Noteleaf: Quick Info on Meeting Participants, Delivered by SMS: Online Collaboration«

Envision this: You’re running late for a meeting, so you haven’t had time to look into the people you’ll be talking with. But a few minutes before the scheduled meeting time, you get an SMS on your phone containing a link to a mobile-optimized web page with photos of the participants, together with data from their LinkedIn profiles, their last few tweets, and links to your most recent emails with them.

That’s theideabehindNoteleaf. The service has just been in operation for a couple of months, having received funding fromY Combinator, but Noteleaf is already adding features. As of today, its SMS notifications will include some new data:

• Participants’ last three tweets, plus links to their Twitter feeds. Twitter handles are retrieved from LinkedIn profiles, but the actual tweets are pulled directly from Twitter.
• A list of connections you share with each participant.

Some of Noteleaf’s features will sound familiar to Gist users, whichwe’ve written aboutseveral times. But Noteleaf’s co-founder Jake Klamka assures me that the company isn’t interested in competing with Gist orPlaxo; rather, he and his colleagues want to maintain a service that’s extremely simple to use, and requires no special apps or changes of behavior. Indeed, it’s likely that once users sign up for the service, they’ll hardly ever need to visit Noteleaf’s website again.

The signup process is very simple indeed. Authenticate your Gmail or Google Apps account through OAuth, do the same with your LinkedIn account, and (optionally) provide your cellphone number for delivery of text messages, and that’s it. If you don’t have a U.S. or Canadian cellphone, Noteleaf will insert the information about meeting participants into your calendar’s notes.

At the moment, Noteleaf’s notifications only work for meetings scheduled through the web interface of Google Calendar or Google Apps Calendar (only the primary calendars are recognized). And it helps if you’ve had Gmail or Google Apps email exchanges with the participants before the meeting. But Noteleaf plans to expand the services with which it’s compatible.

Meanwhile, though, Noteleaf’s extreme simplicity should appeal to teams that coordinate meetings using Google Calendar. The service is currently free while it’s in beta; the developers are considering a freemium model in the future.

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Plaxo’s Personal Assistant Keeps Your Address Book Up-to-Date: Online Collaboration«

Plaxowas one of the first companies to offer a unified online address book that connected to and synchronized with all the different address books people use to store contact info: email clients, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. More recently, however, many innovative“social CRM” competitors have moved into the address book space, likeGist,ConnectedandSoocial, while Plaxotinkered with a social networking product called Pulse. The company has announced that it’s refocusing on its address book product, and has released thePlaxo Personal Assistant, a new service that intelligently makes automatic updates to the Plaxo address book to keep contact information relevant and current.

The Personal Assistant is an add-on service that can:

• Intelligently update inaccurate info.It recognizes outdated contact info, intelligently sources updates, and recommends changes.
• Complete missing details.It can assist in identifying partial entries and proactively locating current information to fill any gaps.
• Cleans duplicate entries.It merges contact info between corresponding entries and removes duplicates to help organize your address book.

The product also includes access to change tracking and 24/7 support.

That all sounds pretty useful, but the new service is not particularly cheap: it costs an additional $79.95 per year (the basic Plaxo service itself is free). You should also note that in order for the Personal Assistant to work its magic, it will need process your contact data, which may make some folks uncomfortable; you can view Plaxo’sdata usage policyhere.

PhotocourtesyFlickr userHeyRocker

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Google Apps Gets Scheduled Rollout of New Features: Online Collaboration«

To make its products more appealing to larger enterprise customers, Google is introducing a Scheduled Release option to Google Apps, which will add a delay to new feature releases that allows time for administrators to use a test domain to explore changes, educate support staff and communicate new info to their users.

One of the great things about web apps is that developers can deliver the latest updates to a product as soon as they are ready; unlike with traditional desktop software, users don’t have to wait for the next version of an app to get their hands on new features. However, these rapid release cycles can mean the product can change with little or no warning, which can be hard to manage in larger organizations, where complex systems or processes may be significantly affected by small, individual changes. Scheduled releases in Google Apps should allow organizations to plan for feature rollouts with more certainty.

