It’s one thing to work in a team with one or two off-site members. But what about entirely dispersed teams, where none of the members are located in the same office? Team leaders need to consider the interplay of three crucial factors: frequency, transparency, and variability. Read more »
![Talkwheel [talkwheel.com]](http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/talkwheel-talkwheel-com.jpg?w=210&h=140&crop=1)
Talkwheel, which positions itself as an integrated communications tool for enterprises, offers a novel way to capture, visualize and follow conversations. Conversations are displayed as threaded and nested messages on the right side of the interface, and around the “talkwheel” on the left. Read more »
Following the success of Facebook and Twitter in the consumer space, over the past couple of years we’ve seen a wave of enterprise social networking tools hoping to capture similar successes in the enterprise market. But how are these tools shaping the businesses that use them? Read more »
For sending, sharing and collaborating on files, there are a huge number of file sharing apps available, including Dropbox, 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 Read more »
GoDropBox is a third-party add-on for Google Apps that adds a public mailbox to your Google Docs account, enabling anyone with the appropriate link to upload files to your account. This is handy for web workers who would like to accept files too big to email. Read more »
I teach technology and innovation to working professional MBA students who are changing courses and teams every ten weeks. Collaboration tools are critical to our effectiveness. Over the last two years, my courses have served as testing grounds for two locally-grown, student-designed tools: Acceledge and Piazza. Read more »
In today’s world, an increasing number of negotiations are taking place remotely, and with digital signatures being as legitimate as those made by hand, the number of useful applications for revising, organizing and signing documents online is growing. Here’s a selection. Read more »
It makes sense to focus on project briefs and core competencies — after all, these are what gets the job done. But what gets the job done well? Often, it’s team members’ non-core skills and experience that make the collaboration a real success. Read more »
On Tuesday, Microsoft officially launched Office 365, the Redmond software giant’s suite of online collaboration and office tools. It competes with Google Apps for Business, but how do the two compare? Here’s a look at some screenshots of key applications in the two suites. Read more »
Cloud file sync and backup company Soonr has now launched Soonr Teaming to add team-based collaborative features to its service. Users can form project teams to work together virtually and access and edit files from anywhere, on Mac, PC or a number of mobile devices. Read more »
It will probably come as no surprise to WebWorkerDaily readers that a recent survey found that 70 percent of information workers don’t believe status meetings help them accomplish work tasks. Additionally, almost 40 percent of respondents feel that such meetings are a waste of time. Read more »
Microsoft has now launched Office 365, its suite of collaboration and office tools that aims to take on Google Apps for Business. But with a product that costs more than Google’s offering and is coming much later to market, will Office 365 be a success? Read more »
Harmon.ie 3.0, is an Outlook add-on that’s adding new social and collaboration features. The new “people” tab in the Harmon.ie sidebar lets users see colleagues’ profiles and availability, displays an activity stream, and lets workers call, chat or videoconference directly. Read more »
Looking at the previous two Tales from the Trenches, a reader could get the impression that all web workers are employed by small firms or as independent contractors. But large organizations are putting the advantages of wired working to use as well, including global telecom giant Orange. Read more »
Sharing institutional knowledge can be a huge pitfall for many organizations. If you need to make sure that different people in your organization have access to the knowledge that keep your organization rolling along, arranging for some sort of sharing mechanism can be difficult. Read more »
A few weeks ago, electronic mail, or email as it’s now affectionately known, hit the respectable age of 40. 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? Read more »
Web content curation is nothing new. What is new, however, is that there are a growing number of tools that allow you to do your own curation for your own purposes. How can curation help keep your remote team on the same page? Read more »
In the desire to be perceived as thought leaders, many businesses are focusing on a curatorial approach to their social media presences. But if you work in a creative team, an approach to social media that leverages your creativity can deliver benefits far beyond brand-customer engagement. Read more »
Small- to mid-sized companies need the ability to edit, share and collaborate on files while keeping teams updated with the latest versions. Alfresco Team is an open-source, professional tool for content collaboration that offers enterprise-oriented social and security features not found in some Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products. Read more »
The flexibility and autonomy of web working can boost productivity and morale, but letting company information out of the secure perimeter of corporate headquarters also opens organizations up to a whole host of security concerns, according to a recent article from MIT’s Technology Review. Read more »
