Now, with the advent of things like smartphones, tablets, and the iPad, new applications designed for those devices are making it easier and more practical to go paperless.

Penultimate: Your iPad notepad

Penultimate by Cocoa Box turns your iPad into a notebook, allowing you to jot notes and create sketches in multiple colors, separate them into notebooks by topic or project, and then email all or part of your notes in PDF format. It even includes three built-in “papers” (graph paper, unlined and ruled), but you can import images of different backgrounds or papers — or download paper packs — to create your own texture or style. Price: $1.99.

SignMyPad: Simple contract sign-offs

The Android- and iPad-compatible PDF reader SignMyPad has built-in annotation functionality, allowing you to sign and date PDF documents right from your iPad and then email it to another party. You can also save documents into versions for gaining multiple signatures, and the app can import documents from and save them to Dropbox. Price: $3.99 for the basic version, $19.99 for SignMyPad Pro, which adds geolocation tagging.

MyFax: Fax without a fax

If you work with clients or colleagues who still use fax machines, MyFax’s mobile faxing app, available for iOS and Blackberry, lets you send and receive faxes from your smartphone and via your email account. Just snap a photo of the document you want to send (the app is optimized for sending photos of text), choose the recipient from your Address Book and send. To fax by email, attach the document to an email message, address it to the fax number plus an @myfax.com and send. To receive a fax, simply give out your MyFax number, and your received documents will be available as an email attachment. Price: Free app, service costs $10/month after a free trial.

JotNot: Turn your iPhone into a handheld scanner

JotNot lets you scan from your iPhone, email the scan as a PDF or image, and fax the scan to U.S. numbers. You can add pages to documents, creating a multi-page scan, as well as delete and reorder pages and send documents to EverNote, DropBox, or Google Docs. JotNot can scan and save a variety of documents, including receipts, business cards, and notes. Price: Free.

DocScanner: Simple scanning

DocScanner is a scanner app for the iPhone, Mac, Android, Qt, and the Symbian S60 that allows you to scan documents simply by taking a picture. It then automatically crops everything other than the document out of the picture and even detects your document’s paper size. Other helpful features include the ability to search multiple-page documents, as well as words within documents. Price: $4.99.

Business Card Reader: Quickly add new contacts

The multi-platform Business Card Reader from SHAPE Services lets you take a photo of a business card, and then it “reads” the picture, extracts the contact data, and enters it into your smartphone’s address book. The built-in browser even lets you check out a new contact’s LinkedIn page right from the app. Price: $4.99 for multi-language support, $3.99 for Asian languages only.

OfficeDrop: Scan to the cloud

OfficeDrop‘s app scans documents directly to the cloud for storage and sharing. The ScanDrop desktop app is available for both PC and Mac, but the iPhone and Android Scanner apps allow you to scan and upload documents using your smartphone. Once uploaded, the document’s text is searchable, thanks to OCR, and sharable with colleagues. Price: Free

Square: Easy payments and receipts

Square, available for Android and most iOS devices, lets you accept credit card payments directly from your smartphone and uses “smart receipts” to send to customers via email or text message. You can create a display with photos and prices so that customers can view your products directly from your iPad, for example, and then keep track of the number of sales you’ve made in a given day. Price: Free app and reader.

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Dear Email, this isn’t working out. It’s not you, it’s me.

I definitely have a love/hate relationship with email, but I know that the majority of my issues with it are a result of user error more than a problem with the technology itself.

User problem #1: Elaboration and niceties

At this minute, I have over one hundred emails in my inbox that need an action or response. Any time I get the nerve to tackle them, I think about having to read through paragraphs of explanation and niceties in order to get to the meat of the message so that I can take action.

As a regular sender of emails myself, I’m just as guilty of adding unnecessary elaboration and niceties to my messages as the next person. I feel the need to start with the typical, “How have you been” and “Here’s the latest this way” chitchat, followed by a detailed explanation of why I’m emailing, but as a reader (and someone with 100+ emails to process right now), I’d love to know I could open each one and find a simple and direct message that tells me what the sender needs. “Hi, Amber. I’m emailing to see if . . .” Ah, wishful thinking.

User problem #2: Deceptive and inadequate subject lines

How great would it be if everyone started using more helpful and direct subject lines? Even just adding simple lead-ins like “Quick question” or “Urgent” could help us hone in on those messages that need attention more immediately than others.

User problem #3: Abuse

We all have to pay the price for those who abuse email, like spammers, contacts who automatically subscribe us to their newsletters, and others who use this more personal and private medium for uninvited messages.

User problem #4: Poor filtering

One big mistake I make with my own email usage is not using filters effectively. There are many types of emails (messages from social networks, newsletters, and other notifications) that could easily be marked as read and archived without my ever having to touch them. The only reason they’re not is because I don’t take the time to set up filters to sort them.

User problem #5: Using the wrong medium

Instead of sending five emails back and forth to set a single appointment, it would be more effective to use another service that streamlines appointment-setting, like TimeTrade, Google Calendar, or SkedgeMe. As with this example, a lot of our communications could be cut down or eliminated, if we’d choose a better medium for them.

But what about the technology?

While user error is a big part of the problem, technology is not completely in the clear.

Technology problem #1: Poor spam filtering

Until we get to the point where spam is successfully filtered out each and every time (which, let’s face it, is not likely to happen), email will always be somewhat of a nuisance, no matter how effective we get with our use of it.

Technology problem #2: Inadequate sorting

Some messages are notifications, some are spam, and a tiny portion are actually important enough to warrant our attention more immediately. It would help if these messages were automatically separated somehow.

It would also be helpful to have smart sorting based on people (example, important people, new people, companies). When I can zoom in on emails from clients and important business contacts, I’m much more likely to stay on task and not get distracted, but by the same token, I’d also like to see a filter to sort out new people, which could help with identifying new prospects and opportunities.

