People no longer have to be tied to their desks all day, every day. As long as an Internet connection is available, people can work from virtually anywhere: coffee shops, their homes, remote offices or on public transport. But while having your staff working from any location is all well and good, how can you make sure that everyone not only remains productive, but feels like part of one organization and one team?

One of the dangers with having a remote workforce and geographically dispersed teams is: “Out of sight, out of mind.” With a customer engagement team that is always on the road and offices in London and San Francisco, here are some of my tips for keeping your team together:

• Deploy a standard, business-wide instant messaging tool. Waiting for emails to hit yourinbox or playing telephone tag with your colleagues is neither productive nor fun. Rolling out one instant messaging tool across your business will ensure that information can be shared quickly and easily. Presence indicators also give you visibility of who is at their desk, who is in meetings and who is not online. At Huddle, Skype is our default instant messaging tool and when a new member of the team joins they’re instantly added to everyone’s contact list. For any quick queries, it’s a great way for people working from their homes, our London office or our San Francisco office to talk to each other.
• Head towards the same goal. When your workforce is based in different time zones or regularly out of the office, it’s all too easy for people to start working in silos.  Communications barriers can start to form and everyone focuses on their own personal objectives without thinking about how this fits into the wider business goals. To make sure that everyone understands the company’s goals and how they fit into the bigger picture, hold regular organization-wide meetings. Obviously, regularly flying an entire team across the globe to meet face-to-face isn’t practical, cost effective or environmentally friendly. To overcome this issue, Huddle holds a Friday Stand-Up meeting. Thanks to the wonders of a projector and live video link, everyone in the San Francisco and London offices can get together and discuss what they’ve been working on that week. This ensures that the product, development, marketing, partner, sales and management team all have full visibility of what is going on across the business (and what the people they’re working with actually look like!) Any team members that have joined that week can also be introduced to everyone.
• Look to the cloud. If you have a team on the move, everyone needs to be able to access files from wherever they are. Storing large files on a local computer or server and relying on email to send them to numerous people just isn’t practical. A lot of people working on numerous documents across multiple locations and time zones results in overburdened inboxes, mislaid documents and confusion over which version is current. Cloud-based file sharing tools, such as Dropbox, give teams the ability to upload content that can be instantly accessed by everyone working on a project. At Huddle, we all use our own product as it gives us the ability to control versioning and access rights. In fact, most of the tools we use are cloud-based — from our email through to our CRM software — so everything is accessible via the web.
• Get the team up to speed. While cloud-based tools and services are great for ensuring that everyone can access whatever they need, from any location, on whatever device they have, having a decent Internet connection is essential. People working from home can’t be productive if they’re using an Internet connection with speeds reminiscent of dial-up. If your team has the option to work from home, consider offering them a home office broadband supplement. If your sales and customer engagement teams also spend a lot of time on the road, think about providing them with mobile broadband.
• Company-wide fun. Team days out are important from a bonding perspective. But your team won’t feel like it’s bonding if everyone based at HQ is having fun while remote workers and staff in other offices are still working. Even when there were only a few people at Huddle’s San Francisco office, we made sure that when the London office had days out, we did too.
• Getting the time right. There is nothing pleasant about being based in different time zones and having to get up at the crack of dawn or work late so that you can join your colleagues, partners or customers for a web or phone conference. If there’s no way round it and some members of the team have to get up early or go to bed late so that they can join a meeting, why not consider rolling out flexible working hours?

Andy McLoughlin, Co-founder and EVP Strategy at Huddle, can be reached on Twitter @Bandrew.

Photo by Flickr user wetwebwork, licensed under CC 2.0

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Be careful when choosing products that claim to be green. Some companies make claims about the environmental sustainability of their products when they are only green in comparison to other manufacturers. In fact Dell, a company that is taking some heat from Greenpeace at the moment for failing to live up to its pledge to eliminate harmful chemicals, took Apple to court for claiming to be the greenest. Apple scored a win in that case, but its iPad could do better in the green department. A great resource for checking the environmental performance of electronic products is EPEAT which rates “desktop and laptop computers, thin clients, workstations and computer monitors” and features resources for individual consumers and small businesses around the world.  Another useful place to look is Greenpeace’s “Guide to Greener Electronics” (PDF of full report), its annual report that also covers gadget and phone makers. The site includes a nifty gauge that makes comparisons between brands easy and an interactive chart for getting more details.

Eco-Friendly Computers

Sony, Apple and HP are the highest scoring computer makers on Greenpeace’s chart because they have all committed to mitigating their environmental impact. Sony’s VAIO line boasts some of the best eco-credentials on the market, especially when taking energy consumption and levels of toxic chemicals into consideration. Apple scores well in reduced harmful chemicals — all of its products are free of PVC and brominated flame retardant (BFR) — but its notorious tight-lipped communications strategy makes details of their supply chain difficult to asses. Apple does try to make its products easy to recycle and energy efficient, two important features for the long-term sustainability of any electronic device. HP has the same rating from Greenpeace and offers a range of computers that fall under their “Eco Highlights” label, including those that meet Energy Star standards.

Dell computers is venturing into providing greener options with its “Earth” category. While it may be using renewable bamboo for its packaging, the ballyhooed bamboo case computer pictured in the “Greener Products” section doesn’t exist yet. Greenpeace wants the company to commit to reducing chemical use. It lost a point “for backtracking on its commitment to eliminate PVC vinyl plastic and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) in all its products by the end of 2009.”

Companies to avoid if you’re concerned about the environmental impact of your computing include Acer, Toshiba, and Samsung. They all received low scores from Greenpeace due to their backtracking on commitments to eliminate PVC and BFRs. As with all of the brands mentioned above, some of their products are greener than others. Toshiba, Samsung and even Lenovo, which scored miserably in the Greenpeace guide, all have desktops or laptops that earned Gold-level certification from EPEAT. Lenovo even garnered the first TCO Certified Edge award for an all-in-one PC. TCO is a certification that considers eco-friendliness, ergonomics and performance to determine which products “are pushing the boundaries of environmental design and leading the way to a cleaner, more efficient IT infrastructure.”

See Green

Laptops are more eco-friendly than desktops with their miniaturized components and reduced energy consumption, but desktops are still more common in home offices. Select an eco-friendly monitor to go along with your box and you’ll have a fully green desktop system.