Egnyte, the file management, sharing and backup system that I wrote about last fall, has been updated, and has added several ways to simplify accessing and sharing files in the cloud, directly from Windows Explorer, the Mac OS X Finder and Outlook. Read more »
Many of us are drowning in email, and Chris Anderson, curator of the TED conferences, thinks it’s time to address that by creating an “email charter” to reduce the amount of unnecessary email sent and to make the email we do send easier to process. Read more »
SocialBase “is a team collaboration, tools integration and task management system [for] your social media workflow” from oneforty, the company that started as a Twitter app store in 2009 and expanded into a buyer’s guide to social media consultants and software earlier this year. Read more »
There’s a tension at the heart of web working. Technology allows us to do our jobs anywhere, and there’s plenty of appetite for the flexibility of location-independence. But while workers want autonomy, they also want social connection. How will this tension be resolved in the future? Read more »
Transparency is something we want from our collaborators, know has value, but often lag about providing ourselves. While studies show transparency nearly always results in better outcomes, people often withhold information because they feel it would take too much time or are uncomfortable sharing it. Read more »
Crowdsourcing startup 99designs recently received $35 million in venture capital and is currently advertising six positions in its Melbourne and San Francisco offices. The business has a strong culture and a flat structure. How does the company plan to manage expansion without compromising collaboration or culture? Read more »
Once you have the good ideas, what do you do with them? Innovation management tools can support the transition from good idea to great change or product. I spoke with Vincent Carbone, Brightidea co-founder and COO, about the company and his perspective on innovation management. Read more »
Apple seems to have a significant impact on the future of work without directly intending to. The company’s next generation mobile operating system brings big improvements for consumers, but they’ll be no less beneficial to mobile workers. Read more »
Coworking centers — independent collaboration spaces that appeal to web workers who would otherwise be based out of their homes or coffee shops — have been springing up all over the world. But how much does it cost to rent a desk at one of these places? Read more »
Wikis are a handy way for teams to share information and collaborate. But the trouble with many traditional wiki products is that they tend to be difficult to use. Papyrs is a slickly designed drag-and-drop wiki app that makes building intranet pages incredibly easy. Read more »
While there’s no single way to kick off a group in a collaborative process, the available research says you should start small with a specific, achievable goal, rather than trying to implement a full technology platform at the same time as you’re organizing the project. Read more »
Most helpful folks are well-connected to a large network of people, but they don’t build this network by being selfish and difficult to work with. They’re usually generous and “pay it forward” in return for the help they’ve received from other people. Read more »
Team task management app Cohuman, which won the “People’s Choice” award in the Launch Pad competition at last year’s Net:Work event, now has a companion iPhone app that helps users to keep updated on project status, communication and tasks even when they’re out of the office. Read more »
The Internet provides companies with a great way to gather new ideas. But it’s also important to think about how you ask for ideas, and what you do with them once you have them. Idea generation is generally the first step in an organization’s innovation process. Read more »
Want a high definition video conferencing system for your meeting room, but don’t have the budget for a costly room-based telepresence system? You might like to check out the MondoPad, a huge 55-inch, 1080p multi-touch LCD display that’s effectively a giant tablet computer designed for collaboration. Read more »
Telecom giant Alcatel Lucent’s research and development arm Bell Labs is hoping to replicate the feeling of in-person, natural communication with a fascinating concept it calls Immersive Communications. It uses “mixed reality” to insert the video feeds of real people into customizable artificial environments. Read more »
Are you a poor listener? In the context of distributed teams, “listening” needn’t be restricted to an auditory process — it includes your ability to take in information through all communications channels. Here are some tactics to help develop better listening skills. Read more »
Google has rolled out appointment slots, a useful new feature for Google Calendar that allows users to publish available appointment times on a publicly available calendar that other users can then book. Here’s a short screencast showing how to set up appointment slots and how the booking process works. Read more »
We’re in the business of exploring and advocating the mobile future of work, but no matter how strongly we push the latest in remote collaboration tools and techniques, we still acknowledge that many people feel some things are better done in person. Read more »
One of my key requirements for the task management apps that I use is that I can access my to-do list anywhere. That’s why I was keen to test SmallTask, an app for Mac and iOS that has built-in support for popular file sync service Dropbox. Read more »
