North Coast Connections

It ain't easy to be a telecommuter. Some people dream of severing the tether to their desk and long for the opportunity to work at home. They see adventure, freedom and personal control versus the commute, oppression and lack of control that goes with a show-up job. My favorite tech magazine, TechRepublic.com had this entertaining but informative expose on whether you are really cut out to tele-work.

The test for tele-worthiness covers several areas ...

HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE
You need a dedicated desk, file cans, desktop computer, printer, productivity software and back-up plans should computers or printers go haywire (a technical term). I consider a dedicated work space as part of the hardware test because working at your dining room table may be fine to pay bills but it isn't cut out for putting in a full day at the office.

BANDWIDTH AND ATTENTION
If you have attention deficiency, are easily distracted or need a taskmaster to closely supervise you and kick you in the butt to get started, fugedaboudit (another technical term). Your personal bandwidth should include the ability to self start, concentrate and follow through. Speaking of bandwidth, the kind that gives you high speed access to the Internet is usually another must for effective tele-work

PEOPLE WHO NEED PEOPLE
Unless you are writing software code, mapping the human genome or some other equally technical task, you will likely need to interact with customers, supervisors, employees or others to do your job. You will need to figure out how best to do this ... it may mean occasional face-to-face contact, and other times it may be OK to use telecommunications such as audio teleconferencing, video conferencing, email or web-meetings. The human element also includes the skills of your boss or client. If he or she can't organize their thoughts or provide clear direction without in-person contact, you will have to consider workarounds. Finally, if you are a people-person who is unhappy working solo or otherwise crave human contact, tele-work is probably not the right career choice. Similarly, to be an effective tele-worker, you will have to learn how to tame the social beasts in your circle so that neighbors, family members and co-workers don't encroach on your time and productivity.

THE START AND STOP WHISTLE
The real key to effectively working at home for me is the ability to set and stick to start and stop times. Sure, we all have time pressured deadlines from time to time, but once you get up early to knock off a task or two, and then don't notice until it is past dinner time to stop work, you've lost the allure of self-paced and self directed productivity.

Of course all this discussion fails to consider whether you are working for out-of-the-area versus local employers and clients. This is a big difference ... when you work for yourself, you still need to market your business, socially network and build confidence with customers. If these can be done locally by attending Chamber of Commerce mixers or dropping by your employer's office for an occasional chat, good for you. As for me, I have to regularly attend trade conferences, teach courses and travel for on-site project work as integral parts of my stay-at-home work ethic. Frankly, it makes me appreciate the times I can work at home all the more.

Chris Crawford
www.justiceserved.com

Photo credit = Telecommute-Jobs.com

Posted by Chris Crawford at 01:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Captain Kirk used to engage the deflector shield to protect the Starship Enterprise when danger lurked nearby. There is a new product on the market in the form of a small thumb drive microprocessor that similarly protects your laptop computer from hackers and spyware. It's called the Pico Gatekeeper from Yoggie Security Systems.

The device is actually a dedicated security hardware appliance that runs on Linux and protects you from hackers when you are using public wireless networks. It also serves as a stand alone security software package so you don't need separate applications such as McAfee or Norton that often cause system conflicts and slow down your processing speed. The Pico Gatekeeper is security software, firewall and virus protection all in a single small package and it actually hides your computer when you are signed on to a wireless network. And they claim that your processing speeds will improve because your computer doesn't have to deal with these chores.

Let's face it ... we are all increasing our use of public wireless networks to access email and the Internet, especially those who travel a lot. Unless you are uninformed or naive, public networks are huge security risks that seldom provide safeguards to prevent "sniffers" from detecting your system, lifting your passwords and intruding into your hard drive. It is shocking how many people don't have security software, firewalls and virus protection on their laptops while they are hooked up to an airport or coffee shop wireless network.

Lest you think this threat is limited to wireless networks, your home or office network is subject to the same intrusions. Yoggie Security Systems provides similar solutions for wired connections.

So I'm going to take the plunge and buy one ... if I experience problems I'll let you know.

Chris Crawford
www.justiceserved.com

Photo credit = Business Week Magazine

Posted by Chris Crawford at 02:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

According to a recent blog posting on the San Francisco Chronicle technology blogs, online spending to the tune of $28 billion during the period of November 1 through December 27 in 2007 was up a stunning 19% over 2006. Oddly, the pundits are citing this as a weakness because spending was expected to be significantly higher (percentage wise), as it has proven to be in the previous years. I don't know where you get your retail sales projections, but where I get mine, 19% growth is head snappingly healthy.

Since the holiday spending growth rate in 2006 was 26% higher than the same period in 2005, I suppose there is some comparative analysis warranted, but get real ... online spending is high and getting higher each year.

The world of technology and the Internet is one in which rapid growth, major breakthroughs and quantum leaps in productivity have become the norm. Remember Moore's Law? Intel co-founder Gordon Moore predicted in 1965 that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit would double every two years. The practical effect on the street is that personal computer processing power effectively doubled every two years for a long period of time. In practical terms, however, there are limits to this theory and nowadays doubling the number of gigahertz of a computer's processing speed does not yield quite the same results as it did when we dealt in megahertz in the past.

Similarly, online retail sales will probably climb at a healthy rate for several years to come, but at some point this growth will level off, at least in terms of percentage growth.

So does this mean that mom and pop should fold up their retail shop on main street because Amazon is going to clean their clock? I think not. Mom and pop can get a piece of this online pie by putting up their own website and selling to a wider audience. After all, e-commerce works both ways. Just ask our own Bob Laffranchi at Loleta Cheese how much of his sales derive from the web compared to years past. The bottom line is if you have a good product or service, customers will buy from you.

I always try to buy locally first, and I'll even spend a few dollars more to do so. But sometimes you've just GOT to have that Wolferman's English muffin, and if the Co-op won't carry it, UPS will. Mmmmm ... Wolferman's.

Chris Crawford
www.justiceserved.com

Logo credit = Main Street Mall Online

Posted by Chris Crawford at 03:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)