I needed to get out of the house. And I needed to get some work done. A friend emailed and told me to come check out an open house for the Hat Factory, a Coworking community space in San Francisco’s semi-industrial Dogpatch neighborhood — making it a choice no-transfer commute. Less Muni drama that way.

The idea isn’t entirely new, but it’s no less interesting for it. Similar arrangements exist for artists’ studios as well as VC-funded incubator space. Visiting The Grotto, a writing community space in Downtown San Francisco was a revelation. “That’s what I need,” I thought to myself (and not just about a writing job).

Warm and welcoming, yet quite functional, the location was an old warehouse converted into live-work spaces. A large desk covered in laptops and assorted cabling dominated the large room, a comfortable couch and coffee table setup encircled the AV system, a private room for conversations was upstairs, and hot coffee was made in the kitchen.

I sat down next to one of the many surge protectors and logged on. The chatty social atmosphere kept it light, occassionally interrupted by long periods of the low hum of quiet productivity. Even I got work done! The laid-back atmosphere was perfect — though it certainly helped that I was surrounded by familiar faces, you can’t help but be charmed by the gang in the video tour.

The good news is that there are Coworking communities in major cities around the world, and other, similar services available. It’s really just a team of people sharing some resources. In the case of the Hat Factory, it costs $170 a month to be an ‘anchor,’ though a day pass can be purchased for $10. Anchors have some extra priveleges and a voice in how the space is organized.

It’s certainly effective medicine if you’ve caught a case of cabin fever or tinnitis from prolonged exposure to the clank of glasses at a cafe. I was always excited about the idea, and that may color my enthusiasm in seeing it realized. Still, I could also see myself filing more than a few stories from there in the future.

The Washington Post ran an article about a new internet-enabled social space — Buzz in Washington, D.C. suburb of Alexandria, Virginia. Besides offering hot coffee, drinks, desserts which sound decidedly scrumptious, what was really intriguing was the mention of a toy-stocked play area for kids.

“I can already picture it as a parking lot for strollers,” writes a reviewer on Yelp. Imagine if they offered short-term supervised daycare, similar to what IKEA shoppers enjoy! While there are lots of wifi cafes here in San Francisco, it’s hard to think of any that could be described as “kid friendly” — though that could be said of The City, generally.

Does one really want kids around while trying to get some work done?

Ubikuo offers an AJAXy, socially networked, mobile accessible system for virtual sticky notes. Lockergnome wonders what was wrong with, you know, sticky notes.

Looking for gadgets, or looking to get rid of your gadgets? Flippid allows you to post gadgets for sale or post a wish list. With tags!

Word Shoot should help you become a more charming IM conversationalist by improving your typing. Think Mavis Bacon meets The Terminator.

Fauxto, an online image editing tool built with Flash, has an impressively Photoshop like user interface and, even more impressively, allows you to work with layers.

I can’t imagine I’m the only person who’s ever spilled a drink on my laptop. And if you’re hauling your deck from dining table to cafe to conference, then you might want to think about getting something a bit more rugged. To be released in January, NEC’s “ShieldPro” FC-N21S is a ruggedized tablet PC weighing 2.5lbs with an Intel processor clocking in at 1.2ghz.

More importantly, as the video above demonstrates, you can lean this machine against a tree at a dog park without a care in the world. It even promises to withstand drops of nearly three feet. Consider the estimated $2,600 price tag as paying an insurance premium on your data.

A new article in The Economist details a transition by Arizona State University IT director Adrian Sannier from the school’s application infrastructure to Google’s “Apps for your domain:”

For Mr Sannier, however, a bigger reason than money for switching from traditional software to web-based alternatives has to do with the pace and trajectory of technological change. Using the new Google service, for instance, students can share calendars, which they could not easily do before. Soon Google will integrate its online word processor and spreadsheet software into the service, so that students and teachers can share coursework. Eventually, Google may add blogs and wikis—it has bought firms with these technologies. Mr Sannier says it is “absolutely inconceivable” that he and his staff could roll out improvements at this speed in the traditional way—by buying software and installing it on the university’s own computers.

This is a great example of how even larger organizations can take advantage of the consumer-facing online tools that independent contractors, startups and small businesses have embraced.

[via Broadstuff]

By Pierre Khawand of People-OntheGo

A radio announcer was talking once about the qualities that he is looking for in a life partner. In summary, he said that he was seeking someone who has the looks of Cindy Crawford, the heart of mother Teresa, the brain of Einstein, and the wealth of Bill Gates. If I had to take this approach with smartphones, I would go for the look and feel and features of the BlackBerry Pearl, the full QWERTY keyboard of the Dash, the reliability and high-speed of the Verizon network, and the international support of T-Mobile or Cingular. But until such a smartphone is available, here is how I went about selecting my smartphone.

