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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Is Email’s Reign Coming to an End?: Online Collaboration«

Two years ago, I wrote an article for GigaOM Pro entitledEmail: The Reports of My Death are Greatly Exaggerated(subscription required), in which I explained why email is such a useful tool and why I thought it was unlikely to be replaced as the primary business communications medium any time soon. In the time since then, however, we’ve seen a wave of newer cloud-based communications and collaboration products taking the enterprise by storm. Could email be overtaken by these?

While it’s been widely reported thatteens no longer use email, it seems that attitudes to email are changing in workplace, too. According to a new GigaOM Pro report,The Future of Workplaces(subscription required), which surveyed 1,000 decision makers and end-users about the ways that workplaces are changing, workers don’t necessarily believe email will continue to be such a critical tool in the future:

Key Technologies: Future Use

The report’s authors highlight the fact that, while the respondents believed they would newer technologies like VoIP and videoconferencing increasingly in the future, the more traditional tools like email and the office landline showed a noticeable downward trend.

These findings shouldn’t be surprising; having a greater range of useful (and relatively inexpensive) communications tools at our disposal means we can pick the best tools for a given job, which should make our communications more effective. The availability of tools likeDropboxandbox.net, for example, has greatly simplified the process of sharing files with others, and should mean fewer people trying to send large files as email attachments. And for internal office communications, social business tools likeYammerandChattermake for easier conversation than can be had over email distribution lists. However, even though we now have a greater range of useful tools to call upon, I think email will continue to play a vital role in our business communications for the foreseeable future. It has advantages— such as being simple, asynchronous and virtually universal — that aren’t all shared by its newer competitors. Don’t expect to see it going the way of the dodo just yet.

For more insight on the way that our workplaces are changing, check out thefull report over on GigaOM Pro(subscription required).

Image Source:GigaOM Pro

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Can In-Office Avatars Help Out-of-Office Employees?: Online Collaboration«

When you work with a virtual team, you may talk with them every day— but you don’t actually see them. We’re used to actually seeing people when we interact with them, so it’s easy to feel a little bit disconnected.

There are ways to counteract this feeling, of course: videoconferencing and other tools have certainly made a positive impact on how out-of-the-office employees can interact with their in-office colleagues. But there is at least one company exploring the question of whether a physical avatar in the office might help even more.Anybotsoffers a physical avatar for telecommuters, which displays a video at about eye-level as well as can be driven around a facility. All a remote team member needs to use the robotic avatar is a web browser.

Do In-Office Avatars Make Sense?

At a hefty $15,000 a pop, it’s going to be hard to justify the cost of one of Anybots’ devices. As the telecommuting trend grows, however, it’s likely that the cost of in-office avatars will drop, especially if they turn out to successful.

Personally, I have a hard time seeing a use for a robot as a substitute physical presence for myself in a client’s or an employer’s office. Then again, almost all of my work is done at the computer, where opening up a chat client or videoconferencing software is trivial. In a situation where physical presence matters more— like when you need to chase down a particular team member and have a face-to-face chat, or locate something in the office— a mobile avatar prove to be be far more useful. Such an approach may also promote interactions that are almost as good as those conducted face-to-face.

It’s not clear yet whether an in-office avatar will be useful for building up relationships between the members of your team who stay in the office all day and those who work from elsewhere. But it is an interesting tool to consider and, as costs come down and availability goes up, they may prove to be helpful in building the personal connections that make a team effective.

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A Paperless Mobile Office: Just a Dream?: Online Collaboration«

A paperless office might seem an unattainable goal, like perpetual motion, cold fusion or alchemy. While sheet-fed USB portable scanners can’t turn paper into gold, they can make tax time a bit easier and bring that paperless office dream a little closer to becoming a reality. But which portable scanning solution is right for you?

Neat Receipts

One of the most heavily promoted products in this field is the $199Neat Receiptsscanner. You can’t open a magazine or go through an airport without seeing a Neat Receipts ad. As the name suggests, it deals with receipts amazingly well. Be sure to get the right version (Windows or Mac), as it is not cross-platform.

When scanning a receipt, the software parses the vendor, amount, tax category and more, and keeps the information stored in a custom database; no more shoe boxes of receipts for the accountant. The scanner comes with its own carrying case and is the smallest of scanners I tested: 10.8” by 1.6” by 1.3”, weighing in at only 10.6 oz, which makes it perfect for scanning receipts while traveling. No matter how crumpled or tiny the receipt was, Neat Receipts had no problem scanning it.

