GigaOM » Collaboration

Social media use at work exploding, but beware alarmists

Jessica Stillman — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:01:43 +0000

It only takes a peek around the desktops of the average office today to see that social network use at work is way up. But by exactly how much is this growth impacting corporate networks? Firewall company Palo Alto Networks analyzes the traffic on its customers’ networks semi-annually to answer questions like this, and this week it released it’s latest findings, summarized in the infographic below.

The headline takeaway is that employees are shifting from being passive observers of social networks while at work to active participants, dramatically increasing their use of these networks (in fact, total social networking traffic more than tripled). But despite BusinessWeek claiming social-mad employees are hogging bandwidth, don’t be too alarmed about the increase in usage. All that posting and game playing only accounts for a total of about one percent of Internet bandwidth, and Palo Alto Networks is stressing that while some people are certainly slacking off, an increasing amount of social networking use is also for legitimate work purposes. File sharing is way up as well but also only accounts for about one percent of total network bandwidth.

“At first glance, the shifts in usage patterns may imply that there is a significant drain on productivity and a strain on the networking infrastructure, possibly jeopardizing other, more business critical, bandwidth sensitive applications. Clearly social networking applications are being used for both business and personal purposes, but the overall impact to the bandwidth infrastructure is small,” says the report. A more serious risk than wasting time or bandwidth may be threats to data security. The report suggests networks are harder to secure than many IT pros imagine.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Flickr user Franco Bouly.

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Ricoh’s file storage service quanp to shut down in the US

Simon Mackie — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 08:55:59 +0000

quanp, an online file storage service from Japanese electronics giant Ricoh that we’ve covered previously, is being shut down in the U.S. In an email sent to customers, the company notes that the service, which was in beta, will be discontinued on September 30th. This closure will not affect the original Japanese version of the service.

No reasons have been given as to why the company is closing the service, but it’s probably safe to assume that Ricoh found it hard to gain traction with quanp in an ultra-competitive cloud file storage market. New user signup has already been closed, and current quanp users should make sure they have downloaded any files stored on the service by 11.59pm PT on September 30th, as at that time all user accounts will be deleted, together with any files stored on them.

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File sharing service Min.us moves to Minus.com

Simon Mackie — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 09:13:41 +0000

Simple drag-and-drop file sharing service Minus, which I wrote about a couple of months ago, has acquired the Minus.com domain name. Minus.com will be used as the service’s primary domain going forward, rather than min.us, which was used previously and was thought to be a little confusing. Users who prefer the old domain or who have it bookmarked shouldn’t worry, however, as the min.us domain will also continue to work as before, and all existing links will continue to work properly. As it’s shorter, min.us will still be used to provide shortlinks to galleries.

As well as moving to the new domain, the team at Minus has been busy adding new features to the service and updating its apps. For example, a recent update to the desktop app updated its look and feel and also included a nifty new screenshot tool, which enables users to take screenshots (either full screen or a region) and upload them to their Minus account, while the Android app has gained the ability to preview plain text and PDF documents.

Minus is free. As well as through the website, files can be uploaded and accessed via a desktop client (available for Windows, Mac and Linux); mobile apps for iPhone, Android and Windows Phone 7; and browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox.

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Boxify.me: A fresh take on file sharing for groups

Simon Mackie — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 21:05:49 +0000

Boxify.me is a service that offers a twist on the kind of simple online file sharing service provided by the likes of Minus, Fyels and Dropdo that may make it useful for remote teams. Effectively, the app provides an online “box” at a specific URL that groups can use to upload and download files. Anyone with the URL can then upload or download files from the box.

I can imagine Boxify.me being useful for project teams as it provides an online bucket to store and share project materials. The app has very little in the way of bells and whistles beyond basic file uploading/downloading, although you can rename your box to make it easier to recall the URL (so you could have your box at http://boxify.me/box/gigaom, for example). Note that there’s absolutely no security provided — anyone who has the URL can access the files — so you definitely wouldn’t want to use the service to store or share anything confidential. Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be any way to delete files once they are uploaded, which is likely to put many people off using it.

