Sharing Screens with Screenjelly

Sometimes we need to show someone how to use an application or do something on their PC and explaining on the phone just doesn’t cut the mustard. Enter Screenjelly.

Screenjelly records your screen activity with your voice so you can spread it via Twitter or email.

Use it to quickly share cool apps or software tips, report a bug, or just show stuff you like.

This is a great free tool to compliment your remote IT services support. All the videos are stored on the Screenjelly server so no worries about storage and it’s 100% browser-based and relies on Java to record your screen activity.

Having a go

I had a quick look to see how easy it is. I actually had a few problems getting started but the help desk were quick to help (always a bonus) – even though the message ended up in my spam folder!

I couldn’t initially get the recorder to work in Firefox. Their suggestion was to check that I didn’t have any Firefox plug-ins that were disabling some specific features (for example, “NoScript” disables JavaScript by default on all pages).

They also suggested that I test that:

• Flash is enabled
• Java is enabled

In the end it turned out that I didn’t have Java enabled in Firefox. Tools > Options > Content > Enable Java sorted this out.

Note that Screenjelly doesn’t support Internet Explorer 6.0 or below but they do support Firefox, Google Chrome or Safari.

My first Screenjelly Screencast

So here’s my first Screenjelly screen cast on creating an Animoto video. Click through to play.

There is some embed code but I can’t get it to work on WordPress, hopefully they’ll sort that one out pretty soon. Emailing or tweeting the link are pretty straightforward.

Note the Animoto video took about 5 minutes to process and is available for viewing.

In my hurry to create something I forgot to write a description but don’t seem to be able to go back and change that now, something else that the Screenjelly team might want to look at.

Overall I found Screenjelly really quick and easy to use, so a definite thumbs up!

Longer Screencasts

Screenjelly is limited to 3 minute screencasts, If you want to record something longer then Screentoaster is worth a look.

The need for Fizzy Coffs

A trashy novel really makes a holiday. Last week in Cornwall I didn’t want to go for anything too complex so took along Blind Faith by Ben Elton.

The background to the story is a future dystopia run by the temple (organised religion). The population is encouraged to be open and share all their thoughts and feelings (through blogs!) and privacy is frowned upon. Elton takes many of todays cultural anomolies and leads them to their most extreme negative conclusion – constant video streaming, distrust of vaccinations, fat, unhealthy, naked people. The protagonist is Trafford Sewell, a pretty normal chap who starts to rebel against the Temple by allowing his child to be vaccinated.

It was an OK read, though lacked any real depth. However one idea that caught my eye was the concept of Fizzy Coffs:

Fizzy Coff was short for ‘physical office’ and meant that it was a day when Trafford’s personally adapted work structure required him to attend his actual workplace, as opposed to the virtual version which existed online and which he could get to without leaving his bed. Fizzy Coffs were a statutory requirement; the law expected each person to spend at least 25 per cent of their working hours in the company of real, physical colleagues in a real physical space. It was intended at some point to increase this proportion to 50 per cent and the transport system was supposedly being updated to cope with the extra travel hours, but Trafford doubted that it would ever happen. All future planning for the transport system seemed to him to focus on the modest ambition of preventing it from grinding to a complete halt.

It’s interesting that Elton sees these days as a reaction to a point in time when everyone did work from home.

Fizzy Coffs were a relatively recent development. Twenty solstices previously, when Trafford had first entered employment, he had not been required to go out to a physical workplace at all. Few people did, except those whose job was serving food and drink or lapdancing. That had been in a time when the virtues of the virtual had gone unchallenged. The public health advantages of keeping people apart had been obvious and it was generally assumed that at some point all work would be done at home. But the growing trend towards social dysfunction had alerted both the Temple and the government to the human need for Face Time. Care workers and spiritual counsellors had concluded that people who dealt exclusively with virtual individuals tended to be at an emotional disadvantage when confronted with the real thing. Unable to relate to fellow members of the community, they were awkward, tongue-tied, and would occasionally shoot at random as many people as they could before turning their guns on themselves.

It had also become clear that it was impossible to meet a series of sexual partners while sitting alone in a tiny flat in front of a computer screen surrounded by pizza boxes. This had of course brought the Temple into the debate. With one in two children dying in infancy, the first and foremost spiritual duty of the people was to produce more children and you cannot produce children without sexual partners. The High Council of the Temple had therefore let it be known that the government must enable the people to interact more regularly, and so Fizzy Coffs became mandatory. It was therefore principally in order to produce children and to prevent them from developing into deranged killers that Trafford found himself picking his way through the emotionally charged litter of a permanently traumatized society in the burning heat of a stinking Sagittarian morning.