Outside of receipts, however, the software can be a bit difficult to use. While scans can be set to automatically export to folders, documents are normally stored in the database and not accessible to the OS. Scanning business cards directly into the address book is possible, but beyond receipts and business cards, Neat Receipts performs poorly as a general scanner. Optical character recognition (OCR) built into the Neat Receipts software does not accurately convert scanned documents, although it works well on receipts and business cards. If you live and die by your expense report or business cards, run out and buy a Neat Receipt scanner. Otherwise, check out one of the other scanners below.

Doxie

If you can get overDoxie‘s over-the-top cuteness, it’s not a bad product. This scanner weighs slightly more than the Neat Receipts model at 10.9 ounces, and it’s bigger at 11.5” by 2.0” by 1.6”. It has a rounded design making it more difficult to properly fit in a bag.

As a scanner, the Doxie performed adequately on pictures and documents. It did have some problems with small receipts as it didn’t always engage the sheet feed option, and crumpled receipts would sometimes get stuck. It’s slightly curved paper path could warp pictures, so I’d be careful scanning anything valuable.

Doxie’s“cloud” function allows scanning directly to services such asEvernote,Google Docs,FlickrandPicasa, among many others. OCR is carried out by Google Docs, for which Doxie warns it can’t accept responsibility, and notes that Google puts unspecified limits on the amount of items that it will convert. Fortunately, Doxie can also scan directly to a local folder for conversion by a third-party program. If you are scanning mostly documents and take reasonable care with any receipts you want to scan, the Doxie provides great value at $149.

Fujitsu Scansnap S1100

The scanner I fell in love with was the $199 theFujitsu Scansnap S1100. While Fujitsu’s Scansnap brand has dominated the mid-range desktop sheet-fed scanner market, it hasn’t had a mobile product until recently. The S1100 is scanning powerhouse that fits into a 10.74” by 1.87” by 1.33” package weighing 12.3 ounces. Of the three scanners, this one scanned the fastest and handled anything I threw at it with aplomb. The included software, similar to Doxie, scans to Evernote and Google Docs, but also provides OCR (viaABBYY Finereader) for conversion to Word or Excel.

The design of the scanner is truly unique as it supports both a straight-through and curved paper path, so your precious documents don’t literally go through the wringer, and documents are less likely to get stuck. If they do get stuck, however, the Scansnap allows you to easily open the scanner assembly for removal. This is such a simple design feature, but anyone who has had their scanner grind up a document will really appreciate it.

Overall

If your primary goal is scanning documents, Doxie is good value. If pictures, receipts and other smaller and delicate items are part of your paperless goals, the Neat Receipts and the Scansnap S1100 are a better choice. My preference was the Scansnap with its optional paper paths and easy paper removal. If you need to scan receipts and want the Scansnap, it’s not a problem as Neat Receipts sells itssoftwareseparately for $79.95 and it supports the Scansnap.

While it seems that paper will always be a part of our lives, these sheet-fed portable scanners can at least make your tracking of valuable deductions and other paperwork easier for your accountant.

Disclosure: Neat Receipts and Fujitsu both provided free samples for this test, while the Doxie was returned at the end of review. Thus, Dave can’t deduct the cost of any of these items on his 2011 taxes.

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Turn Your Dropbox Account Into a WebDAV Server With DropDAV: Online Collaboration«

DropDAVis a nifty service that enables you to use Dropbox withWebDAVclients. It was developed to work with the iWork suite for the iPad, but it will work with any WebDAV client, so you could also use it to syncOmniFocusthrough your Dropbox account, for example.

It’s simple to set up, although you do need to provide it with your Dropbox username and password to get going. Once set up, you connect to https://dav.dropdav.com with your WebDAV client and log in using your Dropbox credentials.

DropDAV costs 30 percent of your Dropbox plan price, so it’s free for users with the  free 2GB Dropbox plan, while users with a 50 GB account will be charged $3 per month. A 14-day free trial is available.

I’m surprised that Dropbox hasn’t added WebDAV support to the service it provides; it’s something thatmany thousands of its users have asked for. But until Dropbox adds built-in WebDAV support, DropDAV is a good workaround.