Despite its low ranking in the Greenpeace guide, Lenovo is on the shortlist of environmentally-conscious monitor manufacturers. Its ThinkVision series, for instance, comes in at the Gold level of EPEAT certification, making it a very responsible choice. Taiwanese display maker Benq combines clean, somewhat cheeky designs with strict environmental standards. Its BenQ V2400 Eco LED Monitor is 100 percent recyclable and mercury-free — and even features a little indentation in the base that can be used as a planter. ViewSonic also has some offerings on the EPEAT and TCO ratings, including the LED-backlit VG1932wm. It has announced intentions to move its whole line over to LED backlights, meaning that they will be mercury free. HP, Dell, and Samsung are other brands with models that make it onto both the EPEAT and TCO lists. Check the manufacturer’s or certifying group’s website to double-check that specific models of displays, and all your system’s components, are truly energy-efficient, non-toxic, recycled and recyclable.

Trenton DuVal has managed the online communications efforts of nonprofits focused on creating a more sustainable, just and equitable world since 2005. His varied experiences living and working on five continents have included professional gold farming, crossing the Atlantic by sailboat, a few meals with Nobel Laureates and a tragic run-in with a three-toed sloth.

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Circuit board photo courtesy Flickr user Squeezyboy, licensed under CC 2.0

Yet with this increase in acceptance comes a corresponding increase in expectations for these workers. Web workers are required to display the same level of professionalism as their office-bound colleagues, particularly in their interactions with co-workers, business partners and customers. However, if they are not using effective technology, displaying that professionalism can be a difficult task.

Below are some ideas on how you can be sure you’re presenting a top-notch, professional image by replacing inadequate consumer technologies with affordable tools designed specifically for those working in small or home offices.

Use a Virtual Phone Service

Whether you’re using your home phone, a second landline or a mobile phone, having calls come directly to your phone makes you appear small and casual. The better choice is a virtual phone service for small business. This type of service, which you can usually find for around $10 per month, offers a number of corporate phone-like features, such as a virtual receptionist that answers calls with a professional greeting, enhanced voicemail, smart call forwarding that allows you to forward calls to any phone you choose (such as your mobile phone) when you’re away from the office, even the ability to establish regular “office hours” by switching to an after-hours greeting when it’s time to shut down.

If you’re running a business that has its own employees or uses contractors on a regular basis, the virtual phone system lets you give customers and prospects one toll-free or local phone number to call, then use extensions to reach anyone in the company, whether they’re inside the building or across the country. Either way, you’ll give the appearance of working in a downtown high rise rather than remotely.

Use an Internet Fax Service

Faxes are still a fact of life in many industries. But it’s not efficient for web workers to have important faxes tied to a single fax machine. Sending and receiving faxes today is as simple as using a smartphone application. For roughly $10 per month, an Internet fax service sends and receives faxes online anywhere you have an Internet connection. There’s never a busy signal, and instant notifications allow web workers to know exactly when a fax arrives. If you’re working on a team, faxes can be delivered to multiple email addresses at the same time, or forwarded to multiple recipients.

Documents sent by fax are usually urgent and important. An Internet fax service can help enhance your professional image by staying on top of faxes.

Be Present Via Video

The phrase “out of sight, out of mind” is one many web workers know. Sure, you can call in to a meeting, but when a lot is happening, or a whiteboard is being used, it can be tough to keep up. A better way to go is to “call in” via video. With the right video conferencing application, and a coworker willing to point a laptop in the right direction, you can establish more of a presence at the meeting, read facial reactions and body language, and participate more fully in conferences. If you need to share information from your computer, many of these applications can help you do that too.

These applications may not have all the video/audio quality or features of the large corporate systems. But they’re available free or for very little cost. And just the effort makes you look more professional.

Move Applications and Services Online

One of the most frustrating parts of being a web worker is the need to become an IT expert. Losing time and having technology crash while you try to troubleshoot hardware or software problems doesn’t do much for your image. Today you can solve that by using web services that are managed by someone else. Your office suite, storage, security, phone system, faxes, accounting software and just about anything else are available these days, either free or for a low monthly subscription.

The nice thing about this model is that your entire office can go with you when you’re on the road, eliminating cost and maintenance headaches. As long as you can get an Internet connection you can access files, work on documents, share information and more from any PC or smart phone – just as though you are in the office.

The expectations for the professionalism of web workers have been raised. Make sure you’re ready to meet them by using communications tools that provide the level of quality of a large corporation, without all the downsides of corporate life.

Steve Adams is the vice president of marketing for Protus, a provider of communications tools for small-to-medium-businesses and enterprise organizations, including the MyFax internet fax service; my1voice, a virtual phone service; and Campaigner, an e-mail marketing solution. He can be reached at sadams@protus.com.

New Jersey is not the only state claiming authority to tax a nonresident company simply
because the firm employs an in-state telecommuter. While uncertainty remains about how
states will handle individual cases, the inclination of many state tax departments to assert this
authority is concerning. The trend threatens telecommuting’s growth nationally at a time when the country urgently needs to use it more — to create jobs, conserve oil, decrease carbon emissions and assure business continuity during emergencies, for example.

States facing cases like Telebright should adopt the New Jersey Tax Court’s progressive
understanding of telework. However, they should draw a different conclusion from that
understanding and resist taxing out-of-state employers whose only connection, or “nexus,” to
the state is a limited tele-workforce.

Overview of Telebright

Srisathya Thirumalai was a Maryland resident Telebright employed to write software code. When Thirumalai relocated to New Jersey, the firm retained her as a telecommuter. Telebright had no other employees in New Jersey and did not file New Jersey Corporation Business Tax returns. The Division of Taxation determined it should, because, by employing Thirumalai in New Jersey, Telebright was “doing business” there. Telebright argued before the New Jersey Tax Court that it was not “doing business” within the meaning of New Jersey’s Corporation Business Tax Act (CBT Act) and that subjecting the company to the Act would violate the U.S. Constitution’s Due Process and Commerce Clauses. The court rejected both claims.

The court also noted that a federal statute limiting states’ power to tax the income of
certain nonresident companies was inapplicable. The statute — P.L. 86-272 — bars states from
taxing out-of-state businesses that restrict their in-state activities to soliciting orders for sales
of tangible personal property, as long as the orders are both approved and filled from outside
the state. Because Thirumalai did not solicit orders, P.L. 86-272 did not shield Telebright from
taxation.

The Ruling’s Pros and Cons

The Telebright court rightly treated cross-border telework as a profitable business practice useful to both employers and workers, and the court also underscored the legitimacy of a home office as a worksite. Courts nationwide should embrace the Tax Court’s advanced appreciation of telework.

However, the court’s decision also jeopardizes the growth of telework in New Jersey, harming both the state’s residents and its economy. Companies outside New Jersey concerned about taxation there may well refuse to allow either current or prospective employees from New Jersey to telework. By decreasing telework opportunities, the policy approved in Telebright can also limit employment in the state.

