTML equivalents.

Read what Elliot Swan, creator of Postable, has to say about his very popular creation:

I absolutely hate having to switch all the “< ” and “>” signs in my code to “<” and “>”, respectively. I also hate having to write “&” anytime I want to include an ampersand. This makes including code snippets on my blog and whatnot extremely annoying, and today I finally got fed up.

So, I threw together Postable, a little app that will do all that for you. Just paste your code in there, hit the button…and walla. Post-friendly code.

If you heavily rely on content management systems, you no doubt share in the irritation that Elliot had. Give it a try!

If you would like to submit something to be shown here, let me know!

Believe it or not, some of the most time consuming parts of creating a templates for the web is time spent whipping up place holder text to demonstrate how various elements will display. Things like unordered lists, block quotes, normal paragraphs, tables and so forth all take up little bits of time which, quite honestly, are just annoying. That’s where HTML-ipsum.com comes in.

The premise is simple: Load the site, copy the placeholder content you need complete with the respective HTML tags and paste it into your code. BAM! What might have taken you a couple of minutes to type out is done and behind you in about 30 seconds. Ever since I found it, I’ve found myself saving time by visiting this site more and more.

If you would like to submit something to be shown here, let me know!

These posts will run on Mondays to hopefully give you web monkeys out there that upcoming week to find some time to try out the cool little helpers. Enjoy!

Kuler is a very, well, cool free, online color scheme picker from Adobe. If you find yourself at times being “colorly challenged” but know what you think looks nice, you can browse themes created by other Kuler users, by browsing their “Newest,” “Most Popular,” “Highest Rated” categories. If you’re really indecisive, Kuler can show you themes randomly.

If you’re in the mood to create you can make up your own color “themes” with 5 color swatches each, name the theme and post it on the site for others to review and possibly use in their next project.

Here are some of the snazzy features of Kuler:

• If you have Adobe Air, you can import Kuler themes directly into CS3
• You can create themes from Flickr images
• Developers can apply for a Kuler API key
• With your Adobe ID you can create, save and download themes.
• For you CS4 users, you can access Kuler from the program of your choice

The Kuler community seems to be very active which makes the constantly rotating list of themes that much more enjoyable. Be forewarned, though: Kuler is a definite time suck for any of you who enjoy looking at pretty colors. Just when you tell yourself “Okay, one more look…” you’ll come across a theme named something inviting like “Sushi Maki,” “Freshaliciousness Remix” or “Steampunk” and find yourself clicking away.

If you would like to submit something to be shown here, let me know!