No signup is required to use Boxify.me, and everything is done via the browser, so there’s no need to install any additional software, although the file upload widget does use Flash. Storage limits and maximum file sizes aren’t noted on the site.

(via Addictive Tips)

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ShareFile offers enterprise-friendly file sharing features

Charles Hamilton — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 11:58:10 +0000

There are a huge number of apps file sharing apps available including Box.net, Minus, FileShareHQ and Accellion. Another option in this very crowded market that is billed as being “exclusively focused on small business/enterprise features” is ShareFile.

ShareFile is worth checking out if you’re looking for a business-oriented file-sharing service, as it offers many features that you’d find in most of the other file sharing services, plus a few that won’t be found with more consumer-oriented solutions:

Security, user and file management

Files transmitted and stored with encryption
Tracking and alerts to confirm that clients have received files
Granular folder-level permissions
Bulk load client users from Outlook or spreadsheet
Activity reports showing who uploaded and downloaded files and when

File access and transfer

Upload individual files up to 10 GB
FTPS over SSL transfers, compatible with traditional FTP clients
Map a local drive letter to ShareFile account
Automatic resume of interrupted transfers
Access via the web, an Outlook plugin, and through desktop, iOS and Android apps
API and command-line tools
File versioning
Full-text search
Ability to request file copies on DVD or hard drives
Ability to send a DVD or hard drive for initial population of files

Customization

Custom branding
Tools for your website, including a login widget and an upload form

Not all of the above features are available with all pricing plans.

ShareFile told me how one of its customers, a worldwide restaurant chain, uses the service to make creative materials available to their franchisees. The same customer’s HR department uses ShareFile to send sensitive employment documents.

The company boasts data centers on the U.S. East and West Coasts, as well as in Ireland and Singapore, but provides telephone and email help from a U.S.-based support staff.

ShareFile is available in several pricing plans, ranging from $29.95 a month for two employee accounts and 5GB of storage, to $499.95 per month for 150 accounts and 150GB of storage. All plans include unlimited client users. A 30-day trial is available.

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As email passes 40, is a midlife crisis in the cards?

Andy McLoughlin — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 12:04:56 +0000

A few weeks ago, electronic mail, or email as it’s now affectionately known, hit the respectable age of 40. When Ray Tomlinson, a young computer engineer, sent the first email in 1971, he could only have guessed how it would impact the way we communicate in both our business and personal lives.

Email has transformed the way people shop, bank, communicate with family members and do business. Now an essential tool for approximately one billion mobile workers across the globe, email continues to dominate the way in which we communicate.

Four decades since the first message – believed to be “QWERTYUIOP” – email seems to be going strong. But is it about to hit a midlife crisis? With web workers now using more sophisticated collaborative apps and social business tools to communicate and share information, are we going to see email’s reign come to an end?

Email is a great communication tool. You can get in touch with business colleagues, family and friends at the touch of a button. Gone are the days of waiting by the front door for a letter from uncles and aunties across the globe, or sitting by a fax machine waiting for that signed document to come back from a client’s legal team. However, email isn’t a collaboration tool. Anyone who has tried to collate feedback from numerous colleagues on a document over email knows how painful the process can be. No one seems to remember which version the team is working on and there is always that one person who sends over some (supposedly) final amendments overnight. Hours can be wasted waiting for emails to go back and forth, searching through inboxes for missing documents, and putting large files onto CDs, USB sticks or FTP servers due to file size restrictions.

It is little wonder then that web workers across the globe are turning to the likes of Dropbox for storing and sharing files. Store your files on one computer, and they’ll automatically appear on your other computers with Dropbox installed. Simple. Indeed, Apple has finally joined the party and realized that emailing photos from your phone was so 2010 — its forthcoming iCloud service will provide a far smarter way to move your content between devices. Evernote is another popular tool with remote workers, enabling you to quickly capture anything. Whether it’s a photo, a screenshot or a web site, whatever you capture is stored, processed and made searchable. And, of course, there’s Huddle. Being cloud-based, Huddle enables you to manage your projects, files and people on any device, from any location.

