Chatbox Adds a Collaboration Layer to Dropbox: Online Collaboration«

Chatboxis a Mac app that adds simple collaboration features to popular cloud file sharing and storage service Dropbox. It allows you to post status updates and comment on the files stored within your Dropbox account, and even chat in real-time with other Chatbox users. Cleverly, all communication and storage is done via your Dropbox account, so there’s no need to register a separate Chatbox account, and the app will also work offline, syncing data when an Internet connection becomes available.

The Chatbox application’s window has a fairly basic interface: a field for entering status updates or comments at the top, with a pane showing recent updates underneath. It’s a fairly basic app, but if all you need is a simple way to discuss, comment on, or annotate the files you store and share via Dropbox, it works pretty well. A couple of minor criticisms I have of the app: There doesn’t appear to be a way to edit or delete Chatbox updates that have previously been posted, and also it’s not immediately obvious how you associate a Chatbox status update with a particular file. (You need to right-click on the file and select“Show Chatbox” to bring up the Chatbox window for that file; any updates are then associated with that file).

Dropbox isn’t the only file storage available, but its popularity and open API mean there’s a thriving ecosystem of third-party apps built on top of it. Chatbox is a pretty useful add-on (not bad for what wasapparently a weekend project), but I wouldn’t be surprised to see developers building on this concept and bringing out more full-featured and polished collaboration apps for Dropbox.

Chatbox is a free app currently in beta and only available for Mac OSX; you candownload it here. It requires a Dropbox account.

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SpiderScribe Helps With Online Brainstorming: Online Collaboration«

SpiderScribe is an online Flash-based tool that helps with brainstorming through the creation of mind maps,diagrams for sketching out ideas and concepts. There are already quite a few similar web-based tools available,MindMeisterandBubbl.usfor example, but SpiderScribe is free, very easy to use and has a few neat features that make it useful for collaborative brainstorming with your team, most notably that the mind map nodes can be documents, images and calendar events, rather than just text, and maps can easily be shared with others.

After creating an account you can get started. There’s ademo videoand a demo map provided to give you an idea of the kind of thing that you can put together, but the interface is reasonably intuitive. There’s a palette with the nodes you can create (this is originally docked at the bottom of the window, but you can reposition it; I moved it up to the side, as shown in the screenshot), while across the top of the screen are controls such as undo, redo, search  and sharing. Nodes can be text, images, files, locations or calendar events and can be added to the map, repositioned and joined together by dragging and dropping. It works well, although I should note that in my testing I had issues with deleting location nodes; the app is currently in beta so hopefully this issue is just a small bug the developers can iron out.

By default, your maps are private, but you can share them with others, either by sending invites or by publishing the map to the web. Invites are sent via email and you can elect to make the folks that you invite“Readers” (who only have permission to view the map) or“Editors” (who can view and edit the map); you can also decide whether to allow them to then share the map with others. They will then need to sign up to SpiderScribe to view or edit your map. Real-time collaboration is possible (changes made to the map by others will automatically appear on your screen), but it doesn’t have the advanced collaborative features of tools likeMindJet Catalyst. Public maps are published on the web and don’t require people to sign up to view them, but the maps are not editable.

SpiderScribe is free and in beta; you cansign up here.

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Adobe’s File Transfer Tool SendNow to Get Branding Option: Online Collaboration«

Adobe’s file transfer toolSendNow, which helps users send large files without FTP,  is getting a few updates, including compatibility with audio and video files, a desktop client and, perhaps most usefully, the ability for users to customize the SendNow site with their own branding,

The ability to send audio and video files using the tool is available immediately. It’s surprising it wasn’t available previously, given many of Adobe’s customers are creatives who likely want to send large audio and video files to colleagues and clients, although perhaps Adobe was concerned the service would be abused, and used to send copyrighted materials.

The custom branding option is coming in June, and will be available to customers on the paid Basic and Professional plans. I think it’s the most interesting update to SendNow, as it will provide freelancers and small businesses with an inexpensive yet professional-looking way to send large files to clients with their own branding.Users will be able to upload their own logos and imagery to the service, then check a box to add that branding on their file download pages, as shown in the screenshot below.

The desktop client will, unsurprisingly, be an Adobe AIR app. It will be released in the third quarter, and should enable users to send files without having to open a browser. From the look of the early screenshots, it will simply replicate the website without providing any additional functionality.

There are three SendNow plans: Free allows for transfer of files up to 100MB in size and includes 500MB of storage; Basic allows for transfer of files up to a whopping 2 GB in size and includes 5 GB of storage, will include the branding option and costs $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year; Professional allows for 2 GB file transfers, custom branding and includes 20 GB of storage for $19.99 per month or $190 per year. SendNow isn’t the only cloud-based file transfer solution available, of course. LikeYouSendIt,Minusand many other similar apps, SendNow facilitates simple transfer of larger files that are too big to send via email without having to mess about with tricky FTP clients. Adobe will hope that its integration with other Adobe products (it’s available via a menu option in Acrobat 10 and Reader 10, for example) and these new features will help give its service an edge.

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TribeHR Brings Your Human Resources Department Online: Online Collaboration«

Managing human resources can be very labor intensive. For example, when you post a job listing online, you’re practically begging to wind up with a large stack of files to wade through. The more you can do to automate the steps that actually get a suitable resume in front of you, the more you can focus on finding the perfect applicant.

TribeHRattempts to automate and streamline as many human resources tasks as it can. The web-based application will, under different plans, handle anything from a handful of employees to an unlimited number. Whether you are the owner of a small business and handle all of your human resources needs yourself or you have an entire HR department, TribeHR can provide you with the tools you need.

Get the Ordinary Out of the Way

The thing about human resources is that as it involves people, unexpected situations will always pop up that need your full attention. That’s not going to change, but the more you can do to get routine form-filling matters off your desk, the more you can focus on those issues that actually require you to make decisions. TribeHR’s approach is to simplify those standard HR tasks and let software do the heavy lifting.

Through TribeHR, you can handle vacation requests, plan employee development and hire new employees. The application is set up so that each employee in your organization can have a login, making it easy to share information, like new policies. There are permissions controls in place so that while you maintain employees’ records online, not everyone with a login has access to all the information in the system.

Switching to TribeHR

The problem with switching to any new human resources setup is that, no matter how good the new tools are, getting switched over can be expensive and time-consuming. TribeHR has tried to minimize the stress, though, by implementing the capability to import different kinds of data, as well as data export and an API. You can also access setup services by email. There is support available through TribeHR’s support site and Twitter. My only complaint is that I’d like to see at least one support or contact method that doesn’t require Internet access.

TribeHR is not the only online HR app available. Competitors includeBambooHRandEffortless HR, but TribeHR has a fairly comprehensive set of features and ispriced reasonably, starting at $19 per month, with plans based on the number of employees you’re working with, the number of job openings you have and how much information you need to store. There is an absolutely unlimited plan available at $399 per month. All plans include a fifteen-day free trial.