Say someone from New Jersey cannot find in-state work but receives a job offer from a Maryland firm. When her home sale efforts prove futile, she proposes telecommuting. Because the company has no other connection to New Jersey and wants to avoid taxation there, it denies her request. She must turn the job down, needlessly prolonging her unemployment. When New Jersey residents remain jobless for a sustained period, the state clearly loses. Personal income tax revenue falls. Because unemployed people have less to spend, sales tax revenue falls. Reduced sales can cause reduced business income tax revenue. A tax policy undoubtedly intended to raise revenue can easily backfire.

The Trend Telebright Illustrates

Other states, too, are asserting that telecommuters within the state who conduct non-solicitation activities may create income tax obligations for their nonresident employers. Responding to a recent Bureau of National Affairs (BNA) survey, thirty-five states said that a nonresident company’s employment of a non-soliciting telecommuter within the state would, by itself, subject the company to income tax liability (BNA, Inc., Special Report: 2010 Survey of State Tax Departments, Vol. 17, No. 4, April 23, 2010).

However, whether a state would tax a nonresident company in any particular case is not completely clear: “[G]uidance, in the form of case law or statutes setting forth the types of activities that trigger nexus and taxability, is lacking in many states.” Although the survey “fills in essential details,” because “nexus determinations are fact-specific and subject to interpretation, the states’ answers should not be relied upon as definitive policy statements,” BNA says.

To harness telecommuting’s many benefits, states should adopt the Telebright court’s view of interstate telework as interstate commerce profiting employers and employees alike. However, states should not — as the Telebright court did — deter telework by requiring nonresident companies to file income tax returns just because they hire a single resident to telecommute. Even a small group of telecommuters should not trigger tax liability. Rather than saddling nonresident employers with extra tax burdens if they hire some in-state telecommuters, states should offer them tax breaks. Especially in the current economy, states should encourage businesses to hire their residents on terms that do not force the residents to move.

Nicole Goluboff is a lawyer and Advisory Board Member of the Telework Coalition, is the author of “The Law of Telecommuting,” “Telecommuting for Lawyers” and numerous articles on telework.

Photo by stock.xchng user djshaw

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The Home Office

Reduce power usage in your home office using some simple common-sense remedies for typical energy drains. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy’s EnergyStar program has some good tips for eliminating wasteful energy use around the house. First, turn off your computer, monitor and printer (or at least have them go into standby mode) when they aren’t in use. Monitors should power down rather than run a screen saver.

When office equipment will be switched off for longer periods, use a power strip, or energy UFO, to avoid vampire appliances slowly draining electricity. Belkin makes a series of devices that prevent wasted power. Disconnect chargers for mobile devices when they are not being used; except for smart chargers, they all suck energy when plugged in. Replace lights with energy saving models; LEDs or CFLs.

A multifunction device that combines a printer, scanner and fax is more efficient than separate machines for each function and takes fewer resources to manufacture. (Think twice about sending or receiving paper faxes, too.)  If you are considering making new hardware purchases, invest in the most efficient computer available. More efficient computers generate less heat (and so lessen A/C usage) and use less electricity over their lifetimes. Collectively, more energy-efficient computing can add up to big savings.

Follow standard practices for keeping your environment temperature-controlled, like preventing drafts and using window shades; heating and cooling make up the largest portion of home energy consumption. Setting your thermostat a few degrees higher or lower, and using a programmable model that can automatically turn off while the house is unoccupied, can make a big difference in your energy consumption. You can also use your iPhone or iPad to control and monitor home power usage and smart thermostats while you’re out.

The Mobile Office

Working over the web on mobile devices actually offers a few advantages for energy efficiency. For one, working in a shared space, be it a café or communal office, saves on the total energy that goes into heating and cooling buildings. Charging up your portables at home and using them out of the house offers the choice to use renewable energy offerings from your power utility. You can also choose to use more efficient (and cheaper) off-peak electricity, reducing, however modestly, the peak load on the grid and, more significantly, the load on your electric bill.

Use power management settings on your laptop that save battery power and extend your battery’s life by reducing the power draw on it. Many of the same tips, such as dimming screens, can be applied to other mobile devices, too. Using less energy on the go means using less electricity for charging later.

There are several options for portable charging for your mobile device or iPhone using renewable energy like the Solio and Freeloader solar chargers or the HYmini wind generator. If you want to combine your free energy from the sun with some style and functionality, check out the solar powered bags from Reware or Noon Solar.

Your cell phone itself is another area where you can save electricity by making smart choices. Start saving electricity and resources by going for a green cell phone, like Samsung’s Reclaim. If you are going to be occupied for long chunks of time turn your cell phone entirely off – just remember to turn it back on when you’re done.

Lastly, as much as we all like staying connected 140 characters at a time, tweet less to save energy.

Share your tips for becoming more energy efficient in the comments.

Trenton DuVal has managed the online communications efforts of nonprofits focused on creating a more sustainable, just and equitable world since 2005. His varied experiences living and working on five continents have included professional gold farming, crossing the Atlantic by sailboat, a few meals with Nobel Laureates and a tragic run-in with a three-toed sloth.

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): The Smart Energy Home

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of Green Tips posts, a collaboration between WebWorkerDaily and our sister site, Earth2Tech.

Going paperless is now a realistic option to making your work life more friendly on the planet and more efficient in general. From web-based faxing, to replacing all mail with email, to toting around your own coffee mug, the benefits of eliminating paper can both preserve natural resources and save you money. Ditching excess paper can also streamline many business practices, eliminating clutter and adding searchablity, data protection and ubiquitous access. Here are seven tips to get you started on your green paperless office.

1. Faxing & Mail

Bring faxing into the digital age. Web-based faxing services have been around for a while, and services out there include GreenFax, Drop.io and MyFax. To make the most out of these variously priced fax capabilities, be sure to make a digitized version of your pen and ink signature on a transparent background. The next time you need to sign something and fax it back, you’ll be all set to do it without ever printing.

Services that convert paper mail to email don’t actually help to save paper, and some have faced privacy concerns. But the innovative Zumbox offers an electronic alternative to your physical mailbox. Users can send the electronic files of would-be snail mail pieces directly to your Zumbox, just by knowing your street address. Businesses can also pay to contact target customers within certain geographic areas with special offers. While Zumbox needs to build momentum to really be useful — as they need a critical mass of both senders and recipients to work well — it’s a concept that has been proven by postal services in other countries.

Most mailed paper bills can be eliminated with e-billing. Opting out of direct marketing (i.e. junk mail) and pre-approved credit card offers (call 1-888-5-OPTOUT) will also help reduce the amount of dead trees coming into your mailbox.

