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What women want: More online meetings?

Jessica Stillman — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 13:03:21 +0000

Men throughout the ages have pondered what women really want. Chocolates, they wondered? Roses? Someone to do their fair share of the housework? (That’s a hint, guys.) But a new study out today from remote access company TeamViewer offers a surprising answer to this age-old question. Women, apparently, want more remote, online meetings.

TeamViewer surveyed over 2,500 American adults and found that more than three-quarters of both sexes (77 percent) feel online meetings are on the rise. With companies squeezed for cash, technology improving and teams increasingly spread out geographically that’s really no surprise. Slightly more head scratching were the responses when pollsters asked about the benefits of meeting remotely. In short, women saw more advantages to the practice than men did. Here’s how the sexes viewed various potential benefits of online meetings:

Save money on transportation costs: 78 percent of women saw this benefit, compared to 71 percent of men
Less time wasted traveling to meetings: 77 percent vs. 71 percent
Less nerve-wracking than in-person meetings: 37 percent vs. 26 percent
Participants are less distracted: 22 percent vs. 16 percent

Women were also much more demanding of the hosts of online meetings, with a whopping 81 percent of female respondents saying organization was important in a host compared to 68 percent of male respondents who felt this way. 64 percent of ladies also said being fast-paced was important. Only 52 percent of men agreed.

The fact that relatively few folks of either gender think participants of online meetings are paying closer attention than in in-person gatherings is hardly shocking considering how many of us have started clicking through emails when an online speaker started droning. The other differences between the sexes are slightly more puzzling.

Are women, who still tend to bear more household responsibilities, just more in need of and aware of the scheduling flexibility and time savings online meetings provide? Does the fact that, on average, fewer women are hard-charging, room dominators increase the appeal of online meetings? Are women just ever so slightly more likely to tell pollsters what they think they want to hear? And what’s to be made of women’s sterner demand for organized, quick-moving moderators – is this dislike of rambling just another function of their harder-pressed schedules?

What do you make of these survey results?

Image courtesy of Flickr user Ryan Tir.

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Telecommuting is worth serious sacrifices: Valentine’s Day edition

Jessica Stillman — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 18:01:52 +0000

Last year Staples asked telecommuters exactly how much the flexibility of being out of the office was worth to them and discovered people were prepared to make some pretty significant sacrifices to keep working remotely. One in five told pollsters they’d give up 20 percent of their pay and more than half were willing to permanently shut off their favorite TV show.

Now, online meetings software firm TeamViewer is following in Staples’ footsteps, asking essentially the same question of 2,500 Americans and finding them willing to make even more surprising sacrifices for the chance to telecommute. The results confirm that most of us believe telecommuting is on the rise – 83 percent of respondents thought so – and also that there’s an unmet appetite for more flexible work arrangements out there. Sixty-two percent of those surveyed said they believe that more people want the option to telecommute.

More surprising perhaps were the things people were willing to give up to work away from the office. TeamViewer says survey respondents were willing to sacrifice:

Social media – 34 percent
Chocolate – 29 percent
Smartphone – 25 percent
A salary increase – 17 percent
Half of their vacation days – 15 percent
Daily showers – 12 percent

If the lack of concern for personal hygiene expressed by more than one-in-ten Americans has you concerned than be warned that we haven’t even gotten to the Valentine’s Day twist yet, and it’s probably more shocking. Everyone may be running around buying roses and chocolates today, but a small minority of Americans told TeamViewer they’re feeling less romantic than most. Five percent of respondents said they’d even give up their spouse to telecommute.

These folks probably don’t have exactly ideal marriages in the first place, so we’ll file that finding in the entertaining trivia folder. Nonetheless the results overall are another piece of evidence that the national appetite for remote work is expanding, creating pent up demand for flexibility.

What would you give up to telecommute?

Image courtesy of Flickr user terren in Virginia.

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14 iPad Apps to Remotely Control Your Work Computer

Charles Hamilton — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 18:00:59 +0000

With the new iPad 2 on the way, many teams may be considering whether iPads can replace laptops as productivity tools for remote workers.

Right out of the box, the iPad includes email, contact, notes and calendar apps that will be more than adequate for many workers. If your team is already collaborating in the cloud, there are iPad apps for just about every cloud service, including WWD favorites such as Google Apps, Dropbox, Egnyte, Evernote, Simplenote, Toodledo, and SugarSync. And connections to Apple’s own MobileMe sync service are built into iOS.

As Darrell wrote recently, there are a number of useful productivity apps that make the iPad surprisingly useful. I’m not saying that an iPad can replace a fully-equipped laptop, but with a foldable Bluetooth keyboard, it can be a lightweight way to get a little work done in a pinch, especially as you can use one of the many remote control and screen sharing apps available for the iPad to remotely access and control an office computer. Here are a few options.