Fixing the world’s email problems might be a tall order, but the good news is that developers are listening. Even better, they’re asking us what we want from the applications we use on a daily basis and how we would like to see them improved.

What suggestions do you have for fixing email?

Photo courtesy Flickr user ilamont.com

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Shared to-do lists

• Wunderlist. Wunderlist is a simple task manager that works on the web or your PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, or Android phone. Your list follows you and stays synced across all your devices, and you can even share your to-do list with the Wunderlist via URL or Twitter.

Project management

• Reverb. Reverb is a project and task manager that allows you to collaborate with your team and stay organized. Similar to Basecamp and other popular project management solutions, Reverb offers the ability to upload files, host discussions, and manage tasks within one interface.
• Splendid Bacon. Splendid Bacon is a stripped-down version of project management that lets you see, at a glance, what’s going on with your projects. Don’t expect elaborate functionality or a complex interface; Splendid Bacon is straightforward and concentrates on one main area of project management, status updates. Post short, Twitter-style status reports to let team members and clients know where you are with a project, and use the simple dashboard and timeline to see which projects are moving forward and which are on hold.
• Client Stat.us. If you like Splendid Bacon’s Twitter-style approach to project communication, another option is Client Stat.us, and this one doesn’t even require log-ins or passwords. Just share a link to the project status page, and your clients stay in the loop. I love the simplicity of this interface that takes the intimidation factor out of client updates; just post what task is in progress and brief (140 characters or less) updates as you move the task forward.

Online meetings and conferencing

• Vyew. Vyew is an online meeting room application that allows you to collaborate with your team visually and in real time. You can upload images, files, and videos into your meeting room, and up to ten participants can access the room and contribute. Conferencing features include a whiteboard, video conferencing, screen sharing, and VoIP. You can even add text or voice comments to the pages of your room, so the interactive features make for truly dynamic presentations and meetings.

Collaborative social media

• CoTweet. CoTweet allows business teams to engage in social media as a group in a unified way. Team members can publish updates to Twitter (and Facebook with an Enterprise account), collaborate on responses, track engagement, and analyze campaigns. All conversations are combined into a single, unified inbox. Work groups can be formed in order to focus on a specific brand or product within the company. Plus, there’s the ability to create and control roles and permissions within the company so that team members are allowed specific access within social media accounts.

Mobile communication

• Mobiola Headset. Mobiola Headset is an iPhone/iPod/iPad app that both records calls and also acts as a headset for your PC or Mac. It works with a variety of VoIP applications, including MSN/Windows Live, Google Talk, AOL IM, and Skype, and you simply use the screen to control recording or playing back conversations.
• IM+ Talk. IM+ Talk allows you to make Skype calls from your smartphone. Depending on your phone, you can receive calls to your SkypeIn number, see who is online and chat with other Skype users, and make free VoIP calls in half-duplex mode (similar to a walkie-talkie).
• Smart Scanner. Smart Scanner is an iPhone app that captures and recognizes scanned information, such as articles from magazines, notes, or other printed information. Once you scan it, you can copy and edit the text, access email or make a call, and open URLs within the text. The application recognizes phone numbers, email addresses, web addresses and QR codes, and it works in five languages.

As tools and technology evolve, communication among distributed teams is becoming easier and easier, making it possible to work from anywhere, literally from the touch of a button.

What online tools and applications have most helped with your communications?

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Fortunately, new apps and devices are being created almost daily to help us improve our productivity and collaboration.

Coolendar

Coolendar is attempting to go where no calendar has gone before, integrating traditional calendar and task apps into a “planning experience.” It works as a simple list, instead of the standard calendar view, and provides alerts of tasks and plans via email, messenger, desktop, mobile and Twitter notifications. One interesting feature is its use of tags to organize items and create group plans so that events are more social (think Twitter meets Google Calendar).

Making task entries is seamless and intuitive (the example it gives: “tomorrow 8am make sure to grab the #umbrella!”) and allow for one-click rescheduling and recurrence.

Let’s Crate

We all love the days we stumble on solutions that make some aspect of our work “ridiculously easy,” and that’s exactly what Let’s Crate claims to do for file-sharing. Create an account, select a crate for storing your files, drag and drop to upload them, and then send the link to the individual file or crate you want to share. It’s that easy, and the free plan of 1 GB of space includes six crates, 1000 downloads, and a 50 MB file-size limit, with higher-capacity plans being very inexpensive.

MyDataNest

MyDataNest is another online storage and file-sharing solution, but unlike Let’s Crate, it offers the ability to edit files online without installing any software. Files are stored online and are available to your team through shared online work spaces.

Using similar functionality to Let’s Crate, you simply upload your files and then share a link with members of your team. With their basic and free plan, you can upload files up to 50 MB in size, and that includes three collaboration folders, 2 GB of online storage, and 10 GB of monthly transfer. As with Let’s Crate, higher-capacity plans are still very affordable.

GroupZap

GroupZap takes the “cool factor” award in this roundup of apps, offering real-time brainstorming and online collaboration, as if you were in the same room with your team. Quickly set up your group’s whiteboard by simply entering your email address and sharing a link. Then use sticky notes to each add your own ideas and thoughts to the board. Team members can also upload images and files by dragging and dropping them onto the board or use boxes and arrows to further annotate concepts, processes, and dependencies.

Once all the ideas are in place, your team can then use stickers to vote on different items within the board, and when the meeting is over, you can create a PDF to send to your team as a record of the meeting or for follow-up. It even records the brainstorming session to show the progression of ideas throughout the meeting.

GroupZap is free for up to 100 MB per board, with each board remaining active for seven days. There are also pay-as-you-go and subscription options, which extend the life of a board to one year and include increases in storage capacity.

