A good friend, teacher, grad student, and former hi-tech consultant, recently blogged about and eWeek article which noted that many executives think telecommuting is a limiter to career growth. I posted a reply over on Libby’s blog but also thought it deserved a bit more thought. I will try to describe my experience with telecommuting for a large technology company.

I followed the news at Lotuphere and then followed the blogs. All of this “following” lead me to the IBM site for the official posting / announcement …

IBM Lotus Quickr will provide ready-to-use team places where team members — inside or outside the firewall — can share information and collaborate on projects online.
Lotus Quickr comes [...]

So, I’ve got a bit crazy with some of the Lotusphere notions and my blog. I just implemented a tag cloud. I actually think it may prove interesting from a research POV. I will be curious …

will I keep it up to date ?
will it expose trends in my blogging content that I was not [...]

I’ve been thinking a bit about the blogging community and the IBM Lotus announcement of social software for business, in particular Lotus Connections. (edit: I had originally only mentioned Lotus Quickr which, as Alan L. points out, ‘ is much more about sharing content’. Thanks for the correction!)
I will admit to a bit of nievete [...]

Businesses call it “Collaboration Software” whereas the rest of the world calls it by whatever program they are using - “chatrooms” “forums”, “bulletin boards”, etc. This is definitely true of persistent chat solutions. The idea has been around longer than text messaging. The concept has roots in AOL chat rooms, message boards, BBS’s, even list-servers.
The [...]

A post on Kolabora links to the following new story …
Sramana Mitra submits: IBM’s (NYSE: IBM - News) entry into social networking is a smart move. Anyone who has experience with large enterprises knows how tedious it is to locate people with the right expertise. Thus, I envision a LinkedIn equivalent which serves less [...]

I envision a conferencing service that is as easy as a cellphone. Imagine a service with the equivalent of voice dialing …
“Get Rocky, Carl, and Libby”

The service locates the participants, but discovers Libby is busy. It scans forward and backward in time to find Libby is available 30 minutes ago, but only for a few minutes, [...]

I’ve used “voice over Internet protocol” or VoIP for many years. It’s not my primary phone service but it is an important one. I don’t have a traditional telephone “land line” or POTS but that’s only because I’m in the process of moving. I rely on a cellphone most of the time. Once I get [...]

I created an end-user provisioning tool a while back and it’s been running on “autopilot” ever since. Recently I received a question from a new contractor on the project via the service Helpdesk. It seems, someone triggered the “email routing test” on behalf of the contractor.
The contractor (a software developer) contacted Helpdesk asking for help [...]

Upon reading a commentary from Irwin Lazar, Carl Tyler asks
Is instant messaging the death knell for email?
I think the answer is “no”. What I do believe is that individuals will gravitate to a single interface to whatever content they use most.
Email, IM, Blogs, Web, and applications all have their own user interfaces. When these start [...]

Here is one I’ve been waiting / expecting to see … 
Google Acquires Marratech For Web Conferencing
March was an exciting and dynamic month given announcements at VoiceCon from leading vendors in the unified communications market, the TellMe acquisition by Microsoft and the WebEx acquisition by Cisco.
So Google getting into the web conferencing market certainly makes April interesting. … [...]

While not technically a mashup, the theory is very similar - take two useful services and make tem work together with a minimum of effort - the result of which should be a better solution than the individual pieces.
In this case, it is also a brilliant method of marketing exposure.
Yugma Skype opens-up the door to [...]

I came across an interesting article about an alarm clock …
About 3 months ago I bought a new clock radio. Last night, I found that I needed to use the alarm for the first time. So I looked at all the buttons, took a wild guess as to how to set the alarm, and [...]

Anyone who hasn’t woken up to Google’s plans to take over the world, needs to start reading a bit more. The latest “launch” has happened with Google making simple slide presentations over the web a “no brainer”. 
The presentation can be shared with everyone and any viewer can follow the presenter or take control of the presentation. [...]

I got an email from a colleague over the weekend. In her ’sig’ she listed all they ways to reach her including two different blogs -  one for work and one for personal stuff. Interestingly, it was her personal blog that had the following …
Managing an online identity is much more challenging that managing a physical one. [...]

The OLPC (One Laptop per Child) computer uses a very different interface from what most people are accustom. The interface is called “Sugar”. Some think it is childish. While it was designed for a computer targeting children, and it uses very simple colors and visuals. This is partly because it is targeting children and partly [...]

There is a cool Frappr map growing for the Give1Get1 OLPCs starting to ship. The G1G1 program is primarily for the USA and Canada so most of the units will land in that part of the map but a few diligent people have managed to get them to other parts of the world. If you [...]

I have tried to describe the OLPC to people and feel I am not a good spokesperson … too many words (I suffer from verbosity). So, it’s YouTube to the rescue !

You can also read what David wrote for his New York Time Online article.
The only correction to David’s information is that the G1G1 program [...]

I’ve been biting my tongue for weeks …
I’m had the enviable position of enjoying a pre-release version of Sametime 8.0.1 online meetings. I know Adam Gartenberg has already written about the latest release of Sametime but I wanted to write about three features I really like: much improved audio, the new push-to-talk option, [...]

If you are a Microsoft Windows user and need a “relatively” simple solution for screen capture and editing - say, for uploading to YouTube - then you might find the combination of Microsoft’s Windows Media Encoder and Microsoft Movie Maker a good place to start. There is a tutorial on how to use the [...]

I recently saw how a virtual team of a few hundred people chose to share information.

setup a “community” to manage membership and let participants choose to subscribe and un-subscribe. GOOD
setup a Wiki to establish a calendar of meeting topics. OK
setup a “quick” file sharing site for posting presentations. GOOD
email out the links to the above [...]

In reading a blog post about the Blackberry Storm touch screen smart phone there was the inevitable comparison to the Apple iPhone on one side and the traditionally Blackberry phones with keyboards on the other. Not too long into the comments, came a note about new Windows Mobile and Nokia phones and services.
It was [...]