So be warned, those of you at home all day may well turn into lonely, friendless, emotional disadvantaged outcasts who can’t interact and end up doing something really dangerous!

Good job it’s only a book!

Netskills Web2practice

Netskills, who provide training for Higher Education institutions, have just brought out a series of Guides to emergent technologies and innovative practice entitled Web2practice. For example have a look at this one on microblogging. Lots of useful advice for remote workers.

(Note: I’ve tried embedding the video (from BlipTV) but I can’t seem to reduce the screen size of it so have used a little work around. If anyone knows how to do it let me know! All the Web2practice videos are available from Bliptv.)

Netskills have also produced guides on:
* Social Media
* RSS
* Collaborative Writing
* Podcasting
* Microblogging

Further topics are planned, including: Social Bookmarking, Blogging, Communications and Digital Identity.

Shortlisted Winner for Remote Worker Awards

Yesterday on my return from a lovely week’s break in Cornwall with the family I found out that I’ve been shortlisted as a winner for the remote worker awards!

This is really exciting stuff! There are 5 people shortlisted for the award I’m up for and they all look worthy candidates, so there’s some tough competition, but it’s still a real honour to have been picked.

There are a lot of prizes available for winners but one of the biggest is a home office. Winning this would really change my working life. It’s been a difficult year for us. My husband lost his job in March and has been at home looking ever since. He recently got a new job, he’d signed the contract and was ready to start, however the Friday before they told him that the post was now being reconsidered! So it’s back to square one for us. Having him and the children at home all the time hasn’t been easy for me, but there are benefits, they are a great bunch!

Anyway the Remote Worker Awards will culminate in a winning ceremony at Cliveden House in Berkshire on 10th September where I’ll find out if I’ve won. I’m not writing my speech yet…but there is no harm in keeping my fingers crossed.

Health and Safety Headache

The words ‘health and safety’ don’t normally conjure up positive images in most people’s minds. Grass we can’t walk on for fear of cutting ourselves, benches we can’t sit on in case we hurt our backs, they’ve even taken away all the magazines in my local doctor’s surgery because they encourage disease to spread! It gets people’s goat up, but we are a Health and Safety obsessed society for a reason…some stuff can be dangerous!

So to avoid getting caught up in a Health and Safety drama it makes sense to know the facts.

Your employer is required by law to ensure that you have a safe environment in which to work under the under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. This applies whether you work in an office, which is under their control, or from another space, that is out of their control.

It’s strange but in the past when I’ve given talks about remote working there is always somebody who asks about Health and Safety. The problem is that most people are not sure of where they stand.

Working Environment

If staff work from home then an employer will really need to do a risk assessment to identify hazards etc.

Business link provide some useful resources on what this entails and typical hazards that might face homeworkers:

• Facilities for remote workers
• Risk assessment – an overview
• Use your home as a workplace

It’s also important that your check your workstation set up: for example check that your chair is adjustable, your computer equipment is safe, VDUs are free from glare and reflections, your keyboard is in the correct position, you are sitting correctly etc. These factors can be considered by self-assessment but if you do have any problems contact your employer. They won’t be able to help you unless you explain what the issue is.

The directgov Web site is also useful and has a good section on computer use.

I have carpal tunnel syndrome and now have a keyboard rest and mouse rest. I’ve also been offered a vertical mouse, though I’m not too keen.

A case study: Location Independent Working

The University of Coventry, Location Independent Working (LIW) project takes Health and Safety pretty seriously and after initial assessment of working environments provide considerable information on procedures. They suggest that:

• Equipment supplied is be regularly tested.
• Employees are provided with information and training on the safe use of equipment.
• Employees are encouraged to take regular breaks.

However ultimately the location independent employee is responsible for day-to-day health and safety issues and for reporting any concerns to their line manager.

Full details are provided in their handbook.

I’ve recently had all my work equipment tested by a specialist electrical testing company. The process took less than half an hour and I know feel confident that I’m not going to blow myself up…at least not while working!!

So health and safety needn’t be a headache as long as you keep it under control.