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3 Challenges of Working Remotely: Online Collaboration«

One of the biggest obstacles for a distributed workforce is the lack of personal connection, and while there are severalways to build stronger relationshipswith your team, the effects of the initial disconnect can have a lasting impact on the success of your company.

Here are just a few of the challenges of working remotely, along with ways to address them while you work to build a deeper understanding and commitment from your employees.

Challenge #1: No“Buy In”

In any relationship, it takes a while to get to know and understand the other person. The same is true for the people on your team. Your staff need time to adjust to one another (working styles and preferences, communication styles, etc.), so it can take a while to develop the relationships that will make your company culture thrive. It can also take a while for new team members to understand the mission and inner workings of your company as a whole, which can make it hard for them to“buy in” to what you’re doing at the beginning.

One solution:Have regularaccountability callswith the people on your team. Use a service likeiMeetto have face-to-face interactions that incorporate live video streaming with voice so that you can start putting faces and voices to names. Have calls every two weeks so that they’re not too demanding time-wise, and stick to a strict agenda and time frame for each call. Start by letting the person know how things have been going for the company overall, and then let the employee share what he or she has accomplished over the last two weeks, as well as what’s on the listto do over the coming two weeks. Make sure to reiterate what the person’s primary focus should be (and why) so that he or she understands how his or her job impacts the company as a whole.

Challenge #2: Clock-Focused Thinking

In almost any working arrangement, it’s easy for employees to focus solely on the clock, instead of on results or the overall vision of the company. Rather than keeping a constant pulse on how a given activity or task relates to the bottom line, employees more commonly monitor how much time it takes to complete, which can lead to a lot of wasted time on trivial tasks that don’t add real value.

One solution:Give employees a single metric to watch that isn’t time-related. Revenue, expenses, leads captured, new clients signed, or website visitors are all metrics that can be influenced up or down based on an employee’s activities, and by tying his or her efforts to one of those numbers, it’s far more likely that he or she will focus on activities that more directly impact it. Be sure to concentrate on that one key metric during your accountability calls, too, so that the person begins to see that that’s how you’re measuring his or her success overall, not by how many hours he or she clocks in a given week.

Challenge #3: Out of Sight, Out of Mind

One thing I’ve experienced within my own business is that, when there’s a lull on the client’s end, I’m tempted to take advantage of the downtime to focus on other areas of my business, making it possible for days or weeks to go by with no contact between myself and the client. This can lead to a breakdown in communication and to lost momentum within a given project, so when working with members of your own team, it’s important to maintain communication, even when things might be going a little more slowly than usual.

One solution:At the start of each day, send a quick email to team members to let them know where you are with things, what you’re waiting for (whether on your end or theirs), and what the next step will be as soon as that “waiting for” item is in hand. This keeps everyone on the same page and connected overall so that there’s no loss in momentum or communication.

In the end, regular communication and feedback helps to ensure that most of these problems are averted and that you and your team remain on the same page and moving forward with the goals and mission of the company.

What problems have you experienced with working remotely, and how did you fix them?

PhotocourtesyFlickr userY0$HIMI

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How to Build Your Reputation on Social Q&A Sites: Online Collaboration«

Can social Q&A sites really help you build your professional reputation? And if so, how can you use them effectively? I’ve taken a look at three sites that offer similar Q&A functionality, yet are vastly different under the surface. Beyond the Q&A features, each site attracts a different set of users, and offers varying amounts of immediacy, usefulness as an information tool and value as a profile builder.

Here is a breakdown of how to useQuora,FocusandNamesaketo enhance your professional reputation.

Quora

I recently wrote aboutusing Quora for getting answers to business-related questions. While I think the quality of conversation on Quora can be good, sometimes you feel like you are posting a question into a big, black hole. Still, with theamount of buzz happening around the site,getting in now to“stake your claim” in your areas of expertise isn’t a bad idea.

When starting to use Quora as a reputation-builder, make sure to fill out your profile information thoroughly, including the sections on the site where you can include your“bio” for various topics. Even if you aren’t ready to spend time answering questions, you want to make sure your expertise is showcased concisely, otherwise people will arrive at your Quora profile page and have no idea who you are or what you do. Keep the length down and make sure the first handful of words convey something meaningful because this is what others will see when you answer questions in a given topic area.

