The update brings that same functionality to those on PCs by letting them click to call through Skype or Microsoft Lync. Gunjan Bhow, VP and general manager of New Ventures at Plantronics, says the goal is to ensure employees with VoIP clients and softphones can still take advantage of cheaper rates instead of going directly to their mobile phones and racking up big charges while traveling. It’s a pretty specific use case, but Plantronics is on the cutting edge of a shift in how people work, and how smarter and more personal computers, such as mobile phones, are allowing this shift to happen.

A personal assistant for everyone (no, it’s not Siri)

InstantMeeting on the iPhone

Apps such as InstantMeeting, Expensify and yes, Siri are taking mundane tasks top managers might have hired an assistant to handle and making delegating them affordable for all. In the case of InstantMeeting, it means I can work right up until a minute before my conference call or hop in the car knowing I’ll get a reminder when I need to get on the call, and will effectively touch a button to connect. I do have to manually enter some conference numbers because the app can’t read the bridge information, but it’s pretty solid. It’s similar to having someone outside my office connecting my calls so I can move seamlessly through my work until the exact moment I’m needed.

Expensify lets me snap a picture of my receipts and then automatically scans them for the relevant line items to create an expense report in a few minutes. The mobile app allows me to take those pictures on my mobile the moment I get my receipt and shoot them to the cloud, where Expensify does all the heavy lifting. My days of scrounging receipts from the bottom of my bag and taping them to copy paper are over, as are my efforts to then transfer that information to Excel.

Siri, of course, takes all kinds of dictation like a pro and helps find nearby restaurants, services and other items much like a real personal assistant would. Vlingo also does some of this for Android users. There are scores of other apps such as TripIt Pro making it easier and less time-consuming to book and keep track of travel, something those lucky souls who have worked at a company with a travel bureau will be glad to learn.

This isn’t just nice; it’s necessary

Just as computers helped drive productivity thanks to replacing typewriters with word processing software and calculators with spreadsheets, these new apps will help boost productivity for the masses who don’t have an assistant at their beck and call. And given that workers are being asked to do more in a day, gaining those two or three hours back each month that it takes to pull together an expense report, or the thirty minutes required to book a trip (or even avoiding the hours lost to flight delays) is a necessity.

And as we handle more and more information coming at us, it’s harder to sink into the uninterrupted flow of work, so being able to maximize that time knowing your phone can ping you when you have to join a call and then connect you can help you relax into work. Yes, these apps all take some time to set up and learn how to use (some may require you to invest in setting up rules so the app can better learn what you need from it), but much like training an assistant, the effort pays off. And thanks to advances in natural language processing, artificial intelligence, better data processing and algorithms, employees don’t have to pay quite as much to offload non-core tasks.

For more on how apps, computing and broadband will change the way people work, come to our GigaOM Net:Work event in San Francisco next week.

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As employees tote their own devices into the enterprise, Iongrid’s Nexus software promises to bring Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets to their iPads with what it calls “pixel perfect” fidelity, and in a way that won’t give the corporate compliance department a collective heart attack.

That’s no small feat. C-level execs loved Apple’s iPads from day one, almost immediately forcing their IT departments to support the devices whether they wanted to or not. That worked okay except for two things. First, PowerPoint slides et al. did not display well on iPads without a third-party reader. Second, the proliferation of  internal documents emailed or downloaded to iPads gives compliance officers fits.

Iongrid says the Nexus client-server application layers security atop existing Active Directory server-based policies to let authorized execs including salesmen who need to take presentations on the road, display their documents with great fidelity on their iPads.

Nexus, which debuts Tuesday at the Enterprise 2.0 conference, securely streams documents to the iPad for viewing.  The user can then manipulate those documents using the usual iPad gestures. The initial release allows viewing only, although within weeks users will be able to annotate or lightly edit the documents as well, said Nick Triantos, CEO and founder of Iongrid and former chief software architect for NVIDIA.  

“We keep a proxy of the document in memory and a list of changes to that document. Then, when you reconnect, we apply those changes to the original,” Triantos said.

If IT policy allows, people will also be able to  take their documents off-line in which case the local copy on the device will be encrypted, he added.

The potential opportunity is big. The iPad leads the market in tablets, and is a particular favorite among the aforementioned high-level execs. And, many, many companies store their shared Microsoft Office applications in SharePoint repositories.