Twilert

Social networking has become the distraction of late, but if you want to keep a pulse on what’s being said about you or your company, it’s hard to navigate away from the live feed for fear of missing something. Enter Twilert, an online app that sends email updates of new tweets on topics of interest to you. Advanced search options allow for monitoring of specific keywords, people, locations, and even links and attitudes (positive or negative posts or questions).

What are some of your favorite productivity and collaboration apps?

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Input devices

• The Magic Mouse. For the Mac user, the Magic Mouse is a multi-touch mouse that is itself a button that allows you to click anywhere on its surface to scroll, swipe, and click. Simply brush along the surface of the mouse to scroll, or use two fingers to swipe left and right and flip through pages or photos. Cost: $69 from Apple.
• The Phantom Lapboard. This is a combination wireless keyboard, laser mouse and hard surface that you can use from your sofa or arm chair. The keyboard opens to a hard surface for use with your mouse, and with rotating angles which allow you to find a comfortable setting for creating a mobile desktop. Cost: $130 from Phantom Entertainment.

Power devices

• The TruePower U-Socket power outlet. This power outlet provides two USB charging ports, in addition to two standard three-prong power outlet ports, making it perfect for charging any USB-powered device without a computer, including your mobile phone or PDA, iPod or MP3 player, and digital camera. Cost: $23 from FastMac.
• The Sanctuary. The Sanctuary is a universal charger and USB port for electronic devices (currently compatible with 3,767 devices, or so its product page touts). Charge your mobile phone, iPod or MP3 player, Bluetooth headset, and PDA in this single charging station. Cost: $130 from BlueLounge.

Mobile phone accessories

• The Jawbone ERA. This Bluetooth headset eliminates background noise and auto-adjusts inbound call volume to match your environment. With HD-quality sound, you can take calls and listen to your music collection from the one headset. Cost: $130 from Jawbone.

Audio gadgets

• The Pod à Porter. Pod à Porter is a light-weight neckband for the iPod Shuffle that allows you to listen to your iPod, while keeping the controls accessible, but out of your way.  Simply run the headphone wire through the Pod à Porter, attach your iPod, and you’re ready to go. Cost: $30 from Shapeways.

Video gadgets

• Kodak PlaySport Video Camera. If you’re looking for a sturdy digital video camera, look no further than the Kodak PlaySport. It’s waterproof up to 10 feet under water, has built-in image stabilization, and can handle being bumped around a bit. Cost: $150 from Kodak.
• Veho Muvi Pro Micro Camcorder. At less than three inches high, the Muvi Pro comes in as one of the smallest camcorders, yet still manages to capture high quality digital video and sound and can record up to three hours of footage. Cost: $65 through Amazon.

What are some of your favorite media gadgets?

Photo courtesy Flickr user Jorge Quinteros

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Today, I stumbled across a new prospect for email management, SaneBox, which can automatically prioritize and sort email. Could this new hopeful mean the end of email insanity, as it claims? Time will tell, but it looks very promising.

Works with all providers

SaneBox works with most email services that use IMAP or WebDAV, including Gmail, Apple Mail, Microsoft Outlook, Yahoo Mail, and Mozilla Thunderbird, so you can keep your current email address and software. It works within your current email program by accessing your account and adding unique folders for sorting.

Better layout than Priority Inbox

SaneBox seems to work a lot like Priority Inbox, except that sorting takes place using folders instead of using a multi-section layout, which I think makes it easier to compartmentalize and maintain focus. With Priority Inbox, you see all messages in the same pane, making it tempting to jump around or check out less important emails. With SaneBox, you view one folder at a time, and other messages are displayed as a count within your sidebar.

Smart, easy sorting

When you sign up for an account, SaneBox takes your most recent 5,000 messages and sorts them. All other messages are sent to the archive. The most recent emails are then sorted, based on importance, to either your inbox or to a “SaneLater” folder. As you go through your messages, you can drag and drop messages that you’d like to process later into folders such as “SaneTomorrow” or “SaneNextWeek.”  They’ll automatically be moved back to your inbox at the appropriate time.

Simple tweaks and adjustments

SaneBox learns from your actions. You can sort mislabeled messages into the folders where you would like them to go, so for instance, if you get mailing list emails, you can have them sent to your “SaneLater” folder instead of your inbox, or you can send them to the “SaneBlackHole,” if you would prefer not to see them at all.

This functionality works in reverse, too, so if you see that an important message got sent to the “SaneLater” folder by mistake, you can drag it to the inbox so that it gets a higher priority with future sorting.

SaneBox refers to these adjustments as “trainings,” which you can access and adjust within your control panel at any time. (Side note: Afraid you got a little trigger happy? Go to the “trained contacts” section of your account and remove any rules you’ve set so that emails are filtered based on the original settings.)

Added features to improve workflow

The main sorting capabilities of SaneBox make it worth a look, but there are several added features that help to improve workflow and email management, including:

• Social network refinement, which helps to improve the accuracy and effectiveness of sorting, based on the strength of relationships and connections within social networking platforms.
• Spam folder monitoring that acts more like a temporary black hole, rather than a permanent one like other email programs.
• Multi-level email importance, which allows you to organize emails into five levels to maximize your workflow.
• Encryption and “outside-the-envelope” examination of messages (SaneBox does not read your email) so that sensitive information remains protected and private.

A monthly subscription costs $4.95 and the app comes with a 30-day trial.

What tools and tricks do you use for managing email overload?

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Contractually

Although new to the digital signature scene, Contractually boasts several impressive features to speed up the negotiation process. You can use their lawyer-reviewed forms, add one of your own, and even customize your forms with their online contract editor, which notifies all parties of any changes made to their contracts, as well as the differences between different versions.

Contractually also goes some way to eliminating confusing emails and other communications around negotiations with built-in questions, requests, and replies that are kept with the contract and that are visible to all participants. Plus, all messages, attachments and change histories are stored with contracts for future reference.