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Mailbox Adds Gmail to Your Mac’s Menu Bar: Online Collaboration«

Looking for a way to access your Gmail acount from your Mac’s menu bar? Zentertain’s Mailbox is a lightweight app that does just that, adding an envelope icon to your menu bar that, when clicked, pops open a window containing your Gmail inbox. You can read emails, reply to conversations and compose new emails from within that window, all without having to open up your browser.

The first time you click the icon, you’ll be asked for your login details before being taken to your inbox. Eagle-eyed users of the mobile-optimized version of Gmail for the iPhone will probably be very familiar with the version of the web app that pops up; it looks like Mailbox is effectively just a browser window, and the app is tricking Google into thinking that it is serving the site to a mobile device. That’s not necessarily a bad thing: the iPhone-optimized version of Gmail is nicely-designed, provides access to Gmail’s more advanced features (Priority Inbox, Google Buzz, labels, stars, etc.) and works well on smaller displays— like the window that Mailbox uses to display your inbox on your desktop.

As a very simple, lightweight app that provides speedy desktop access to your Gmail account via your menu bar, it works pretty well. However, if you’re a Google Apps for Domains Gmail user, you’re out of luck: unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to work properly with those accounts. Additionally, there are a couple of extra (albeit probably technically hard to implement) features that would turn it from merely being a convenient way to access the Gmail website into a much more useful application. Robust offline access would be really handy, and make the app more of an equivalent to full-featured desktop email clients like Outlook and Apple Mail. Some kind of notifications system for new and unread emails would also be useful— perhaps having a count of unread emails next to the app’s icon in the menu bar, and also having the option ofGrowlnotifications for new emails.

Mailbox can bedownloaded from the App Store. It’s free, and requires Mac OS X 10.6 or later

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15 Tips for Accomplishing More in Less Time: Online Collaboration«

I’m a huge fan of anything that can make me more productive, so I’m always looking for ways to accomplish more while not killing myself doing it. It’s easier to excel if you can do more than your peers while still having time to relax and recharge.

Here are my tips for getting more done in less time:

1. Stay focused on the important work. Keep your eye on the work that will have the biggest impact, and make sure you finish the most important work first. Don’t get caught up in tasks, even those that seem urgent, if they aren’t really important.
2. Learn keyboard shortcuts. The more you can do without taking your fingers off of the keyboard, the faster you’ll finish your work, so take the time to learn available keyboard shortcuts for commonly-used tasks. Email, RSS readers, browsers and any other frequently-used apps are good places to start. Keyboard shortcuts aren’t only available in desktop apps; many web apps, such asGoogle ReaderandGmail, also have keyboard shortcuts.
3. Know whom to ask for help. If you can spend less time trying to figure things out for yourself, you can get more done. Make connections with people in your company and your industry you can ask for help. However, you’ll need to be prepared to help others, too.
4. Filter anything you can. If you get really good at automatically filtering out the noise, you can focus only on what you really need to see. Set up filters wherever possible: in youremail,RSS readerand more.
5. Learn to skim. If you get good at skimming over content without reading every word, you can quickly determine which items require your attention and which ones can be ignored. This works for reading social network posts, news and email.
6. Touch once. This one is hard for me to stick with, but when I do it, it really makes a difference. For email or other communications, look over it and decide what to do with it right away: archive, respond, create a task item, flag for followup, etc. Regardless of how you process communications, just make sure you deal with them once rather than looking at them multiple times.
7. Take control of your calendar. I’m really proactive about my calendar, and I only attend meetings where there is some benefit from my attendance. If you want to have time to get any real work done, you’ll probably need to occasionally decline meetings.
8. Become the master of your email. Don’t let email control you. Finding ways toreduce email overloadand proactively deal with email will allow you to spend less time on email and more time on actual work.
9. Work in chunks and focus. Despite what some might think,humans are not great at multitasking. We work better when we focus on one thing at a time. I do this bybreaking my work up into logical chunkswhere I can focus on specific tasks.
10. Get really good at using search engines. Learnlittle tricks for your favorite search engine. For example, with Google, you could search for“productivity site:gigaom.com/collaboration” to find all of the productivity tips posted on this blog. Spending less time looking for information means that you can get more done.
11. Automate routine tasks. For any mundane tasks that you perform manually over and over, you should find a way to automate them if at all possible. I write scripts, automatically process email with rules and filter RSS feeds toautomate tasksand spend less time on things I can have the computer do for me.
12. Prune. Have less data to process. Dump those irrelevant newsletter subscriptions, drop the social network contacts who don’t have anything interesting to say and prune feeds out of your RSS reader. Focus on the important information and get rid of the rest.
13. Keep it simple. When faced with any task, look for ways to keep things simple and avoid spending time on complexity that doesn’t add much value. Simple document formatting is a good example. Focus on the content that matters without getting too caught up in having elaborate formatting that could create more maintenance problems later.
14. Get news from podcasts. I pick and choose the news sources important to me with a combination of mainstream news and news on niche technology topics, and I listen to that news when I’m doing household chores, driving, grocery shopping, working out and more. I get only the news I want, and I listen to it at times I wouldn’t otherwise be productive, which allows me to keep up with industry news while spending little time on it.
15. Take time to recharge. If you work constantly, you’ll look like you are busy, but you’ll burn yourself out. If you really want to be productive, you need to take time to workout, do something fun, take a vacation, read or do something else relaxing. You’ll find that you come back to work with new ideas and focused energy to make a real impact.

Share your productivity tips below.

PhotocourtesyofFlickr user pasukaru76.

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Portable Presentation Power With MightyMeeting: Online Collaboration«

Ever get that“a-ha!” moment when seeing a new app in action? That’s how I felt seeing a demo ofMightyMeetingfrom CEO Dmitri Tcherevik. The app allows users to store demo videos and presentations in the cloud and then share them in online meetings and discussions from the web, iPad or iPhone, and is particularly useful for a web worker who is often on the road.

Who would use MightyMeeting?

Anyone who wants to make a presentation— either from the road or in person— using their iPhone or iPad. And yes, even through a web browser if you really, really want to lug your laptop around.

How does it work?

Download the freeMightyMeeting apponto your iPhone or iPad (or both) and either register through the app or through the MightMeeting website (also free).

The free version lets you attend anyone’s MightyMeeting and also lets you cache your presentations for offline, face-to-face meetings (so no Internet connection is required). You can show your slide presentation directly on your iPhone or iPad or connect your iPad to a projector for an instant big screen presentation. You also get a 14-day free trial period of the Pro version when you sign up.

The Pro version ($4.99/month) lets you host meetings. You can invite others to online MightyMeeting meetings— an unlimited number of meetings, with an unlimited number of attendees— and show your presentation via your iPhone while speaking to them on your phone as well. Or you can be speaking by phone and control the meeting on your iPad.

(And yes, Tcherevik conducted our entire meeting and controlled his slideshow presentation from his iPhone.)

How is this different fromSlideshareorSlideshare’s Zipcast?

I often access my slides by visiting the Slideshare site through my iPhone or iPad’s web browser. It’s not ideal but it works. Kind of. MightyMeeting offers much more seamless mobile capabilities, enhancing phone meetings with shared slide presentations.