Scheduled release will be used for all new features for Gmail, Contacts, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Sites in the future. With the new system, admins can choose between two options in the Google Apps control panel:

• Rapid Release: Customers on the Rapid Release track have access to new features as soon as the features have completed testing and quality assurance,
• Scheduled Release: Customers on the Scheduled Release track gain access to new features on a regular, weekly release schedule following the initial release of those features. New features will be released on the Scheduled Release track each Tuesday, with at least one week’s notice following the initial feature launch.

Customers who previously had“pre-release features” enabled in the Google Apps control panel will be placed on the Rapid Release track, and all others will be placed on the Scheduled Release track. Google expects many SMBs to choose the Rapid Release track, while the Scheduled Release option will appeal to its larger customers with more complex IT environments.

To support the new scheduled release process, Google has also launched a“What’s New?” portal, which will contain information about recent and upcoming releases, as well as training information.

PhotocourtesyFlickr userJoe Shlabotnik

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11 Ergonomic Tips for Avoiding RSI: Online Collaboration«

We’ve previously covered ways to improve productivity and comfort while working, including Thursday’s recent post onhow to keep your wrists healthy, and Georgina’sDIY suggestions for improving ergonomics. But for those of us who work remotely, at home or on the road, creating a healthy, ergonomic environment can be a challenge.

Remote workers need to be especially vigilant about avoidingRepetitive Stain Injury(RSI). We may be more susceptible to it because coffee shops, airline tray tables, andkitchen tablesaren’t designed as computer workstations. I asked licensed massage therapistWimsey Cherrington, who specializes in treating patients with repetitive strain injuries, to share some low-cost techniques:

1. Take frequent breaks.Don’t work at your computer for long stretches at a time. Take breaks frequently, preferably every 45 minutes. Wewrote aboutsome of the apps that encourage taking breaks a few years ago; there are now more options for desktops, laptops, tablets and phones.
2. Relax.Cherrington reminded me that“the shoulders should hang effortlessly from the body,” but workers tend to hunch up, leading to shoulder and neck stress. She says that when not actually typing, such as when we’re reading or talking on the phone, we should try to relax our shoulders. And of course, everyone should use a headset when talking on the phone.
3. Exercise.During breaks, do arm and shoulder exercises. Cherrington recommendedexercises similar to these, as they will help reduce stress on the upper body. I find number 7,“releasing the neck,” and number 14,“shaking out tension,” to be particularly useful.
4. Keep your feet comfortable.Many of us spend most of our day sitting down, but we shouldn’t forget our lower extremities. If you’re in a corporate environment and must wear dress shoes, put them on when you get to work, but wear something comfortable for the commute. And always wear shoes with back straps— no flip-flops! And if you have the freedom to not wear shoes at your workstation, there are a number ofsimple exercises you can do, like“ankle circles.” Some exercises use a foot roller, which is sort of like a miniature rolling-pin that you can use to reduce stress.
5. Position yourself for comfort.Set your keyboard low and your chair high. Your elbow should be at a 90 degree angle, and your forearm asclose to horizontal as possible.
6. Lose the back pocket.Don’t keep wallets and other thick items in back pockets to prevent sciatica and related conditions.
7. Find the right keyboard and mouse.Get akeyboardand mouse that are comfortable for you. Even on the road, if you’re planning to do a lot of work, consider taking an external keyboard and mouse, since laptops’ ergonomics are limited. But no matter what hardware you use, Cherrington agrees with many of those who commented on Thursday’s recent post that it is important to change positions frequently. There are alsospecialty ergonomic mice like theVerticalMouseand theSmartfish Whirl Laser Mouse, which can tilt forward, back and from to side to side while you move it. Smartfish sent me one to try, and while it took some getting used to, I’ve become a regular user. The Whirl Laser Mouse retails for $49.95 from theSmartfish website.
8. Use a stand for your laptop or tablet.If you’re using a laptop, an iPad or other tablet, get a case that can be set up as a stand using different angles. I like theZooGue Case Geniusfor my original iPad; a version for the iPad 2 will be available soon.
9. Check your eyeglass prescription.Cherrington says that a surprising number of cases of neck strain can be traced to people who are leaning forward because their eyeglass prescriptions are out-of-date. If you need to lean forward to see your screen, it might be time to get your eyes checked.
10. Look for ergonomic hotel space.Itcan be difficultto find ergonomic places to work while on the road, although some business hotels are now offering better desks and chairs. But Cherrington suggests to look for hotels with exercise opportunities. Even if a hotel doesn’t have a gym or exercise room, they may be able to provide yoga mats and small exercise equipment in your room.
11. Get regular tune-ups.We’re used to getting the oil changed in our cars regularly, but we’re sometimes not as good at maintaining ourselves. Cherringtom suggests you should consult a health professional once a quarter, and don’t wait until you experience pain, tightness or discomfort. But if you get a flare-up, don’t try to“work through” pain— stop what you’re doing and get help.

