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Wireless

Friday, June 20, 2008

Using your Blackberry to shoot yourself in the foot

I talk to an increasing number of people who wake up in the morning and instantly grab their Blackberry from the bedside table to check work email. Dealing with work on your smartphone is a huge example of the end of work-life balance, but it’s not the only one. Conference calls with Asia at 2 a.m., getting reports done while on vacation, following work-related developments online over the weekend…it’s all typical for knowledge workers. Just as the news cycle has gone 24 hours, so has the work cycle.

It is because nobody outside of the assembly line works from 9 to 5 that the use of at-work networks for non-work-related activities should not only be tolerated by encouraged. A recent study—not conducted by an organization with a financial interest in helping companies bloock access—there are perfectly legitimate reasons for employees to engage in these non-work or semi-work-related activities while at the office and, further, that blocking could backfire and result in lost productivity.

(The study was published in the June issue of the CyberPsychology and Behaviour Journal.)

Leave it to some workers to want to return to the days of the clear line between work and leisure. CNN is reporting that employees are making noise about being compensated for the time they spend on their Blackberries while away from the office. Producers and reporters for ABC News have evidently reached an agreement with management to pay them for their smartphone activities. Lawyers are warning companies that they can expect more such demands.

Talk about shooting themselves in their collective feet. If a company pays you for the time you spend doing work away from the office, then they have every right to expect you will devote every minute in the office to work. And that’s just denial of the 24-hour work cycle that can only lead to complications of multiple stripes. From compensation practices to the fine line between online activities with and without work dimensions (for instance, representing your company well while engaging in primarily non-work networking), things could get very ugly in a hurry. It seems companies aren’t the only ones that need to wake up to the realities of the networked world. Add greedy, clueless employees (and, in some cases, the unions that represent them) to those ranks, too.

Monday, November 05, 2007

Wearable WiFi Locator

Every year around this time, Michele asks me for a gift list. This will definitely be on it. I need to boost my geek quotient, and nothing will accomplish that like wearing a t-shirt that detects WiFi signals, and at $29.99, it’s way cheaper than a new VAIO.

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

WiFi users spend more time online

Those busy folks over at the Pew Internet and American Life Project have released a study showing that people with WiFi access tend to spend more time online than those tethered to a hard-wired connection. Thirty-four percent of Interet users have gone online using WiFi, with most of them using hotspots away from home or work. Details here.

From a communications standpoint, the first implication that leaps to mind is the potential for internal communications. If your company hasn’t implemented WiFi in its facilities, it’s time to reconsider (or consider for the first time). Being able to get online at meetings or in the cafeteria can improve productivity. Can you think of other ways business can take advantage of the fact that WiFi use translates into deeper levels of online engagement?

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Toyota offers cell phone-only event programming

On “For Immediate Release” yesterday, I reported on results of a study that focus on the increased use of mobile telephones for activities other than phone calls. Consumers use an average of 4.8 features on their handsets, ranging from text messaging (the most dominant use) to software downloads, coupon retrieval, and alert services. My point was the companies ignore mobile phones as a communication channel at their peril. (It has been evident for years that Internet-based services were poised to escape the confines of the computer and migrate to other devices.)

Toyota is one company that has gotten the message. In a ClickZ article yesterday, I learned about a campaign to track, via video, the progress of the FJ Cruiser in the grueling Baja 1000 race. Banner ads accompany the videos.

Expect to see more of this as awareness of cell phone potential increases.

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

WiFi: A conference requirement

Last week, one comment kept recurring at Lawrence Ragan Communications’ annual Web Content Management conference in Chicago: “Why don’t they have WiFi?”

The conference was held at the ancient Knickerbocker hotel, where in-room broadband ran $9.95 a night. (The day is coming when hotel-wide WiFi will be free.) You even had to pay, I was told, when connecting to the WiFi in the lobby. And although the ballroom where the conference was held was just off the lobby, the signal didn’t reach that far. Thus, a number of attendees who would have liked to blog the conference were frustrated in their efforts.

Blogging the conference would have provided Ragan with a number of benefits. The links to the company from these blog postings would have given it a ton of Google juice. Readers of these blogs would have learned about the company and ultimately some would have been enticed to attend next year’s conference, or perhaps some other Ragan professional development offering. The cost of providing WiFi in the ballroom (where every session was held) would have been dramatically offset by the free publicity provided by these would-be bloggers.

IABC offers free WiFi at the trade show at its international conferences, but not in the meeting rooms where bloggers would need it to write in near-real-time about the sessions. I’m not sure what PRSA or other communication organizations do, but I’d be surprised if any made WiFi pervasively available wherever their conferences are taking place. I hope I’m surprised soon.