As you know I have done a series of posts (with many more to come) about my switch last year from PC to Mac.  Well recently, thanks to the amazing social media tool that is Twitter, I met Phil Simon. He is the author of several books the most recent of which is The New Small.  The book looks awesome and I just started reading it last night.  I’ll be interviewing Phil here soon and giving away a copy of the book.

After chatting Phil and I realized we had a lot more than a first name/hairline in common – we both were born in Brooklyn NY, grew up in New Jersey, went to school in Ithaca NY and have a lot of the same views about emerging technologies and how small businesses/entrepreneurs can leverage these tools to grow their businesses.  We also like the same music (especially Rush, Pink Floyd and the Police) and have a very similar sense of humor (I think that is a NY/Jersey thing).

We also both recently switched from using PCs to Macs and are both now happily plugging away on our MacBook Pros. He also wrote  a series of posts detailing his transition to the Mac. I was sharing some of the great apps I discovered with him and told him about eCamm Call Recorder which makes it super easy to record Skype video and audio chats. He was excited by this and asked if we could do a video interview me about my switch to the Mac so I could share some tips.  Of course I said YES – so visit his blog and check out the interview.

I’ll be returning the favor and interview Phil in the coming weeks once I finish reading The New Small and giving away a copy to a lucky reader so be sure to check back!

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In this initial broadcast I chatted with some folks about mobile work technology – we discussed online musical collaboration, co-working and coffee shops, why it makes sense to create your website in WordPress, CRM software, Windows vs Mac, Skype and Tokbox, multi-person video chats, the Blue Yeti microphone, Twitter Apps, and I even jammed a little harmonica!I’m thinking of doing these either weekly (or bi-weekly) to make myself available to answer any burning questions you may have about mobile work technology, cloud computing, setting up an effective home office, using social media, automating common business processes, internet marketing, and anything else about working from anywhere or growing your business online.

Let me know what you think of the idea and what time/day might work best for you.

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Here are links to the resources in case you want to check them out yourself:

Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Snow Leopard Edition By David Pogue

• Amazon
• Barnes & Noble

MacProVideo.com - Great video tutorials on Mac programs.  They are running a special sale until October 20th – use these special links to take advantage of these discounts:

• 33% off any HD downloadable tutorials
• 25% off subscriptions

I purchased 5 of the downloadable tutorials and I highly recommend them.

Have you found any great books, tutorials, or other resources that help cut your learning curve ?  Please share them in the comments below!

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In my next video I’ll share some resources I found that really helped me get up to speed quick and shortened the learning curve as a new Mac user.

Have you made the switch to Mac or been thinking about it? Post a comment below and let me know your thoughts, what has made you want to switch, or what is keeping you on Windows.

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The biggest problem is that most organizations take an ad-hoc approach to workshifing, which has been thrust upon them. The business landscape began to change; they increasingly found themselves working across time and distance with team mates, remote offices, clients, vendors, and other outsourced professionals. And they mostly left individual employees, project teams, and offices to decide for themselves how best to conduct business. Virtual teamwork was not deliberate, and not undertaken with any real strategy.

If you’re in this boat – what are you to do? You can’t just stop the flow of business and start over with a brand new plan. But you also can’t just lumber forward and say to your people, ‘Work virtually better.’ What you CAN do is take a step back to get a perspective on your process and workflow in order to isolate and highlight areas for improvement and adjustment. One way to accomplish this is by conducting  my ICC Workflow Audit™ which helps you take a look at your needs for Information, Communication, and Collaboration in order to guide you in choosing and throughtfully apply the right technology and guidelines for your organization or team.

I recently partnered with Citrix Online to discuss this topic in a free webinar – Work Unchained: The Competitive Edge of the Anywhere Office®. We had a great turnout for the event and some interesting discussions.  If you missed it you can watch it on-demand.