The 4 quadrants

I remember the days when I was writing business plans and meeting with venture capitalists to get funding, at that time it is was invariable that a 4 quadrant diagram gets included in the presentation. Not only it served a good purpose in helping explain the market and the positioning of the various players, but it was also the cool thing to do.

So let me take the same approach (the 4 quadrants diagram approach) to the world of smartphones. Obviously there are many ways to slice and dice the smartphone market, but the one that developed as I thought through this topic had the “business capabilities” on the vertical axis, and the “entertainment capabilities” on the horizontal axis as shown below.

You can see how the full featured smartphones, such as the Treo 700p, Treo 700w, and T-Mobile MDA, ranked high on both the business and entertainment features, and were therefore positioned in the top right quadrant, and even the top right corner in that quadrant. The BlackBerry 8700 on the other hand has all the business features, but virtually none of the entertainment features, and therefore ranked high on the business features, but low on entertainment.

When it came to the BlackBerry Pearl and Cingular 3125, obviously they both provide the business and entertainment features, but are not as full featured as the Treo’s and the MDA, and not as business-like as the BlackBerry 8700.

The Motorola Q and the T-Mobile Dash ranked a little higher on the business axis than the BlackBerry Pearl and Cingular 3125 mainly because of the full QWERTY keyboard that they offer. They ranked slightly lower than the Pearl and the 3125 on the entertainment axis because of the form factor (being slightly larger and not as slick looking for social events).

So it seems that the following categories have emerged:

1. The business smartphones
2. The computing powerhouses
3. The social smartphones
4. The business-social smartphones

Why not the business category?

I did not choose the business category (even though I came originally from this category–having been a BlackBerry 7230 user for a few years and before that a Palm-PDA user for many years) because I discovered many business uses for the multi-media features that I would like to continue to have access to. Here are some examples.

During conferences and business events, I took pictures of product displays and advertisements to serve as reminders and to share with business partners. When driving, I recorded voice notes to capture thoughts and conclusions as well as important reminders. Occasionally, I sent voice memos instead of e-mails. In addition, I was able to document the 81-day-experiment more closely and post my pictures and related observations more often. I am also planning to explore the music downloading and streaming capabilities to see if they can supplement my iPod music library.

Note: If however I were to choose a device in this category, it would have been the BlackBerry 8700. The “Strictly Business – Blackberry 8700 & Nokia E62” post explains the details.

Why not the computing powerhouses?

Because less is more. I don’t think of my smartphone as being a laptop replacement. In other words, I personally don’t need all the features that these computing powerhouses offer and would rather not have them in the way. Furthermore, I am not impressed by the usability of these devices. The Treo 700p usability has been improved from earlier versions of the Treo, but still, I found that there were too many choices and they were in the way. Not to mention the Treo 700w which I believe has a long way to go in terms of usablity. You can refer to the “Dual personalities – Treo vs Treo” for details. (LINK TO: http://webworkerdaily.com/2006/12/11/treo700w-treo700p-treo-680/ )

How about the T-Mobile MDA? I didn’t find this device easy to navigate, in addition to being slow and occasionally “freezing” on me. With no back button, and no home button, you almost need to depend on the stylus and on the touch screen. Sometimes it took a few seconds for the device to switch between applications and sometimes the screen didn’t switch to landscape when I opened the sliding keyboard. The feel of the keys and sliding keyboard were not very smooth. I kept hitting the side and front keys accidentally, which are planted everywhere like landmines. Not to mention, the device is a little bulky. You get the point.

Note: If I were to choose a device in this category, it would be the Treo 700p. At the end of the 9 days, I was used to it, and all things considered, it does the job reasonably well.

Why not one of the “social” smartphones?

I found the trackball and the user interface of the BlackBerry Pearl to be no less than “brilliant”. This combined with the robust out-of-the-box applications and push e-mail, and the navigational and text entry shortcuts, make the device one of the easiest and most efficient devices among the ones I have used–not to mention the form factor including the slick design and the small and thin dimensions.

So why not the Blackberry Pearl? The BlackBerry Pearl would have been my first choice when selecting my smartphone except that it doesn’t have a full QWERTY keyboard. I happen to use e-mail extensively and therefore the ability to type fast is not just an important requirement but a showstopper. When I have a few minutes in between meetings, and need to quickly respond to urgent messages, every second counts. While the SureType does a good job in making typing on the numeric keypad easier, it still doesn’t compete with the full QWERTY keyboard and the two thumbs flying around seamlessly without having to think about which letter corresponds to which key–keeping the thoughts focused on the subject matter.

