YouTube – RSA Animate – Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us.

My friend and cohort, Mad Coyote Joe, forwarded me a link to this video. I think that not only is the animated presentation style brilliant, but the point being made goes right along with some of the fundamentals of workshifting. Things are not always what they seem.

I’m really loving the growth of social media – especially the way it can serve as a watercooler and networking environment for those that work in The Anywhere Office.  One of the downsides of being virtual is losing the connections and social element of working in an office.

I have found Twitter to be a great way to connect with people and in many ways it’s even more powerful than the traditional water cooler as I have connected with people from all over the globe!

Being a work at home dad, entrepreneur, and small business owner it’s hard to find the time in my schedule to get out to networking events. This is another area where social media has really been amazing – I’m able to take a more asynchronous approach to finding and starting conversations with other liked minded people I meet.  I think the key, however, is to then take those conversations to the next step and schedule a real-time phone call, Skype chat, or in person meeting when possible.

Still haven’t taken the social media plunge?  I came across a recent article that helps you get up to speed on the big three:

Here’s a quick 101 on how to best leverage the top three social networking sites — Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. via Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn? Finding the Right Fit for Your Small Business | Small Business Matters.

If you haven’t explored any of these services yet I strongly urge you to do so!  You can connect with me on all three here – Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook.

Twitter is by far my favorite – which is yours? Post your thoughts in the comments below.

If you’re like me, and apparently many others, after installing iOS4 for your iPod Touch or iPhone you were less than impressed.  Well after several weeks, and a few tries, I’ve successfully removed iOS4 from my iPod Touch 2G and downgraded/reinstalled the previous OS 3.12 (more on why it’s not 3.13 in a bit).  Read on and I’ll explain how you can do the same on your device to solve problems such as battery drain, sluggishness, and crashing.

I’ve always been someone who jumps on upgrades for software pretty much as soon as they come out.  I also try a lot of beta software – friends, colleagues, clients, and readers of this blog have come to trust  me to “test it all out” and then report back on what are the best programs, devices, and technology available.  I have to say however it was a mistake for me to upgrade my iPod Touch 2G to iOS4 the day it came out. I should have waited a few days and read about what others were experiencing as it would have saved me a lot of problems.

I was really excited about the new features in iOS4 and you have heard me mention here on this blog before that my iPod Touch has pretty much been my favorite piece of technology for the last few years.  It’s amazing and it just works – I travel without my laptop a lot more these day thanks to this handy little device.  In fact it has essentially acted as an Apple gateway drug making me want to switch from a PC to a MAC.

But my wonderful, joyful piece of technology was no longer bringing me as much joy after upgrading the firmware/software from 3.13 to iOS4. As it turns out many of the new features I was excited about (multitasking and screen rotation lock) were not supported on my older device. But worse was that the addition of persistent wi-fi when the device goes into sleep/standby mode was killing my battery.  Even when it was off in my pocket what used to last a few days was out of juice by the middle of a single day.  UNACCEPTABLE!

I also found using it just felt slow and sluggish and many of the apps were crashing – something I never experienced before. As I mentioned one of the reasons I love my iPod Touch is that it “just works” which has long been the mac fan mantra.

I searched around on the web and tried about a week ago to downgrade but it didn’t work.  I was stuck having to manually turn off the wi-fi by putting it into airplane mode when I wasn’t actively using it just to make my battery last throughout the day. I decided to wait for Apple to release a fix, patch, or official way to downgrade to the previous OS – but alas the 4.01 update was released today and it does not appear to address the horrendous battery drain or the slowness/crashing I have been experiencing.

So I decided to brave the downgrade again being I’m a techy and comfortable trying the various steps and methods I found. It took lots of Google searching, some sweat (when I thought I bricked it and couldn’t bring it back to life) and lots of swearing but I FINALLY was able to downgrade from iOS4 to 3.12 on my iPod touch.  I wanted to go to 3.13 but for some reason that was a no go. No major loss as 3.13 only contained minor updates from 3.12 – but I am still searching for a way to bring it back to the 3.13 software I had on it before I foolishly chose to upgrade to 4.  Here is what finally worked for me – I hope these steps and links will help you and others restore your iPod Touch or iPhone to the previous OS:

1. I primarily followed these instructions from LifeHacker http://lifehacker.com/5572003/how-to-downgrade-your-iphone-3g (which are for Mac or Windows users) however it didn’t work for me exactly as they suggested so I had to make a few changes.
2. One of the main things you need to do is put your device into what is called Device Firmware Update (DFU) mode in order to properly restore a previous OS/Firmware. To do this you follow some special instructions for how to power it up which they detailed nicely in the Lifehacker link above – they even include a video walkthrough.
3. In order to restore you need to download the previous firmware which you can find here http://www.felixbruns.de/iPod/firmware As I mentioned earlier I tried to restore to OS/firmware 3.13 (which was the latest before the release of iOS4) but I kept getting “error 3194″ after it would try to restore through iTunes.  I searched high and low on Google but none of the solutions I found others suggesting seemed to work until I found a few people mention they were able to successfully restore to 3.12.  I tried that and it did the trick! You might want to try 3.13 first so you can have the most up to date software – but if that doesn’t work try 3.12 like I did. (IMPORTANT - Make sure you download the right firmware for your device from the link in this step.  They have various versions of the iPhone and iPod Touch).
4. After you successfully restore the previous OS you need to use a program called RecBoot to kick your iPhone/iPod Touch out of recovery mode. You can download the latest version of RecBoot from here http://www.sebby.net/443-recboot-final-release/
5. On a windows computer in order to run RecBoot successfully you need to install something called LibUSB which are special drivers for your USB ports.  The first time around I had trouble doing this and got very confused until I found this great blog post with a YouTube video that did the trick http://windows7kb.com/windows-7-videos/how-to-install-libusb-on-windows-vista-64-bit/ I am running Windows 7 64-bit but I believe these steps are exactly the same for 32-bit you just download a different version of LibUSB. It also says in the readme file that you need to download “iTunesMobileDevice.dll” and put this folder in the same folder that RECBOOT is in.  The Readme file that comes with RecBoot gives you a link where you can download this file.

One odd thing was that the LifeHacker instructions state you need to use RecBoot to kick your device OUT of DFU/Restore mode.  When I was wrestling with the 3.13 OS this didn’t seem to work for me and I started sweating bullets as my device would not turn on and seemed to be stuck in restore mode with a black screen.  I tried it several times to no avail – however once I successfully restored the 3.12 OS it seemed to kick itself out of restore mode without the use of the Recboot software.  But I can’t say you don’t need it as I had to try several attempts to get this to work so I’m it’s possible that some of the earlier steps I took while following the “official” Lifehacker instructions might have had some effect on my solution.

CAUTION - I highly recommend you read all the steps and download all of the files you need BEFORE proceeding with these steps.  Be sure to review the readme files that might come with any of the downloads. Also if you are using a Windows Computer you will want to create a RESTORE POINT before installing LibUSB or any of this software.  This will allow you to roll your computer back to the state it was in before you installed the drivers and/or software.  If you are unsure how to do this here are step-by-step instructions for creating a restore point in Windows XP or Windows Vista/7. This is good general advice any time you are installing new software or hardware or monkeying with your system.

The only downside in all of this was that after restoring the firmware and my iPod Touch Backup (the one it made by itself before I upgraded to iOS4) none of my apps, music, or videos were restored.  It wasn’t too much of a hassle however because iTunes had all that in place so all I had to do was drag whatever movies and music I wanted back onto my iPod Touch and then check the boxes for the apps I wanted to resync.  It was actually helpful as I had a lot of apps installed I was no longer using so I didn’t bother to restore many of them which freed up more space on my 16GB iPod Touch. One sync with iTunes later and all was right again!

In order to test that my battery life was back to normal I left my fully charged iPod Touch unplugged next to my bed when I went to sleep last night without turning wi-fi off.  Upon waking I smiled as I saw that I still had a full charge. Under iOS 4 I was often greeted by a message in the morning that I needed to charge my device even though it was sitting on my night table unused.

There were a few features in iOS4 I found useful including the spell checker, the updates to email which showed threaded messages much like Gmail, and the improved search feature – but I was perfectly happy with my iPod Touch before I had those features and it is much more important to me that it has good battery life and doesn’t crash as I use it frequently throughout the day.

Hopefully Apple will release a future update (4.1) that will fix these issues and perhaps give us an option to turn off the persistent wi-fi feature to conserve battery life.  I wish they had released an official “downgrade patch” that would allow us to easily roll our devices back to the previous OS if we were unhappy with iOS4 – but for now if you want to go back – follow my steps above and hopefully my wrestling with this will save you some time.  If you have any questions about these steps or thoughts on iOS4 of downgrading please post a comment below.

I love it when people get creative with the tools and technology available to them!  When you think of social media you may think of staying in touch with friends, or another avenue of business networking – but what about tapping into this amazing technology in the classroom?