To get more out of Quora, follow the topics that you believe you can contribute meaningfully to. Respond to questions when you have a specific point of view or expertise that hasn’t yet been demonstrated. Follow the people with whom you are truly interested in getting on their radar, learning from, or interacting with.

Quora has a section in your profile where you can post content. This can be a good place to re-purpose some of your relevant content and tagging it with specific topic keywords to add your two cents without specifically answering a question. You can also answer a question and link to your content elsewhere, although do this sparingly as this can appear gratuitous if you simply use Quora to point people to your blog or site. Don’t think of Quora as a“gateway” to your other presences, like your blog, but instead think of it as an opportunity to provide a snapshot of who you are and what you do on a site where people are paying attention.

Because of Quora’s breadth of topics, you can choose almost any area and set of topics to show what you know. However, the most active areas are the tech, new and social media, and mobile spaces.

Focus

If your expertise is useful to small business owners, you may want to head over toFocus. This site has been around a few years now and while Quora came out of beta with a bang, Focus has been building a rich database of information and experts a little under the radar and now boasts over a million active users. While Quora tackles a broad range of topics, Focus looks to help business owners make better decisions, so expect to find more business topics and technology topics related to business.

On Focus, Q&A is only one of the site’s features. Think of it as an expert network or“expert market” where business owners can not only get answers to their questions but download published research and attend live teleconference events.

As you fill out your Focus profile, you can opt to check a box to apply to become an official“expert” on the site, but there is no guarantee you’ll be chosen. Focus takes a careful look at several criteria to assess if you are actually an expert in your field and if you have a proclivity for sharing your knowledge with others in a longer format such as on a blog versus Twitter. They also look at your interactions and the retweets your content generates to see if what you write resonates with your community of followers.

If interested in having you as an official expert on their site, Focus will conduct a phone interview. Some experts providing long form research are compensated but not those solely participating in the community Q&A. Otherwise, you can contribute to the Q&A section in basically the same way you might on Quora. The site is constantly undergoing incremental changes to improve how it works, so expect to see better integration of features over time.

Namesake

Namesake calls itself a“community for real conversation.” Namesake takes a more“live” approach to conversations on topics, with announcements of conversations happening on the site, and the people participating and watching.. The conversations are then archived and can be added to over time.

There is a little more chaos on Namesake compared to Quora or Focus.com; every response isn’t carefully composed and the best aren’t always“endorsed” or voted up to the top. These are“conversations” after all. Namesake groups people, conversations and experts by topic, so like Quora and Focus, you should follow the topics that are most interesting and relevant to you, to find experts and to identify conversations where you can be an expert.

The site claims experts in broad topic areas, from technology to entertainment to politics. You can claim your areas of expertise (up to 10) when you are filling out your bio, but you gain expert credibility and status through endorsements from others for your conversation contributions. A nice feature on your Namesake bio is the ability to add video to showcase who you are and what you know.

Whereas Quora might feel like a place for tech insiders, and Focus is more business-oriented and straightforward, Namesake has a scrappier feel where tech hipsters are jumping into a sandbox to play and experiment.

Tips for Q&A Site Success

As you can see, all of these sites have Q&A as a feature, but Quora emphasizes this aspect the most. Regardless of which site you choose as your platform for showcasing your expertise, know that the process can be time-consuming (and possibly addicting). Here are a few tips for making the most of your efforts:

1. Pick one site.Be great. While you might dabble in all three sites to get a feel for them and to make sure they offer you the best audience for your information, to get more out of a Q&A site, you really need to pick one where you’ll spend most of your time and energy. Be thoughtful, and take care to get a feel for the community and learn the etiquette of the site. Be helpful.
2. Incorporate the site into your content production.If you’re already blogging and tweeting, participating actively in a Q&A site can feel like a burden. Look for ways to incorporate a little time each day on the Q&A site of your choice so you can be present, pay attention and add value. Over the long haul, you’ll find it easier and easier to make the time to contribute, but don’t get carried away and let it dominate your time unless it is proving to be a fruitful outlet.
3. Add to your content sharing.When you blog, find an appropriate way to share that in your profile or in an answer or as a post or update on a Q&A site. Make sure not to use the Q&A site as nothing more than a gateway or traffic driver to your blog or site, but do think of it as an additional place to archive examples of your work.
4. Go narrow, not broad.You can’t be all things to all people. You can’t be a true“expert” in many, many things. Part of building your reputation is knowing who you are, what you can offer others, and then focusing on providing consistent, valuable information. Sure, you can provide the occasional answer to a random topic (for example, I’ve responded to questions about RVing and parenting on Quora) because this shows you’re human and multidimensional. But when building your reputation and your brand, consistency is key.

