Web Worker Daily

A few days ago, Aliza provided some excellent planning advice on how to pick a company phone system. I’ve written in the past about three options for incoming service: Google Voice (which now lets you use some of its features with your existing number), 3jam, and Grasshopper (which is now reportedly profitable.)

This time, let’s look at a business phone system that provides both incoming and outgoing service, plus actual phones. The folks at RingCentral have kindly set me up with one of their packages, the RingCentral Office. They also offer RingCentral Online, an inbound service similar to those listed above, but we’ll focus on the Office package for simplicity. Read the rest of this entry »

Video conferencing is hot, and as such, companies are jockeying for position in the space. The latest to do so is Cisco, which as Stacey reported over at GigaOM, today offered $3 billion — in cash — for Norwegian video conferencing equipment manufacturer Tandberg. As Stacey notes in her analysis, this move will enable Cisco to move even deeper into the video conferencing market, and underlines Cisco’s belief in its growth.

While heavyweight fixed telepresence systems such as those offered by Cisco are aimed at the enterprise and so are unlikely to be used by many web workers, there is already a huge choice of web app video conferencing options available in this highly competitive space, from higher-end tools like WebEx (also a Cisco product) through midrange offerings like Dimdim (see my recent look at Dimdim Webinar) all the way down to no-frills options like Skype and Tinychat (see my review here). Investment and innovation in this market should bring benefits for us all, as video conferencing makes remote collaboration much easier, from one-to-one meetings all the way up to larger webinars and presentations. Fewer on-site meetings mean reduced travel costs, less time wasted on travel, and a healthier planet, too.

Additionally, as more of us work remotely, we are becoming increasingly isolated from our colleagues. In “Coworking in Rural Places,” Aliza explained how she uses video conferencing to create a “pseudo-coworking space” with her business partner, easing the isolation of working in remote Tok, Alaska. Video conferencing is a great way to establish the rapport that can be so hard to build without the benefit of daily face-to-face interaction.

Do you use video conferencing as part of your remote working setup? What tools do you use?

In a recent post, I blogged about the telecommuting trend, including a data point from a WorldatWork study that found a 39 percent increase in the number of telecommuters in the U.S. between 2006 and 2008. Many businesses are actively seeking to embrace remote working, and Simon’s post on GigaOM Pro, “Enabling the Web Working Revolution” (subscription required) describes some of the other benefits and research on telecommuting.

Today, Cisco Systems released the results of its Teleworker Survey, in which the networking giant surveyed almost 2,000 of its employees to better understand the social, economic and environmental impact of telecommuting.  Read the rest of this entry »

Hot on the heels of our earlier Coworking Roundup comes the news that Cisco has collaborated with the city of Amsterdam to launch its first Smart Work Center (SWC), in the nearby community of Almere, an area which incidentally, has an all-fibre broadband network.

The SWC has been conceived as an experiment in using computing technology to address climate change, reducing travel costs and carbon footprints by providing workers with the ability to work remotely away from the City. Cisco, driven by its commitments to the Clinton Global Initiative has also taken the opportunity to introduce some of its leading edge conferencing and collaboration technologies in the SWC. Read the rest of this entry »

As covered on our sister blog Earth2Tech, Cisco is out with an integrated set of product offerings dubbed the Cisco Virtual Office. This is turnkey telecommuting for companies with a bit of money in the bank: Earth2Tech got ballpark estimates of a couple of hundred thousand dollars to spin up an installation. For that price, you get secure routers, IP phones, and software designed to enforce corporate security policies across the widely-distributed enterprise – right into telecommuters’ homes.

As Earth2Tech points out, “remote workers are increasingly cavalier about security issues, as the lines between home and work uses of technology have become more blurred.” While high-end solutions like Cisco Virtual Office will appeal to larger companies, even independent and small-business telecommuters should expect to be faced with questions about security as companies grow more sophisticated in this area.

What do you do to protect company data when you telecommute?

A recent story on news.com identifies the need for awareness by employees of what is acceptable in a public facing personal blog. On the Patent Troll Tracker blog (now hidden from public view), the author just recently identified himself as a Cisco employee. As a result, two lawyers in Texas filed a suit alleging author Rick Frenkel of smearing their good name and causing harm to a patent case against Cisco.

This case raises some complex issues regarding corporate and personal blogging and we’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject.

What comprises an effective blogging policy? How do you go about developing such a policy? Do employers have authority in dictating what an employee blogs about, given the company’s name is never mentioned? Do you know if your company has a blogging policy? If so, is it too restrictive?