With social networks making it so easy to stay in touch and share information with people in their personal lives, the demand for such simplicity in the workplace has increased. Take Facebook, for example: You can message your friends, share your photos and videos (and every other aspect of your life should you so wish), and co-ordinate events from wherever you are. With more than 500 million active Facebook users spending 700 billion minutes per month on the site, and more than 200 million people tweeting, email’s grip on our personal lives may well be coming to an end.

For business, however, it’s a different matter. Yes, there are tools being used to make our working lives easier, but removing email from the workplace completely will require more than just introducing intuitive, easy-to-use tools in the office. It requires a change in habit. Email is deeply entrenched in our daily working lives and moving to other tools will require a culture shift. Any new tools and services need to be integrated into processes from the outset of a project / program / campaign so that people become accustomed to using an alternative tool. And this is before you start the mammoth task of introducing client and partner companies to your amazing new tool. While email may not dominate workplace communication in another 40 years, there’s life in it yet!

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

Photo courtesy Flickr user ilamont.com.

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Egnyte adds easy file sharing to Windows, Mac OS X and Outlook

Charles Hamilton — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 13:15:01 +0000

Egnyte, a file management, sharing and backup system I wrote about last fall, has been updated, and has added several ways to simplify accessing and sharing files in the cloud.

The company now offers add-ons for Windows Explorer and the Mac OS X Finder that allow users to right-click (or control-click) on a file and be offered the opportunity to send or share that file directly from the desktop, as part of Version 6.0 of Egnyte’s Personal Local Cloud application. An Outlook plugin with the ability to share files as links or attachments is also available. In addition, Egnyte includes the ability for enterprise IT departments to enforce limits on file sharing and other security policies.

Egnyte positions itself as “Dropbox for the enterprise,” since it provides secure means of allowing workers to access their files while giving IT departments the control and security they need. The Egnyte “Local Cloud” service that synchronizes on-site and cloud storage is also popular in enterprises.

The folks at Egnyte told me that their product is becoming increasingly popular in large, 1,000+ person operations where mobile devices are becoming ubiquitous. In fact, in a recent study, up to 40 percent of the access to Egnyte’s service came from mobile sources, with the iPad being the single most popular device. Egnyte’s mobile apps are proving very popular, with more capabilities and other platforms coming soon.

The “Dropbox for the enterprise” space is getting more crowded, with the likes of Accellion and Box.net also offering enterprise-friendly secure file sharing and backup features. Egnyte will be hoping these updates help to keep it up with the pack.

The service is available at several price levels, and a 15-day free trial is available.

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Box.net’s SimpleShare: Seamless Screenshot and Screencast Sharing

Simon Mackie — Thu, 26 May 2011 19:02:28 +0000

File sharing and collaboration company Box.net’s SimpleShare is a great little desktop app for Windows and Mac that makes taking and sharing screenshots and screencasts seamless. Take a screenshot or record a screencast using the app and it will automatically be uploaded to your Box.net account, while the file’s URL will be copied to your clipboard, ready to share over email, IM or Twitter. What’s more, you can also share other files in a similar manner just by dragging them to the app’s icon.

On the Mac, SimpleShare sits in the menubar, and the app uses the same keyboard shortcuts for taking screenshots as OS X’s built-in tools. It’s similar to the GrabBox app I’ve written about previously for uploading screenshots to Dropbox, but the addition of a screencasting tool and the ability to upload other files makes SimpleShare even more useful. On Windows, the app’s icon lives in the task bar and uses different keyboard shortcuts, but otherwise works in the same way to the Mac version.

SimpleShare’s screencasting feature is pretty bare-bones, with none of the controls or editing features you get in a dedicated tool like Camtasia. You can select a region of the screen to record and that’s about it. However, it’s good enough to make a quick recording of something happening on your screen, and could be very useful for sharing rough and ready demo videos to document a process for colleagues, or to record a problem with a website to share with technical staff, for example. Screencasts are recorded as Flash files (.flv format) so can be instantly replayed by anyone you share them with, with no need for them to download any additional software.

