This morning I was down in our basement office pecking away. It’s a great spot to hide. I am effectively cut off from the what’s going on in the rest of the house (a blessing at times). Can’t hear a thing…no doorbell, kids pummeling each other, or the kettle… I guess my husband got tired of the kettle screeching away so he sent me a text message from the kitchen PC. "Hi…water boiling". Now that’s practical IM.

Peter Csathy’s post on how SightSpeed runs things in the office is a great testament to how things CAN work if a company has the will. I started working exclusuively from home in 2003, but even before that point I remember having to negotiate hard to work even a few days out of the office–and that was as a contract tech writer. I mean if a contractor has trouble convincing management, an employee doesn’t have a hope. Since then, I’ve learned that it takes a certain kind of discipline to work effectively from home, and not everyone can do it well. However, with commute times for people edging up into the 4 hour range, companies have to start taking work-at-home scenarios more seriously. The impact of commuters on the environment is staggering as well. We need “to commute less and collaborate more — and more effectively — online”, as Peter puts it.

With tools like SightSpeed that are inexpensive and easy to deploy, there’s really no excuse for not entertaining a work-at-home policy. However, based on my experience, it hasn’t been the tools so much as the mindset. The biggest obstacle I see is a lack of skills or expertise in managing remote workers. It’s not the same as managing employees in the office. But there’s no training and no support, so managers operate the way they always have. It’s up to the remote worker to adapt and fit into the system. And guess what, there’s no support or training for employees to be fantasitc home-based workers either. In my view, you need both.

I’ve been wondering about the GrandCentral “One number for life” mantra, and TalkPlus‘ second number for your mobile phone. While I understand these products target different markets, I find it hard to keep them distinct in my mind. It dawned on me that this could be a problem that consumers have as well.

There’s a lot of chatter about Voice 2.0 applications–the user in control not the network–but that is the VOIP blogosphere talking. Me, I think okay, I get another number, it’s free for now, and it’s solving what problem exactly? 

GrandCentral:

Provides a phone number not tied to a device or location. When people call this number, the phones you have “attached” to it ring, like your cell phone, home phone, and office phone. Up to six phones can be linked to your GrandCentral number. The service is all about giving you control over how people reach you (inbound calling) as opposed to how you place calls. Callers can leave voice messages that can be checked by phone, email or online. You’re notified of a voice mail via email or text message to a cell phone. And you can flag unwanted callers as spam. It’s also free.

You need it if people have a hard time tracking you down. You find yourself playing telephone tag. You WANT to be found but heck, you’re always bouncing between work, home, and on the road.

TalkPlus:

Provides a second number for your cell phone so you can separate personal life and work life. The number can be used as a second line for business, dating, classified ads, online auctions, social groups, or a second residence. Like GrandCentral, unwanted callers can be blocked while priority numbers ring through. When making outbound calls, you can specify which caller ID to use so that the person you are calling doesn’t know how or where you’re calling from.

You need it if your mobile phone is your primary means of communication but the  separation of work and play is important to you. You want people to know that you’re calling from the office (the caller ID says this is a work-related call) even though you’re calling from home or the beach in Maui. You are also concerned about personal privacy and want to make sure that your personal number is only available to the people you want to have it.

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In talking with Craig Walker, GrandCentral CEO, he tells me they couldn’t be more different than TalkPlus.

“Our philosophy is that we don’t need MORE numbers for people to reach us at…we need less.  As long as I have the control over my inbound calling that GrandCentral gives me, there’s no reason that I would want to juggle different personas. I don’t want phone numbers that identify me as being located at a certain place or doing a certain thing, I want a phone number that is personal to me.  If you want to reach me, call my ONE NUMBER.  I’ll be able to answer it wherever I want…I will be able to know who’s calling every time, and I’ll even be able to listen in on the voicemail as its being left if I’m still unsure whether I want to take the call.  When somebody calls me, they shouldn’t be able to “figure out” or know where I am based on the number…if I’m in the office, working from home or on the beach, that’s my business.” 

Obviously there’s more to both GrandCentral and TalkPlus than what I describe here, and the enthusiasm voiced by many in the VOIP blogging community seems to be not so much what these services are doing today, but what we can expect from them in the future.

To set up a free GrandCentral account, click here. To sign up for a TalkPlus sneak peak beta (for Cingular, T-Mobile, and Sprint customers in select U.S. states only), click here. TalkPlus won’t be a free service like GrandCentral and pricing is to be determined.

I’ve been reading this week about NECs VOIP Seal anti-spam tool. VOIP Seal can detect if a call is computer generated and block it based on voice patterns. Alec Saunders also touched on it and pointed out that iotum is already anticipating the need for SPAM blocking with simple call screen capabity. GrandCentral does the same; they’ve got a SPAM registry where you can nominate the worse offenders so that everyone can block their caller IDs.

While I’m sure we’ll be hearing much more about the woes of phone SPAM in the future, I hope it’s something we won’t look back on and think, “If only we had done something back then…” In today’s report on M&C Tech News, they report the following statement from NEC:

“the existing infrastructure for producing spam e-mails (so called “botnets”) can easily be modified to also produce spam telephone calls. Today, the number of spam emails is higher than the number of regular emails produced jointly by all of the users in the internet. If unsolicited marketing and spam calls become as frequent as spam email, constantly-ringing VoIP phones may hinder the spread of their use.”