You can carry your presentations with you wherever you go and have instant access to your slides to show on-the-fly, either offline or online through the MightyMeeting app. Because of the caching in the app, you don’t even have to worry if you have an Internet connection, or carry a bulky laptop wherever you go. Seems like a no-brainer to me, and it literally puts the power of portable presentations into the palm of my hand.

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Xobni’s Gadgets Bring Third-Party Collaboration Tools to Outlook: Online Collaboration«

Xobni, a popular productivity add-on for Outlook that automatically displays additional information about email contacts, has announced that it is making available“gadgets,” third-party additions to Xobni that will allow well-known collaboration tools as Yammer, Chatter, Dropbox, Evernote and Salesforce to become an integral part of the Outlook interface.

The first crop of gadgets includes tools for web-based document sharing, lead tracking, issue reporting and monitoring, and note-taking, such as:

• An Evernote gadget that automatically displays notes containing the name or email address of a particular contact, and allows adding and editing.
• A Dropbox tool for finding files and sharing them by creating links that are entered into email messages. Drag-and-drop file sending is planned for the future.
• A JIRA bug tracker tool that allows programmers to update project status inline.
• A Google Translate tool that automatically translates entire conversations, both incoming and outgoing. Xobni says that the translations are good enough to be helpful for use in customer support.
• A WebEx tool to schedule meetings, and start them on the fly.

Other gadgets available today include:

• Productivity: GoldMail
• Collaboration: Huddle and Microsoft SharePoint
• Content: Facebook, Flickr, Hoover’s, Klout, LinkedIn, Twitter, Xing, YouTube, Yelp
• CRM: Salesforce CRM

Xobni was one of the first companies to bring“social CRM” services to the inbox, but has more recently seen significant competition from the likes ofRapportive,GistandLiaise. By hooking into third-party services, the gadgets can offer offer additional capabilities not offered by Xobni’s competitors.

When I spoke with Xobni representatives recently, they said that the rationale for developing this platform was simple: research shows that in the enterprise, people spend 38 percent of their screen time in Outlook, so it makes sense to make Outlook as capable as possible.

Xobni says that its system relies on open APIs, and it is based onOpenSocial. Developers can create their own gadgets;they can be createdwith straightforward web development tools. The infrastructure can even be hosted on intranets to take advantage of corporate LDAP servers. Gadgets are not yet part ofXobni for Gmail beta, but they are on the way.

The new Xobni gadgets are available fromthe company’s website. Most of the Xobni Gadgets are free, but the JIRA and Saleforce gadgets are priced at $9.99 per user per year. Xobni handles billing and payment for developers.

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5 Tips for Better Performance Reviews: Online Collaboration«

During an annual performance review, it’s important to be able to document your accomplishments throughout the year, especially if you work remotely. It isn’t the time to be modest about what you’ve accomplished.

Here are a few ways to ensure you can demonstrate your value to the company, whether you’re a freelancer being evaluated or a full-time, web-working employee preparing for an annual performance review.

1. Keep good records. I spend a few minutes at the end of every day to document in awork diarythe top few things that I accomplished or worked on that day. I’ve been doing this for most of my career, and it’s a great excuse to reflect on my productivity for the day, in addition to providing me with a reminder of what I worked on in any given month or year. You could also do monthly status reports, internal blog posts or use some other form of documentation. The format isn’t as important as making sure you have some kind of ongoing record of your performance.
2. Demonstrate your expertise. Everyone is an expert in something, and demonstrating your expertise is one good way to stay top of mind, especially when you work remotely some or all of the time. In my current position, I’m focused on open-source online communities, and people I work with come to me with all kinds of questions on this topic. I try to document best practices to help people find the information they need to be successful, but I also make time to sit down with people to answer questions and provide suggestions for how they can work within the open source community. People come to me for help, not just because of my job title, but because I’m willing to explain and help them work through their difficulties in a way that makes all of us more productive.
3. Learn new skills. For most of us working online, technologies change every day, and while we don’t need to jump on every hot new thing, we do need to take the time to learn new skills and techniques. If we don’t learn about new technologies, we’ll find ourselves becoming obsolete and irrelevant. You can’t perform well if you don’t have the right skills. Whether you learn these new technologies by going to classes or just jumping in and learning on the job isn’t important, but you need to set aside some time for development.
4. Brag to your manager. Yes, I know your parents probably told you not to toot your own horn and that you shouldn’t brag about your accomplishments. But you spend at least 40 hours a week (probably more) working very hard on your job, and your manager probably sees only a couple of things you do every week, especially if you work remotely. It’s your job to make sure your manager knows about all the important things you do, and the only way to make sure she knows is by telling her. Make the time to meet with her or send her a quick email when you finish something that you are proud of accomplishing.
5. Emphasize the benefits of working remotely. When working remotely, it’s also important to talk about how working remotely impacts your performance and use it to your advantage. In my case, I drive to the office two or three days a week on the days that I have a lot of meetings, and I make sure that I use that time to track people down who aren’t responding to email, and I make the most of my time in the office for in-person collaboration. On the other hand, for my days working from home, I focus on activities that require quiet and concentration, like strategic thinking, data analysis or writing projects. I’m careful to schedule my time and structure my to-do list to take advantage of each location, but I also talk about why this works with my manager, employees and coworkers to give them some insight into why I work the way I do and why it works so well for me.

The bottom line is that you manage your own performance, and you need to make sure that you are getting credit for your hard work, especially if you are working remotely.

PhotocourtesyofFlickr user Roman Pinzon-Soto

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VoxOx Brings Its All-in-One Communications App to iOS Devices: Online Collaboration«

VoxOx, an all-in-one phone, fax, instant-messaging, text-messaging, and file-sending application for desktops, is now offering an app for iOS. While the mobile app doesn’t have all the features that the desktop application has, it could be useful for those who juggle lots of communication channels.

Like its desktop cousin, the new iOS app, named VoxOx Call, attempts to bring together the features of many other products. At first glance, it looks most like Google Voice. New users can select a free U.S. number, or purchase a low-cost number in Canada (something Google Voice doesn’t offer); number porting is coming.

Surprisingly, VoxOx Call doesn’t make calls using VoIP. Instead, it’s a callback service that connects both parties using standard lines. The provider explains its decision this way:

“Most VoIP calling apps rely heavily on a user’s bandwidth, which can quickly deplete a mobile data plan or result in unreliable call quality. The VoxOx Call app utilizes the traditional telephone network to initiate a call, but does so at VoxOx’s cheap worldwide calling rates, ensuring low cost and reliability. A user simply dials a contact’s phone number, and then waits for their phone to ring with that person on the line. Instead of the call being routed as an outbound call for which a mobile carrier may charge toll fees, VoxOx turns it into an inbound call, which in most countries is toll free. This allows a mobile user to pay only pennies per minute for long-distance and international calls via VoxOx rates instead of dollars per minute through their mobile carrier.”

Whether this system makes sense for you will depend on what kind of phone and data plans you have. An interesting side-effect of this procedure, though, is that the app can be used even on iPod touches and iPads, since you can set the app to call you on any number, including non-iPhone cell phones and landlines in your vicinity.

Like Google Voice, VoxOx offers transcriptions of voice messages, and these can be viewed in the iOS app. I haven’t tested it enough to evaluate how accurate the transcriptions are; Kevin Hertz, CTO at Telcentris (the company behind VoxOx), claims 80-90 percent accuracy.