2. Invoicing

You don’t have to just receive e-bills, but you can generate them, too. Invoicing software like QuickBooks generates invoices that you can email. there are plenty of “freemium” online options too, including Freshbooks, Cashboard and CurdBee, or for a really simple solution, try the Google Calendar Invoice Creator.

3. Schedules & Calendars

Calendars and agendas can be hard to let go of in physical form, but the advantages of going paperless can ease the pain. With Google Calendar, MS Outlook and Apple’s iCal your schedule is available and up-to-date wherever you go. Online task managers like Google Tasks and Remember the Milk can keep you on top of all of your to-do lists for a project without using a scrap of paper.

4. Mobile Tools

Your cell phone can be one of the easiest tools to help you banish the paper build up. A variety of iPhone, Android and BlackBerry apps allow you to invoice (Freshbooks), manage tasks (Task2Gather), handle scheduling (Tungle and TimeBridge) and remotely back up your files (SugarSync). Better yet, apps such as DocScanner, JotNot, and WorldCardMobile turn your phone into a document or business card scanner, getting rid of the need to bring paper back home with you. Online service Qipit, which is also available as an iPhone app, allows you to use any cameraphone (or plain digicam for that matter) to make digital copies of whiteboards or documents.

5. Digitizing What You Can’t Avoid

Try as you might to avoid eliminating paper, chances are you will get stuck with some sort of paper that you need to keep on file. A number of services can help get the paper clutter out of your office and into the cloud. Shoeboxed and OfficeDrop both make scanned versions of hard copies that you send them by mail, and customers can also upload files to the services for offsite storage.

If you prefer to do the scanning yourself, there are a few hardware options that are worth the investment. The Fujitsu ScanSnap combination of auto-feed document scanner and integrated software wins raves reviews from users. The retro-futuristic Neat Receipts and cute-but-functional Doxie both offer more portable scanning with OCR and cloud-based storage integration.

6. Storage

Backing up all of the important documents you’ve just digitized is a no-brainer. You can use Mozy (available in “Home” and “Pro” flavors for a fee), DropBox (up to 2Gb free) or LiveMesh (up to 5GB free) to move your important files to the more energy efficient cloud.

7. Where You Least Expect It

If you really get ambitious about phasing out paper from your daily routines, you can try some extra steps. Replace your sticky notes with reusable adhesive dry-erase sheets. Also consider eliminating the paper from your morning coffee ritual with reusable filters and a travel mug, instead of the paper cups from the café. Finally, if there’s still paper you just can’t cut out of your life; reuse it as scratch paper, recycle it or add it to your compost.

What technology or tactics do you use to avoid using paper? Share your answers in the comments.

Trenton DuVal has managed the online communications efforts of nonprofits focused on creating a more sustainable, just and equitable world since 2005. His varied experiences living and working on five continents have included professional gold farming, crossing the Atlantic by sailboat, a few meals with Nobel Laureates and a tragic run-in with a three-toed sloth.

Photo courtesy Flickr user EricaJoy, licensed under CC 2.0

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Over the last few years I’ve hired dozens of freelancers and remote workers to help complete all sorts of projects for BigCommerce. In this article, I’ll share seven tips for managing a remote workforce for maximum productivity, efficiency and results.

1. Communicate what you expect in writing. Once you’ve hired someone, make sure they understand the scope of the project they’ll be working on — and put as much detail as possible in writing. For example, if you want them to create a professional voice over, make sure you write the script for them, document how the voice-over will be used and the tone you’re looking for, and even provide a link to an exmple video online so they understand exactly what you’re looking for.
2. Provide a bonus when work is completed on time or early. This can work well for designers and other creative roles. A simple example is offering an extra 10 percent if the project is completed one day early, an extra 20 percent if it’s completed two days early, etc. This simple idea can lead to a quicker turn-around time while maintaining quality.
3. Have a five-minute call/video chat at the beginning of the day. If your project will take weeks or months to complete, then you need to make sure your remote team stays on track and is heading in the right direction. Similar to a daily stand-up meeting in an teams using Agile methodologies, a quick five-minute call or video chat on Skype every morning is a great way to hear progress updates from your team, as well as identify roadblocks that might get in the way of completing your project.
4. Address problems immediately. It’s easy for a problem to bring remote workers to a halt, so make sure you do whatever it takes to help them work around or solve the problem. In addition to having a quick daily meeting, encourage your workers to contact you immediately if they need help or have questions. You can even give them ways to get input from other members of your remote team so they can solve problems together.
5. Set a predictable working schedule. If it’s applicable to your project, set a predictable working schedule to help your remote workers feel as though they’re “at work” during a specific time, such as from 9am to 5pm on weekdays even though they’re working from home — this can lead to better productivity and also lets you know when you can reach your workers.  Some people work more effectively between certain hours, so you might want to ask each member of your remote team when they feel they do the best work, and set the schedule accordingly.
6. Break larger projects up into date-based milestones. Breaking a large project down into smaller, date-based milestones will help keep everyone on track and alert you to any issues before they become insurmountable. For example, break down a three-month web development project into two-week milestones, with a team check-in at each juncture.  This will enable you to easily track and measure for success, and will help your remote team work more efficiently as well.
7. Provide and track key performance indicators. If you manage your in-office team using key performance indicators (KPIs), why not do the same for your remote team? Before you assign the project, come up with a few (say, three to five) KPIs you can use to track their success on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.  For example, if you’re remotely managing a web designer, and their job is to create a 20-page website, a couple of your KPIs might be number of milestones met on time and number of web pages created per week.

If you’ve managed a remote team with success in the past, I’d love to hear your tips as well.

Mitchell Harper is co-founder of BigCommerce, a leading provider of shopping cart software used by more than 40,000 organizations worldwide. Mitchell has written and published over 300 articles relating to software development, marketing, business, social media and entrepreneurship.

Photo courtesy Flickr user cogdogblog, licensed under CC-BY-2.0.

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When attempting to master the art of the follow-up, it’s important to recognize that every scenario will call for a different tack. That said, here are a few ideas that can help make the follow-up email more succesful.

Know Thy Audience

Everyone engages with email differently. Some of us are in our inbox first thing in the morning. Others only wade through their inbox on downtime during the day. The point is to try to understand the email habits of the person you’re working to follow-up with. If you’ve already had email conversations, look to see when they responded to you and notice if those responses are clustered around certain parts of the day. Or, if this is a new encounter, try poking around their Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter accounts. If they’re updating their social networks frequently, there’s a good chance their email is open.

You can also learn a lot about their personality by the content they post around the web, and you’ll need that info later to craft your pitch. So while you’re looking at timestamps, also be on the lookout for any patterns in interest or anything you can use to communicate with this person in a way that makes them feel positive about the experience. The bottom line is to learn as much as you can about the person you’re communicating with — and all you need to know is literally at your fingertips.