SimpleShare is free and available to download for Windows XP, Windows 7 and Windows 7 64-bit, and Mac OS X 10.5, 10.6. It requires a Box.net account; a personal account including 5GB of storage is free.

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Fyels: Ultra-Minimal Drag-and-Drop File Sharing

Simon Mackie — Fri, 20 May 2011 21:02:03 +0000

Fyels is a minimalist drag-and-drop file sharing app that makes sharing larger files with colleagues or clients a breeze. Head to the website, and then drag and drop your file onto the dropzone. Once the file is uploaded, you’ll be provided with a ready-shortened link to it that you can share with people over email, IM or Twitter.

It’s just about as stripped-back as an online file sharing service could possibly get; there are no fancy bells and whistles whatsoever. Unlike Dropdo, another simple file sharing app I covered recently, it has no built-in file viewing functionality, for example (although Fyels does at least provide a mechanism for deleting uploaded files yourself), and you can’t apply a password to uploaded files. But if all you need is a very quick, simple and no-login way to share larger files with colleagues or clients, Fyels is ideal.

Fyels is free, with a file upload limit of 25MB (a limit that may be increased soon). A Mac desktop client is also available; it doesn’t offer any additional functionality over the website, although it may be slightly faster to switch to than the website for heavy file-sharers.

(Via TorrentfFeak)

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The Future of Work Platforms: An Overview

Minus: Simple Drag-and-Drop Online File Sharing

Simon Mackie — Fri, 13 May 2011 21:02:17 +0000

Minus is a drag-and-drop online file-sharing app that’s well-designed and dead simple to use: Head to the site, drag the files you want to share onto the browser window and it will be added to an online gallery. You can continue dropping more files onto the window to add them to the gallery, up to a limit of 50 items, and are given a URL to share with colleagues or clients.

Usability is also good for those you share your files with: Each file is represented by a large image (images, text files and PDFs get thumbnail previews, while audio and video files can be played within the app itself) that can be paged through using the large left and right arrows. Files can be downloaded individually, or the whole gallery can be downloaded as a ZIP archive. No sign-in is required to share or download files, although registered users get larger upload limits (5o MB per file, as opposed to 25 MB for unregistered users), a public profile and the ability to search their own and other users’ galleries.

Minus’ drag-and-drop simplicity should make it very easy to use for less tech-savvy folks; it’s certainly a lot more intuitive than fiddling with FTP for sharing larger files. In some ways, it’s reminiscent of defunct file-sharing service drop.io (a service that was a WWD favorite, until it was bought by Facebook and then discontinued), which also had drag-and-drop functionality and online galleries, although Minus doesn’t have some of the more advanced features that drop.io had, such as real-time chat. Crucially, however, Minus is also missing drop.io’s ability to password-protect files. While galleries can be “private,” that only prevents them from being published to your profile; anyone with the URL can gain access, so I wouldn’t use Minus to share any confidential work files. Minus’ FAQ states that the company is working on implementing a business model for the app; I wouldn’t be surprised to see that include adding the ability to password-protect the galleries of subscribed users, and possibly to also add branding to galleries.

(via ghacks)

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Dropdo: Online File Sharing With Built-In Viewing Tools

Simon Mackie — Wed, 11 May 2011 22:16:39 +0000

Want to share a file with colleagues or clients, but aren’t sure whether they have the necessary software to open it? Dropdo is a simple online file sharing service that has built-in viewing tools for many different file formats. Upload a document, image, code, audio or video file in one of the formats that it supports, and Dropdo will host the file and display it online. If Dropdo does not support the format, it will simply host the file and make it downloadable, much like any other file sharing service.