What do you do to improve ergonomics and avoid RSI?

Photo courtesy sxc.hu userljleavell

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Establishing Remote Working Guidelines: Online Collaboration«

If you’re just starting to consider the option ofworking remotely, whether through flexible work arrangements with your current employees or by hiring new team members who will work remotely from the start, you’ll want to establish some guidelines to keep your team productive and happy. Here are a few to consider. 

Viability

Before beginning any remote-work arrangement, you’ll need to ensure that it’s a feasible option for your situation and company. Although there are many cases where employees can get just as much work done (if not more) working virtually as they can in-house, there are certain situations where it might not be a realistic option, such as if yourcompany requires a large amount of direct, in-person contact with customers and colleagues.

Viability of remote working not only applies to the circumstances surrounding the company, but also to the individual employees considering the possibility. You must determine on a case-by-case basis if a person has the discipline and motivation to maintain his or her responsibilities without direct supervision.

Finally, is it viable from a logistical standpoint? Are the resources, tools, and technology available to support this kind of work arrangement? Establish a checklist of all required items for creating a successful remote work situation, such as:

• Computer and equipment needs,
• Internet connectivity needs,
• Software needs,
• Security needs, and
• Communication needs (phone, voice mail, email, fax, IM, etc.).

Performance Expectations

How will a remote working arrangement affect performance expectations? Will it impact how performance is measured, how assignments are distributed, or how deadlines are established and monitored?

Scheduling and Availability

Especially in the early stages of remote working, getting used to new norms of availability and scheduling can be a challenge. Business owners and managers might expect employees to be available during set times, while employees would rather work during times when they’re most productive, which is why it’s important to communicate these expectations clearly from the beginning. Questions to consider include:

• Will employees be expected to come to the office a certain amount of time each week?
• What will be the terms regarding overtime?
• Will the employee be required to track hours worked each day or week?
• Will the employee have vacation and sick time?
• Will employees be required to maintain set“office hours,” where they are available by phone, IM, or email?
• Will employees have a standard response time for communications?
• Will employees be required to attend certain company functions, meetings, or events?

One important consideration is that it’s not always in the best interest of productivity to increase the number of meetings between employees and management staff simply because of a remote working arrangement. Having meetings for the sake of it wastes time that could be spent more productively.

Designated Work Space and Time

Another big consideration with remote working is that the lines between personal time and space and company time and space can quickly blur, so it’s important to establish guidelines before beginning the arrangement:

• Will the employee be permitted to work whenever he or she chooses? For example, is it acceptable for an employee to break work into blocks of time over the course of a week that may not be in line with more traditional work schedules?
• Will the person be expected to have a designated workspace that is separate from the rest of his/her home?
• Will the person be required to have child/dependent care during certain hours?

Expenses

In addition to personal versus company space and time, you also must establish clear lines between personal and company expenses:.

• Who will be responsible for purchasing and maintaining equipment, software and supplies?
• Will the company reimburse the employee for utilities or other expenses associated with conducting business activity at home?

Also, don’t forget to consider taxes and insurance. Both the employer and employee should meet with qualified professionals to understand the implications of a remote working arrangement.

Evaluation and Review

With any remote working situation, it’s a good idea to start with a trial period to see how well the arrangement works for both parties. Also, be sure to set regular performance review to be sure that work continues to be performed at or above expectation.

In the end, a good majority of businesses can support the option of working remotely, but whatever your business, the first step is setting up solid guidelines that keep you and your team on the same page so that you’re productive and profitable.

What guidelines does your company have in place for remote working?

PhotocourtesyFlickr userDominic

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Solvate CEO: Universal Healthcare is Good for Web Workers& the Economy: Online Collaboration«

In the world of U.S. web workers,health insurance is an often covered topic, with plenty of media outlets and government figures piping in to discussthe difficulty of getting coverageand the possible benefits of a universal care from the perspective of the individual mobile worker. When it comes to employers, however, the most often heard opinions are those of organizations like theU.S. Chamber of Commerce, which fought hard against healthcare reformlast year.