In addition to international calling, VoxOx offers worldwide SMS. VoxOx has aimed to make text conversations as seamless as possible. If the person you’re conversing with leaves their office during a chat, it’s possible to switch between, say, their IM account and SMS on their cell phone. The app also has a simple way of emailing chat transcripts.

The iOS app offers several advanced features, including the ability to record calls, transfer between devices in the middle of a conversation, and arrange conferences of up to 20 people. Users can set up call forwarding to multiple phone numbers. VoxOx Call users can also receive, view and forward incoming faxes, change outgoing caller ID on the fly. It offers push notifications, too.

VoxOx Call doesn’t have quite as many features as the desktop version, though, and while it’s possible to sign up for a VoxOx account from the mobile app, VoxOx Call is intended to work in concert with the desktop software. There are a number of functions that can’t be accessed from the iOS app; even simple things such as adding an IM account aren’t available. Also, Skype integration seems to be missing, apparently because Skype requires its own software to be running in order for other programs to access it.

On the other hand, the iOS app has something the desktop application doesn’t: integration with the device’s address book.

During my conversation with Kevin Hertz, I asked him about some of the issues thatcaused me to be skepticalabout the Mac version of the desktop app when I looked at it a few months ago. I’d been disappointed by its“un-Mac-like” appearance and poor font rendering, which made it unappealing to use. I had been surprised by its lack of connections to the Mac address book, or even a system for importing contacts. I was unhappy with its inconsistent support for such standards as oAuth and Facebook Connect. And I had also been annoyed by the tendency of VoxOx to default to an“invite your friends to use this” setting. Hertz assures me that all these issues will be addressed in updates to the desktop application.

VoxOx remains a promising, but flawed, product. The initial release of VoxOx Call for iOS will definitely appeal to those who do a lot of international calling and texting; its limited features and reliance on callbacks will make it less compelling for the rest of us.

VoxOx offers a number ofcallingandtextingplans. You may alsopay as you go. The VoxOx Call app is free (iTunes link).

Do you use VoxOx? How do you manage your mobile communications?

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SocialBridge: A Collaboration App Built for Creative Agencies: Online Collaboration«

As with most collaboration apps,Central Desktopis a general-purpose tool, trying to pack in all the features that every organization needs. But what if it could be focused on a specific industry or niche?

Central Desktop, But for Creatives

SocialBridgeis, essentially, the Central Desktop app if it had been built only for use by creative and marketing agencies. Central Desktop Inc. was working with a large broadcast firm that had started out with the usual Central Desktop setup. The company worked with its client closely to meet the special needs of an organization whose collaboration involved large media files and other needs that went beyond the app’s original capabilities. This focus led the Central Desktop team to consult with its other existing customers, conducting surveys and customer interviews to get a better picture of the internal processes and client interactions that were key to helping this particular niche.

The result is SocialBridge. It’s an app that eliminates the need to juggle multiple communication methods and can handle the big files that typically would otherwise require the use of FTP.

The Features Creatives Need

SocialBridge focuses on those needs peculiar to creative agencies: on top of its lightweight project management tools, users have  access to an intranet that syndicates social updates, and easy-to-use tools that allow clients to check in on the status of their projects or submit tickets for new projects. The file management features are particularly robust, offering cloud storage of the large media files (videos, images andso on) that go along with creative projects, as well as tools for reviewing and approving project materials. But it also includes the more humdrum features common to other collaboration apps, like the ability to communicate with teams and track time.

Twoplansare available; pricing isn’t disclosed on the website.

Central Desktop isn’t the only app that’s been customized or built for the creative industry, of course. We’ve previously reviewedProofHQ, an app that’s designed tohelp the design signoff process, andCreationFlow, an app that canhandle project and task management, client review, version control and task history, for example. As the collaboration web app market matures, it’s likely that we’ll see many more apps tailored to specific industries or niches.

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How the Lifestyle Business Trend Can Benefit Employers: Online Collaboration«

Lifestyle businessesare becoming more popular. The idea is that an individual can create a business that allows for their choice of lifestyle, as well as funds it. Whether the founder’s priority is to travel, have flexible hours or pursue some other passion on the side, lifestyle businesses can be incredibly attractive.

The growing lifestyle business movement has an impact on more than just those people ready to take the leap into entrepreneurship. It can also present a staff retention issue for businesses: For every employee wanting to start a lifestyle business, an employer risks losing a valuable team member. However, by taking some of the elements that make lifestyle businesses so attractive, such as freedom and flexibility, and offering them to their employees, employers can mitigate that risk.

Why Not“Lifestyle Employment?”

Some organizations, particularly those that rely on employees who might be likely to pursue a lifestyle business, could profit by offering“lifestyle employment.” It would need to offer the same sort of benefits as a lifestyle business, such as flexibility, and perhaps consist of telecommuting and flexible work arrangements. But, crucially, lifestyle employment can guarantee a stable income— something a fledgling lifestyle business cannot.

Employers should be considering this staff retention issue. There’s a good chance that the best employees — those who take the initiative, work creatively and get things done — have already at least considered what it would take to strike out on their own.

Opportunities

Providing lifestyle employment-style benefits is not just a question of keeping your employees happy and productive— although that’s certainly a major consideration. Look at the reasons employees might leave to start a lifestyle business; those reasons can present opportunities for an employer if used creatively in a lifestyle employment arrangement. For example, perhaps a particular employee’s passion is travel. Making sure that individual has the opportunity to trot the globe as he pleases could mean he’ll bring you new ideas, new clients and new opportunities you’ve never heard of.

Thinking in terms of lifestyle employment may be a stretch for many organizations. But done right— giving your employees some of the freedom they’re looking for along with a little information on how they can use that freedom to your advantage — it may make a world of difference in your business.

PhotocourtesyFlickr userPaull Young

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Scrubly Wants to Help Clean Up Your Address Book: Online Collaboration«

If you’re anything like me, you probably have several email address books, each with a daunting number of duplicate, conflicting and junk entries.Scrublyis a web app that can help to clean them up. It’s compatible with Gmail and Google Apps, Outlook and Apple Mail address books, and can scan contact folders and groups for duplicate contact entries, flagging them for review. You can remove duplicates with a click, or choose to selectively review and delete flagged entries individually.

Scrubly provides similar“de-duping” functionality to thePersonal Assistant toolprovided by unified online address book service Plaxo that Iwrote about earlier this year, but it’s considerably cheaper and provides a few features the Plaxo tool doesn’t:

• Address books are automatically backed up before cleaning them, so original files can be retrieved and restored at any time (reassuring if you’re concerned the de-duplication process may accidentally remove some entries you don’t intend it to).
• It can automatically update Outlook, Gmail and Apple Mail address books after cleaning them up (Plaxo can also do this, but only if you pay for its Premium Sync service)
• Scrubly groups compatible duplicate contacts together, merging them into one complete entry.

