Where FlickR will likely go from the TED conference via Ben Hammersley - unbelievable demo showing future of online photosharing
10 tips to building a technology business from Richard Veal at Connect Yorkshire event
Latest Silicon.com CIO jury - techies lack business skills
How technology will help beat road pricing from Peter Cochrane
Silicon.com is conducting a home working experiment tomorrow with the whole editorial team working from home for a day.
Amongst most technology companies I encounter homeworking seems to be standard practice now. Employers have realised that people are more productive when not in the office being interrupted all the time and are more than happy to invest in Blackberry's etc.
While at Skype, our whole global PR team worked from homes dotted around the UK and US. We used Skype for free calls to one another, multi-person conferences/instant messaging and a Wiki to access documents/share information via any Web connection. I have to say the whole company walked the walk.
I was talking to employees at Civica the other day and they can work from home when they want or just bob into their nearest office if they fancy a change of scenery. I think this is important as you can get a bit of cabin fever if you work from home all the time.
The other important thing is to be disciplined in your work hours so that it doesn't eat into your home life - which can be difficult if you have colleagues in different time zones! Anyone tips for homeworkers? Or views from your office (as above)?
Randall Rothenberg, the new head of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), has written an open letter to audience measurement companies, ComScore and Nielsen NetRatings, demanding an audit of their measurement processes according to the FT.
Richard Waters comments that [in the midst of the current Web 2.0 hype] we've gone back to the bad old days where companies are being valued on the number of eyeballs they can attract.
Randall's letter comes after ComScore called for a change in Web measurement tools on the back of their own survey because of the explosion of podcasts and video and people becoming wise to clearing their cookies.
ComScore uses a panel of representative internet surfers over cookies whereas Nielsen argues for measuring website use in terms of the amount of time spent on pages rather than by number of views.
This reminds me of working with Site Intelligence during the dotcom boom when everyone knew people were inflating website figures but John Woods bravely came out and said as much as 80% of companies were fibbing (resulting in half a page in the Observer).
Woods said to gain an accurate picture of website use a combination of measurements is required because of the issue of cookies being cleared etc., rather than a single method for advertisers to determine a site's popularity.
Randall's letter says that the IAB has been calling on ComScore and Neilsen NetRatings to be independently audited since 1999. It's a shame that it has taken until now for the IAB to bear its teeth but better late than never as online advertising overtakes offline. Let's hope not just the cookies get cleaned up.
I've just returned from a great snowboarding holiday in Tignes, France which was responsible for the gap in posts. While there I got a message from O2 on my mobile which gave me a flat rate for calls home for 36p per minute which I thought was quite good but still more than double a Skype call back to an O2 mobile in the UK.
Another type of mobile technology was responsible for the delay we had flying back. We were on time until the front wheel on the Thomas Cook aircraft was broken by the tractor pushing the plane out of its dock. A 24 hour delay and extra night in Lyon ensued as an engineer needed to be flown out with two new wheels. You'd have thought something the size of a plane would have room for a spare!
A report from The Future Labratory claims we are more happy because we are blending our work and home lives using new technology.
Commenting on the survey, The Independent implies that as a result of working-life blending we are happier with "almost half of us (46.8 per cent, to be exact) throwing off the chains that bind us to our desks and taking jobs that involve working away from the office, on our own terms".
Sorry but mobile technology for work just means working longer/harder, no matter how you dress it up. I'm comparing the number of laptops on trains today with how many people you would you see consciously scribbling work notes before mobile computing? The survey points out 77 per cent of people felt new technology had improved productivity.
For me, technology can certainly help us work smarter. Guess it depends what you are doing but does working longer or harder make people happy?