Monday, March 17, 2008

UK Managers: remote working is the future

3:14PM Sarah Stokely | A poll of senior managers in the UK about what they expect the workforce to look like in 2018 shows they’re expecting trends like remote working and home working to become the norm.The Guardian’s written up an interesting article on the results of the poll, which was conducted by the Chartered Management Institute. They say it’s the “first attempt by captains of industry and commerce to predict how their organisations may look 10 years in the future.”The poll of 1,000 senior executives found that 74% expected that distributed, “virtual teams of employees”, would become the norm by 2018. It also predicted a proliferation of “virtual” companies, often small community-based enterprises without conventional business premises.Not that radical an idea is it? I know heaps of computing and writing types who already work this way. Wave goodbye to the nine to five [The Guardian via Brazen Careerist] More »

Flickr Video

3:04PM Sarah Stokely | At last! Flickr execs have confirmed that the photo sharing site will finally start supporting video. According to CNET’s Dan Farber, the video service will go into beta next month. More »

GPS risk?

2:39PM Sarah Stokely | The RACV is warning motorists that they may be at risk of a house break-in if their GPS system is stolen from their car. Since most GPS units have a “navigate to home” function, it would be simple enough to work out where the owner lives. Apparently someone in the UK lost a sports car that way, but I’d rate it as pretty unlikely unless your car is far from home when they steal your GPS. If it looks like you are on holidays, that always makes your home more vulnerable for a breakin – which is why you should get someone to collect your mail and put your bins out while you’re away. More »

Evernote takes note of handwriting, photos and more

2:02PM Sarah Stokely | Noteclipping web service Evernote got an interesting writeup over at the Wired Compiler blog today. You may have used it before – it originally launched as a Windows app – but it’s now available in Mac web and mobile versions. I was intrigued because it looks like it has some very cool image recognition capabilities – for example the ability to read handwriting or recognise words in pictures (so searching for the word Ninja will turn up a photo of a billboard with “Ninja” on it, for example). Another cool thing is that the service gives you a unique email address for uploading content to your Evernote account – anything you email will be automatically added to your default notebook. You can see some of the cool features in the video above. I’ve applied for the beta – so if I get in I’ll write up some more detailed notes on what it’s like. Evernote offers a backup for your brain [Wired Compiler blog] More »

UPDATE: How to install a phone jack – don’t try this at home!

11:52AM Sarah Stokely | On Saturday we published an article on how to install a phone jack which was written by Gina for the Lifehacker US site. Over the weekend commenter PJB pinged us to let us know that, well, it’s illegal to do this in Australia! Whoops! I did some fact checking and according to ACMA -  The Telecommunications Cabling Provider Rules 2000 tell us that “all customer cabling work in the telecommunications, fire security and data industries must be performed by a registered cabler”.We apologise for running the story encouraging illegal and revolutionary cabling activity – it got through despite our usual fact checking and localising efforts because I wasn’t up on my cabling laws. Thanks for pointing out the error, PJB. More »