While Google Docs and some file sync services like box.net also have file viewing tools, Dropdo offers very simple and quick “one-stop” service to share files in a wide variety of different formats, and it doesn’t require users to sign up to upload or view documents.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be a comprehensive list of supported file types on the website, but according to a Hacker News post the developer made to announce the app, it will display images, videos (a few formats), audio (a few formats), plain text, markdown, source code files (with syntax highlighting for all of the languages supported by Pygments), and all the formats that Google’s document viewer supports (PowerPoint, Word, Excel, PDF, Photoshop PSD, and more).

Dropdo is free. Files up to 25 Mb can be uploaded, and there are extensions available for Chrome and Firefox. A potential issue with the service is that the only way to delete uploaded files currently is to email the developer; the FAQ notes that user accounts are in the works, and registered users will then be able to delete their own files.

(via Lifehacker)

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VoxOx Brings Its All-in-One Communications App to iOS Devices

Charles Hamilton — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 12:00:50 +0000

VoxOx, an all-in-one phone, fax, instant-messaging, text-messaging, and file-sending application for desktops, is now offering an app for iOS. While the mobile app doesn’t have all the features that the desktop application has, it could be useful for those who juggle lots of communication channels.

Like its desktop cousin, the new iOS app, named VoxOx Call, attempts to bring together the features of many other products. At first glance, it looks most like Google Voice. New users can select a free U.S. number, or purchase a low-cost number in Canada (something Google Voice doesn’t offer); number porting is coming.

Surprisingly, VoxOx Call doesn’t make calls using VoIP. Instead, it’s a callback service that connects both parties using standard lines. The provider explains its decision this way:

“Most VoIP calling apps rely heavily on a user’s bandwidth, which can quickly deplete a mobile data plan or result in unreliable call quality. The VoxOx Call app utilizes the traditional telephone network to initiate a call, but does so at VoxOx’s cheap worldwide calling rates, ensuring low cost and reliability. A user simply dials a contact’s phone number, and then waits for their phone to ring with that person on the line. Instead of the call being routed as an outbound call for which a mobile carrier may charge toll fees, VoxOx turns it into an inbound call, which in most countries is toll free. This allows a mobile user to pay only pennies per minute for long-distance and international calls via VoxOx rates instead of dollars per minute through their mobile carrier.”

Whether this system makes sense for you will depend on what kind of phone and data plans you have. An interesting side-effect of this procedure, though, is that the app can be used even on iPod touches and iPads, since you can set the app to call you on any number, including non-iPhone cell phones and landlines in your vicinity.

Like Google Voice, VoxOx offers transcriptions of voice messages, and these can be viewed in the iOS app. I haven’t tested it enough to evaluate how accurate the transcriptions are; Kevin Hertz, CTO at Telcentris (the company behind VoxOx), claims 80-90 percent accuracy.

In addition to international calling, VoxOx offers worldwide SMS. VoxOx has aimed to make text conversations as seamless as possible. If the person you’re conversing with leaves their office during a chat, it’s possible to switch between, say, their IM account and SMS on their cell phone. The app also has a simple way of emailing chat transcripts.

The iOS app offers several advanced features, including the ability to record calls, transfer between devices in the middle of a conversation, and arrange conferences of up to 20 people. Users can set up call forwarding to multiple phone numbers. VoxOx Call users can also receive, view and forward incoming faxes, change outgoing caller ID on the fly. It offers push notifications, too.

VoxOx Call doesn’t have quite as many features as the desktop version, though, and while it’s possible to sign up for a VoxOx account from the mobile app, VoxOx Call is intended to work in concert with the desktop software. There are a number of functions that can’t be accessed from the iOS app; even simple things such as adding an IM account aren’t available. Also, Skype integration seems to be missing, apparently because Skype requires its own software to be running in order for other programs to access it.

On the other hand, the iOS app has something the desktop application doesn’t: integration with the device’s address book.