The public at large could be forgiven for assuming that most CEOs are against greater government involvement in healthcare, but at least one chief executive is speaking up for web workers and addressing the problem of obtaining health coverage. Mike Paolucci, CEO and founder ofSolvate, a platform to connect freelance talent and employers that has been covered in the past on WebWorkerDaily, boldly predicted that universal healthcare is“coming down the pike for sure.”

Noting that“health care leads to a more mobile society,” Paolucci said the issue was “one of the things that hasn’t been talked about” and went on to outline the benefits of being an independent worker and the role universal health care could play in promoting a more flexible workforce:

It will let people go forward and choose what they want to do and I think that’s a tremendous advantage. When you have a full-time job, you’re not entirely free. You have to go into work. You have to play within that political structure and sometimes you have to do things that might compromise your values, but you do it because you’re forced to play the political game. When people have 10 or 20 clients, it’s very empowering. It’s basically saying, I am in control of my own destiny. I’m no longer at risk to the same degree from things like an economic downturn where I could all of a sudden lose all of my work.

Perhaps more importantly, Paolucci goes on to argue that a more flexible workforce, promoted by universal health care, is good for both individual companies and the economy in general as well:

I feel like it would lead to a richer, more flexible economy because instead of a one-to-one employment relationship, the economy would have a many-to-many relationship for both companies and freelancers. If you look at the economic impact of a layoff, not only does it take all of that productivity and it goes to zero, but in a lot of cases that employee is going on unemployment, so they actually become a drag on the economy. In a situation where instead of cutting back from all to nothing, you cut back a lot of freelancers, you’re effectively reining in your costs to meet flexibly whatever demand you have. At the same time, you’re not losing all of that training and knowledge, so there’s not that waste of saying,“I’ve had this guy involved in my business for a year and now I have to let him go,” and then when the economy comes back he’s probably moved on to something else. There’s waste involved in that.

Of course, the idea that a system of universal health care would be a boon for the economy is more than a little controversial.

Do you agree with Paolucci that universal healthcare would be good not just for individual workers but for the economy in general as well?

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Eureka Streams: Open-Source Enterprise Social Networking: Online Collaboration«

One of the issues with many of the popular enterprise social networking apps we’ve written about previously is the loss of control. Commercially-sensitive or valuable company information being stored on someone else’s servers tends to make corporate IT nervous. The apps aren’t behind the company firewall, so you’re relying on someone else to keep that data secure. Additionally, the provider of the tool could potentially decide to change it or withdraw service with little or no warning.

How about a self-hosted, open-source solution instead? Lockheed Martin’s Eureka Streamsmay be worth a look.

If you’d like to give it a try, there’s anonline demo available here; you can sign in as a few different users. It’s a polished product, with a fairly intuitive interface. Similar to other enterprise social networking tools (which all borrow heavily from consumer apps like Facebook and Twitter), most of the action centers around the familiar concept of activity streams. Users post updates and share links on their streams, and you can“follow” the streams of users you’re interested in and comment on their updates. (You can find those users by searching their profiles for relevant interests or job responsibilities.) Following updates from everyone in a large company would be bewildering, so Eureka Streams also enables users to create and join groups.

In addition to the activity streams and profiles, Eureka Streams can also act as somewhat of an intranet dashboard. The home page can be configured to show a variety of different information via apps, and widgets that can be added and repositioned on the page as required. Apps can include activity streams of individuals and groups, bookmarks and RSS feeds, and you can set up multiple“Start Pages” on different tabs.

Eureka Streams is missing one major piece of functionality: You can’t share files, which means it’s much more limited as a collaboration tool than many of its commercial competitors. It’s a surprising omission, as many work-based discussions are based on documents, although I suppose you could just post links to documents hosted elsewhere.

While it doesn’t have all the polish and features of a tool likeYammerorSocialtext, the additional control and security may prove attractive to some organizations. And an open-source tool like this has other advantages, too. If you need to tweak some of the functionality or customize the tool — integrating that missing file sharing functionality, possibly via a third-party app, for example— it can be done. And having full access to the data produced by the use of the app could be useful for organizational analysis.

Eureka Streams can be downloaded fromGithub. There are instructions onbuilding and running the app here, and there’s aGoogle Group for discussing the product and getting support.

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