Tone is Everything

By nature, follow-up emails are annoying. The standard “Hi Matt, I was just checking to see if you received the email I sent last week regarding the such-and-such…” comes across as canned. It basically says, “I want something. Respond to me.” (And not much else.) One way to remedy this is to embrace a tone that gives context and character. Make fun of yourself and your follow-up task. For example, you could try something like, “Hey Jim — I know the line between persistence and annoyance is thin (and I hope this doesn’t lump me into the latter category), but I wanted to see if you had a chance to check out the spec sheet I sent over last week…” I’ve found that when you call out exactly what it is you’re doing and add a little good-natured self-deprecation, people appreciate the forthright approach.

Be Concise

Sometimes your recipient misses your first email because it was too long. (How many of us have tried to read an email only to have zero idea what the person is talking about a mere three sentences in?)  So while your first email was hopefully straight to the point, your follow-up needs to be even more concise. Capture the gist in two sentences and reference the “full story below.” I find that this approach can get someone’s attention simply because the most recent message is concise and easily digested, with the opportunity to continue if interested. You get bonus points if you can follow-up with just a link to a video or product page.

Understand Time

We all get tons of email, and it can sometimes be days before you respond to something. So parlay that feeling into understanding that responding takes time. As such, you need time your follow-up. There’s no golden Vince Vaughn-like “three day rule,” but say you sent your initial email on Monday, wait until at least Wednesday to follow up. It’s just polite. And think about it — if you send your follow-up the very next day, you’ve already set yourself back, because you’ll be annoying the person you emailed. It comes down to respecting people’s time. Do that, and following up gets much easier.

There’s no universal way to follow up, these are just a few personal tips I’ve picked up along the communicative way. Toss in your own follow-up ideas and tactics in the comments.

Dave Clarke is the Communications Strategist at Churnless, a web strategy and production company that helps businesses satisfy, delight, and keep their customers. Follow Dave on Twitter: @thedaveclarke.

Photo by stock.xchng user barunpatro

I didn’t think  that I had a problem with excessive use of tabs, until I closed a Firefox window as I was browsing one day and was met with the question: “You are about to close 83 tabs. Are you sure you want to continue?” My jaw dropped. I took a screenshot, and started thinking about ways to tame my habit.

A 3-Step Technique for Browsing More Effectively

My technique for curing “tab-o-rrhea” consists of three steps. My instructions are for Firefox, but should also work in other browsers, like Chrome.

1. Chunk your web browsing

What different tasks do you usually do together? Take a piece of paper and create groups for the tabs you normally have open. A good way to start is to write down what tabs you have open in your browser right now, and then group them.

Here’s an example set of groups:

Finances:

• Mint.com
• Your bank
• Any investment sites

Checking web site stats:

• Statistics on your main site
• Statistics on sub-sites

Updating your web site:

• Godaddy
• Blogger.com
• dictionary.com

Social media:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Meetup.com
• Bit.ly (Link shortener)

Writing your newsletter:

• AWeber
• dictionary.com
• Bit.ly (Link shortener)

Planning your week/weekend:

• Weather.com
• Mr. Movies.com
• Meetup.com

2. Create the groups

1. For each group, open up a fresh Firefox browser window and open a tab for each site.
2. Then go Bookmarks > Bookmark All Tabs
3. Save in Bookmarks Toolbar or (even better) within a folder in Bookmarks Toolbar, so that way you can access each group at the touch of a mouse.

3. Use the groups you have created

Helpful Tips to Maximize Your Success

• I advise you  to keep no more than four windows open at any one time. If you need to switch tasks groups, you can close a whole group, knowing you can get it back up at the click of a mouse.
• If you have to scroll horizontally to see your tabs, you have too many!
• It may seem counter-intuitive, but I find it helpful to keep one window open to use for “random” tabs. Restrain yourself from opening tabs in your reserved windows.

Advanced Jedi Tab Practices

Ok, so you may be thinking, “That’s great – but I want to take this to the next level.” I will oblige you, grasshopper.

Firstly, set a schedule for when you’d like to use these groups of tabs. For example, you could decide to check web site stats once a week, say Friday morning, and use the Planning your week/weekend” group on Friday afternoon and Monday morning, for a half-an hour. This will ratchet up your success considerably.

Secondly, schedule a time two weeks from now to review how your tabs are working for you. For each group, ask yourself:

• Do I actually use this group? If not, how can I make it more accessible?
• Are there any tabs that I would like to add to this group?
• Are there any tabs that I have not been using, and should delete?
• Are there any groups that are not represented?

In all, implementing the above will not only help you to browse more efficiently, it will help you save time on the tasks you are already doing, and help you to organize your thoughts.

Jeremy Bennett is an Intuitive Consultant and Trainer who helps innovators in the technology industry who are feeling unfulfilled where the are, to understand what’s keeping them stuck, navigate big transitions, and make choices that align with who they are, so the can pursue their unique purpose with joy, in service to the planet. To find out how he can help you visit: Pursue your Purpose Without Fail!

The reasons for employers to decentralize workers are becoming harder and harder for businesses, employees and governments to ignore. Telework can help employers reduce costs, avoid job cuts and start hiring. It can help them minimize turnover, assure business continuity during emergencies and boost productivity. It can help employees save on commuting and achieve a better work/life balance. It can decrease traffic congestion, the cost of repairing and maintaining transportation systems, carbon emissions and the nation’s dependence on foreign oil.

However, despite these and other well-publicized benefits of telework, some states maintain a tax rule that frustrates employers and employees trying to use it. The rule — known as the “convenience of the employer” rule — imposes a heavy penalty on nonresidents who telecommute to in-state employers.

To assure that state tax authorities do not impede the growth of interstate telework arrangements, Congress must abolish the convenience rule.

How the “Convenience of the Employer” Rule Works

New York State is notorious for its exceptional drive to enforce the convenience rule. Under the rule there, if a nonresident of the state works for a New York firm and opts to telecommute sometimes — even for most of the year — New York will tax him on 100 percent of his salary: the wages he earns in New York plus the wages he earns in his home state. Because the employee’s home state can also tax the compensation he earns at home, he risks double state taxation for working off-site.

To protect their residents from double taxation, some states grant a credit for personal income taxes telecommuters pay the employer’s state on the salary earned at home. However, even telecommuters offered a credit risk being penalized. When a telecommuter’s state has a lower tax rate than the employer’s state, the telecommuter has to pay the steeper rate on the income he earns at home.