I came across a great post that was chock-full of ideas for how to use social media for learning.  It breaks them down into grade levels and topics and even links to some case studies or articles that explain in more detail the specific examples:

Sites such as Facebook and Twitter and tools such as Skype are connecting students to learning opportunities in new and exciting ways. Whether you teach an elementary class, a traditional college class, or at an online university, you will find inspirational ways to incorporate social media in your classroom with this list.

via Fred’s Head from APH: 100 Inspiring Ways to Use Social Media In the Classroom.

Have you heard of any other innovative or creative uses of social media? Post a comment below and share!

It’s clear that video is booming on the web.  Video sharing sites like YouTube and portable camcorders like the Flip have exploded.  Also, as I’ve discussed in previous blog articles and in the recent Businessweek Video Webcast - video conferencing is growing in leaps and bounds.

I’ve seen significant growth in the desktop video conferencing space with services like Skype, Tokbox, and ooVoo being used for everything from virtual meetings and remote collaboration to friends and family keeping in touch.   Thanks to the increase in broadband and wi-fi people can meet face-to-face virtually from almost anywhere.

Well now it looks like video chat/conferencing is about to get even more mobile.   Last week Apple released the iPhone 4 which includes a forward facing camera and a built in program called FaceTime that allows video chatting from iPhone to iPhone.  Also Sprint released the EVO 4G which also includes a front-facing camera and the QIK video chat software. It seems like the natural next step . . .

There is no mistaking that the time is ripe to get into the mobile video chatting game. It is already big enough with tools from Skype, Google (Talk) and others, and it’s only going to get bigger. There are already millions of notebook owners in the mix, and when you add what is likely going to be millions of smartphone and tablet owners, the potential market for video chat offerings is going to be huge.

via Is a Mobile Video Chat Revolution Imminent?.

I’m sure these two phones are only the start of this trend.  In fact you can be sure that once Apple starts to push this envelope others will be soon to follow – much the way that the iPhone invigorated the smartphone market and the iPad has woken up the sleeping tablet market.  I’m still shocked that the iPad didn’t include a camera on it for video chats – but I’m almost certain the next generation will include that feature.  In fact it’s one of the main reasons I didn’t run out and buy one – I’ll wait for the second generation so I can tap into the video.

The stats seems to back up this prediction in a recent report, entitled “Can You See Me Now?: The New World of Consumer Visual Communications,”  by GigaOM Pro. (subscription required):

Although many people feel remote collaboration is all about technology – the truth is virtual team work is a human endeavor – it’s about people working with people. Sure the tech is important as it enables people to work together while apart – but the strategy behind which tools you choose and how you use them is easily just as critical.

As Jason and I often say it’s about “the right tools thoughtfully applied”. Yesterday I came across a great blog post by Isaac Gube (@IAMTHEGUBE) about the tools and strategies he and his brother put into place when they launched their latest venture DesignInstruct.com – a regularly updated web magazine for designers and digital artists where you can find and learn design tips and tricks. The Brothers Gube clearly share the same philosophy as the Brothers Montero:

Design Instruct is our first real venture together. It is the first time my brother and I sought to actually build something of our own (unless of course you count all the make-believe forts we built when we were kids).

There are many challenges associated with working with someone over a long distance. However, we found that there are solutions to those challenges, and so far, we’ve managed to make it work.

via How to Make Remote Team Collaboration Work.

I love the way the post breaks down the 5 main challenges they had and describes the solutions they came up with.  When technology was needed they used free or low cost tools that can be embraced by any small business owner, solo professional, or entrepreneur.

The important thing is they did their own workflow analysis, tooks a step back, and developed a structure and approach that worked for them. The spirit and philosophy they brought to this approach echoes my own:

Working on the Internet over a long distance is definitely different than working together in the same physical location. But being different doesn’t mean that it’s a worse way to work.

Of course, it’s a different way to work, but it’s also a very effective way to work once you acknowledge the challenges and are willing to adapt.

Just think, a few years ago, working from such great distances would have been quite an ordeal, and today it is done with such great ease and effectiveness.

I strongly encourage you to read their blog post and please share some comments below about the tools and strategies you’ve found to help you collaborate and work across the web.

Video conferencing has changed.  What was once a very costly technology only used by large enterprise type organizations with dedicated IT departments is now easier to use and more cost effective. There are a variety of solutions to fit almost any budget.

This was the topic of discussion a few weeks ago when I joined Bloomberg Businessweek in their New York Studios for a live Video Webcast called “Video Breaks Out of the Boardroom”.  The show was hosted by Jim Ellis, Assistant Managing Editor of Bloomberg Businessweek, and I was delighted that they invited me to join Marc  Beattie from Wainhouse Research to be part of this episode.  Here is a photo from our broadcast:

The Bloomberg building was amazing and everyone I met there was extremely friendly and helpful.  We had a wonderful discussion and looked at what’s involved with implementing video conferencing including how much technical know-how it takes, how and why companies using it, what it costs, and what are some of the stumbling blocks. We also took some great questions from those that were viewing the live broadcast.