Typically what happens now when execs want to take their documents on the road, they email them to Gmail and then call them up on the iPad where the documents won’t render correctly without a special reader. Or they save the Office docs to Dropbox or some other cloud-based repository but the display problem remains the same. Sometimes an assistant would convert the required document to PDF and then download that — a “ridiculously labor intensive,” process — Triantos said.

Nexus’ server component enforces existing permissions and security levels set in Active Directory but can add more layers, said Michael Rothrock, Iongrid’s VP of product.

“Active Directory doesn’t know the user location, but we do, so if a user is off campus or abroad, we can enforce a new subset of security based on IP address and the iPad’s GPS information,” he said.

Pricing is $15 per user per month with volume discounts available.

Iongrid was founded in 2010 by Triantos, Rothrock and Ben de Waal, who is CTO.  It’s privately funded by angel investors including Simon Crosby and Nigel Stokes. Crosby is CTO of Bromium (and founder and former CTO of XenSource, now part of Citrix); Stokes is chairman of AppZero and former CEO of DataMirror (acquired by IBM  in 2007.)

Analyst Peter Christy, co-founder of the Internet Research Group, said Iongrid is attacking a meaty problem. Apple iPads were designed for 20-year olds who want to share everything. Business users have different needs, and since two to four percent of laptops or tablets are lost or stolen, these users need higher security standards.

“Oftentimes a thief can turn off the radio on a device before anyone from the home office can wipe it clean,” he said. Iongrid Nexus can alleviate those security concerns.

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Office 365 is not Microsoft’s first attempt at offering this kind of service; it has previously offered hosted Exchange and SharePoint services with BPOS (Business Productivity Online Services). But by including Office Web Apps in Office 365, the company now has a much more rounded product that enables users to do their work anywhere, on any device, and to easily collaborate with others.

Office 365 vs. Google Apps for Business

One of Office 365′s main advantages over Google Apps is the huge existing installed user base of Office products. Office is entrenched in the majority of businesses worldwide, and Office 365 offers an easy pathway for those users to migrate to cloud collaboration while using familiar tools. Office 365 also has a greater range of features than Google Apps, incorporating office productivity (Office and Office Web Apps), collaboration and intranet tools (SharePoint Online), email and calendars (Exchange Online) and instant messaging and web conferencing (Lync Online).

Unlike some previous Microsoft releases, Office 365 works cross-platform, so it can be accessed equally via Mac and PC and on mobile devices — although there are reports that mobile access from some devices is limited. Office Web Apps, in particular, is an impressive suite of products, and while they aren’t complete cloud-based replacements for the desktop Office apps — they don’t offer the full range of functionality that desktop apps do — Microsoft obviously invested a lot of effort in making the user experience very similar. The interface is familiar, and documents look identical in Office Web Apps and in the desktop applications. By enabling seamless round-trip working between Office Web Apps and Office desktop applications, Office 365 can also work when users are offline, something that can’t be said of Google Apps.

Of course, Google believes that its product is superior. On Monday, in a post titled “365 reasons to consider Google Apps” on the official Google Enterprise blog, Google Apps Product Manager Shan Sinha aimed a few barbs at Office 365, saying that it is designed for usage by individuals, not by teams; that its pricing is complex; and that Office 365 doesn’t have proven cloud reliability, while Google Apps has a record of 99.9 percent uptime. Some of Sinha’s points are debatable: Office 365 does enable co-editing and collaboration, for example, and Microsoft has plenty of experience in offering cloud-based services, even if Office 365 itself is new.

Easy migration to cloud productivity for existing Office users

With its higher price point, Office 365 might not tempt existing corporate users of Google Apps for Business away, particularly as migrating between the two services is unlikely to be straightforward. However, that’s probably not the market that Microsoft is aiming at. Rather, it wants to keep hold of the huge numbers of business customers with existing investments in the Office product line. For them, Office 365 is a well-designed product that offers an easy migration route to cloud-based office productivity at a reasonable price point with products that will feel very familiar to their users. I think that will make Office 365 a compelling proposition for many business customers, in particular smaller businesses that would like to offer their employees the ability to work and collaborate remotely using familiar Microsoft tools but don’t want to have to make an upfront investment in, and then maintain, their own SharePoint and Exchange servers.

Office 365 is available on a number of different plans, starting at around $6 per user per month for small businesses with less than 25 users; enterprise customers have access to plans including dedicated support. For comparison, Google Apps for Business costs around $4 per month.

