How to Become a Black Box Worker

or, perhaps a more formal name, "Modular Nomadic Worker." Sun Microsystems has a product called the Sun Modular Datacenter, also called the "Black Box." You can read more about it here. But basically, it's a complete data center in a box (container, really)! Just add power, water, and Internet, and it's good to go.

I started thinking about how "modular" I've become, with my smart iPhone and laptop plus wifi or 3G card, and I realized how similar I am to the Black Box data center. Just drop me anywhere with my (small) laptop bag and phone, and I am a "fully functioning" worker!

Here are the things I have that enable me to work everywhere:
* cell phone/ smartphone: iPhone (not yet 3G)
* bluetooth headset: Aliph Jawbone (red!)
* broadband card: Sierra Wireless 881 3G USB w/unlimited domestic plan
* laptop: MacBook Pro 17"
* webcam: built-in iSight
* wifi: Starbucks card for 2 hours free, plus possible free AT&T broadband customer at AT&T hotspots?, obviously also at home and in the office

With these tools, I'm able to work from wherever I am, whether it be from home, a conference, an airport, while travelling in my motorhome, or even in the office! I answer my phone and emails, and participate in desktop video conferences (using iChat AV and MeBeam), and even sometimes meet in Second Life. Rather than wondering where I am, my boss can just always find me.

I think I really am living in the Snow Crash metaverse now!

Security, Part 2

At my company, we are supposed to put appropriate footers at the bottoms of our documents and emails. For example, "Internal Use Only," "Do Not Duplicate," etc., (I made all of those up). I don't think all of the employees are as thoughtful at doing this as our legal & security groups would like, although I'm sure many people are very conscientious. So I think we may have just assumed that, by keeping our documents only on our intranet, that we are keeping employees safe from themselves, and the company's secrets slightly safer than they might be otherwise.

Now, however, it is very easy for employees to blog on the Internet, or collaborate using a wiki on the Internet. Our email & calendar accounts are accessible from the Internet. But many employees find accessing our applications and documents through our intranet just not compatible with their work (or location, or Internet-enabled device, or ...). So should we move more out onto the Internet?

Security, Part 1

(note that I'm not in an IT security group or anything, I just started thinking about this)

Several months ago when our group started looking at ning, I wrote up some general guidelines for using these Internet-based apps (vs. our intranet), just to have something.

Currently, after reading the policies & guidelines for our company's external blogs and wikis, I'm thinking that we've just flipped the model. We used to think we had to protect users from themselves, by giving them the safest default. Now that everyone wants to be connected via whatever device or appliance or location or situation they choose, we need to move our data onto the Internet. In addition, as we understand the value of open information (think Wikinomics), we (as a company) want to publish as much of our information, and thoughts, to as wide an audience as possible.

Anyway, I think the model is now something more like, "You, as an employee, have knowledge and ideas that may or may not be appropriate to share with the rest of the world, including our competitors. It is up to you to determine whether or not you should publish this information securely, or on the Internet. If you are unsure, contact blahblahblah for assistance."

Liveblogging from Office 2.0

This week I attended the Office 2.0 conference in San Francisco. I decided one of the easiest ways to take notes, and be able to access them later, was via my iPhone. So I took my notes in iPhone's Notes application, then mailed it here to my blog. I haven't yet corrected anything except the titles, and added tags (I can't tag entries directly via email).

I decided to, at least for a day or so, leave them in the format they arrived in, just to see how I feel about that. I will tidy this all up, and also add links to the products and articles, rsn.

If you want to see all blog posts from everyone who was blogging directly from the Office 2.0 conference, check this out (also in my Links channel): Office 2.0 Conf Tag in Technorati.

Office 2.0 Thursday AM Notes:

People enjoy collaborating
Cultural adoption don't send docs, send links
Decisions: what do I need to know?
What do I need to produce ?
What do I need to communicate ?
(where's the value?)

Pan for gold, I Love Lucy skit in my inbox, email is my favorite app?
No.

Enterprise 2.0:
Mgmnt support
Usability
Integration
Accessibility
Top down - mgrs can lead the way
Training- not how but why and what's different
Templating no blank page
Solving problems

Adoption: New tool must be 9x better than what it replaces (9x better
than email?)

No Long Tail of users, small percentage of people participating in
Enterprise can be a small number (top small)

Feed the open mouths, don't force others. Be patient

Morgan Stanley created system to convert email groups to discussion
forums

(Office 2.0 Thursday Morning Notes)
-Diana

<Sent from my iPhone>

Working Online

If I want to do all of my work online, so I don't have to worry about having the right computer with me, or even a full computer with me, how do I do it? It looks like there are a few online applications (ThinkFree, Zoho, Google Docs-although the latter doesn't yet work in Safari) where I can edit from a browser on my Mac.

Here are my questions, or at least, unresolved issues:
* can I edit OO format documents, or only Microsoft?
* can I at least view these OO documents from my iPhone?
* can I edit somehow from my iPhone?
* do I always have to down/upload the documents to one of these sites? I can't always do that from my iPhone, but many of these documents were emailed to me, if that helps.

More questions, and I'm hopeful, some answers, as I figure them out. I'm headed off to the Office 2.0 conference tomorrow, so maybe all will be revealed there. And, everyone there will be using an iPhone!

iPhone Photo Blogging

This weekend I went to Disneyland (yay!) with Dawn and some friends. But not all friends, nor family, so they were happy to follow along with the pictures I was uploading from my iPhone during the weekend. Both the iPhone camera, and the "Post to Web Gallery" options worked great! It was very easy, and fast even over the Edge network, to upload my pictures to my .Mac account.

There is even a Subscribe option from the web gallery site, although I haven't looked at how that works. But now I know that the subject line gets posted as the caption, so next time I will add useful information there, instead!

Apple, once again, is changing how I work, this time in how I'm sharing pictures. I was missing MMS here, as I normally would have text-messaged the pictures to friends and family; but one at a time, and each would only get a picture or two. This way, I first emailed the link out, then as I took each picture I immediately posted it to the website, all weekend long. Almost as good as being there?

(mobile on hold)

until I figure out how to post to my blog from my new iPhone. Maybe it's fast enough to just do it via the web browser?

Sorry for the Delay

Sorry for the delay in posting, I was busy playing with my new... wait for it... you can guess... yup, my new iPhone!!! Wow, is it awesome! Even better than I thought!

Here are To Do lists I'm looking at, but I haven't found the perfect one yet:
TaDa List
Listingly
ToodleDo

I'm also looking for a replacement for Documents to Go, but I'm thinking web-based would be better:
Zoho
Google Docs & Spreadsheets, but no Safari support?
Note that I rarely use Microsoft formats, prefer OO, so the built-in reader in the iPhone doesn't always help me.

Suggestions?

EDIT: 8/28