Following the Gartner Curve

Do you follow the Gartner Hype cycle? Every year they examine the maturity of technologies and trends and plot them on their special five phrase curve. The phases are:

1. Technology Trigger — The first phase of a hype cycle is the “technology trigger” or breakthrough, product launch or other event that generates significant press and interest.
2. Peak of Inflated Expectations — In the next phase, a frenzy of publicity typically generates over-enthusiasm and unrealistic expectations. There may be some successful applications of a technology, but there are typically more failures.
3. Trough of Disillusionment — Technologies enter the “trough of disillusionment” because they fail to meet expectations and quickly become unfashionable. Consequently, the press usually abandons the topic and the technology.
4. Slope of Enlightenment — Although the press may have stopped covering the technology, some businesses continue through the “slope of enlightenment” and experiment to understand the benefits and practical application of the technology.
5. Plateau of Productivity — A technology reaches the “plateau of productivity” as the benefits of it become widely demonstrated and accepted. The technology becomes increasingly stable and evolves in second and third generations. The final height of the plateau varies according to whether the technology is broadly applicable or benefits only a niche market.

They’ve recently released this year’s Hype Cycle report, apparently the largest to date covering 1,650 technologies and trends in 79 technology, topic, and industry area. I haven’t read the report (it costs a small fortune to buy) but there’s quite a lot that’s already been said in the blogosphere.

“Technologies at the Peak of Inflated Expectations during 2009 include cloud computing, e-books (such as from Amazon and Sony) and Internet TV (for example, Hulu), while social software and microblogging sites (such as Twitter) have tipped over the peak and will soon experience disillusionment among enterprise users,” Jackie Fenn, vice president and Gartner Fellow

Microblogging (services like Twitter) is ranked as having “moderate” impact on the market. I personally agree with the ReadWrite Web comment on this:

“We can’t help but feel that Gartner may be underestimating the impact of microblogging. It remarks that services like Twitter enable “new kinds of fast, witty, easy-to assimilate exchanges.” …Gartner does not analyze the over-arching trend of Real-time web that microblogging exemplifies.“

Things to watch out for in the future include Wireless power, Internet TV, augmented reality and surface computers. Much of this translates into the mobile market (especially smart phones) so could have a big effect on remote working.

Social software seems to have tipped past the peak of inflated expectations and in the Social software curve there are lots of examples of things like ideas management (something we looked at for the IWMW event I organise) and activity specific software.

All exciting stuff!

Splendid Streaming at IWMW

We’ve had a go at streaming the plenary talks at the Institutional Web Management Workshops for the last 5 years now. Allowing people at home to watch the talks is all part of the amplified conference role that we see IWMW playing.

The AV unit and one camera at IWMW, by Mindfieldz

This year was no exception and the University of Essex did a stirling job of live streaming talks for us and hosting them on the University Web site.

They had 3 video cameras (with female camera people as Liz Azyan pointed out!) filming the main area and pushed out some really great quality content. We also pulled this content into Nevibes so we could offer it along with all the other IWMW2009 resources (like tweets, slides and live blogging using CoveritLive).

The University of Essex have now added some statistical data about the streaming viewers including a map of viewer location and a time graph of viewers. Numbers peaked at almost 60 viewers during the second morning plenaries.

Map of streaming video viewers

Timings of streaming video viewers

Twitter Comments on the Streaming

There were a lot of Twitter comments on the streaming which were on the whole really encouraging. They also helped us maintain good quality during the three days by pointing out problems such as the mikes being too loud.

The streaming that we currently provide is usually courtesy of our host institution so it can be difficult to offer different outputs and support all users (e.g. Linux users had a few problems). We are aware of these type of issues and do our best to offer as many solutions as are within our means.

What Next?

An archive of each of the plenary talks will be made available soon. Watch the main page video page on the IWMW 2009 Web site for updates.

The Green Eyed Monster: Do you Resent your Remote Colleagues?

Jealousy...by Bah Humbug, Flickr

Maybe there is a new fury bubbling under the skin of many on-site employees?

Maybe they’re secretly filled with jealousy and hatred towards their off-site colleagues?

Maybe they’ve got a stash of voodoo dolls hidden under their desks?

OK, maybe I’ve taken it a a step too far, but an interesting piece in this weeks BNet magazine entitled Remote Working: Our Manager Likes You Better openly talks about the resentment felt by those in-the-office towards those out-of-the-office.

Remember the biblical story of the Prodigal Son? One child stayed home, did all the work and the other one came home and got full honours? Needless to say, the stay-at-home son resented the situation. The same thing is going on in your office whether you want to admit it or not.