ContractPal

ContractPal calls itself an “electronic signatures cloud” and offers several features to help reduce certain hassles of contract negotiation, like incomplete documents, which are reduced through what it calls a “reflexive questioning engine.”

ContractPal also automatically routes forms and agreements based on content and parameters you set so that you’re not waiting on approvals or revisions. Plus, it can even accept payments.

GoPaperless

GoPaperless is another solution that provides simple digital signing of documents. Not quite as feature-rich as Contractually or ContractPal, it’s an easy-to-use alternative that offers basic “click to sign” functionality with security through layered encryption, password-protected signing sessions and session activity tracking.

It also provides the ability to export to a variety of formats, as well as have multi-party contracts with a controlled sequence of signers.

DocuSign

Another simple and straightforward solution, DocuSign’s basic-level service collects electronic signatures, authenticates recipients and tracks all activity for a document and is available online and through mobile devices, like the iPhone and iPad.

It offers several additional features with its more advanced editions, including collaboration, document routing, and user and group management.

Adobe eSignatures

Adobe eSignatures has been around for a while and was reviewed by Charlie just last year.  It offers perhaps the most basic of e-signing solutions and is free to use. Just upload your document, enter the email address of your recipient, select a due date, and sign the document yourself, unless you opt to sign after all other signatures have been collected.

RightSignature

RightSignature might tout the fastest process for sending electronic documents for signature with its “one-minute send,” but it also offers more elaborate features than services like Adobe eSignatures, such as handwritten signatures, webcam photo authentication, digital fingerprints and iPhone mobile signing.  It also offers a unique “NaviGuide” flag to point signers to the next required field, as well as a checklist and progress meter to show users what needs to be done to complete the process.

EchoSign

EchoSign works in more of an email-like interface and allows you to control how your documents are signed, whether by e-signature or fax. Its “MegaSign” feature is helpful for documents that require acknowledgement from large groups of people, at the end of which a complete activity report is generated showing who has and hasn’t signed the document. This is helpful for things like policy changes and other situations where you need all employees to sign off on something.

What applications do you use for negotiating contracts and getting them signed online?

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In last week’s post, I talked about how technology is creating an “always on” social media world. Like it or not, these days, if you’re in public (i.e., out of the safety of your own house and/or in the presence of a another person with a camera or camera phone), you’d better be comfortable with anything you do being captured and possibly even posted online.

For this week’s post, I thought I’d provide some tips from the PR industry to help you feel better prepared for those impromptu publicity events.

1. Stay (at least somewhat) presentable. Make sure that you’re at least presentable most of the time. My solution is to keep my closet up-to-date so that I feel “put together” enough, no matter what I might wear on a given day.
2. Get comfortable with public speaking. Fear of public speaking is often reported as the #1 fear of most people, so it’s no wonder we’re a little resistant to having video of ourselves broadcasted to the world. A public speaking or improv class can help alleviate anxiety and instill confidence for those times when you’re placed on the makeshift stage of the World Wide Web.
3. Spruce up on interpersonal communication skills. Learning to manage facial expressions and body language and to maintain eye contact can greatly improve how you feel, as well as your effectiveness, when communicating with others.
4. Control your energy and attitude. Sometimes we leave the wrong impression with people, even our loved ones, simply because we aren’t in the best of moods or because we’re not quite feeling up to par. Doing things to better manage how we feel overall can improve how we handle stressful situations.
5. Mind your manners. I often wonder about celebrities who are dismissed as rude, thinking, “Did they just have a bad day and get caught on camera at an inopportune moment?” Bad habits, poor manners and language, and being less than courteous can be a big turnoff for prospective clients and business associates, so it never hurts to err on the side of caution in this department.
6. Try not to appear defensive or guarded. If you come across on video like you’re fighting off paparazzi, it can easily be taken out of context so that others think you have something to hide or have a bad attitude. As nerve-wracking as it can be to appear on camera, try your best to relax and be natural.
7. Get comfortable making smooth transitions. You can expect to be asked a question at some point that you either can’t or don’t want to answer. Learn to make smooth transitions to another topic so that you avoid sticky situations or avoid coming across as uninformed or elusive.
8. Watch what you say and do. As many celebrities can attest, one careless slip in judgement can quickly put you front and center of a debate or media firestorm. Even if you think you might not be that powerful or important to warrant that kind of attention, you could still get into hot water with friends or family, your clients, or your boss, so be careful not to do or say anything that might be insensitive or offensive to someone else.

While it was once the job of publicists to manage the images of high-profile individuals and companies, these days, with the ever-present social media and devices to share content like photos, audio, and video, it’s becoming increasingly necessary to take charge of our own publicity and image as it’s presented online. Fortunately, a little preparation goes a long way to keep you in the good graces of clients and business associates online.

What other tips do you have for preparing for social media close-ups?

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Technology is rapidly changing, becoming more social and is quickly becoming an integrated part of our lives. With ever-evolving devices, social networks, and online video capabilities, we’re increasingly moving toward an “always on” existence.

Yet it’s almost as if a strange dichotomy exists: on one hand, we’re steadily moving in this new direction where Facebook and Twitter are a central part of our lives, but on the other, many of us are still slow to adopt video and video conferencing. While a great number of people are embracing constant connectivity, others seem to be too leery of the close-up.

The spy in your living room

An acquaintance of mine has a bad habit of recording people on his cell phone without their knowledge or consent. While casually hanging out with friends or family, it’s common to catch him capturing video of someone in the group and jokingly saying that he’s posting it to Facebook. It’s really annoying, but it also shows how when we could innocently be in the company of others without worrying that the things we say or do will end up broadcasted online are gone.