For more information on how to implement the ICC Workflow Audit™, read my white paper or my guest post on their blog Workshifting.com

I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you or your organization have adopted to virtual teamwork.  Please post a comment below and share your stories and feedback!

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1. My arms are only so long so I couldn’t hold the camera out far enough to get much of me and the background in the shot
2. The camera shook a lot so the video jumped around a bit

As I always do when looking for the solution to a problem I searched Google and found a solution – the XShot 2.0 camera extender.  This amazing device is only 9″ in length and weighs 5 ozs. when closed but folds out (like an antennae) to 37″ long and can hold a camera up to 1.25 lbs.  It includes a standard tripod mount on the end that swivels up to 180 degrees so you can attach your point and shoot digital camera or your pocket camcorder (like the Flip video), simply extend it and get yourself and others in the shot!  I was jonesing on trying it out so I contacted XShot and they were kind enough to send me one so I could give it a try and review it for you.

Watch this video below where I do a quick demo of how it works:

Ever since I’ve had a digital camera I’ve always done the single-arm stretch to take photos of myself and others without having to ask someone else to take the picture.  These have been some of the best (and fun) photos I’ve taken – but the problem was always how close the camera was and you could only get 2 people in the shot.  Not anymore thanks to the XShot!  It’s solid, extremely light, and at full extension can get several people in the shot as well as the background.  The swiveling camera mount on the end allows you to reach high spots in crowds and concerts, take photos from fun angles and in other places difficult to reach. I’m looking forward to trying some of these situations out and will post more photos and videos to the blog when I do.

The XShot makes it easy to take pictures and videos on the go to post on your blog or social networks and it’s great if you want to do video interviews at trade shows or other events where setting up a tripod is difficult.  Best of all it fits in your pocket or camera bag so it’s a prefect tool for your Anywhere Office! It’s a great tool not only for travelers and photographers but also for bloggers, people involved in social media and entrepreneurs. It sells for $25 and along with my Joby Gorillapod and my Flip Video Camera will now be a permanent part of my mobile video setup.

For more info visit the XShot’s website.  Check out their Gallery and Video pages to see some great examples of all the different creative ways people have used it – including video while skiing and paragliding!

I love a creative solution to a problem and XShot has certainly come up with one. Post a comment below and let me know what you think . . .

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If you’re not familiar with their website, HotHardware.com features computing/hardware news and reviews f0r technology enthusiasts and IT professionals. They have a wonderful active community and I highly recommend you sign up for free and join in the discussions.

In a recent post I talked about the importance of “sandbox time” and play when learning new technology. This contest entry is a perfect example.  I’ve been wanting to learn more about editing video with Sony Vegas for some time.  Instead of diving into a work project where I would be under a deadline and worried about making mistakes, I used this contest entry as a way to do something light and fun. I learned a lot of great editing tricks in order to quad myself and get the timing right on the various shots.

Well, I got my Flip camera in the mail yesterday (I was very excited when the UPS guy came to my door – I love getting my hands on new technology) so I thought I would post one of my first videos with it here so you can see how it plays!

Viddler.com still has uploading HD video in beta and my account hasn’t been granted that feature yet – so what you are seeing above doesn’t do the Flip it’s full justice – once they enable HD on my account I’ll repost this video in full 720 HD glory!

You can look forward to a lot more videos coming soon – the Flip makes it fun and easy – the way technology is supposed to be!

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Listen above as my 2 year old son Spencer and I take AudioBoo for a spin on my Ipod Touch.

Posting audio to the web just got a whole lot easier thanks to a great service and iPhone app called AudioBoo.  AudioBoo allows iPhone and iPod Touch users to record and playback digital recordings up to 5 minutes long which can then be posted on the AudioBoo website where users have their own pages or channels similar to Twitter or YouTube.

I love to test out new technology (in fact I’m kind of addicted to it) so when I heard about AudioBoo I just had to give it a spin.  I have an iPod Touch – not an iPhone and despite it not having a built in mic I have an external add-on mic (more about that below) so I am able to use any of the recording apps for the iPhone.