The Cingular 3125 is the other device in the “social” category. It is the only smartphone I used in the 81-day-experiment that is a flip phone. Even though it looks like your regular flip phone, don’t let the looks deceive you. It is actually a fully capable smartphone. It is a Windows Mobile smartphone, but it does have the back button, the home button, and many navigational shortcuts including numbered menu items, which makes it much easier and more user friendly than the computing powerhouses I described earlier. However the Cingular 3125 has a keypad and not a full QWERTY keyboard, which again might work well if your typing needs are minimum, but for me that was not the case.

Note: If I were to choose a device in this category, as you may have guessed, it would have been the BlackBerry Pearl.

So it is the “business-social” category that I chose

In this category, I used the Motorola Q and the T-Mobile Dash. In addition, I reviewed recently the Cingular BlackJack by Samsung which is the newcomer. You can refer to the “Four Smart Phones Compared” post for more details.

Choosing a device in this category was relatively easy. I did not choose the Motorola Q because of the lack of international support of the Verizon network. I travel internationally and it is important for me to stay connected while on the go. The T-Mobile Dash was then the obvious choice. By the way, I did take a close look at the Cingular BlackJack. However, I still favored the T-Mobile Dash because I found the keyboard to be easier, the overall design to be more elegant, and the Wi-Fi support to be potentially useful. So the T-Mobile Dash is it!

At the end of the day, my selection was driven by my need to quickly respond to e-mail on the go (and therefore have a full QWERTY keyboard), my need to travel internationally and stay connected (and therefore has a GSM/EDGE phone), my desire to have the camera and voice capabilities, and my desire to have a slick and small device that I can easily slip in my pocket and take to any social or business event. The trade off was having the less than optimum Windows Mobile interface and the less then optimum T-Mobile network in San Francisco.

What is coming up next?

In my first post on WWD on November 20 when I layed out the plan for the smartphone reviews that I will be posting, I indicated that the 4th post will be about the Windows Mobile Evolution, and the 5th post will be about the “Black Sheep”, which in this case referring to the Nokia E62 and the Symbian OS. However, it happened that I addressed these topics already in the weekly posts in the last few weeks. Accordingly, today’s post ended up being about my own device selection, and next week’s post will be about selecting a smartphone in general–with the hope of giving you some additional insights that can help you in this process.

So stay tuned for next week’s post about selecting a smartphone, and meanwhile, if you happen to have missed my webinar last week, in which I gave an overview of the 81-day-experiment, you can refer to the following resources for more information.

Spotted over at J.D. Lasica’s New Media Musings was a link to this article by Scott Goldberg of Digital Media Wire on “12 Unwritten Rules of Cell Phone Etiquette.” My favorite is number 11:

11) Lengthy Voicemail Messages
If I reach your voicemail, don’t you think I already know you can’t take my call right now and want me to leave my name, number, and a brief message? Do you need to waste my time telling me that? The whole process of leaving a message to begin with is too long. The last thing I want when I finally reach your personal greeting is a lengthy description of what you want me to do. We’ve been using cell phones long enough to know the drill. Just as you want my message to be brief, so too do I want you to keep your personal greeting short.

Now, I’ve certainly broken a few of these rules. What are your pet peeves when it comes to cell phones?

If you happen to be in Berlin on December 23rd, check out Fabienne Serriere’s workshop on how to mod a cheap WiFi signal strength detector into your backpack or messenger bag strap. If, like me, you won’t be anywhere near Berlin on December 23rd, you can follow along at home with this Engadget How-To.

What would be even more boss would be to hack the LED display of the Canary Wirless Digital Hotspotter to the strap, so that you can check specifically for open networks.

While “Internet Addiction” isn’t, technically, an accepted clinical diagnosis, there are plenty of anecdotal cases of obsessive and compulsive use of the Internet that becomes socially deletirious. And people toting around wifi laptops and web-enabled cell phones would likely be considered at particular risk. Catherine Holohan of BusinessWeek wrote a good article about the issue today.

“It’s not surprising that it is not defined yet, because these things change very slowly,” says Greenfield. “But when you are in clinical practice and you are dealing with people’s lives, you can’t wait for those issues to be addressed. There is a huge problem with Internet abuse in the workplace, and you can’t pretend that they don’t exist because there isn’t a label.”

So where do you draw the line between “use” and “abuse,” especially when being online all the time is considered a professional requirement?

One of the unintended consquences of moving so many employees out of the office is how to keep up morale and effectively manage teams when the physical dimension is removed from the equation. In a must-read article for people who manage teams of telecommuters, Network World took a look at number of different approaches by companies to solve the problems.