We advise teenagers and college students not to post lewd or indecent photos of themselves online, as they might come back to haunt them in future job searches and so on, but what about our own everyday conduct? Are we comfortable having that streamed live to the world 24/7?

In effect, life is becoming an all-access, behind-the-scenes pass where anyone with a cell phone and an Internet connection can follow us wherever we go, watching and recording everything we say and do.

Our resistance to the spotlight

Certainly, one could argue that this brave new world of social media, with no privacy and complete (perhaps to a fault) transparency, means greater truth and authenticity, but for most of us, I think there are certain times when we want to be able to let our guard down, and that doesn’t mean that we’re being dishonest or that we’re hiding our “real selves” — quite the contrary, during those times, we might feel the least like ourselves and don’t want that to be how we are ultimately perceived by those around us or by anyone online, especially those who generally see us in a more professional light.

Feeling as if we’re always in the spotlight also has the potential for leading us to a lack of intimacy and closeness with people in general, since relationships restricted to those created online often lack depth and meaning. For example, if we have sensitive conversations with close friends or family members, we might divulge details or thoughts to that person, as we’re in the process of developing our opinions around the subject. That doesn’t mean that those details are our opinions, but rather are helping us form our opinions, and the conversation itself is very much a part of that process. If we’re never allowed to have those types of conversations, how will that impact us developmentally and socially? At some point, there have to be boundaries to what gets broadcasted to the world and to what is considered for or against our reputations, online or off.

In short, we can’t be polished and professional at all times, nor can we ever be perfect — we’re human, and being human means bad days, bad moods, and even slumps sometimes. Yet the reality of our world today is that everything we say or do is displayed as if on an overhead projector, and we’re keenly aware of the fact that first impressions count, so how do we find the balance so that what we say or do today doesn’t come back to bite us tomorrow and so that we don’t become today’s version of Stepford wives, behaving just so, in order to avoid a bad rap?

How are you handling being “always on”?

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Timers, alarms and stopwatches

Sometimes, all we need is a little added motivation, like an egg timer or alarm, to challenge us to remain focused and get to the finish line. If that’s the case for you, a simple online alarm clock or timer can help boost productivity.

• Naked Alarm Clock. A simple and free online alarm clock, Naked Alarm Clock makes it easy to lose yourself in the task at hand without worrying that you’ll miss your next appointment.

• Your Meditation Timer. If you get annoyed with more-traditional-sounding alarms, a meditation timer might be music to your ears. A soft gong or Tibetan bell can let you know it’s time to change tasks.

• Online Stopwatch. For every type of timer imaginable, look no further than this Online Stopwatch.

Pomodoro timers/trackers

The Pomodoro Technique involves breaking work up into timed 25-minute chunks (known as pomodoros), separated by short breaks to help improve concentration. There are several apps based on the idea.

• Focus Booster. This app helps eliminate the anxiety of time and enhances your focus using the Pomodoro Techinique.

• Pomodoro (Mac only). Another Pomodoro supporter, this app helps you to avoid procrastination and get things done.

Time monitoring/tracking

For the analytical among us, more-detailed automated time tracking and monitoring may do the trick for increasing productive time online.

• RescueTime. This tool lets you track your Internet usage while also allowing you to voluntarily block distracting websites.

• TrackTime. This app allows you to track the time you spend on projects, as well as your web-browsing habits.

Time-out/break reminders

Sometimes the problem with getting things done isn’t our lack of effort but rather constantly overextending ourselves. This is where a forced break or time-out can help.

• Time Out (Mac only). Time Out gently reminds you to take breaks on a regular basis.

• SmartBreak (Windows only). SmartBreak also reminds you to take breaks when working on your computer for long hours.

Website-blocking tools

For many of us, the Internet is filled with tempting distractions that keep us from the task at hand, which is where website-blocking tools come in handy.

• StayFocusd (Chrome extension). This productivity extension for Google Chrome restricts the amount of time you can spend on time-wasting websites.

• Anti-Social (Mac only). Anti-Social keeps you focused by turning off the “social parts” of the Internet, such as Facebook, Twitter and any other sites you specify.

• Freedom. This app locks you away from the Internet for up to eight hours at a time.

• SelfControl (Mac only). SelfControl blocks email and websites for a predetermined period of time.

Concentration/work environments

For those of us who need complete isolation in order to get focused, there are certain tools that hone in on a single task until the job is done.

• FocusWriter. FocusWriter provides a simple, distraction-free writing environment.

• Think (Mac only). This tool limits your attention to one application at any time to keep you from getting distracted.

• Quiet (Mac only). Quiet allows you to focus on a single window while simultaneously fading out others.

• Haze Over (Mac only). This app helps you stay focused on your main window by dimming inactive windows.

• Concentrate (Mac only). Perhaps the most robust of all the apps, Concentrate allows you to create “activities” (for example: design, study, write) with customized actions that run every time you concentrate on a given task.

• Isolator. This tool helps you concentrate by covering up your desktop, its icons and the windows of other applications.

While the Internet has its advantages when it comes to work, it can also be a distraction. But with the right app to help maintain concentration and focus, it’s a lot easier to stay on track and get things done.

What are your favorite focus-boosting apps and tools?

Photo courtesy Flickr user BY-YOUR-⌘

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Cord Chaos

If you’re like me, you avoid cleaning or rearranging your office due to the dread of having to sort through dozens of cables lurking behind your desk. Fortunately, there are some gadgets on the market to help with this pesky little problem.