I figured to make the test a bit more fun I would ask my 2 year old son Spencer to test it with me. He was having a ball with this and occasionally put the mic too close to his mouth so you will have to forgive some of the audio spikes.

He definitely follows in his Dads footsteps and seems to love technology as much as I do (he’s a born button pusher . . .). In fact he quickly mastered my iPod Touch almost instantly when I got it last Christmas.  He knows how to turn it on – swipe through the pages to find the games and programs he likes and play them all without any help from me.  And if you think that is crazy – you should see him wield a mouse on the Noggin website – lookout!

The iPod Touch is an amazing device and I will be writing (and shooting a lot of video) about it in the near future to let you know how it has replaced my laptop for many of my mobile work tasks – but back to AudioBoo.

Portable Audio Blogging Made Easy
It couldn’t be easier.  I setup a free account on their website and then downloaded the program (also free) to my iPod Touch.  One quick touch of the account button to plug in my account info and we were ready to record.  We plugged in the Phillips Mic – tapped the START button on the record screen and after a 3 second countdown we were recording.  When you are all done you hit the pause button and then the publish button.  It allows you to type in a short message, add a photo, and even post the location you are publishing from. Within minutes it uploaded our audio over our wifi connection and we were able to listen to it.

The audio quality is pretty amazing and the whole process really was really simple.  While you can listen to the audio on their website or from my AudioBoo page – they also give you an embed code so you can post it on blogs and other websites – like I did above.

A microphone for the iPod Touch

The iPod Touch is missing a few features that come with the iPhone including the built in microphone and camera. I read some great reviews on the web about an inexpensive mic made by Phillips that worked with the iPod Touch.  It’s actually a headphone adapter that has a mic built in.  I was able to score one at Target for $10 and it works great!  It has opened up a whole world of applications to me on the iPod Touch that used to only be available for  iPhone users like VOIP programs like Skype – as well as audio recording program like Griffin iTalk and the new Voice Memos feature that is built into the newly updated iPhone OS3.

Unfortunately these mics seem to have vanished and are almost impossible to find. However, don’t despair iPod Touch users – the Griffin SmartTalk and the Monster iSoniTalk are similar headphone adapter/mic devices – both selling for about $20. I’ve read good reviews about both of them.

I look forward to recording more with it in the future and it’s good to know that my partner in crime is willing to help test new technology with me!

Post a comment below and let us know what you think of our first Boo!

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Visit www.TheAnywhereOffice.com and click archives to listen to the complete show. While you are there be sure to visit our blog and post comments and feedback as well.

TAO Podcast Theme Music – Begin by Andy Simon

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“Julie Supan,senior director of marketing for YouTube,said the site now serves up 35 million videos per day,and users upload 35,000 videos per day,with 100 million page views per day. These are massive numbers for a site that’s not even a year old yet”.Which prompts this question posed by unmediated.org, if Youtube.com now gets more traffic than the BBC.Which is mainstream media?

Another story I found from Wired called “A Guide to the Online Video Explosion” asks what do people want to watch? They noted that:

” . . .the networks are racing one another to get their broadcast programs online, while also creating Web-only content.

But don’t let them fool you. What’s happening here isn’t just TV online. Gone are the rigid 30- and 60-minute blocks; now the clip is it – be it 30 seconds or eight minutes, we’re watching only the money shots. Gone is top-down broadcasting; instead, the network has been, well, networked, with thousands of creators and places to watch, from single-serving sites like Rockboom to slick aggregators like iTunes and blinkx. And gone, too, is the at-this-time, at-this-channel programming; now we’re not only time-shifting with DVRs, we’re space-shifting as well, watching stuff on our laptops, iPods, and cell phones – even loading it back onto our TVs.”

What are your thoughts on this recent trend? Post a comment to this post and let us know!

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