Virtual Collaboration in the Workplace

10 sure way to kill telecommuting

InfoWorld, today, has a nice short article on how to kill a telecommuting initiative. It is well worth reading; their ten snarky points are:

1. Ignore the gaping holes in the save-big-money calculations
2. Keep HR out of it
3. Don't require a separate home office -- leave it up to the employee
4. Make mobile phones the work-at-home standard
5. If you're converting an in-office employee to a remote worker, make sure the employee has to cover all home office costs
6. Pilot telecommuting with marginal employees first
7. Hold lots of meetings where several remote employees participate by teleconference
8. Remember that remote employees are always available
9. Call remote employees only when you have a specific purpose
10. Make them second-class citizens

Five best mind mapping applications

One key virtual tool for divergent thinking is the mind map.  It can be used for brainstorming, strategic thinking, idea organizing, and a large variety of other ideation tasks.

HiveFive lists their top five mind mapping applications: MindMeister, MindJet MindManager, XMind, FreeMind, and iMindMap.

Hulu moves into Social Networking

Hulu just jumped past Yahoo Videos to the number two spot among Online Video sites in terms of total stream, Nielson Online reports. They are still number five in unique visitors, but I predict they will be number 2 by year end.  And there is something even more important to the story...

 

Zoho Meeting embedded into a blog

I am attending a meeting tonight using Zoho Meeting. It has an option to embed one's meeting into a website so I am embedding it here to see what happens. While this is NOT an open invitation to attend (I will pull this down at meeting time), it is an interesting concept I wanted to share with you. Zoho Meeting is an alternative to MS LiveMeeting, WebEx, Lotus Connect, and GoToMeeting. It costs much less than those others - and you can hold a 1 to 1 meeting for free. You can also do remote assistance through this (for those of you with technology challenged parents). Right away, what I noticed neat about this is that when it is turned on there is a live window from the blog onto my desktop. As I do things, you can peek in at what I am doing.

Start your Marketing plans by social media

A social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. There are plenty of economies currently growing much faster than the U.S.’s, and as social networks catch on in those countries, social network advertising will grow.  Gaining a global user base now is actually a land-grab among social networks, especially for the largest social networks, all of which have substantial funding to back them up as they continue to grow.  Social Media websites are not only just a place where you can connect with your friends, but they can actually be used to further your personal brand and career.  Imagine that one day everyone would be able to use Facebook to locate people on the web – a truly global digital phone book.

As I read this article, I start to think how easy to start a business when you sign in with the social networking websites' account, as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. Do you know any businesses doing a great job on social media networking? Please share.

Jaja

 

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Too good for Ipod?

We have heard that people sometimes reject technology for different reasons. In industrial era, working class society rejected technology because the machinery substituted men in industries which resulted in poverty. Some religious societies rejected technology because they believed that it has a sense of devil. But I have never heard that technology being rejected to PRIDE.

I came across this articles that mentioned Bill Gates opinion about iPod and iPhone. He does not only refuse to use them, but he also prohibited his family from using them. It's interesting. His wife said "There are very few things that are on the banned list in our household. But iPods and iPhones are two things we don't get for our kids," Melinda Gates told Vogue magazine. His pride , as i think, is number one reason behind this rejection.

This leads us to technology in general. Why do you think there are people refusing technology ? Is it something related to their personalities and characteristics or it something in the technology itself drove them away ?

Hanan H.

Here is the link for the article :Full Text

Etherpad, nifty tool

When I was looking for a decent and free real-time text collaboration tool the other day, I came across EtherPad (http://etherpad.com/).  A “pad”, or whiteboard, can be used to work with anyone who has an internet connection, synchronously, to create a document.  Some of the extremely useful features include revision history storage, track changes by user, and a chat board to discuss certain areas of a document.  It can be used for work or school in a variety of ways.  The site provides real life use cases of how the product is used, which is nice because it documents the many different ways the product can be used, outside of the obvious ones.  This can even be used within the same room to help create group goals or business objectives.

I wish I had known about this tool a little earlier because it seems like it would be a great tool to co-write papers for classes.  Anyone used this tool and have a good story to share?  Are there any problems you ran into while using it?

Jen M

27 Free Must Have collaboration tools

I found this interesting blog which describes the 27 free must-have online collaboration tools that I wanted to share with the class.  It is a pretty good overview of the free tools out there which span across all of the topics we have been researching in class.  It provides the name of the tool, a brief overview of what the tool provides, and a link to the tool.  The tools are also broken up into categories so if you are looking for a particular type of tool, you only have to look through the respective section.  Most importantly, all the tools in the list are free so you don’t have to worry about costs associated with them.  Comments posted about the blog also describe other useful tools.  Anyone agree/disagree with any of the tools in the list?   

Jen M. 

The List

ADOBE (ADBE) To Emerge As Dominate Unified Collaboration Player?

95% of all PC and Apple computers use Adobe, making them in an ideal position to create new collaboration tools. Adobe already offers free collaboration tools.

 

“The user interface is impressive by all standards and is on par with user interface design from Apple, and Microsoft alas.  Interestingly, Adobe has now added in desktop VoIP and video in a seamless package. Wow - a company poised for leadership in the unified collaboration space at a time when we need "better collaboration" tools.” Said Ken Kalinoski, Mgr Hill Rock Consulting.

 

One of Adobe’s strong points is how easy it is to use their programs. Adobe is now offering easy to use Tele, video and data tools that make collaboration possible.

A successful collaboration tool makes a user unaware of the background tools. The goal is to allow for collaboration between departments such as engineering, sales and marketing in one company all working together, and having secure connections when collaborating with other companies as well.

Anna L.

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Yahoo! Connections

Yahoo!'s getting a little piece of the social networking pie.
Yahoo! Connections is really just adding a Status to your existing contact list and showing avatars.  Like Facebook and all, Yahoo! Connections tries to find Connections based on your list of Contacts and Messenger list.

But Yahoo! has bit of an advantage in it's initial social networking release over Facebook, Twitter and others.  And that's because Yahoo! already has a very large customer base.  The tough part is convincing the Facebook, Twitter and other users to convert to Yahoo! Connections. What do you think ?

Maybe Yahoo! isn't even trying to steal people from Facebook, maybe they're just trying to enhance their product by adding a simple social networking concept. What do you think ?

Most of my friends have Yahoo! except for my wife (Hotmail) and I can't wait to pass this on to them...

I don't think Hotmail has introduced a social networking platform yet.

http://help.yahoo.com/tutorials/cg/mail/cg_connect1.html

This is a video plug for Yahoo! Mail.. It talks about the Connections a bit.
http://overview.mail.yahoo.com/whatsnew/smarterinbox

Thanks
John G