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Notifications

It’s hard to understand just how much better it is to be able to see your work-related emails lined up at a glance on your lock screen as they come in, without having to even unlock your device, until you’ve tried it for yourself. Plus, you can jump to any email in the list automatically with one swipe, instead of having to unlock, open the mail application, scroll and find the right email, then tap on the email. The new iOS notifications can also do the same thing for text messages, voicemail or even with alerts from third-party apps. This makes everything you do on your phone or iPad much, much easier; a boon for busy remote workers who are inundated daily with demands for their attention.

iMessage

While the value of iMessage, Apple’s new text and MMS replacement, may be reduced by being limited to a single platform (iOS only), that limitation didn’t stop BlackBerry Messenger from being a huge hit with the enterprise crowd. iMessage will even work on iPads and iPod touches, devices which don’t normally support text messaging. It’s also smart enough to detect when your recipient can receive iMessages, so iOS-based web workers will be using it whether or not they realize it.

AirPlay mirroring

An iPad 2, coupled with an Apple TV, can function as a mobile workstation, and a presentation tool you can use anywhere there’s a television or video output device. AirPlay mirroring of apps makes it easier to work on presentations and longer documents, especially when you pair your iPad with a Bluetooth keyboard for easier typing. Plus, developers should be able to leverage the new feature to come up with some really innovative two-screen interfaces that could significantly change the way we use mobile devices to get work done.

Documents in the cloud

As part of iOS 5 and iCloud, developers will be able to add simple cross-device syncing of document changes. This will be an incredible boon for remote workers, and especially for distributed teams, who should be able to take advantage of this in apps that let members work collaboratively on a single document. We could see solutions that allow a distributed team to work together on projects as if they were working on a corporate server, instead, using Apple’s free iCloud product, which should be handy for small companies and freelancers.

PC-free

There are mobile workers who can do everything they need to get done on an iPad and an iPhone, especially with the right software support from an in-house IT development team. For those workers, the most important thing about iOS 5 is that it finally severs the essential connection between iOS devices and a home PC. A workstation with an all-day battery and an always-on connection is now within reach, especially for remote workers with relatively light computing demands.

Apple gave mobile workers a lot to be thankful for with OS X Lion, too, including auto save, resume and version tracking for documents built into the OS, but I think the changes made in iOS 5 will have the biggest impact for remote teams. Apple also made a couple changes directly aimed at enterprise customers, like encryption for iMessage and S/MIME support in iOS Mail. If you’ve been waiting for a good time to introduce Apple devices to your mobile workflow, there’s never been a better time than this fall, when iOS 5 is released.

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Back in 1975, BusinessWeek published “an in-depth analysis of how word processing will reshape the corporate office.” In the article, industry experts were divided over whether they would be able “to call up documents” from their files on-screen and connect electronic terminals to each other or if this vision of the future was, in fact, “scare talk.” One of the biggest concerns raised was how word processing would change the traditional secretary-executive relationship.

I think it’s safe to say that the predictions in the article put forward by George E. Pake , then head of Xerox Corp.’s Palo Alto Research Center, were largely correct. According to Pake, in 1995, there would be a TV-display terminal with a keyboard sitting at his desk and he’d be “able to call up documents from my files on the screen, or by pressing a button … I can get my mail or any messages. I don’t know how much hard copy [printed paper] I’ll want in this world.”

I have it on good authority from Jonathan Howell, Huddle’s CTO, that in the 1990s, everything was networked, all internal communication was done via email on a mainframe and desktop printers (with “desktop” referring to ubiquity rather than size) were commonplace. However, Jonathan was working for IBM in the 90s; what was it like for the rest of the workforce? You could indeed access your files with a click of a button on your computer. Networked desktop PCs were becoming increasingly widespread in offices worldwide, and in August 1995, Microsoft launched its much-anticipated Windows 95. The World Wide Web started to take shape, and Yahoo became one of the largest directories for web content. In short, advances in technology during the 1990s resulted in the “revolution in the office” that Pake predicted. Laptop computers were also becoming hot sellers, so the idea of a mobile workforce, while still a long way off, was starting to develop.