• Cordies Cable Organizers Cordies desktop cable management system keeps all your desktop cables straight by snugly holding cables so that they don’t slide off your desk when disconnected. Each loop holds multiple cables at once and can support power cords, USB cords, phone chargers, and audio and video cables. Cost: $12.99 from ThinkGeek.
• BlueLounge CableDrops CableDrops offer another solution for keeping cords and cables in place. They come in packs of six and in a variety of colors. Cost: $9.95
  from BlueLounge.
• Applecores. Keep cables organized and in place with AppleCores. They come in three size, multiple colors, and can hold everything from earbuds to household appliances, and the best part might be that you can simply unplug and they’re ready to go when traveling. Cost: $1.99-4.99 from Applecore International.
• Dreamfarm Jot. Jots work a lot like CableDrops, but might be a little more versatile (the Dreamfarm website shows Jots holding everything from cables to sets of keys) and are only slightly more expensive for packs of two. Cost: $4.95 from DreamFarm.
• Ziotek Color-Coded Surge Protector Keeping cords straight on top of the desk is one thing, but what about under it? How many times have you played musical cables trying to locate one of a half a dozen? The Ziotek color-coded surge protector is just the fix. It includes color-coordinated slots and cable markers to keep all your devices straight. Cost: $10.99 from CyberGuys.

Cell Phone and Charging Stations

What a difference ten years makes! I can’t remember ever needing to charge anything before cell phones and MP3 players came on the market, but charging stations are now a permanent part of our work life.

• Breffo Spiderpodium Stand. The Breffo Spiderpodium stand is a cool little gadget that holds cell phones, iPods, and other devices on an eight-leg “octopod” (instead of tripod). It mounts to car vents or mirrors, stands on desk or counter tops, and wraps around bike handlebars, backpacks, or baby strollers. It won’t leave marks and can easily be moved to another spot. Cost: $17.25 from Amazon.
• G.U.S. Phone/PDA Charging Station. If devices are taking over your counter tops, especially if multiple people in your home or office need to charge them at the same time, you might like a phone/PDA charging station. This one can stand on a desk  or counter top, or be mounted to a wall so that phones are out of the way and in one place. Cost: $39.99 from GreatUsefulStuff.
• Chargepod. For even more devices, you might prefer the Chargepod, which can charge up to six devices on one outlet. It claims to support over 3,000 devices, including phones, PDAs, cameras, and mp3 players, and it’s also available as a car charger. Cost: $49.95-59.95 from Callpod.

Notes and To-Dos

While I love technology and all the conveniences it often brings, I’m still a compulsive note-taker, and although my filing needs are nearly non-existent these days, I still use a few tools to keep paper in order.

• Dreamfarm Gripet. Another Dreamfarm creation, the Gripet holds notes and reminders using friction. It attaches to a wall, filing cabinet, or refrigerator with magnetic or adhesive mounts. Cost: $19.95 from DreamFarm.
• Tear Away Planner Mousepad. In recent years, I’ve  made use of my mousepad by buying a small desktop calendar to fit to it. Although I use Google Calendar for keeping track of dates and events, I like having a month at a glance and right under my computer mouse. If you use a paper to-do list, you might opt for a tear-away planner mousepad instead, which covers a full week of to-dos at a glance. Cost: $9.99 from ThinkGeek.
• NeatReceipts. If you hate tracking paper documents for taxes and record-keeping, NeatReceipts can help. It organizes receipts, business cards and other documents by scanning and then using optical character recognition to extract key information. Cost: $199.95 from NeatCo.

What are your favorite gadgets for staying organized?

Photo courtesy Flickr user yprime

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“Untethered,” for most of us, isn’t technical jargon for how hardware communicates, shares or connects, but rather the ability to work unrestrained, able to jump from one activity to the next without cumbersome hardware and software slowing us down.

In the end, however, it isn’t just the technology that must evolve and set the stage for a new way of working. As users, we must embrace change as well and be willing to move away from old ways of thinking and working. We can begin by moving to a more simplified cloud-based setup.

Step 1: Gradually Move to the Cloud

One of the best ways to simplify the way we work is by reducing our reliance on location-dependent software and hardware. Over the years, I’ve gradually moved away from using a single computer; now the bulk of my work is available online, and where I once worried about the inevitable computer crash that would create days of additional work and headache, I can now simply move to any other computer with an Internet connection and barely miss a beat.

With the advent of services like Google Docs, it’s much easier to stop thinking in terms of the solution and instead focus on the medium or output. Instead of using local programs for things like documents and spreadsheets, for example, we can opt for online applications, like Office Web Apps, Google Docs and Zoho, that can handle these types of files.

Step 2: Minimize

To create a centralized “dashboard” for your work, begin weeding out extra steps that might currently exist in your setup by trying to moving away from using solutions that only handle particular problems or tasks.

Simon wrote about this from a developer’s standpoint in a GigaOM Pro article, Enterprise 2.0: Web Apps and the Patchwork Quilt Problem (sub. req.). As a user, you can adopt a simpler way of working by taking a minimalist approach to software and hardware. Instead of using a separate application for each problem, figure out ways to re-purpose what’s already in your toolbox, or adopt different tools that can address more of your needs.

You might currently use ten separate programs to manage an equal number of smaller tasks, and although this approach might be effective at alleviating specific pain points, it creates an often greater problem of tracking the applications being used, as well as syncing, searching for, and accessing information across multiple platforms. By reducing the number of tools you use to the “lowest effective dose,” you can greatly improve productivity and the ease in which you work. Zoho, for example, offers project management, web conferencing, invoicing and a host of other business solutions in one stop.

One word of caution: While I’m trying to keep my day-to-day tools and apps be kept to a minimum, I’m still very aware of the risks of relying on a single solution. It pays to back up important work and information in a second location, in order to not become overly dependent on any one platform.

As we transition to cloud computing, our main goal is to keep things simple and to make the process of work faster and more effective, and while technology is gradually improving to make work and life easier, as users, we still have to learn to embrace the change to achieve it.

Do you think technology has made work easier or more complicated for the end user?

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In recent months, I’ve increased my usage of video and multi-media presentations and conferencing, both for collaboration with external business contacts and for internal product development.

