Twilio, the cloud communications platform, is arming app makers with the ability to add Voice over IP features to their iOS apps. With a new Twilio Client for iOS, the company is making it easy for any app with connectivity to incorporate Skype-like functionality. Read more »
With its new iOS app, Clear, Realmac Software has taken the “less is more” axiom to its ultimate conclusion. Fjord’s Alfred Lui and Aynne Valencia explain why we’ll soon see more of this stripped-down approach to interface design, thanks to three big industry trends. Read more »
Apple has once again cut prices on its iAd system for rich in-app advertising on iOS applications, as ad buyers continue to balk at the up-front cost of participating in Apple’s vision of how mobile advertising should work. Read more »
Twitter on Wednesday switched on enhanced brand pages for accounts owned by National Public Radio, NBC News, Volkswagen, and others. This is the first batch of premium Twitter pages from companies other than the handful of launch partners who unveiled enhanced brand pages in December. Read more »
Elance recently introduced video chat to its users as a new feature embedded directly into the site. That will allow employers and contractors to have face-to-face communication without having to open a different application or video chat client. Read more »
The sky is falling again in cellular land, and this time Siri is to blame. At least that’s the assessment form this opinion article in the Washington Post this morning claiming Siri’s piggy ways will destroy our cellular networks. But this assessment is wrong. Read more »
From 1990s through 2011, DSL, a broadband technology, had a strong run at large phone companies in America. Now it is falling behind cable broadband and fiber. The latest data from Verizon, AT&T and Time Warner Cable points to its declining fortunes. Read more »
Ad-targeting company 33Across is acquiring link-tracking specialist Tynt Multimedia, resulting in a combined user graph spanning 1.25 billion users. Both are storing and analyzing billions of transactions daily, and they will use that data to help publishers compete on ad sales against mega sites like Google. Read more »
Google SVP of ads Susan Wojcicki said on the company’s earnings call that 60 percent of all video ads that appear on YouTube are TrueView ads, meaning that viewers can skip it and move on to the video if it’s not relevant or interesting. Read more »
Apple unveiled its new interactive textbooks Thursday at its media event in NYC. Here’s a look at how those textbooks work on the iPad. Early impressions? Wish I could go back to high school. Still, these textbooks definitely have room to grow. Read more »
At a press event in San Francisco on Wednesday evening, Facebook unveiled a host of new apps — more than 60 in total — that integrate with its Timeline user interface. The social networking company also announced it will begin approving Timeline apps from all developers. Read more »
Apple’s Siri ad featuring the jolly old elf was 2011′s most effective holiday advertisement according to viewer reaction as measured by Ace Metrix, a TV ad analysis firm. The Apple spot featuring Santa Claus using Siri also exemplified a trend this year: specifically, “Santa sells.” Read more »
The SF BART subway system admitted Friday it shut down cell phone service on several subway platforms during a planned protest Thursday. The subway operator said it was to guarantee passengers’ safety, but others are calling it “a chilling strike against free speech.” Read more »
Millennials — workers between the ages of 20 and 29 who grew up with ubiquitous cell phone and Internet availability — are now a dominant force in today’s enterprise. Is your company ready for them? This report, the second in a two-part series, examines the tensions ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
If you’re working remotely, finding ways to improve and streamline communications with your clients and team might seem like a never-ending chore, but with the right mix of tools, it’s possible to keep projects moving forward. Here are ten tools that will help improve your communication. Read more »
A new data and visualization project called the Connected States of America helps bring some focus into the way mobile phones facilitate communications and shows how conversations and text-messages bind areas and regions together, even ones that are far apart. 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 »
When you’re evaluating potential hires for a remote work position, or accessing whether or not an existing office-based asset can make the jump to working from home, what skill or skills do you hold most important? Here are my three top selections. 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 »
The sort of “Let’s Get Away From It All” vacation immortalized in the popular song may be a thing of the past. A new study confirms that web workers are increasingly accepting of being contacted for work while on vacation. Read more »
“If you’re bolding the bullet points in your email” said a friend of mine recently, “your email’s too long.” Few web workers would disagree. But that comment made me wonder whether the tools we’re using to communicate are becoming more important than the communications we’re having. Read more »
The first step to successful remote working is communication. Binfire offers distributed teams a free solution for online collaboration that makes it simple to stay on track, with several useful features that I haven’t seen in other project management solutions so far, including: Read more »