Alec talks about receiving annoying SPAM calls at the iotum office and we fielded one today at our house. A computer generated “Win a free trip” thing.

I’d be interested to hear from you if you’ve been getting spammed more than usual.

Let me know!

Okay, I like Skype. While I set up my account ages ago without any problems, I decided to use Vonage as a work line because I wanted a “regular” phone. Well, now that Vonage is behind me, I’m using Skype more.

Initially, I didn’t want to like Skype because like Vonage, it has become a category unto itself. What I mean is, people can now say that they are using free Internet phone software that works (or doesn’t work) ”like Skype” and you know what they’re talking about. The same can be said for phone service that is ”like Vonage”.

And because Vonage didn’t work out for me, I tried hard not to be sold on Skype Hype.

Well I have to say that so far, Skype works perfectly for a computer-bound person like me, and here’s why: 

• I am self-employed. I work out of my home office, I spend most of my time at my desk, and my laptop is always on.
• The Skype window is big enough to see what you’re doing, including the task icons along the top. Bigger is better especially when you are learning a new piece of software, or if you’re not a computer wiz.
• Adding contacts (one click) and importing contacts from your email address book (about three clicks) is easy and intuitive. Someone with limited computer experience can do it.
• Dialing by double-clicking the contact name is what saves me time. Of course this isn’t unique to Skype (all softphones, or computer phones do this). As a new user though, I made a few calls by accident because I double-clicked when I didn’t mean to. A single click expands the contact info so you can see the details. Another single click collapses the details. A few times I was too quick on the mouse.
• Until the end of the year you can make FREE calls within North America to any regular phone. This means you can really test drive Skype in all kinds of calling scenarios–long distance, local calls, conference calls. Make the most of the freebie and put Skype through its paces.
• If your contact permits it, Skype shows you that person’s timezone and a mood message. For example, “I’m here but in and out of meetings all day”.
• Skype online help information is approachable, fully searchable, and tailored to all levels of user.  If you are a rank beginner the Skype User Guides or Troubleshooter are the places to visit. For all my questions, I’ve been successfull using the Knowledgebase.

Of course, devoted Skype users know there are tons more features and wiz-bang stuff that Skype can do. But I think that unless you’re happy with the basics, the rest of it won’t matter. You just won’t use the product. 

In the next few weeks, I’ll be comparing how I like using Skype versus another popular softphone, Gizmo Project. Should be interesting.

 

 

I recently mentioned Jangl in Battle of the Js. On first look, I wasn’t overly enthused–the home page promise didn’t mesh with the user interface/support once logged in. But since then I’ve had chance to talk with the folks at Jangl to learn more about their service. They agree the user experience is something they need to improve, and are working hard to get there as we speak.

Jangl’s Tim Johnson was able to walked me through all this, so now I get it. However, he knows you can’t personally explain the concept and use to everyone. Improving the overall package to make the service clear and easy to use is part of Jangl’s planned enhancements over the next month and a half, starting with the announcement last week of a new Jangl widget for Tagged, a social networking site. Today, Jangl announced a new TypePad widget which will give TypePad bloggers and their readers anonymous phone numbers for talking, texting and exchanging voicemail on their mobile phones.

Here’s what I learned about Jangl:

It is all about connecting two people without sharing phone numbers. The two people can be bloggers, social networking junkies, or they can be “off Net” contacts.  Why would you want to keep your phone number private? Well, let’s say you’re selling something on Ebay or Craigslist you don’t want to share a personal phone number. Or you have a personal profile on a social networking site and you want to connect with your fans without sharing a personal number. Or how about you are using an online dating site like Match.com and want to keep your contact number private.

There are two ways people can get an exclusive number for you. As a Jangl user, you can give out your Jangl ID or you can post a Jangl widget on a website or email. If you give your Jangl ID out at a party, for example, the person goes to Jangl.com and follows the instructions to generate a number for you. If someone clicks your Jangl widget online, the widget generates the number. Either way, people can call you on a regular landline or cell phone. You answer the call on whichever phone is attached to your Jangl account. It could be a mobile phone or an office phone, for example. You can choose to answer based on the caller’s introduction, or you can send the call to your existing voicemail system.

Because Jangl relies on the use a regular phone to make the actual calls, not a computer platform, you can receive calls from fellow bloggers visiting your Typepad site while out and about on your mobile phone. YOU don’t have to be sitting at your computer. And once the other party has generated a number for you AND specified their mobile as the phone they’ll be calling from, then they can call you from anywhere as well. That’s a pretty cool way to take your online profile with you.

The only required online part of the process is generating the phone number. Once that’s done, the computer is completely out of the picture. You can maintain a list of Jangl contacts online in your account, but that’s up to you.

Who pays? To get a Jangl ID and create an online widget of your own is free, but because the calls you make and receive are on regular mobile phone or landline networks, you pay the appropriate fees to the service provider.

Hope this helps!