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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