Similarly, telecommuters living in states with no income tax suffer because of the rule. Say a Florida resident telecommutes to his New York employer, traveling to New York on business only a few weeks a year. Although the employee chooses to live and do most of his work in a state with no personal income tax, he may nonetheless be forced to pay state income tax — to New York — on all of his Florida wages.

The additional state tax burden the convenience rule imposes can make telework too expensive for employees. The rule also creates tremendous confusion for them: Determining where they owe income tax if they telecommute — their own state, the company’s state, or both — can be a considerable challenge.

How Businesses Suffer

When employees cannot afford to telecommute, employers cannot tap the business benefits telework offers. In addition, just as employees can be confused about where they owe income taxes, businesses can be confused about where they have to withhold taxes. Compliance with the convenience rule can become so onerous for payroll departments that firms in convenience rule states may be forced to move out. For example, in 2008, a company reported to The New York Times that it was planning to leave New York because it was “blindsided” by the state’s enforcement of the rule (“Telecommuters Cry ‘Ouch’ to the Tax Gods“).

How States Suffer

The convenience rule threatens states where telecommuters live (or where would-be telecommuters live) with an unfair drain on their revenue. For example, if a telecommuter’s state does give him a credit for taxes he paid New York on wages he earned at home, the telecommuter’s state effectively shunts its own revenue to the Empire State. That revenue finances public services in New York (like police, fire and other emergency services), even though the telecommuter often works at home and depends on the services provided by the home state. States struggling with perilous budget deficits -– and with the decisions they have to make about which of their own programs to eliminate -– cannot afford to subsidize the programs in New York.

In addition, workers’ states can lose revenue because:

• Confused telecommuters may mistakenly conclude they owe taxes only in their employer’s state, not the home state;
• Confused employers may mistakenly conclude they must withhold only for their own state, not the states where their telecommuters live;
• Unemployed residents may remain jobless — and without taxable income — longer than necessary, because the convenience rule makes looking for work with remote employers unaffordable;
• Businesses in the home state may earn less taxable income when telecommuting residents are forced to cut their home state spending because the extra state tax bill for telecommuting shrinks the residents’ budgets;
• Businesses in the home state may earn less taxable income when residents who cannot afford the telecommuter tax must commute to their out-of-state jobs everyday and purchase more of the goods and services they need in the employer’s state than in the home state.

Even states that maintain a convenience rule suffer because of it. For example, by threatening the profitability of in-state companies and driving them away, the rule jeopardizes the states’ business income tax base.

The rule also threatens the states’ personal income tax base. In New York, because the rule applies only to employees who spend some days working inside New York, telecommuters can duck the tax penalty by staying out of New York entirely. They may decide, with their cost-wary employers, that they will telecommute full-time. Or, they may look for work in their home states. Either way, once a telecommuter leaves New York for good, New York can no longer tax any of his income. Further, New York’s stores, restaurants and other businesses lose his patronage.

The Federal Solution: The Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act

The Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act (H.R. 2600) is proposed federal legislation that would prohibit states from taxing nonresidents on the wages they earn when physically present in another state, removing the threat of double or excessive taxation for telecommuting across state lines.

The bill was introduced by Representatives Jim Himes (D-CT) and Frank Wolf (R-VA). It has support from a bi-partisan group of lawmakers representing states all around the country, including Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, Massachusetts, Kansas, Illinois, Arizona, Washington State and even New York.

The bill also has endorsements from organizations advocating for telework, transportation, homeowners, taxpayers and small businesses. The telecommuter tax is a needless barrier to telework’s expansion. As Washington weighs how to create jobs, improve the country’s preparedness for pandemics and other emergencies, meet national transportation needs, slow climate change, strengthen America’s energy independence and help secure a prosperous future for both large and small businesses, it should demolish this barrier. The Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act would do just that -– without costing the federal government anything. It’s time to make this bill law.

Photo credit: stock.xchng user Ayla87

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A few weeks ago I read this very interesting piece on WebWorkerDaily about the impact of corporate blocking policies on web working employees. The gist of the article was that blocking tends to throw away a lot of the good with the bad and, increasingly, the things that managers think of as “bad” (Twitter, Facebook, IM, etc.) are actually an important part of folks’ communication toolbox.

I’d like to pile on with more evidence that wholesale blocking is bad. The University of Melbourne found that workers who are allowed to surf the web for fun at work were actually nine percent more productive than those who weren’t. So what about monitoring? Well, it turns out that monitoring your employees (the way most employers do it) is similarly detrimental to productivity. It also tends to make life more stressful for employees.

At RescueTime, we are constantly thinking about the ethics and efficacy of blocking and monitoring for teams and individuals — it’s our mission to actually build software that does this in a way that increases productivity and isn’t evil. A huge, and sometimes daunting, part of our job as product developers is to educate employers on what works, what’s ethical and what kind of expectations are reasonable for web workers. Here’s some of what we’ve learned.

Blocking and Monitoring is Everywhere

As obvious as the faults of blocking and monitoring are, employers still do both. You can see why a manager might do it — excessive leisure surfing can have a huge cost, and abusive workers are exceptional at camouflaging their activities. A 2005 survey by the American Management Associated found that 75 percent of employers monitor their employees’ web site visits to prevent inappropriate usage, while 65 percent of them use software to block web sites entirely. The good news is that 80 percent of employers actually tell their employees about their monitoring practices.

How to Do Blocking Right (If You Care About Productivity)

Just because wholesale blocking of web sites can be evil and ineffective at improving productivity doesn’t mean that blocking should be kicked to the curb. Below are three guidelines for effective blocking:

1. Your goal should be to block excessive or abusive Internet usage, not block everything. Block using allowances. Decide as a team what an appropriate amount of leisure time is for a work day (or work week). Stop the “binge” leisure surfing and you’ve solved 95 percent of your productivity problem.
2. “Nudge” before you block. If you’ve set a limit of no more than eight hours a week of leisure surfing, alert the user when they are trending towards exceeding that. Blocking is a painful and limiting experience; a nudge may be all you need to avoid the excess.  If at all possible, give them some social context. Receiving a message that says, “Hey, you’re at 7 hours of leisure surfing so far this week, and 8 hours is the maximum. Your average teammate is at 3h and 21m” can be way more motivating.
3. Give as much control to your team as you can. The more top-down the solution is, the less effective it is.