It’s easy to use: Just sign up, then either authorize the Scrubly app to connect to your Gmail/Google Apps accounts and/or download the clients for Outlook or Apple Mail. You can set up multiple address books in your Scrubly account; each one is scrubbed and backed up separately. When you hit the“scrub” button on an address book, Scrubly scans it, looking for duplicates, junk entries (those that contain very limited information, such as only a name) and“loose match” duplicates (entries that Scrubly thinks are probably duplicates but they aren’t exact matches; you need to review these individually). Once you’re happy with the results, you can re-import the scrubbed address book (or books) back into your email app (or apps).

If you have fewer than 250 contacts to clean up, Scrubly is free. More than that, and you can either opt for a one-time cleaning of address books with an unlimited number of contacts for $9.95 or buy an annual subscription, which costs $24.95. It worked pretty well in my testing, successfully de-duping both Gmail and Outlook address books. However, note that Scrubly only has de-duping tools; it doesn’t attempt to automatically keep your address books up-to-date like Plaxo’s Personal Assistant does, and it can’t connect with the variety of services Plaxo can, either. If you have a mass of contacts spread across various different email and social media accounts, and want to de-duplicate entries across all of them, Plaxo’s pricier service (which costs $79.95 per year) may be more useful. But if you’re simply looking for a way to clean duplicates from a particularly messy address book, Scrubly offers a simple and cost-effective solution, particularly as you can opt to pay for a one-time cleaning.

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Digital Ownership: The Last Great Hurdle for Distributed Workforces?: Online Collaboration«

Working at a small consulting firm a few years back, I was amazed to find that no one at the company was permitted to bring work home. You could stay as long as you wanted at the office, but no working on company material at home on the weekend— ever. This was also a firm that still depended primarily on paper-based communications, and forbade the use of flash drives. These stipulations were in place to try to preserve the company’s intellectual property, which, the prevailing thought was, would be put seriously at risk by going digital.

These kinds of precautions aren’t uncommon, and it’s easy to see why firms put them in place. A recent studyfound 52 percent of workers surveyed would access company networks insecurely while working remotely, even though 90 percent of those polled said they were aware that doing so was unwise and represented a security risk. However, companies that have these kind of barriers to distributed and remote work in order to try to“lock down” and protect their IP risk being left behind in a changing world.

The commonly accepted definition of what can and can’t be“owned” when it comes to digital information is rapidly evolving, and it will only continue to do so in our lifetime. This change in the way people perceive digital ownership may have originally been spurred on by the consumer sector (people now tend to pay for access to digital media, for example, instead of buying physical goods, like CDs), but just asconsumer hardware and software is flooding the enterprise, a looser definition of digital and intellectual property is also in the process of catching on with employees and certain companies.

Consider Mark Zuckerberg’s statement inThe Social Networkthat if the Winklevoss twins could’ve created Facebook, they would have. It’s an attitude I hear a lot from startup founders, which basically amounts to a belief that ideas are only worthwhile if acted upon, and that any claims to“ownership” not backed up by action are of little consequence, and it’s an attitude that seems to be gaining traction.

Distributed work is haunted by the idea that once information leaves the physical office, it becomes incredibly vulnerable to theft by an enemy perceived to be constantly at the gates. However, in most cases, people just aren’t that interested in a company’s information to begin with (companies tend to overestimate the value of their IP), and as the core concept of what can and can’t be owned in the digital world is inexorably changing, companies that try to resist the shift and lock down their IP will get overtaken by others that are enthusiastically embracing distributed work.

Of course, information has value, and the idea of digital ownership isn’t without its practical uses. But even though it may seem difficult to imagine now, most industries will eventually end up using technologies that may at one time have been considered“risky,” including ones that foster remote work and the use of distributed teams. Fifteen years ago, the idea of an employee accessing a workplace network from home and moving files back and forth using their own laptop, phone or tablet would’ve seemed inconceivable, but we got here. As we continue to negotiate the tricky waters of digital ownership, the safe bet to make is that policies surrounding company IP will relax,  and to plan accordingly.

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CardCloud Wants to Kill Off Business Cards: Online Collaboration«

With our smartphones, laptops, tablets and the Internet, swapping contact details on bits of printed paper seems pretty archaic. It’s also inefficient. Getting the data from the cards into whatever email, contacts or CRM app you use is a pain, and once you do, the card itself will likely be thrown away. That’s whyCardCloudwants to replace the business card. Contact details are stored in a web app and can then be sent to other people using an iOS app or a mobile-optimized web app.

One major problem with many contact exchange apps—Bump, for example— is that the apps are not universal. They work well if the person you want to exchange contact details with also has the same app, but if she doesn’t, you’ll still need to have some business cards handy. Like Bump, CardCloud allows you to beam contact details directly to other CardCloud users, but it also allows you to simply send your card to an email address. That way, even if you’re the only person with CardCloud on your phone, you’ll still be able to share your contact details with anyone. You can leave your business cards at home.

Getting signed up to CardCloud is pretty straightforward: pick a username and password, then go ahead and create your card. You can add all of the usual things you’d find on a business card: name, address, URL, email address, phone numbers. You can also add a logo and photo, and links to a huge variety of social network accounts.

Once you’ve created your card (or cards, as CardCloud allows you to store more than one in your account), sharing it is simple a matter of opening up the iPhone app, and tapping either“Share a Card” to share your details with another CardCloud user or“Email a Card” to email the information. CardCloud is currently only available for iOS devices as a native app; users of others mobile devices can use a mobile-optimized website at m.cardcloud.com to email their cards, but don’t have the“Share a Card” option. Native support for other platforms is in the works.

Sending a CardCloud business card via email works really well; the recipient gets a nicely formatted email with the card in it, plus a map showing where you were when you met; handy for jogging one’s memory. The contact details from the card are also attached to the email as a vCard file:

Unfortunately, I haven’t come across any other CardCloud users so far, so I haven’t been able to try out the much more useful“Share a Card” option for exchanging contact details, which also allows you to automatically add someone’s contact details to your iPhone’s address book. Until I do run into some other CardCloud users, the app basically just provides a streamlined way to send a template email with my contact details on, but at least with it installed on my phone I know that I’ll never need to worry about forgetting to bring my business cards to a meeting again.

Of course, some will argue smartphone users can already send their contact details via email or SMS, provided they’ve created entries in their contact lists with their own information, but for those who like the ease of a native app instead of scrolling through contacts, CardCloud is a simple solution.

CardCloud is currently a free service; presumably some paid options, such as customized card designs or integration with other services, will be added in the future.

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Note-Taking Apps Evernote and Catch Add New Sharing Tools: Online Collaboration«

There have been some major updates to two of the heavy hitters in the note-taking app market:EvernoteandCatch. Evernote has followed itsupdates to its iOS,Windowsandweb applicationswith amajor updateto its Android app. The newEvernote for Android, version 3, includes document sharing tools that make it possible for web workers to use Evernote as a collaboration tool from their mobile device.

The new Android version lets users share documents and notebooks (groups of documents). Shared documents can be edited if both users are Premium subscribers, and Premium users can also view shared documents offline.

Evernote for Android now has the ability to share notes directly to Facebook, Twitter and other services. It has also added the ability to include map locations in notes (a feature that its competitor Catch has had for a while).

