With so many social media applications and software as a service carving a new way of working, why not adopt some of those working practices.?

Like anything in life, behind all good business practices are the relationships that you build and carefully nurture along the way. So how can social media applications and collaborative software change the way we think of offering support? I started with the main features and thought how I could apply them. (more…)

When we started out (what seems like) aeons ago – the concept of not having one physical location where you worked brought strange looks from people.

As a startup – we saved valuable cash by not renting any offices, and having everyone work from home. That cash gets spent on more marketing or more developers – things that added real value to our business. Whereas an office always struck me as an expensive way to get a lot of people to have coffee and tea in un-natural amounts.

This message seemed to be lost on large corporations though – who stuck blindly to the mantra of  ‘I exist. I am a business. Therefore i need a whopping big office.’ (more…)

It’s not hard to imagine a world in which learning – just like working – takes place remotely. Technologies like Yuuguu are already enabling students and teachers to connect from wherever they are, providing for better attendance, less travel and – it’s been shown – a better environment for learning. Increasingly, we can see that the future of education will take place in classrooms without walls. (more…)

Some 23,565 jobs were posted in the last 30 days on Elance – the worlds best resource for freelancers. With 77,976 active experts all fighting it out, Elance shows us which skills are the most sort after and predicts trends for 2009. This is their first installment of what they call the “Elance Online Work Index”. Based on job posts and skills data Elance has drawn from 100,000 jobs posted over recent months. So lets see if your skills are in demand or which you may want to brush up on.

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The new Terminator Salvation film is not due in cinemas until May but one person has made his own cyborg prosthetics. Meet Jerry Jalava, the Finnish programmer with more than the average skills. Following a motorbike accident, and the loss of his finger, doctors joked that he should have a usb “Finger drive”.  Last posted on Flickr on the 10th March, Jerry has created a prosthetic finger with a 2Gb USB drive, accessed by peeling back the nail. (more…)

Fed up of the view out of your window? Here’s a novel idea for cheap office space: use spare berths in marinas as floating offices. This could be a really unique and inspirational place to meet or work. The economics of it are a bit puzzling – I hadn’t associated anything to do with berthing boats as being “cheap” and I guess not everybody would be happy with bobbing up and down all day! That aside, it’d make a great change from most office environments. (more…)