However, Pake’s vision of a world without “hard copy” remains a fantasy. In spite of the increasing popularity of email and the web, the rise of devices such as the iPad and enterprise content management tools, such as Huddle and SharePoint, the paperless office is still out of reach. The desktop printers that became a familiar sight in the office in the ’90s continue to be the worker’s trusty companion. According to the WWF, the average U.S. office worker goes through 10,000 sheets of copy paper per year. People still want to have physical documentation. Whether it’s business records, receipts or utility bills, people continue to feel they need to store paperwork in a safe, physical place for future reference. To drive widespread adoption of new technologies, a cultural shift and change in habits needs to take place. Just as the introduction of word processing and automation to the 1990s office changed the traditional secretary-executive relationship (or “office wife” bond), enterprise content management and collaboration technologies are disrupting the way people work today. Transforming working practices takes time.

In 1987, little more than 10 years after BusinessWeek’s predictions article was published, Apple Computer created a video envisioning how people would use technology to work in the 21st century:

The touchscreen “Knowledge Navigator” tablet device shown in the video could easily pass for an early prototype of Apple’s iPad, while the University Research Network accessed for information on deforestation in the Amazon rainforest looks suspiciously like the web. We are now accustomed to seeing touchscreen devices — according to market research firm iSuppli, worldwide production of touchscreen modules for use in computers is set to hit 117.9 million units in 2014 — but in 1987, mainstream adoption of such devices was still years away.

Another application shown is video conferencing: The professor is seen happily conversing with his colleague on-screen. Now, of course, video conferencing is part of most workers’ everyday lives, whether they are based at home or in an office: another hit for Apple’s vision of the future. While I doubt avatars with bow ties fielding calls and managing diaries will take off (unless Clippy 2.0 is overdue?), but virtual customer service assistants are now a familiar sight: Jenn at Alaska Airlines and Lucy at O2, for example. It may be a while before speech recognition is as seamless as that shown in the video; it is still a familiar (albeit often frustrating) technology.

The paperless office and a diary-managing avatar may not be a reality just yet, but many of the predictions made decades ago aren’t too far off the mark. However, there were some visions of the office of the future that just didn’t come to fruition, such as the short-lived Microsoft at Work (MAW). On June 9, 1993, Bill Gates launched MAW, which was supposed to connect common business machinery, like fax machines and photocopiers, with a communications protocol allowing control and status information to be shared with computers running Windows. It never got off the ground, and by 1995, it had disappeared from view.

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

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The new iPad offers enterprise users a number of improvements over the previous version, although the cameras might not be appreciated by some in workplaces where privacy is strictly monitored and controlled. Like the original iPad, the new version is still a tool that allows remote salespeople to all stay on the same page, with current sales and marketing material and an interactive presentation tool they can easily take directly to their customers. And it still allows distributed team members to stay in touch via email, IM, VoIP and online collaboration tools. But now it also offers the power to potentially operate in a greatly expanded creative capacity, the means for advanced video telecommunications, and the ability to act as a plug-and-play mobile workstation.

iMovie is a truly powerful creative app that could pave the way for professional-calibre video editing applications on the platform. The new A5 chip and 9x better graphics performance mean that we’ll see developers rush to tax the limits of what’s possible on the iPad 2, and I think we’ll be surprised at how far they take things. Allowing team members to tweak complicated rich-media projects quickly on the go will be revolutionary for the iPad as a professional tool.

People who think that adding a camera to the iPad 2 is just a minor improvement aren’t people who work with remote team members and clients. Videoconferencing is increasingly popular; you need only look as far as the success of Skype and the rise of competitors to that service to find proof of that. The value of face-to-face communication actually increases as in-person dealings become more of a rarity, and it won’t be long before third parties join Apple’s FaceTime in the video chat game, and multi-person group video chat is right around the corner (I suspect this may be a feature of FaceTime in iOS 5, in fact).

I’ve mentioned this before in my piece on HD mirroring being the killer feature of iPad 2, but it bears repeating here. The mirroring feature of the iPad 2 (which allows the entire OS and all apps to be output to a display via an adapter and HDMI cable) will allow users to treat it as a total mobile workstation. Just plug the iPad into a screen, pull out a full-size Bluetooth keyboard, and work away. Obviously, iOS still has isn’t as capable at some tasks as OS X or Windows, but developers have been doing a good job of filling those gaps, and will no doubt continue to do so. And for some tasks, I find it actually works better as a productivity tool, because of its one-at-a-time.