During my conversation with Kevin Hertz, I asked him about some of the issues that caused me to be skeptical about the Mac version of the desktop app when I looked at it a few months ago. I’d been disappointed by its “un-Mac-like” appearance and poor font rendering, which made it unappealing to use. I had been surprised by its lack of connections to the Mac address book, or even a system for importing contacts. I was unhappy with its inconsistent support for such standards as oAuth and Facebook Connect. And I had also been annoyed by the tendency of VoxOx to default to an “invite your friends to use this” setting. Hertz assures me that all these issues will be addressed in updates to the desktop application.

VoxOx remains a promising, but flawed, product. The initial release of VoxOx Call for iOS will definitely appeal to those who do a lot of international calling and texting; its limited features and reliance on callbacks will make it less compelling for the rest of us.

VoxOx offers a number of calling and texting plans. You may also pay as you go. The VoxOx Call app is free (iTunes link).

Do you use VoxOx? How do you manage your mobile communications?

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FileShuttle: Simple Drag-and-Drop FTP File Sharing for the Mac

Simon Mackie — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 11:53:53 +0000

If you have access to a server, FileShuttle is a free app for the Mac that makes sharing files, images and text a snap. Add your server’s FTP details, and uploading files is simply a matter of dragging them onto the FileShuttle icon in the dock. The file is uploaded and a shortened URL is automatically copied to your clipboard, ready to paste into a tweet, IM or email. Drag multiple files to the icon, and FileShuttle will package them up all up into a handy ZIP archive before uploading. You’re kept informed of the progress of any uploads via a progress bar indicator under the app’s icon and Growl notifications.

As well as uploading files, it can also automatically upload screenshots (in a similar manner to the GrabBox application I wrote about previously) and save snippets of text as text files, making it possible to turn a directory on your server into an easily sharable pasteboard.

A screenshot can’t really show how simple it is to use, so I made a short screencast:

Watch this video for free on GigaOM

While there are many cloud-based Mac file sharing apps like CloudApp and Droplr, FileShuttle is incredibly easy to set up and use and allows you to make use of your own server space in order to retain control over the files you share. Highly recommended.

(Via One Thing Well)

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Accellion Offers Secure File Sharing For the Enterprise

Simon Mackie — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 17:05:34 +0000

Dropbox and Box.net have long been favorites of the team here at WebWorkerDaily, they make sharing large files with others a snap, and also work on a number of mobile devices. Thanks to their ease of use compared with clunky traditional file-sharing systems or FTP, these apps are also growing in popularity within the enterprise, too. But their use can give corporate IT departments headaches, particularly with regards to data security and regulatory compliance. Accellion, a provider of secure file transfer solutions, has announced Accellion Secure Collaboration, a new product that aims to bring easy Dropbox-style file sharing and collaboration to the enterprise, while also providing IT with the tracking and control to ensure data security and demonstrate compliance with HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley and FDA requirements.

The Accellion Secure Collaboration product should seem very familiar to anyone who has used Box.net or Dropbox. It provides secure workspaces where users can share files with both internal and external parties, complete with the ability to assign access privileges, share comments and track document versions. Files and folders of up to 100Gb can be transferred, and can also optionally be encrypted for added security. Mobile access is catered for, with an iPhone/iPad app (available late April), and BlackBerry and Android apps also in the works. Plug-ins are also available for SharePoint and Outlook.

A range of deployment options is offered, including virtual server, cloud (via EC2), hybrid cloud and on-premise appliance. Cost varies, but for smaller customers is likely to be in the region of $100 per user per year (dropping substantially for larger volumes). The Secure Collaboration product is available as an upgrade for existing Accellion customers. You can request a trial or run a demo here.

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Egnyte’s Remote File Management System Comes to Android, Just in Time for Working Holidays

Charles Hamilton — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 22:00:53 +0000

The folks at Egnyte, the file management, sharing and backup service I wrote about a couple of months ago, have released a survey indicating that over 80 percent of small business professionals plan to work over the holidays. Here are a few more statistics from Egnyte’s survey, which was conducted in October 2010 and received over 500 responses:

80 percent will work in their home office, while 31 percent will work at the home of an extended family member, and 31 percent will work while on the road. Only 24 percent plan to work at the office over the holidays.
83 percent said they plan to access work data using a smartphone, with the iPhone, Android and BlackBerry leading the pack for the most popular devices.
Nearly eight in 10 (79 percent) will use their device “when they can get away with it” this holiday season; 12 percent will use it during the drive to Grandmother’s house. Thankfully, only four percent will check it at the dinner table.