Evernote for Android’s interface has also been revamped, making it easier to navigate, while it also includes a more useful home screen widget. Evernote Premium users can now set up a PIN to lock the app.At over 3MB, the program is fairly large as Android apps go, but it can now be moved to an SD card.

Meanwhile, the note-taking alternativeCatch, whichI wrote abouta few months ago, has added a new premium version that supports file attachments, including images, sound files, PDFs, RTF files, and Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. It’s also added the ability to share notes via Facebook, Twitter and email, although Catch does not offer shared editing.

Both services are available in free and premium versions.Evernote Premiumallows users to upload any file type up to 50MB in size, totaling up to 1GB per month, for $5 per month or $45 per year. For the same price,Catch Proalso allows uploading of 1GB per month.

I still find Evernote more compelling than Catch. And while the latter service’s simple interface will appeal to some, Evernote’s enhanced sharing capabilities will be helpful in many collaboration situations.

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Postling: Simple, One-Stop Social Media Management: Online Collaboration«

These days, everything is distributed: our teams and co-workers, our customers and clients, and even our networking efforts. You can live in San Francisco, have an assistant in New York, and serve clients in London. It’s also possible to have many followers on Twitter and Facebook, and tons of posts and comments written about you or your company on a daily basis around the web. Somehow, you have to find a way to manage all that interactivity, and keep your team, your customers and your followers in the loop aswell. It’s a lot to handle, and it can easily become overwhelming.

EnterPostling, a centralized dashboard for organizing, managing and tracking all your social media efforts so that you can engage with your entire online community from one location.

Post and Respond

Postling enables you to post to your blog, schedule tweets and respond to comments using virtually any social media outlet. You can write a post once and publish to all your social media accounts at the same time, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and Flickr.

Organize and Schedule

You can group your social media accounts by brand so that you can stay organized and work efficiently, which comes in handy if you own more than one business, have multiple locations, or want to manage your business and personal accounts from the same place.

On top of that, you can also connect multiple users to your accounts so that assistants and team members can post to your social networking and media outlets, too, and with granular permissions for every person, you can easily protect your privacy by only allowing access to certain accounts.

Another helpful feature of Postling is its ability to schedule posts, which means you can write posts ahead of time, then schedule when you want them to be published.

Monitor Comments

Postling also gathers all the comments your readers leave on your blog, Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms and organizes them in a single place, making it easy to respond across all social networks without having to access multiple sites.

The Postling dashboard provides an overview of your recent posts and the comments they receive, and each comment gives you the option to reply directly to the correct account. Comments are threaded, so it’s easy to understand the flow of a given conversation and chime in at any point.

You can monitor what people are saying about you and your business by tracking your streams, RSS feeds and reviews from around the web, such as Yelp and CitySearch, and with email alerts of comments, you won’t miss anything.

The Postling analytics dashboard allows you to gauge the effectiveness of your social media and networking efforts by showing which days your posts are most effective, as well as your post-to-comment ratio.

Postling currently supports integration with most social networking and media platforms— including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn— most major blogging platforms, as well as YouTube, Flickr, Bit.ly, Yelp and CitySearch.

The starter plan is free and includes one account per social network; if you need more users and accounts, Postling’s has plus ($9/month) and premium ($49/month) plans.

Of course, Postling’s not the only app that enables you to work with multiple social media accounts. Alternatives include tools likeTweetDeck,CoTweet,HootSuite, andEngage121, but Postling’s ease of use, along with the number of platforms it supports, makes it my preferred choice.

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7 Tips for Successful International Meetings: Online Collaboration«

International meetings can be tricky. Language barriers can make communication difficult, while time zone differences can make finding a suitable time can be awkward.

Here are a few of tips to help you overcome those issues and make your international meetings more successful:

1. Find a suitable time. If you only need to accommodate a couple of major locations, this can be relatively easy, but it can get ridiculously complicated if you are trying to co-ordinate attendance with people around the world. However, there are some great tools that can help you visualize working hours in various timezones.TheWorld Clock Meeting Planneris one of my favorites: you can input up to four cities, and it produces a chart showing how the times vary in the various locations, helpfully color-coding the times shown with green for working hours, yellow for non-working hours, and red for times when people usually sleep. When you’ve determined the time for the meeting, it can be useful to include a link to a tool like theEvent Time Announcerin the meeting invitation to ensure that attendees don’t make any time zone conversion mistakes.
2. Rotate meeting times. If you regularly have a meeting involving participants from spread of time zones where it is impossible to find a time that suits everyone, try rotating the meeting time (also known as“sharing the pain”). You rotate the meeting around, so that everyone gets convenient times sometimes, and also gets the terrible times sometimes. For example, my company recently moved a meeting that had been at noon my time for about a year to 11 p.m. to better accommodate Asian participation, and we’ll probably keep this new time for a while before moving it again six months to a year from now.
3. Send materials in advance. You should still send materials in advance even if you are using a meeting tool that allows people to access them during the meeting. I’ve been that lonely participant in a remote hotel room with a terrible Wi-Fi connection unable to keep me online and logged into the meeting tool. If you want everyone to participate, make sure you’ve sent the materials in advance so they aren’t relying on an Internet connection.
4. Allow plenty of preparation time. Whenever possible, you should send out an agenda and materials 24 to 48 hours in advance of your meeting, especially for international meetings where not everyone is a native speaker. This helps to ensure everyone receives the materials with enough time to review them. With non-native speakers ofthe language, having some time to review the materials and come prepared with questions can make the difference between a successful meeting and one that doesn’t really accomplish much.
5. Speak slowly. This is hard for me, so I appreciate it when someone asks me to speak more slowly. For participants who aren’t native speakers, speaking slowly helps give them time to process what you are saying, but it can also help people with poor audio quality over cell phones, or on international phone lines with delays.
6. Pause for questions. Leave plenty of time for questions, and provide lengthy pauses to give people time to think about their questions. Too many people rush through presentations without giving people time to respond with questions. This is especially true in international meetings, as in some cultures, interrupting is considered rude, and also some participants may need a little extra time to think about how to translate their question into your language before asking it. If your pause for questions doesn’t feel uncomfortably long, it probably wasn’t long enough.
7. Send minutes. Don’t forget to follow up after the meeting with detailed minutes, materials and any action items people are responsible for accomplishing. This means you should assign someone to take notes during the meeting, so the same person isn’t trying to present and take notes at the same time. Having detailed minutes is a great way to make sure you can follow up with people and gives people who had a hard time following along a little more information to review.

PhotocourtesyFlickr userleoplus.

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Scheduling Tool Tom’s Planner Now iPad& iPhone Compatible: Online Collaboration«

Tom’s Planner, asimple drag-and-drop Gantt-chart based online planning toolhas received a couple of useful updates: it’s now compatible with the iPad and iPhone, and it can also import Excel and MS Project files.

To use Tom’s Planner on an iOS device, no app is required— just load up the Tom’s Planner website in mobile Safari. Tasks can be scheduled around by dragging and dropping on the chart, while accessing the context menu items is achieved by a“long click” (tapping and holding for longer than a second). I’ve tried it out on my iPhone and it works pretty well, although the small screen makes it quite fiddly and the long click does take a bit of getting used to; I’m sure it’s much easier to use in the iPad’s larger screen, though. Android support is apparently also in the works.