Finally, I have to point out that for those who have yet to hold the iPad 2, the thinner and lighter design just makes it feel much more like a portable device. My first-gen iPad feels positively clunky by comparison. This is no small consideration when it comes to the mobile worker. To paraphrase my colleague Kevin Tofel, the best tools are the ones that you have with you, and I can definitely see the iPad 2 coming along where its predecessor may have been left behind. For the flexible, distributed workforce of tomorrow made up of autonomous, mobile individuals acting in concert across great distances, the iPad is the tool to beat, and this revision only underscores that.

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Let’s talk about portability. The iPad is a great small computing device. A 9.7-inch screen is small enough to not take up much space in your bag, but also provides a decent amount of screen real estate so that you won’t find yourself squinting. And it only weighs 1.5 pounds (1.6 if you spring for the 3G-capable model). But, that weight doesn’t factor in a case, stand or keyboard, all of which are pretty much required if you plan to use it to do work on the road.

The new MacBook Air provides either a 11.6-inch or a 13.3-inch display, depending on which model you choose. Even the smaller display will make a big difference in terms of usability over the iPad, especially with long periods of use. It also comes with its own keyboard. The weight penalty for all this added convenience? Only an extra 0.8 pounds with the 11.6-inch Air, or 1.4 for the model with the larger display. Not bad at all when you consider that covers all your bases.

And how about price? I’m leaning towards the 11.6-inch MacBook Air, so I priced it out with the upgrades I’d need; the only one I really wanted was the extra 2GB of RAM. That brings the total cost, with shipping, to $1,099. If I wanted to get an iPad with the same storage capacity, I’d have to opt for one of the top-tier 64GB models. The Wi-Fi-only model is $699, but I can’t tether my iPhone to an iPad like I can with the MacBook Air, so I’d probably want to spring for the Wi-Fi + 3G model. That’s $829. Add in the cost of the Apple Bluetooth keyboard, and we’re already at $889. Include a case that doubles as a stand, and you’re up to around $929.

For an additional $170, you get the convenience and software library of OS X, an easier design to work with on the road, more screen real estate and more muscle under the hood. I haven’t even mentioned how much better the Air is as an at-home solution, and it’s already looking like the better bargain.

Speaking of the home office, the MacBook Air works nicely there, too. With its new upgrades, it has almost as much power as the 13.3-inch MacBook, depending on the options you choose, and has video out capabilities via Mini DisplayPort. Plugging it into an Apple Cinema Display will provide all the desktop computing ability most web workers need (and you can add another screen using one of the two USB ports on the new Air, if you need it). And, as you would expect from an Apple product, it’s a very nicely designed and packaged device. Here’s Janko from our sister site NewTeeVee unboxing a 13-inch model:

The new Air looks like a great solution for web workers both at home and away, but that’s not what really makes it the best proposition for the forward-thinking web worker. No, the key differentiator with the Air is that it truly lets you create, unbridled. You can write without feeling hindered thanks to the full-size keyboard, and edit photos and do graphics work thanks to the NVIDIA 320M graphics and Intel Core 2 Duo processor. You don’t have to settle for just “the best you can do on the road” any more, as is the case with netbooks. At this price, and in this size, the Air will let you do the best you can do, period, no matter where you’re working from.

Are you thinking about getting a MacBook Air? Let us know what you think of the new models below.

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The Safari Extensions Gallery is accessible from the Safari menu or via extensions.apple.com. Users can download and install extensions from the gallery with a single click, with no need for a browser restart. Extensions can be automatically updated and are managed within Safari.

Safari Extensions are built with HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript web standards. Every Safari Extension is signed with a digital certificate from Apple to prevent tampering and to verify that updates to the extension are from the original developer. Safari Extensions work in a sandbox, so they can’t access information on a user’s system or communicate with websites aside from those specified by the developer.

While the Safari Extension Gallery is launching with a range of extensions from the likes of Bing, the New York Times, Twitter and eBay, it’s nowhere near to matching the usefulness of Chrome’s extensions, let alone Firefox’s gigantic range of add-ons. Apple’s decision to include extension support in Safari is a smart one, but until developers start porting the most useful extensions to Safari, I’ll find it tough to switch from my favorite browsers.

You can download Safari 5.0.1 for both Mac and PC for free from Apple.

What Chrome or Firefox extensions would you like to see ported to Safari?

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