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Smartphones: Corporate Shackles or Tool for Work-Life Balance?

By Thomas Wailgum

MON, JANUARY 04, 2010 — CIO — Any and all executives or managers looking to get more productivity from their information workers—and, really, what company isn't shamelessly espousing a "more with less" philosophy these days?—might want to pay attention to the following strategy: Set your workers free from the office.

"Teleworking," or working from home/Starbucks/not-within-corporate-walls, of course, is nothing new. High-powered laptops, ubiquitous broadband and Wi-Fi connections, and even-my-grandmother-has-one cell phones have all enabled a seamless virtual work-experience for the modern employee.

But new survey data from Forrester Research shows that tech-savvy information workers want to be connected to (yet untethered from) the office even more—they want smartphones. And they want them badly: Many are even ready, willing and able to foot all or part of the bill to gain access to corporate e-mail and documents, as well as stay connected to their work lives—often at the expense of their personal lives. More...

01-05-2010 07:39

Cities embrace mobile apps, 'Gov 2.0'

(CNN) -- Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist and a customer-service guru, was riding on a public train in San Francisco, California, recently when something common but annoying occurred: The railcar filled with people and became uncomfortably hot.

If the inconvenience had happened a few years ago, Newmark said he would have just gone on with his day -- maybe complaining about the temperature to a friend.

But this was 2009, the age of mobile technology, so Newmark pulled out his iPhone, snapped a photo of the train car and, using an app called "SeeClickFix," zapped an on-the-go complaint, complete with GPS coordinates, straight to City Hall.

"A week or so later I got an e-mail back saying, 'Hey, we know about the problem and we're going to be taking some measures to address it,' " he said.

Welcome to a movement the tech crowd is calling "Gov 2.0" -- where mobile technology and GPS apps are helping give citizens like Newmark more of a say in how their local tax money is spent. It's public service for the digital age. More...

12-28-2009 09:43

Brin: Google's OSes likely to converge

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Google's dual-pronged operating-system strategy will likely produce a single OS down the road, according to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

Many Google observers were puzzled when the company announced plans for Chrome OS in July, coming amid growing acceptance of the company's Android operating-system project as a smartphone and Netbook OS. After all, why design an open-source operating system with the goal of reinventing the personal computing experience when you're currently developing another open-source operating system with the goal of reinventing the mobile computing experience?

Google executives, including CEO Eric Schmidt, have downplayed the conflict ever since, asking for time to let the projects evolve. And a few days after Chrome OS was revealed, Android chief Andy Rubin said device makers "need different technology for different products," explaining that Android has a lot of unique code that makes it suitable for use in a phone and Chrome has unique benefits of its own.

But Brin, speaking informally to reporters after the company's Chrome OS presentation on Thursday, said "Android and Chrome will likely converge over time," citing among other things the common Linux and Webkit code base present in both projects. More...

11-22-2009 11:09

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