Adventures in home working

I have just read this book,  and I thought it might be interesting to summarise it as a mind map.  The picture below shows the main themes.  I have also attached a PDF of the map and the actual Mind Manager map as well which have the full detail.

File Attachment: map.pdf (44 KB)

File Attachment: One Small Step Kaizen.mmap (23 KB)

and noticed how many of the books were in some way related to the mind …

• The Tipping Point
• Learn to be an Optimist
• Mastering Virtual Teams
• A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age
• Learn to meditate
• One small step can change your life
• Conversationally speaking
• Lateral thinking
• Learn to remember
• The Emperor’s New Mind : Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics

There were plenty of books on other topics,  but I think this year must be my “year of the mind”

I have been increasingly using Skype and decided to share my experiences to date:

Overall Summary

• Closest I have had to the perfect phone while working from home,  but still issues that I have to work around

Skype delights

• I can sit at home with my headset on listening to music, watching videos and making and taking calls in considerable comfort
• I have a very long headset cable so I can move around quite freely
• I can wind up the volume for telephone calls so that I can always hear people,  I can use the in-line volume control for my headset and the dedicated keyboard keys for this which makes it very easy
• I can easily forward calls from my Treo to my Skype-in number,  which means I don’t get interrupted on calls and avoid the low signal strength issues I have at home.
• I have a single source of contacts for Skype (via the Outlook tool-bar), Lotus Notes and my Treo 650.  I sync my contacts over to Outlook using DoubleLook.
• Its cheap,  I make lots of calls to the US and Skype to Skype and Skype to Land-lines is excellent quality most of the time.
• When video is important Skypes integrated video is great.
• The kids love it,  they use it to Skype each other and me from their rooms and to call their friends
• The ability to send voice mails instead of emails
• It’s IM is pretty good with history, search etc,  Although nowhere near as good as Trillian Pro.
• I can use it on my Tablet – over wireless – from anywhere in the house

Skype tweaks:

• Tools – Options – Hotkeys, enable hotkeys,  I find mute and focus really useful
• Tools – Options – Advanced – ‘Enable contact list and history quick filtering’ – enables word wheel type searching,  really great if you have a lot of contacts
• Tools – Options – Video – Disable – Start Video Automatically – uses too much upload bandwidth, only use video when you really need it,  unless you have lots of upload bandwidth (I have 256K on ADSL)

Skype problems:

• Registering for conference calls is a real problem.  The DTMF tones that Skype generates are rarely recognised.  I have tried several different conference solutions and never managed to get reliable results, sometimes I can connect first time,  other times I give up after 10 tries requiring several redials!  However it is possible Gizmo can do it and DTMF tone generators are more reliable. 
• Skype breakup when CPU utilisation is high,  this just means I have to keep a watch on my task bar, where I can see task managers CPU indicator, not a big problem
• Skype breakup when uploading screen changes in web conferences,  this is Dependant on the software I am using,  If I use Lotus Sametime with true colour then it is particularly bad and I have to learn not to speak when I flip slides for a few seconds.
• Poor quality when calling mobiles, especially internationally

Useful add-ons

• Best add-on so far is SkypeMuter which PAUSES Windows media player when you receive or make a call.  Very useful, although on my machine it sometimes seems to just toggle Media player, ie it un-pauses it when you Start or Receive a call,  but in general I think its great and its free.
• I have tried Pamela which promises to provide great functions including excellent voice mail and voice recording.  I have had a couple of issues with it degrading the call it is recording though so for now I have disabled it until I have time to do more testing,  however its definitely worth watching as it evolves.
• I was incredibly excited to find Unyte a free (for now) web conferencing product nicely integrated with Skype,  it really is a 2 click product.  I loved it and used it all day long when I installed it,  but I am fairly certain that it somehow crashed by Netgear router twice that day!  Again another one to watch to see if Unyte really was the cause.  It really is a wonderful product.  Also I noticed no voice quality issues when using it!
• A freeware DTMF dialer, which is more reliable than Skype.  You can store up the DTMF strings you need and play them back on demand.  In my case I have to take off my headset and put the microphone near the headset but it works 70% of the time, so its a big improvement.
• The Skylian plug-in for Trillian Pro so I can have one tool for presence and Instant Messaging

Alternatives:

• Gizmo.  Good voice quality, integrated recording, better DTMF support – sounds perfect so far!  however dialling free-phone numbers costs money and its way to unstable crashing at least twice a day on Windows 2003 Server SP2.
• Windows Live Messenger (beta), Good voice quality – however dialling free-phone numbers cost money and no one else has it installed, so its not getting much use.