From large companies like IBM organizing fun activities like picnics and sports, to smaller companies like Perkett PR meeting up at Chamber of Commerce meetings to network, there seem to be plenty of excuses to get together during on and off hours to meet in person. Offline strategies include ‘water cooler’ video conference chats and simply being friendly over IM to humanize daily interactions.

While many of these solutions may seem intuitive to those of us who have grown up with all this technology at the center of our lives, it’s interesting to take a look at the tensions being created in traditional corporate culture.

Windows users of Skype can now download version 3.0 of the software, but the new features (Public Chat, last.fm integration) aren’t so much with the practical.

Put off getting that EVDO card if you’re a Verizon customer in the ten city test market, because you may want to wait for the EVDO Rev. A card required to access the public rollout rumored for Friday. This follow’s Sprint’s launch just yesterday in markets like New York, San Francisco and LA.

And Google goes open source with their Google Web Toolkit. No new features (yet), but this is still good news for developers of free, online apps and the people who love them.

Little did misguided, mid-century, sci-fi futurists know, but instead of commuting to work in a hovercraft, I don’t commute to work at all. I’m also still waiting for frickin’ laser blasters. Because every web worker needs to protect themselves from laptop theft.

And so it goes with wearable, visual overlay displays. Yes, they work. Kind of. And no, you can’t wear them in public. For all sorts of reasons. Which sort of defeats the purpose. Still, it seems every year at CES we see a newer, slightly better version demoed, and this year will be no different thanks to Lumus-Optical.

I think I’ll wait for the implants. Though I can’t wait to read the reports from the floor in Vegas.

If you’re a Simpson’s fan, you’ll remember Principal Skinner’s advice to Bart Simpson in the episode, “Bart the Murderer:”

Principal Skinner: Here’s a whole box of unsealed envelopes for the PTA!
Bart: You’re making me lick envelopes?
P.S.: Oh, licking envelopes can be fun! All you have to do is make a game of it.
Bart: What kind of game?
P.S.: Well, for example, you could see how many you could lick in an hour, then try to break that record.
Bart: Sounds like a pretty crappy game to me.
P.S.: Yes, well… Get started.

Ryan Carson of Carsonified suggests pretty much the same technique for tackling daily tasks, with the twist of counting points to weigh critical tasks more heavily. [Note: Skinner does use this system to save himself from certain death later in the episode, in case you think we're making fun.]

The system was inspired by an article on Printable CEO by David Seah which outlines the program in more detail. And because productivity nuts love a good web app, Rough Underbelly’s Geoffrey Grosenbach has written one to keep track of your score online.

Something on the PR wire caught my eye this morning — Tel Aviv startup BeInSync scored a round of funding from a trio of European and Israeli VCs. In a rare case of business deal news leading me to a cool new application, it turns out BeInSync offers software to synchronize files across a number of systems using secure, peer-to-peer file transfers without a central server.

Which is just an elegant solution to the problem of maintaining a central set of personal and professional work across a team of people with multiple machines. Sadly, it only supports Windows, so multi-platform sharing is out the window. Version 2.5 was just released, and it’s a free download, so there’s no reason not to check it out.

AppZapper, “The uninstaller Apple forgot,” announced a new release today that adds some great new features to this small but handy tool for uninstalling applications on Mac OS X. User Authentication makes sure that your kids don’t ‘accidentally’ uninstall critical applications to install the latest video game, and UnZap allows you to remove applications non-destructively, and restore them later if you like.

The problem AppZapper solves is that while it’s terribly easy to install software in OS X, finding all the support files can be annoying. Shareware, a full license is only $13, so it’s a good bargain for Web Workers like us who are always trying out and then discarding the latest and greatest apps.

A survey by MetaFacts of over 7,000 American computer users which focused on mobile computing came to some interesting conclusions. To quote the press release, “Mobile PC users enjoy their nomadic lifestyle, being twice as likely as desktop PC users to be using a handheld GPS, Apple iPod, other portable MP3 player or digital camcorder.” They gamble, blog and buy more online as well. Another recent study showed that over 30% of home machines are notebook PCs.

But it was also found that work-issue laptops aren’t nearly as mobile as personal machines, with personal users more likely to log in at libraries and cybercafes and workers at hotels and client offices, if at all. In other words, workers may be wireless, but are still somewhat tethered to their workplace, at least with the company laptop.

InformationWeek blogger Barbara Krasnoff wonders if the size and weight isn’t an issue for workers on the go, and asks for suggestions on a lightweight solution for her upcoming trip to the CES in Las Vegas. I just loved the ultra-light PC-MM20 from Sharp even if it was getting long in the tooth, and find the Lenovo ThinkPad X41 to be eminently luggable. But other than a brief caress of an OQO 01+, I’ve never tried one of the sub-notebooks, with or without a portable keyboard. Any thoughts?