In case you missed it you can now view the entire Video Webcast live.  Just register here and you can watch the whole show.  We discussed the topic for about 20 minutes and then had about 10 minutes of Q&A.  If you’re currently using video conferencing, or thinking about it, you definitely want to catch this.

A big thanks to everyone at Bloomberg Businessweek for having me be a part of this event. I hope to join them again for future shows!

Please post a comment below and let me know what you thought of the webcast and feel free to ask me any questions you might have about using video to connect with your virtual teams and remote workers.

I have to admit that these days I don’t travel that often.  Having a 3 year old son makes me want to stay home a lot more than I used to – and being I work in The Anywhere Office I find I can often avoid unnecessary travel by wielding my mobile work technology to work from anywhere. However now and again an opportunity arises that I just can’t pass up.  Last week I was invited to be a panelist on a Bloomberg Businessweek Live Video Webcast all about video conferencing.

It was a great opportunity that I didn’t want to miss – so despite the fact that it meant flying out of town on my birthday – I went to the West Palm Beach Airport here in sunny Florida and flew to New York City.

The webcast was lots of fun and I got to spend some time with my good friend Marc and visit with his family as well – a splendid time was had by all!  I got to the airport very early because I hitched a ride in with my wife (who works close to the airport) and it got me thinking about being productive in an airport and why I love flying out of PBI.  Here is a short video I shot talking about working from an airport with The Anywhere Office:

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I’ve been invited by Bloomberg BusinessWeek to be a panelist on a free live video webcast this Thursday (June 10th) all about video conferencing -  I hope you can tune in! Here is the description:

Video Breaks Out of the Boardroom
Thursday, June 10 at
10am PT | 1pm ET | 6pm GMT

Video is changing how companies interact with employees, suppliers, partners and customers. It’s an important area for growth and an essential tool for global businesses.

Join us as we speak to executives and thought leaders in the video collaboration space about emerging technologies and how these tools offer so much promise for business.

• Build & sustain business relationships
• Broaden the scope of your markets
• Strengthen customer relations and loyalty

Our expert panel, moderated by Jim Ellis of Bloomberg Businessweek, includes Marc Beattie, co-founder, Managing Partner, and Co-Manager ofUnified Collaboration Practice at Wainhouse Research and a recognized expert on the collaboration services market and Phil Montero, CEO of Montero Consulting, Founder of YouCanWorkFromAnywhere.com, and the spearhead of the remote work movement for more than a decade.

You will be able to participate in this live discussion through interactive questions and answers with our industry experts – all from the comfort of your desktop.

Click here to register today!

I’m looking forward to a great discussion. I’m also excited to see what the Bloomberg news studio looks like – it should be lots of fun! I hope you’ll join us and be sure to submit some questions.

If you can’t catch it live I will be posting the video here at The Anywhere Office after the event.

In consulting with companies off all different sizes in a variety of industries I’ve found one of the biggest challenges they need to overcome in order to embrace flexible work is management resistance.

Despite the long list of benefits to virtual work or telecommuting many managers are simply uncomfortable with the thought of managing remote employees.  That’s why a recent article by Fast Company really caught my eye. It describes 3 recent scenarios where managers didn’t want to provide workplace flexibility and the unfortunate results:

Managers, sticking your fingers in your ears, closing your eyes and saying “La, la, la, la” when a valuable, competent current or prospective employee presents a plan for flexibility doesn’t make it go away.

via Dont Let “Flexibility Just Doesnt Work for Me”=”I Dont Care If You Leave”…Because It Will | Fast Company.

The article shares some excellent suggestion for what managers can do when approached by employees proposing a flexible work agreement and also what employees can do if a managers shrugs off the request with the “that doesn’t work for me” rebuttal.

Managing virtual teams and offsite employees is not really a choice – it’s a reality in most business (or soon will be).  So the question isn’t will you do it – but will you do it well . . . or will you do it poorly?

I strongly urge managers struggling with this is to get some training on strategies and best practices for managing virtual teams. We’ve seen a sharp increase in the desire for this type of training which is why our workshop The Art of Virtual Leadership is now available on-demand. So no more excuses . . . learn how to lead your remote employees so you can hire and retain the best talent for your organization despite their location!

What are your thoughts?  Share your story or experience in the comments below!