The ability to import Excel and MS Project files should be useful for teams who aren’t starting a project from scratch, and could be especially handy for users who occasionally get emailed a Project file but don’t have it installed themselves.

Despite facing some serious competition in the simple online collaborative planning tools market from the likes ofGanttic(reviewed here) andMicroproject(reviewed here), Tom’s Planner is still my favorite. While it doesn’t have all of the the advanced features offered by its competitors, it’s well-designed and simple, which makes it really easy to use, even for complete project management novices.

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Get Reminders to Return to Important Email With Snooze Your Email: Online Collaboration«

We’ve probably all had times when we’ve been so busy we didn’t have time to deal with an important email when we first read it. The danger is that the email ends up being forgotten.Snooze Your Email for Gmailmay be able to help. It’s an extension for Chrome that enables you to hit a“snooze” button on an email to quickly set a reminder about it for a preset time in the future.

Once installed, the extension adds a new“Snooze” button to the Gmail interface, as shown above. Hit the button, and a drop-down menu appears, enabling you to choose a snooze period from five minutes to four hours, or to be reminded about the email on a specific day or at a specific time:

When the snooze period is up, the extension will then play an alert sound and pop up a desktop notification, reminding you about the email and (optionally) marking the email as unread. In the notification, there are handy links to open the email or to snooze it again:

It’s a simple idea and it’s implemented well. However, it only works on Chrome, so if, like me, you also tend to read your emails on mobile devices it may prove less useful. I’d love to see this as a Labs feature in Gmail itself and have it available on multiple platforms. Note that despite its name, Snooze Your Email for Gmail also apparently works for Yahoo Mail, although I haven’t tried it.

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FileShuttle: Simple Drag-and-Drop FTP File Sharing for the Mac: Online Collaboration«

If you have access to a server,FileShuttleis a free app for the Mac that makes sharing files, images and text a snap. Add your server’s FTP details, and uploading files is simply a matter of dragging them onto the FileShuttle icon in the dock. The file is uploaded and a shortened URL is automatically copied to your clipboard, ready to paste into a tweet, IM or email. Drag multiple files to the icon, and FileShuttle will package them up all up into a handy ZIP archive before uploading. You’re kept informed of the progress of any uploads via a progress bar indicator under the app’s icon and Growl notifications.

As well as uploading files, it can also automatically upload screenshots (in a similar manner to theGrabBoxapplication Iwrote about previously) and save snippets of text as text files, making it possible to turn a directory on your server into an easily sharable pasteboard.

A screenshot can’t really show how simple it is to use, so I made a short screencast:

While there are many cloud-based Mac file sharing apps likeCloudAppandDroplr, FileShuttle is incredibly easy to set up and use and allows you to make use of your own server space in order to retain control over the files you share. Highly recommended.

(Via One Thing Well)

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How Much Are Cultural Miscues Costing Your International Team?: Online Collaboration«

Good managers foresee costs and budget for them, but according to one researcher out of George Mason University, there’s a whole class of costs managers of internationally distributed teams may be ignoring: the price of cultural miscues and miscommunication.

Certainly, you’re not going to hire someone who doesn’t speak the language in which your team does business. But management professorCatherine Cramtonsays that simply being satisfied that your man or woman on another continent can speak English may lead you to misssubtle but costly communication problems.

Competence in the lingua franca of a team is not the same thing as total comfort, Cramton explained in an interview.“Speaking comfortably in the workplace is a signal of competence, and when you take that away from someone, it’s very emotional.” People react to this discomfort by making small changes that can have a big impact on your team. In her research, Cramton observed this dynamic in action, splintering teams:

When people feel uncomfortable they will try to find a way to get around that. We saw people rather than going to the person who had the best information to solve their problem, going to someone who spoke the language they wanted to speak. We saw employees avoiding meetings or falling silent at meetings, or trying to set up meetings that only included people who spoke the language they were comfortable with. There were a lot of strategies. Once that gets going it really erodes the commitment to bringing people in alignment around a language.

And cultural miscues can cause just as much trouble as linguistic ones, according to Cramton. These misunderstandings are hard to prevent, because“contextual differences are pretty invisible. It’s hard to know what you need to explain about your local constraints that your remote colleagues would not imagine.” Your Greek colleague may think it goes without saying, for example, that the week of Easter is a holiday where everyone is home with their families.

So what can you do to prevent these sorts of problems from undermining your international team? Cramton has four suggestions:

• Site visits or designated experts.The most expensive but most effective solution is to send team members overseas so they can see for themselves how long commutes are, how unreliable the communication equipment is or how abrupt the national style of conversation. Failing having the budget for that, Cramton recommends ensuring at least a few members of the team are experts in their colleagues’ cultural context, so they can act as a“bridge” and explain challenges to those less well-versed in these issues.
• Explicit explanations of context.Cramton uses this strategy herself.“I work with people all over the world and I try to explain my important constraints so that they can get a better picture of the framework in which I’m working. When I’m in doubt of how my remote colleagues are operating, I’m very careful to ask specific questions about their situation.”
• Curiosity before anger.“You don’t know what the important differences are until somebody doesn’t do what you thought they were going to do,” Cramton says, so“it’s important when those problems surface to be curious and ask questions and to assume that there may be things about your colleague’s situation that you don’t know, and need to know.Curiosity is a great rule of thumb.”
• Foreign language learning… for you.If you’re managing a multi-lingual team, Cramton has a surprising suggestion: Try learning a foreign language yourself. It can open the eyes of mono-lingual American managers to the stresses faced by even proficient English speakers, she says, including“how tiring it is to speak in a second language.” In her research, she found that“people could be comfortable speaking in English in the morning when they were fresh or when the topic was very familiar. But when they were tired, or when they were talking about things that had emotional aspects, then it was tough. People who have not had that experience of struggling to find the right word or to catch the meaning, may not really appreciate how tough it is. When you have a little more compassion or understanding, it can be easier to find solutions.”

Photocourtesyof Flickr userrasdourian

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Trails, a Firefox Add-On to Help With Research: Online Collaboration«

As part of my efforts to improve my productivity, I’ve been looking for tools that can help me during research. One such tool is The Cafe Society’sTrails, a useful Firefox add-on that can collect and edit text snippets and images from the web, and structure them into a clean booklet layout that you can then easily share with others.

Once installed, Trails stores the text and images that you clip onto pages that it calls“spreads.” These are viewable in a sidebar  (via View->Sidebar->Trails or a keyboard shortcut). You can create as many spreads in your booklet as you like, and they can be can be set up as one-, two- or three-column pages.

Adding content to your booklet is done via some new Firefox context menu items: As you’re browsing, highlight some text or select an image and right-click to select to add it to your booklet. Before text is added to the spread, it pops up in a window giving you the opportunity to edit it. Content can be deleted and edited after insertion on the page, too. Trails automatically puts the URL a particular snippet or text or image came from below each piece of content on the page, as well as recording the time and date that it was clipped on.

Once your booklet is complete, it can be printed, exported in PDF format or published to the Trails Public Library online.