How to Do Monitoring Right (If You Care About Productivity)

Monitoring can provide a business with critical data. Which applications are actually getting used? How does the new development methodology effect how people spend their time? How good is the new manager at making sure that people have enough work to do? How people spend their time is a leading indicator for business health and team engagement/morale, but it’s uncomfortable to introduce it to a team, even when done correctly. Below are some guidelines for effective — and minimally evil — monitoring:

1. Set reasonable expectations. Knowledge workers don’t work solidly for eight hours a day (in fact, if you’re doing productive computer work for five hours a day, you’re in the top 1 percent of our userbase!) Suggesting that they should is a disaster. Also, it should be clear to everyone involved that day-to-day scrutiny will not happen. A leisure-heavy day is not a problem. A leisure-heavy month might indicate that someone is undertasked or undermotivated. It’s also important for everyone to be aware that how you spend your time does not equal productivity.
2. If productivity matters, only monitor high-end teams. I’m not kidding. A study at Rutgers showed that monitoring high-ability individuals resulted in better performance. Monitoring lower-ability individuals actually lowered their performance.
3. Give your team the ability to control the monitoring process. Giving them a “pause” button gives them control over the process and actually results in increased task performance (source: University of Conneticut Study).
4. Monitor as little as you need to. If productivity is your goal, you don’t need to read people’s IM conversations — you just want to understand how they spend their time. Ideally, this should be no different (and no more evil!) than a timesheet, except that it’s more accurate and less effort-intensive.
5. Monitor everyone (managers included!). We all have the same fear. We know we only really work for a few hours per day  We also all have the same delusion– that somehow we’re more efficient than our peers and that’s how we manage to do eight hours of work in two or three hours. In reality, we’re all pretty similar.  The Rutgers study mentioned above also found that monitoring group-wide offered protection against the stress associated with the monitoring.
6. Show people their own data. If you’re chasing productivity, showing people how they spend their time can be very motivating, especially if you compare them to their average peer. If you wanted to have each department to be more disciplined about spending money, you wouldn’t monitor their spending in secret and then pounce on them when they spent money irresponsibly. Take the same attitude with time and get your team involved and interested.

What do you think of these guidelines? As a member of a team, what sort of blocking and monitoring rules do you think would actually help you be more productive without feeling too “overlordy”?

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To me, it’s about blended, dynamic reputation. Some may call it “personal branding” but that’s always felt a little stilted and contrived to me. The essence is that I have control over only one side of the equation: how I present myself to the world, both online and off. The judgment rests solely in the hands of the people with whom I interact, and they’re all going to see me differently.

Drawing Boundaries

I choose not to delineate between my personal and professional presence online, except on my blogs (more on that in a moment). That means I don’t have a separate Twitter account for my business presence — as Director of Community for Radian6 — and my personal presence, or separate Facebook profiles.

Why? To me, they’re one and the same. Who I am professionally is very much who I am personally. And my belief is that in order to deliver myself, my capabilities and my trustworthiness as obviously and clearly as possible to people, I don’t want the appearance that I’m acting differently in one world than I would in another.

It’s the WYSIWYG philosophy. I want to know that what people are seeing and feeling when they interact with me is “Amber” first and foremost. Whether I’m acting in my capacity as a Radian6 representative, a business adviser, a horse enthusiast or a friend, I want them to know that they’ll always get a consistent sense of “me.”

Filters

All this does not mean, however, that I don’t filter myself at all. I do, in a couple of ways.

For my blogs, I have one that’s about my business — social media and community — and one that’s purely personal. I do that for the sake of my audience more than for me. People coming to my Altitude blog likely don’t want musings about my summer vacation muddying up the information on social media for business (they would probably just see it as noise).

I also contribute to our corporate blog, and I do that with my “community director and social media person in a corporate role” hat on. I don’t really write differently in terms of tone or personality, but I write with a specific focus.

By housing my personal blog separately, I’m setting the expectation for any visitors that they’re going to be reading more casual, personal thoughts and that they won’t necessarily find business value there.

The most important filter, though, is that of judgment. I know that the web is one big messy, interconnected mishmash of information. You can’t put up barriers very easily, or keep the peas from touching the mashed potatoes. It’s all out there in one big pile. And if people want it, they’re going to find it.

That means if there’s some bit of content — a blog post or a photo of my daughter or a snap from vacation — that I don’t want public for whatever reason, I don’t publish it. I think carefully about comments and responses that I post and the interactions I have, considering how they’ll be interpreted out of context, or after time has passed and the conversation isn’t as immediate. We all know by now that the web never forgets.

Personal Accountability

Balancing personal and professional presence online is a matter of choice and comfort level. Your mileage will and should vary, as your world is different than mine or anyone else’s.

But make no mistake: you’re driving. You choose what to publish, and where and when you do it. And you hold the responsibility of monitoring your own reputation through listening, so you know what other people are saying about you and where.

Being online shouldn’t be about being paranoid. It’s about being informed and aware, and conscious of your own choices. Consider how you’d like to be perceived. Do you want to be liked? Trusted? Known as the contrarian? Purely professional while keeping your personal life carefully hidden? On the web for fun and keeping work out of it? They’re all up to you.

Knowing your own values, boundaries and expectations for yourself are key to guiding your presence and participation, no matter where you choose to be.

Amber Naslund is Director of Community for Radian6, geek girl extraordinaire, and blogs over at AltitudeBranding.com.

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One is NuevaSync, which is completely free but requires registering for an account. The other is SaiSuke, which costs $10 but offers many more settings to set things up exactly how you need to. Read the complete review on TheAppleBlog.

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External battery packs are nothing new, they’ve been around for years.They are nothing more than large battery packs that are not designed toattach to the notebook, rather they are separate gadgets that plug intothe notebook much like a power adapter.  They can power most laptops for8-10 hours without a plug and that makes them viable solutions to thedry battery problem that road warriors often face.  These externalpacks can be somewhat expensive with good ones running about $300 butwhen you need them you really need them.

I used such a solution for years and found it easy to implement.  Theexternal battery pack stayed in a pocket in my bag and when I neededthe juice or to top off my internal notebook battery I simply ran thecable from the pack to the notebook without removing the pack from thebag.  While I had to deal with the extra weight of the pack in the bagusing it this way didn’t add much inconvenience and that was important.  I would also connect the notebook to thebattery pack in my car between meetings and could insure my notebookbattery would last all day as a result.  That’s the other benefit theseexternal packs bring, they charge the notebook battery while runningthe notebook which is a double benefit.

Electrovaya is a company that is famous for their external batterypacks and I have heard nothing but good things about them.  Their PowerPads come in assorted sizes depending on the size you are willing to carry around and the battery life you need. GearLog recently reviewed a relatively new battery pack called the Powergorillaand they seemed to be pretty impressed with it.  All of these externalbattery packs are available with power tips that fit most notebooks sothey are a "one size fits all" approach that can be used with multipledevices if need be.  They are not cheap but for the road warrior who isconstantly faced with the dreaded empty tank this method shouldcertainly be considered.