Proprietary Solutions

These apps connect to proprietary client software running on the computer in your office, and generally have the advantage that they can operate through firewalls and tend to be easy to set up.

GoToMyPC. This is an app that I wrote about recently. Note the developer no longer requires a credit card to create a trial account if you sign up from within the iPad app.
LogMeIn Ignition is available for iPad and iPhone. Sam reviewed it here.
RDM+, an app that I wrote about a while back.
TeamViewer’s iPad app is available in free (non-commercial) and Pro versions. I reviewed it here.

VNC and RDP Solutions

These solutions require a VNC or RDP server to be running on your office computer. As I recently wrote, there are a number of VNC server options available. Macs have VNC capabilities built in, and some editions of WindowsWindows XP Professional, Vista, and Windows 7 come with RDP. Both VNC and RDP require configuring firewall rules and ports, which can be tricky.

iTap RDP.
iTap VNC.
iTeleport uses VNC, but offers an option that claims “to leverage Google’s infrastructure to simplify the connection setup for you” by authenticating through Gmail. I haven’t tested it, so I don’t know how well it works.
Jump Desktop supports VNC and RDP.
Mocha Remote Desktop supports only RDP.
Mocha VNC
PocketCloud supports VNC and RDP; available in Standard and Pro versions.
Screens, a VNC app that Darrell recently reviewed.
Splashtop Remote supports VNC.
VNC Viewer for iOS. I reviewed the Andorid version of the app here.

Do you use an iPad for teamwork? How do you connect to your office?

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Remote Support Tool TeamViewer Gets an Android App

Charles Hamilton — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 15:00:27 +0000

Cross-platform screen sharing solution TeamViewer has been around for a while (we wrote about it a couple of years ago). But it’s been recently updated to version 6, and also has a new Android app. While there are many screen sharing and web conferencing apps available, TeamViewer stands out by offering an all-in-one solution for making presentations, connecting to and troubleshooting remote computers. I’ve been trying the Android app, and I found it easy to set up and use. It’s responsive, too, as the developer says that it can adapt to different connection speeds.

TeamViewer can be set up in different ways. If you want to share your screen for presentations or training, you can install the software on your machine, and then share your ID with your audience, who can view your desktop in a web browser. The software is not intended to support large numbers of viewers, so it would not be suitable for webinars.

TeamViewer can also be used for troubleshooting remote computers, similar to CrossLoop, LogMeIn Rescue, or the “remote assistance” functions built into Windows and Mac OS X. In this configuration, you ask the client to download and run the TeamViewer QuickSupport module (it doesn’t need to be installed). The client gives you the ID and password that the QuickSupport module creates, which you can enter into your copy of the software or use the web version.

The TeamViewer software, which is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, can also be used to connect remotely to unattended computers. It’s also possible to connect on the go via iOS and Android apps.

One nice feature of TeamViewer is that (as with LogMeIn and similar products) it can create connections behind firewalls, meaning that it doesn’t take the sort of setup that VNC does. A chat and file transfer system is included.

All in all, TeamViewer is a well-developed product that can be used for many needs faced by those of us with remote workforces. I confess, though, that I got a bit of sticker shock from TeamViewer’s pricing structure, which starts at $729 for one workstation. But since TeamViewer is priced as a one-time payment with no monthly subscription fees, it may be a good buy for some organizations. Note that TeamViewer is free for non-commercial use, and also offers free trials.

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TeamViewer Lets PCs and Macs Share Desktops

Samuel Dean — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 00:00:59 +0000

If you’re a web worker who needs to share desktops with others, or get remote access to PCs or Macs while you’re on the move, try TeamViewer, which has just come out in a new version 4. If you’re a Windows user who has someone else to connect with, you can actually try Teamviewer in about 60 seconds. There is a “Start Full Version” button on the home page which will do a very rapid installation, and then you’re ready to collaborate.

In order to initiate a session with a remote user, you share ID numbers. Your team members are called partners in the application, and you can keep a partner list, similar to keeping an instant messaging buddy list. Remote computers can be your partners as well.

The big new feature in TeamViewer is browser-based access for making remote connections. This works in such a way that PCs and Macs can share desktops. You can access your Mac via a remote PC, do file transfers, and vice-versa. All sessions are protected by 256-bit AES encryption, so your information stays secure.

This application is slick, extremely easy to get started with, and has a grown-up interface with appeal. There is one caveat, though: It’s completely free to use TeamViewer for non-commercial purposes, but business licenses cost $250 per 6-month period. That works out to a little over $40 a month for business use, which may be tolerable if you like the application. For both remote control and desktop sharing, though, there are a number of completely free applications.

In any case, these kinds of tools can become very useful very fast, so TeamViewer is worth a look. It’s definitely a snap to take it for a spin, and a no-brainer to start a session.

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