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Planning Tool Ganttic Gets Streamlined, Now Easier to Use: Online Collaboration«

When Ilast lookedat Flash-based drag-and-drop online planning toolGantticlate last year, I was pleased with its functionality, but less impressed with the app’s complex user interface, which made it tricky to get familiar with. Since then, however, Ganttic has been redesigned with a greatly streamlined interface. If you previously tried Ganttic but were put off by its complexity, it’s worth trying again.

The user now has a choice of layouts: a simple streamlined view, and a new“wide” layout for advanced users, with additional data housed in a column on the left of the screen. Previously, the user was presented with several different“add” buttons; these have been consolidated down to a single button. The new simple view (shown above) definitely feels less bewildering than previous incarnations and should make the app much easier for project management novices to get to grips with; task and project information appears in pop-up windows. The advanced“wide” view (shown below) has task and project information on the left, which will probably work well for more experienced folks with larger monitors.

As well as the sleek now design, which has also been touched up cosmetically and now feels a lot more professional, there have been a fewuseful changes under the hood, too, including the ability to add URLs to tasks and projects, which means tasks can be linked to documents online. Additionally, there’s also now documentation available as adownloadable PDF file. While I’d prefer to see contextual help given in the app itself, it does cover the basics of using the app and setting up your first project, which should help novices to get to up to speed with the product.

Despite Ganttic’s new and improved interface, if all you need to do is sketch out a basic project plan, I’d still recommend going with the simplerTom’s Planner. However, if you’re looking for a more robust planning and scheduling tool— one that can scale with your projects as they get more complex— Ganttic has many more powerful features and its redesigned UI means that it should now be much easier to get to grips with.

A free Ganttic accountis good for up for up five users and 10 resources, while a Pro account costs€0.69 ($0.98 USD) per month for each user or resource. Alternatively, you can host Ganttic on your own server, which costs €23.95 for each user or resource.

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Firefox Feeling Sluggish? Disable Your Add-Ons: Online Collaboration«

Firefox 4 included an update to its JavaScript engine, which made for some serious performance gains. Now Mozilla is going after another cause of sluggishness: slow start-up times caused by add-ons. If your install of Firefox feels slow to start up, you may want to try disabling some add-ons. According to Mozilla, on average, each add-on a user has installed adds 10 percent to Firefox’s start-up time. But that’s only for the average extension; some add-ons have a much worse start-up time impact than others.

To encourage add-on developers to consider this performance hit and optimize their add-ons, Mozilla has started testing the 100 most popular Firefox add-ons and releasing a weekly-updated listof their impact on browser start-up time. Here is a“rogue’s gallery” of the 10 add-ons with the worst impact on start-up time:

1. FoxLingo– Translator / Dictionary
2. Firebug
3. AniWeather
4. FlashGot
5. FoxClocks
6. FoxyTunes
7. Video DownloadHelper
8. FastestFox– Browse Faster
9. Xmarks Sync
10. SimilarWeb– Find the Best Sites on the Internet

The two worst-performing add-ons in the list, FoxLingo and Firebug, add a whopping 76 percent each to Firefox’s start-up time.

As well as publishing the slow add-ons list, Mozilla will also be adding warnings to the Add-On Gallery listing of any add-on that slows Firefox’s start-up time by 25 percent or more. TheMozilla effort to improve add-on performanceis not just about“naming and shaming” poor performing add-ons, though,  Mozilla is also providing assistance to developers to optimize add-ons by updating its performance best practices documentation, and by releasing tools to help developers test their products.

The availability of a wide range of useful extensions is one of the reasons I use Firefox; Icompiled a list of my favorites here. But Mozilla’s testing data shows that it’s good idea to regularly review the add-ons you have installed and disable those you no longer or rarely use, particularly if they appear on the list of the worst offenders above. Disabling an add-on stops Firefox from loading it, so it will no longer affect start-up time, but keeps the add-on in your add-on manager list so it can be re-enabled when you need it. Firebug, for example, is a really useful debugging tool, but I only use it very occasionally, so from now on I’m going to keep it disabled.

PhotocourtesyFlickr userPhoto Monkey

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