As a note-taking tool, Trails is nowhere as powerful and flexible as more full-featured, multi-user solutions likeEvernoteorOneNote.  However, it does fit seamlessly into a Firefox-based workflow, and as the booklets that it creates are nicely-formatted and can be exported as a PDF, it makes for a very easy way to share well-presented research with colleagues or clients.

Trails can bedownloaded from the Mozilla Add-Ons repository.

(via ghacks)

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Podio: A Highly Customizable Enterprise Social Network: Online Collaboration«

Podiois aiming to shake up this enterprise social networking space currently occupied by the likes ofYammer,Presently,SocialWokandSalesforce Chatterby providing a tool that can be customized using a wide range of ready-to-use productivity apps available from its built-in App Store. There are apps available for tasks such as tracking shipments, praising employees, CRM, timesheets, project management and many more (and if a required app isn’t available, it can be built using Podio’sAPI). This makes Podio highly adaptable compared to its competitors, as it allows organizations to create a networking platform to suit their employees.

Here’s a look at the home page, which can look very different from one organization to another:

Note the familiar“activity stream” on the left, which you’ll find in all of the other enterprise social networking solutions. Podio allows you to add apps from the app store to workspace areas  called“Spaces.”  You can create as many Spaces as you need for your private network, or to share with external users such as clients or partners. The App Store makes it easy to set up specific tools for each of your Spaces. Podio also includes useful core tools such as a calendar, contacts area and a task management system like that you would find in solutions likeBasecamp. These are all good features to include for a social platform in the workplace. Finally, having the ability to add other tools from the App Store gives each company a great deal of options.

Podio on the Go

There’s a free iPhone app for your Podio network, but I wasn’t as impressed with the it as I was with the Podio website. Currently, the iPhone app only provides access to a few core features such as the main activity stream, messaging, contacts, tasks and profiles; you don’t have access to any of the apps added to your Spaces from the App Store. I think it would make sense to include a way to include apps that you want your workforce to use while on the road on their mobile device.

Comparisons

So how does Podio compare to the current crop of corporate social platforms? Well, some have begun to give more options to add more features and customization, but none of them offer Podio’s range of specialty apps; I think its closest competitor could be a newly launched service calledConvofy, which Simonreviewed recently.

Podio offers a free version for up to 10 users and a premium edition for $99/month for up to 25 users, and $4/month per additional user.

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21 Ergonomic Tips for Traveling Web Workers: Online Collaboration«

Those of us who work remotely often do more traveling than the average worker, and working on the road may leave us more susceptible to strains and injuries than our office-bound colleagues. During my recent conversation with licensed massage therapistWimsey Cherringtonabout ways toavoid repetitive strain injuriesat work, she also suggested several tips for avoiding strains while traveling.

Luggage Handling

Many injuries are caused by improper handling of luggage. Of course, wheeled luggage is a must these days, but there are times when you must pick up your bags. You can reduce the possibility of strains by avoiding twisting motions while lifting bags.

• Keep it light.We all know how tempting it can be to want to take the laptop, the tablet, the smartphone, the camera, the MP3 player, and all the paraphernalia that goes with them. But the heavier the bag, the more likely you’ll be to strain yourself while lifting it. (And you’ll pay more to the airlines in luggage fees!)
• Avoid unbalanced bags.Many pieces of luggage have lots of pockets and compartments, which is great for stowing lots of gear, but pack carefully. Top- or front-heavy bags can compound the potential for strain.
• Bend your knees.When you pick up a bag, brace yourself by bending at the knees. Don’t let your back do the work.
• Lift carry-ons carefully.When putting a carry-on bag in the overhead compartment of planes or trains, face the aisle, lift the bag close to your body, then move your whole body through a 90-degree turn to face the overhead compartment, and put the bag in the compartment.
• Avoid twisting while lifting checked bags:Similarly, when putting checked bags on the scales at an airport ticket counter, lift the bag while keeping it close to your body, then turn your entire body and place the bag on the scale.
• Be careful at baggage carousels:It can be crowded at baggage carousels, but don’t rush. Wait to pick up your bag until it is directly in front of you, pulling it off the carousel straight toward you. Hold the bag close, then turn your entire body and put the bag on the ground.

Neck Support

It’s important to support your neck while traveling, since your body responds to even imperceptible bumps by continually keeping your eyes level with the horizon. These involuntary adjustments can cause neck and shoulder strains.

• Wear a pillow.An inflatable, horseshoe-shaped pillowsimilar to this onewill help support your neck. Wear it at all times while traveling, even when using a laptop and while sleeping.

Back Support

Most seats in planes and trains don’t provide lumbar support for your lower back, and the seats aren’t set in the optimal position, which is flat or slightly higher in the back.

• Use a travel seat with lumbar support.Frequent travelers might want to invest in a travel seat,like this one.
• Make your own travel seat.If you want to save money, or if you only travel occasionally, you can make your own lower back support by folding a heavy wool scarf or muffler and placing it behind your lower back and folding your jacket to fill in the seat.

Exercises

Even in the close confines of an airplane or train seat, there are several exercises you can do to keep yourself relaxed. These are also good for long meetings and conferences:

• Ankle circles.Point your toes out, raise one foot and rotate your foot in a circular motion for 30 seconds. Repeat with the other foot.
• Foot pumps.Point toes of both feet out, then back— repeat for 30 seconds or until muscles or tired, whichever happens first.
• Foot lifts.Keep your heels on the floor and lift the front of your feet as high as you can. Return feet to relaxed position on the floor. Repeat for 30 seconds.
• Heel lifts.Keep the balls of your feet on the floor and lift your heels as high as you can. Return feet to relaxed position on the floor. Repeat for 30 seconds.
• Leg“march.”While staying in your seat, contract your thigh muscles and move your legs as though marching in place for 30 seconds.
• Leg raises.While staying in your seat, with your hands on the armrests, slowly lift both legs, keeping your knees bent. Hold for 3-5 seconds. Repeat 8-10 times.
• Torso/back arch.Slowly move your shoulders forward while arching your upper body backward. Reverse the movement, slowly moving your shoulders backward while arching your upper body forward. Repeat a few times.
• Shoulder circles.Gently bring your shoulders up and around, as though drawing a circle with yourscapulae(shoulder blades), also known as“angel wings.” At the end of the circle, let your shoulders drop. Repeat 4-5 times.
• Relax your back.Once you’re off the plane, you can relax stiff and tight muscles with a device like theBacknobber, which is easy to use, light and comes apart for storage in your luggage.

Final Thoughts

• Try not to work all the time.Just because it’s possible to get internet connections in airplanes and trains doesn’t mean that you have to use them! Working while traveling should be a last resort. Use plane or train time to catch up on sleep if you can!
• Reset your body clock.When you get to your destination, and when you get home, you may need to adjust your body’s rhythms.Celine has some great suggestionson how to get back on schedule.
• See a professional when you get home.If you know that you’ll be unable to avoid stressing yourself on a trip, make an appointment with a health professional before you leave. I find that a good massage therapy session can really help ease the stress of business travel.

How do you avoid strains while traveling?

ImagecourtesyFlickr userNoël Zia Lee

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