Possible complaints by on-site employees include “I’d like to work from home but they (managers) don’t trust me enough“, “We get all the dirty work because we’re close at hand” and “Those people working at home think the world revolves around them“. I like to add a few of my own…”why do remote workers get expenses for social events when we are just expected to attend” and “remote workers get out of things we can’t get out of – like boring staff meetings“.

Having been both an on-site and off-site employee for UKOLN I’d like to clarify that I’ve never felt resented in anyway by those in the office, nor felt any resentment myself towards our remote staff. As I’ve well documented on this blog remote working has it’s own set of challenges, and I’d still say that the majority of people I know do it as a necessity rather as a choice. It isn’t always the easy option it’s depicted as. Different locations of work offer different challenges and different opportunities, that’s just the way it is.

However if there is some tensions between staff then it’s a manager’s job to smooth these over. The BNet article offers a number of handy tips including:

• Be aware of sensitivities, however silly they may seem. Don’t send remote employees news about the pizza you’re bringing in unless there’s a reason.
• Keep your remote team up on office news (not gossip) and keep the home team apprised of what’s happening with those team members who are working elsewhere.
• Don’t discourage the employees that do work together from collaborating and working together in a way that makes sense. If hallway conversation or visiting cubicles gets results, let them visit. Just be sure to keep remote employees into the loop.

Here’s the thing: it is a relationship that needs to be worked at and making sure that issues aren’t being left unsaid is really important.

And if anyone does feel jealous of me they are quite welcome to come over one lunchtime, eat heated-up leftovers and sort out my washing. I’ll take their place in the staff canteen having a catch up with colleagues. Is that a fair swap?

Tweetastic at IWMW2009

I survived!! I think this year’s Institutional Web Management Workshop went really well but as one of our local organisers Keith Brooke put it “it’s a bit hard to gauge when you’re in the thick of things“…and I certainly was in the thick of things! Anyway all the feedback I’ve received so far has been very positive.

There is a lot to be said about the event but there are some fab resources available (for example the IWMW2009 blog and the IWMW2009 event on Slideshare) so on this blog I just want to concentrate on one aspect: What it was like to be a remote attendee?

Now this is a tricky one for me because I wasn’t a remote attendee, I was physically there, but I am trying to get some remote attendees to come forward and talk about their experience – hopefully more on that in another post.

I want to start off by looking at the use of one particular technology as a remote attendee aid….Twitter.

There were a hell of a lot of tweets during the event. A few stats…Twapperkeeper reports 1,614 tweets in the archive and the number is still rising. What the hashtag reports 1,462 tweets, 162 contributors with 43.7% coming from “The Top 10″, only 4.4% are retweets and 36.1% have multiple hashtags. An archive of Tweets and further stats are available from the IWMW 2009 Twitter page on the IWMW Web site.

What is tricky to know is how many of these were remote attendees. A bit of data mining might be possible.

However what is clear is that Twitter helped support remote attendees in quite a few ways:

Providing information

Delegates and remote attendees alike benefited from following the iwmw and iwmwlive accounts. The live account, facilitated by Kirsty McGill, provided live blogging on every plenary and was extremely useful.

Asking questions

On a number of occasions remote attendees asked questions using Twitter. Kirsty McGill, our live blogger, did a great job of asking for and monitoring tweets from remote people. She then asked them at the appropriate moment. Karine Joly has blogged about her experience of asking a question.

Giving Feedback

In a 3 day event there is always bound to be technical mishaps. Twitter was an easy way for remote attendees to keep us informed when things weren’t working exactly as they should. For example when I held a lapel mike a bit too close and deafened everyone! They also pointed out the need for question askers to talk into the mike.

Tweeting on the wall

We gave tags to different sessions which allowed us to pull relevant tweets up on the Twitter wall (we used Twitter Fall). This meant that the ‘remoteness’ of an attendee was invisible.

Tweetfeed

I linked the IWMW2009 blog to the IWMW Twitter account using Tweetfeed. This allowed all posts to be automatically sent out to the Twitter feed and to everyone interested (not just people attending). No worries about spamming people because these were people who had registered because they were interested. In the past we probably would have used the IWMW delegate email for this and missed all remote attendees.

Taking photos

The use of Twitpic meant that photos could go out very quickly and in response to questions. Helpful for those unable to see exactly what was going on.

Creating Community

After the event Chis Gutteridge set up a Southampton developers group using the #sodev tag. There has also been talk of using #iwmc as a tag for the Institutional Web management community.

We also used Netvibes to pull all the IWMW2009 resources together and pulled the tweets in too through CoveritLive.

What was your experience of Twitter like at IWMW?