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Another week, another netbook

HP shook things up this week with the introduction of the HP Mini 1000 which I got to spend some quality time with at the HP office.  The build quality and aesthetic design is first rate and it is easily the most attractive netbook I have seen.  How attractive a netbook is is not something that usually factors high on my criteria list but it seems to be important to many.  The 1000 will not disappoint those folks for sure.

HP made a lot of design choices that have disappointed some I have heard from and that’s understandable.  The decision to drop down from a high res display to the standard netbook res of 1024×600 has angered quite a few people.  I too wish they had retained the higher res but I understand why they didn’t.  Their decision to go with a 1.8-inch hard drive has limited them to the maximum 60 GB capacity and that’s quite a bit smaller than competing netbooks.  Both of those decisions were not easy for HP to make given my conversation with them but to keep the 1000 as small and thin as it is and to reach the low price point they must reach they felt them necessary so that’s what they did.  I am not a notebook maker so I can’t argue against the decisions they made, they are what they are.  I do think it’s a pretty nice netbook in any event and let’s see how long it takes the creative netbook enthusiasts to start hacking it to deal with some of these decisions.

Are handheld computers (MIDs) irrelevant?

I spent a fair amount of time thinking about handheld PCs this week and reached some surprising conclusions.  Before I share those I should set the stage for this thought process so it makes more sense, at least I hope it will.  Kevin and I were having one of our many chats and we started talking about the Aigo MID that has recently appeared.  The discussion was a very eye-opening one for me as it made me think back to my first handheld, the Sony U50.  That handheld PC was the very first one in my opinion that kicked off the whole handheld PC thing as it was truly a no-compromise PC running Windows XP yet would still fit in the hand.  I have written reams about the Sony U during the time I used it as one of my main computers for well over a year and you can review that if you question how much utility it provided me.

I still miss the Sony U occasionally and wish I still had it.  There is something not only cool but very useful to have a full PC in your hand.  Sure there are compromises due to the small size but the design of the U minimized them sufficiently.  I accomplished so much with the U during that time and I thought about that a lot. I realized that while I had been very excited about the MIDs when they were first hitting the tech discussion that I have been losing that enthusiasm recently.  The Aigo review at Pocketables confirmed that loss of enthusiasm and I finally realized why that is.

I’ve always been a handheld computing nut so I asked myself if the Sony U was just being introduced today would I be as excited about it as I was back then. I was pretty shocked when I realized that while the geek in me would be happy to see it I wouldn’t think that it could play a major role in my mobile life as it did back then.  That set me back a fair bit, I assure you.  So I set out to ponder why that is and I came to the conclusion that times have changed and technology has evolved to the point where the handheld PC is not as relevant as it was back then.  Why is that?  Well, the emergence of the smartphone is why.

I’m not talking about any single smartphone either, I’m considering the entire field.  You have to remember that back four or five years ago when the Sony U appeared there were not really any smartphones out there.  There were no phones that had decent web browsers to make surfing the web enjoyable.  No phones had WiFi to provide fast connectivity and 3G was only a twinkle in some engineers’ eyes.  At that point in time the Sony U, a handheld PC, was the only option for someone like me who needed a handheld portal to the online world.  It provided me unrestricted access to email, it gave me the ability to search online for information and the computing power to do something with that information.  There was really no other way to have the mobile connectivity I needed and that’s why it made such a big deal to me back then.

That has now changed with the growth of WiFi and 3G networks which are easily tapped while on the go.  There are many smartphone devices to choose from that provide a great deal of the online needs for most people, myself included.  Smartphone browsers are now very good at providing a decent online experience and most smartphones have very good email capabilities out of the box.  We can stay connected no matter what by using the phone in our pocket.  Sure there are compromises involved in interacting with that information but those are largely the same compromises we’ve always faced using handheld devices.

That’s why I think that MIDs are doomed to failure, they no longer bring capability to the mobile worker that we can’t get on a good smartphone.  If MIDs had appeared two or three years ago they would have taken the world by storm but technology wasn’t in place to allow that to happen.  They are just starting to appear now and I don’t see them bringing any capability that we don’t already have with the smartphone in our pocket.  The time for MIDs has passed, and we can blame the phone for that.

Will the smartphone be the mobile computer of the future?

This brings me to question: will the smartphone become the primary mobile computing platform of the future?  Some very smart people, much smarter than I believe so.  I saw an interview of our good friend Steve Rubel who believes that smartphones will replace laptops for the mobile worker in the next few years.  I think that’s a bit simplistic and while I respect Steve’s views I don’t agree with them for the simple reason that smartphones suffer from the same compromises that handheld PCs have always had that prevents that from happening.  We will still need notebooks that supply a bigger screen to interact with more information at once and we will need the keyboard for content creation.  Handheld PCs, even my old faithful Sony U suffered from the same restrictions as smartphones do today and that won’t change.  There is simply no substitute for having a high resolution screen to consume information and a decent keyboard to allow better interaction with that information.  That hasn’t changed and it won’t be changing any time soon.  Sorry Steve, but I think I’m right about this.

Enter the netbook

That need for ultimate mobility coupled with the desire to consume more information than a smartphone makes possible is in my opinion the reason for the explosion of the netbook.  Netbooks have the same utility as a bigger notebook but are far more portable due to the reduced size.  The 9 or 10-inch screen on the netbook presents the near perfect compromise between portability and utility and that is readily apparent to folks who see them.  That’s why they are exploding in sales numbers and why regular consumers are snapping them up in large numbers.  Sure the low prices (compared to notebooks) helps in that regard but the portability is the key factor here.  Some netbooks cost the same or even less than some smartphones out there today so given the choice between the phone and the netbook to get mobile work done folks will choose (and are choosing) the netbook.

Don’t get me wrong, I am enjoying consuming online information with smartphones.  I am in a unique position to try many different models and they can and do offer quite decent experiences for working online.  The iPhone is a great online tool and I am finding the T-Mobile G1 Android phone to be quite capable in that regard as well.  But they all suffer from the ability to interact with that online information and they greatly fall short when it comes time to create content and that’s where netbooks are so strong.

eBook of the week

This week I have picked up another Dean Koontz ebook that is pretty good and I am enjoying thoroughly.  Hideaway is a riveting tale of a man killed in a car accident who is reanimated due to advances in medical technology.  He doesn’t come through unscathed however, and this is where the story gets so good.  I won’t spoil it for you but if you like Koontz you’ll love Hideaway.

Wrap-up

I am out of time again and I hope you enjoyed my ramblings about mobile tech.  Remember that these are simply my opinions and yours may very well be different, that’s what makes them opinions.  We are all entitled to our own opinions and there are no right nor wrong ones.  I would love to hear your take on the mobile handheld computing future though.  It’s an exciting time in this area for sure.

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