Not long after starting to use these technologies on a regular basis, I decided I needed a better and more-permanent setup in order to remain productive and comfortable, while also being able to shift quickly and seamlessly from one activity to another. Otherwise, I was constantly rearranging my work space to fit the task at hand and spending as much time setting up for a given activity as I was actually completing it.

The Case for a Dedicated Media Room

Many companies today with distributed workforces are making dedicated “media rooms” an important aspect of communication, one that allows workers separated geographically to engage in dynamic conversations, as if they were in the same room and without having to spend time setting up equipment.

Lew Epstein is a general manager at Steelcase, one company providing such working environments. Steelcase’s “media:scape rooms” are dedicated meeting areas that use furniture and technology to create collaborative work spaces for distributed teams. Epstein says that “teams need to share complex ideas [and] solutions that enable them to connect quickly and globally. They want to share content on their laptop or get up and write or draw on a whiteboard, and they need all the subtleties of face-to-face communication, too. For true collaboration, groups need spaces that nurture the process of collaboration. Work is not defined by what you do at a desk, and organizations are no longer confined within office towers. Teams need comfortable, versatile collaborative spaces to work in.”

Tandberg, now part of Cisco, is another company that provides such solutions for face-to-face communication or, as the company refers to them, “telepresence environments.” While these spaces require considerable investment, they can provide companies with cost savings and create greener organizations by cutting travel.

Creating a Media Room

The options for setting up a media space are as varied as the companies that use them. Overall, you’ll want to make sure your solution provides a seamless way to share information, audio, and video so that your team can easily connect and engage with one another remotely, but here are a few other considerations to make when planning your media room or space:

• Think about how your team currently collaborates and how you might improve remote meetings and presentations.
• Decide if you need a dedicated room is required,  or if whether you can integrate your media space within your current office or meeting area.
• Decide if you’ll be conducting calls with multiple parties at either end or with just one person.
• Think about whether your solution needs to be portable or if it will be set up as a permanent point within your office (some HD telepresence units are now reasonably portable).
• Consider the types of content you will share within your presentations and meetings.

In the end, a dedicated media space allows a distributed workforce to collaborate and share information from anywhere in the world quickly and easily, saving time and money, while increasing the effectiveness of global communication.

Image courtesy Steelcase

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1. Save for a rainy day. If you know that you’re going to be on a “forced vacation” for a while, the blow is softened if you can save a little in advance. Try to get as much outstanding work and projects completed in advance of the closure so that you’re that much less behind when things are restored to normal.
2. Warn everyone in advance. Let employees, sub-contractors, and customers know as soon as possible before the event that you anticipate a business closure. Let them know how long you expect to be down and what you will do once things are restored so that they’re as confident as possible that you will communicate with them as soon as you’re able, as well as the method in which you will do so.
3. Set a backup point-of-contact. For Hurricane Gustav, I elicited the help of my trusted accountability partner to be my point-of-contact after the storm. She would be the first person I contacted to let everyone know I was safe, and since past experience let me know that text messaging was the most reliable form of contact post-storm, I made sure to get her cell phone number and let her know that would be my method for contact until I had phone or Internet again. Once she heard from me, she would then communicate with clients that I was safe, as well as any estimate I had at that point for regaining power and communications.
4. Prepare backup contact methods. In the days after a natural disaster, it’s very likely that you will not have power, land line phones, cell phones or Internet, so it’s important to anticipate limited communication methods beforehand. Write down the phone numbers and email addresses of all important contacts and put them in a waterproof place, like a Ziploc bag. Should you be able to send text messages or make phone calls, the numbers will be readily available to you and not locked away on your computer or the Internet.
5. Hire a sub-contractor. If you have enough notice, you may wish to outsource some of your work to an assistant or sub-contractor so that you at least have some income during the closure. Be sure to work out terms in advance and communicate on your website how clients can reach the the sub-contractor while you’re away.
6. Create an emergency code. Sometimes we don’t have the luxury of knowing that a disaster is threatening to disrupt our businesses, so as a safeguard, you may want to establish an “emergency code” with a trusted business contact, assistant, or sub-contractor. Plan in advance that, if you send the code, they’ll take certain steps for you, and be sure to provide support documentation, user names and passwords, and necessary contact information so that they can act on your behalf.
7. Set up outbound messages. Just before you hunker down, set up an auto-responder within your email program stating that you’re away in preparation for the event and that you’ll respond to all incoming messages as soon as communications are restored. You may also wish to communicate your emergency point-of-contact. Be sure to post a similar message to all outposts, including your website, Facebook page, and any other place where business-related contacts communicate with you.

Certainly, in an ideal world, we’d all be able to operate from satellite phones and Internet, with backup generators, but even that’s not always possible after a natural disaster has occurred. And as we saw with Hurricane Katrina, it’s not always “business as usual” immediately after the threat of danger has passed. Sometimes it can be weeks before power and communications are restored, making it next to impossible to get back to work or even connect with the outside world, which is why it’s so important to prepare for the likelihood of a business closure well before disaster strikes.

What tips do you have for preparing your business ahead of an emergency?

Photo courtesy Flickr user Tammra McCauley

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Dozens of new products and applications launch every day to help with different aspects of social networking, information management, and remote collaboration. We test and bookmark those that seem interesting, but quickly forget why we tried them or even where to find them again. They simply don’t alleviate a problem important enough to keep them on the radar very long.

Some of the “solutions” available offer quick fixes to problems we didn’t even know we had, which got me thinking. What do we really need as web workers these days, and is anyone working to find solutions to those problems?

Technology is changing by the minute, and we expect the tools we use to change and evolve as well, but at the end of all the experimentation with promising new gadgets and gizmos, we still have certain core functions to do each day. What we really need is a single tool to help ease the increasing challenge of managing those tasks, while still keeping us up to speed with the changes in technology.