Former Twitter CEO Evan Williams breaks the important aspects of identity down into five distinct pieces, including authentication and personalization. But the reality is that what we mean by “identity” can change from moment to moment, and that may be the most difficult problem of all. Read more »
Remote working may be on the rise, but there are still assumptions made about a distributed workplace that prevent some employers from adopting it. Here’s a list of five big reasons companies won’t pull the trigger on remote working, and why those fears are mostly unfounded. Read more »
One of the biggest obstacles for a distributed workforce is the lack of personal connection; the effects of the initial disconnect can have a lasting impact. Here are some of the challenges of working remotely, along with ways to address them. Read more »
A lot has been written about how to overcome the communication challenges faced by virtual teams who work together but are physically distant. What has been covered less often is the topic of the communication advantages of being distant. Experts tell us there are a few. Read more »
Technological advancements have minimized the need for employees to be as physically present in a traditional office setting, and employee relationships now extend across different time zones and geographies. This paper discusses the future of work and the workplace in that context. We examine the shifting nature of actual workspaces, from four office walls to the online world; the emergence of new flexible hours that no longer require a nine-to-five mindset; the role of consumer-grade technologies such as iPads, smartphones and notebooks in the workplace; and what role cloud-based services such as Box.net, Huddle and Dropbox play. Companies mentioned in this report include Facebook, Apple, Google and Skype. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
All collaborative groups experience conflict. Dealing with that conflict is difficult enough in teams working face-to-face, but remote teams experience additional challenges, such as communicating primarily over email and working in different time zones. What can we do to minimize sources of conflict? Read more »
What remote teams actually experience is known as “swift trust”, which happens when you don’t have the time or means to build trust through multiple interactions. While this type of trust cultivates easily, it’s also very fragile. How can you establish trust using communication tools? Read more »
The ability to write clearly is becoming more and more important, especially in organizations that work primarily online. Whether you’re using an IM client, a project management app or email, clear writing will speed up the process and minimize problems. Read more »
Some teams are made up of some members who work on-site and some who work remotely. While most research shows that little difference in performance between the two groups, this kind of team poses a challenge, because the on-site workers tend to ignore the remote workers Read more »
I hate spending time on email. But for those of us who do most of our work online, we can’t escape it. When was the last time you took a hard look at the emails you send to other people? Are your emails helping or hindering? Read more »
If you run a service-based business, you probably have some horror stories to tell about bad clients and projects that have gone wrong. There are some things you can do to better manage client expectations, which can help keep these problems to a minimum: Read more »
If you work from home, having a TV in the vicinity can be distracting. But that same TV could also be the unexpected source of some extra help in the productivity area, if you happen to have a media center PC hooked up to it. Read more »
I imagine most people are aware of the recent fuss over The Gap’s redesign of its logo. Yes, it’s lame. Regardless, what this little burst of free PR for The Gap got me thinking about is the state of authenticity in communication. Read more »
Glass makes sharing websites — along with some useful context — a matter of clicking a button in your browser. It’s based on a browser plugin, available for Firefox and Chrome, that essentially creates a secondary information “level” for a website when you turn it on. Read more »
When choosing the tools your organization relies on, there are many issues to consider. But one is easy to overlook: communication. After all, your team probably has plenty of communication tools already at its disposal. But a variety of communication tools can actually be a problem. Read more »
If content is king, and a picture tells a thousand words, then text is the currency of online credibility. Few of us actually consider ourselves “writers,” yet most people who work online spend hours each day writing. Read more »
Last week, I was somewhat bullied into playing the celebrity doppelganger game that’s making the rounds at Facebook right now. Actually, my friend merely made a suggestion about who I look like and encouraged me to change my profile photo, which is the whole point of the game. Read more »
When you work with anyone, it’s important to keep good records. But documenting your work can be even more important when you’re telecommuting. With many employers, you’re required to document certain pieces of information, like how many hours you’ve worked. But keeping a few more records […] Read more »