For those who are working from their smartphones, Egnyte is now offering an Android app, which joins the existing iPhone and iPad apps, to enable users to access and share files while on the road (or during the holidays).

The Android app has some nice features, shared with Egnyte’s web app, such as being able to:

Create notes
Manage different versions of the same document
Email documents as attachments or links — links can be set to expire after an interval of your choosing.

Of course, in order to edit documents, you’ll need an appropriate editor app.

Egnyte’s Android app is now available in the Android Market at no charge. The Egnyte service is available at several price levels, beginning at 20 GB of online storage for $14.99 per month, through 1 TB of storage for $49.99 per month. A 15-day free trial is available.

Egnyte will also be one of our Net:Work Future Ideas Launchpad finalists. You can see the company’s CEO Vineet Jain presenting on stage at Net:Work in San Francisco on December 9 — register here.

Will you be working during the holidays?

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Beta Roundup: Social Networking, Twitter and Messaging Clients

Charles Hamilton — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:00:47 +0000

Internet-based communication is changing so quickly these days that there seems to be an endless stream of beta releases. Yesterday, Simon wrote about some of the latest browser betas; let’s look at a few products and services for interacting with social networks, Twitter and instant messaging.

I don’t generally like living on the bleeding edge, but some betas are very usable, and I’ve already incorporated them into my daily workflow. Others look promising, but are not stable or are lacking too many features right now. But all of the following are worth trying, and watching as they develop. We’ll review them more thoroughly as they mature.

Adium is my favorite IM client for the Mac OS. Its latest beta supports all of the instant messaging protocols, and also has rudimentary support for Twitter and Facebook Chat. Unfortunately, the latter is not working as I write this, although a fix is expected shortly.

VoxOx is an ambitious program combining IM; social networks (Facebook, MySpace and Twitter); SMS texting; faxing; private email; file sharing; video conversations; and voice connections. As I wrote a few days ago, it is very rough around the edges now, and desperately needs improved tools for managing contacts.

Imo.im is a web-based multi-system instant messaging client with some intriguing features, like shared whiteboards. This service is listed as being in alpha, so we can assume that it has considerable development ahead of it.

Brizzly is a web-based service that looks a lot like Twitter’s own web interface, but with improvements. It supports multiple Twitter accounts and has recently added Facebook support. The multiple accounts aren’t as well integrated as I would like, but I assume that will come.

Tweetminer is another web-based service that includes support for multiple Twitter accounts, tweet scheduling, and RSS feeds. Its interface is attractive, but features are minimal at the moment. There are also Adobe AIR or Fluid-based desktop versions, for those who prefer standalone apps.

Socialite (formerly EventBox, which Imran wrote about here) has just released beta 2, which seemingly broke support for Facebook updates. When this issue is fixed, Socialite could become my favorite, as it combines support for Facebook, Facebook Pages, multiple Twitter accounts, RSS feeds and Google Reader in one attractive interface.

Seesmic Desktop is another Twitter and Facebook program which has worked well for me, but it shares with many Adobe AIR programs some ugly screen fonts and a propensity for using large amounts of memory. Seesmic also has a promising web version, but so far, it lacks support for multiple Twitter accounts, and for Facebook.

Nambu only does Twitter, but does it very well, in what I think is the most attractive interface of any program of its type. I can choose three different layouts, and switch between them easily. Nambu’s development is very rapid, with a new beta released every couple of days.

I find the popular Tweetdeck to be totally unreadable and unusable, due to its AIR interface. I wish Adobe would make AIR on the Mac look as good as the native OS X fonts and windows.

There are lots more betas out there, of course. What beta software and services do you use?

Image credit: Stock.xchng user OmirOnia

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