For everyone who lives by their Blackberry, here is a novel way to get some breathing time. Gizmodo reports on a Chicago hotel that offers to lockup your Blackberry. This is another way of accountability to allow you to get some freedom from that little device.
From Reuters
Who would have thought. HP a leader in so many things, is withdrawing from telecommuting. This is such a short sighted move and is sure to cause many high performing individuals to look for alternative employment.
With gas prices ever increasing, increase pollution from moving people from one place to another, just so they can be in the same room and the decreasing amount of time parents have to spend with their families, this is just a no-win strategy.
The benefits of telecommuting have been documented for several years now. If there is a problem, it is most likely with people management skills of those involved with staff hwo are telecommuting. Having staff all in one place is not going to solve that problem.
While we were visiting in Victoria, we spent a nice Sunday afternoon at a car show in Victoria. Check out some pictures.
Skype has just announced free calls to all landlines and mobile phones within the US and Canada. This is promotion goes until December 31, 2006.
One wonders how Skype, now part of eBay is going to make any money and how others will react to this news. You still need a PC or PDA with WiFi to access the network, but new devices such as Polycom’s Communicator and numerous USB handsets make things a whole lot easier. Add in Skype’s conferencing features, call forwarding, voice messaging, Skypecasts, and buddy lists and you have a whole lot of communications capabilities in one spot.
Now you just have to fight with your ISP to allow unfettered access to Skype. Reports are coming in from all over Canada and the USA that users are being restricted or totally locked out of Skype access. My message to the ISPs -> get over it.