#1 Need: A Centralized Dashboard

If you’re like me, you jump from one application to the next consuming, creating, and managing every type of media imaginable.

Getting a single task completed can sometimes require five separate platforms (email, online document manager, project manager, content editing apps, etc.), and this problem isn’t limited to work-related tasks, since even commenting online has become increasingly complex.

Whether completing work-related projects or simply networking online, it’s often necessary to log into multiple applications. Even the simplest of tasks have become multi-part processes. Simon wrote about this issue in a GigaOM Pro article, Enterprise 2.0: Web Apps and the Patchwork Quilt Problem (sub. req.).

#2 Need: Aggregated Contacts and Information

“I remember talking with Lynne about that company. She sent me the link to their website, but I’ll have to look it up. I can’t remember if she sent it to me by email or if she posted it somewhere else online.”

How many times do we have these conversations with ourselves? Information is shared just as often via Twitter and Facebook as it is by email, and with varying layers of security and the sheer volume of information being generated at any given point, it’s getting harder to reference a given conversation at a later point.

We need a way to not only archive, but also sync and update information across multiple platforms so that we always have the most current version available to us wherever we are and whatever hardware or software we’re using.

#3 Need: Seamless Hardware Transitions

Just as with disconnected software, hardware that doesn’t seamlessly share and sync information and applications makes it hard to transition from one to another. Although options are available (and they vary depending on the phone, computer, operating system, etc.), they’re not always painless, and if you ever switch to new equipment, you’re often forced to switch syncing options as well.

#4 Need: Security

Last, we need better ways to keep information secure and private. After several experiences with bank and network security breaches, I find myself backing out of applications that require me to share information between applications and sites. It’s just not worth the risk. Although I want to find ways to simplify the way I work online, I know that with every application I use and every piece of information I sync, I’m risking the security of contact data, usernames and passwords.

I’m not sure this was our intention, but we’ve become dispersed as a workforce and created ways to better connect and bridge great distances through the use of social networking, video conferencing, and online collaboration, only to find the information and tools we use to manage all that online interaction disconnected and even counter-productive.

What capabilities do you think are missing from today’s collaboration tools?

Photo courtesy Flickr user music_addict_4

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Increasingly, the information we use to manage our companies is moving to the cloud, and human resources is no exception. Here are several solutions that provide simple and affordable online employee management and tracking to save you time, money and effort.

TribeHR is one of the more robust platforms of all the options, providing many HR management tools in one app:

• Vacation/leave tracking. Select, approve and track vacation and leave days, including earned and taken days. View vacation requests, as well as who is currently on vacation or leave.
• Employee development. Set, track, and complete goals, privately or shared. Get feedback and peer input, and collect notes and comments for performance reviews. You can also securely store employee evaluations for future reference, and track and rank employee skills company-wide.
• Employee notes and feedback. Privacy-controlled note-taking for employees and managers, as well as public employee recognition and company feedback.
• Shared resources. Post and store files for employee access and viewing. You can even track who acknowledges viewing the files you post.
• Job postings. Post available jobs for your organization and accept applications, make and share notes, and rank applicants.
• Reports. Generate reports for taken/available vacation and sick time, goal progress, skills, and file reading acknowledgement.

TribeHR also provides data portability, so you can export your company information. Plans range from $19 per month for up to 15 users, going up to $399 per month for unlimited users. A free trial is available.

BambooHR

BambooHR is another powerful HR software option with several great features to help  you manage your employee data:

• Employee records. Track employee information, such as contact information, dependents, emergency contacts, salary, and position history.
• Vacation/leave Tracking. As with TribeHR, BambooHR allows the tracking and management of employee leave time and allows employees to request time off for manager approval. It also tracks leave time accruals and balances.
• Training time tracking. Track one-time and recurring training, and even set due dates and alerts so that you can monitor employee training.
• Benefit tracking. Track benefit eligibility and enrollment dates, plans and coverage, as well as employee and company contributions.
• Online document storage. Store and share forms, applications, documents and performance reviews.
• Reports. Generate employee data reports, including job and salary history, leave time used, turnover rate, and create your own custom reports using BambooHR’s filtering and sorting capabilities.

Plans range from $79 per moth for up to 50 employees, going up to $599 per month for 1,000 employees. A free trial is available.

Effortless HR

Effortless HR offers features to help you centralize and manage employee information:

• Employee records/management. Save important employee information, including contact details, job information, benefits, skills, and performance data.
• Employee portal. Employees can update information, request time off, and clock in or out from within the Effortless HR platform.
• Employee email. Send company or department emails and announcements.
• Time tracking. Employees can clock in or clock out through the online interface and can view the hours they’ve worked in a given week. Managers can export time reports to work with your payroll software.
• File area. Share files with your entire company or with specific employees.
• Reports. Import and export employee information.

Plans range from $29.95 per month for up to 19 employees, going up to $99.95 per month for up to 1,000 employees.

iEmployee

iEmployee provides web-based time and attendance management and tracking through four separate products (costs are not disclosed on the website).

• Online paystubs. Provide paystub information online to eliminate printing and distribution costs. It also allows you to maintain an online archive of all paystubs for future reference.
• Timesheets. With its online tracking system, iEmployee provides an easy way to process payroll and improve accuracy.
• Vacation/leave tracking. Managers and employees are able to track vacation and sick time, and employees can request leave online for manager review and approval.
• Time clocks. The online interface, as well as optional time clock hardware and Integrated Voice Response (IVR) telephony features, allow employees to clock in and out.

All the solutions outlined above provide the ability to track and manage employee information remotely, making human resources yet another aspect of your company that can be accessed and stored completely online.

How do you manage and track employees and HR data?

Photo courtesy Flickr user Alex E. Proimos

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