Everyday, there are new tools that show promise, but many are tried once and forgotten about. Some are clunky or get in the way of collaboration. Others are a solution in need of a problem. Here are some of the best ones that have gone past the trial, and turned into must-have tools that we use every day.

Skype
www.skype.com
Cost: free
Skype is best known as a telephone replacement. Sure, being able to make free skype calls anywhere in the world is nice, but that isn’t the real killer app from a collaboration perspective. The best kept secret about Skype is its use in Instant Messaging. Just like Messenger, AIM, or Google Talk, you can create a text chat bewteen people. You can even create a group chat within your team. The one feature you won’t find elsewhere though, is the ability to bookmark these conversations. This means that if someone is offline, when they return they will see the entire conversation they have missed and are able to catch up. With a team spread over multiple timezones, this is really useful, and you never have to worry about being left out of the conversation because you happen to be offline at the time.

Tokbox
www.tokbox.com
Cost: free
Video conference calls add that human touch to a remote team. If everyone has a webcam installed, Tokbox is a really elegant interface to show a “Brady Bunch” style display of your team during a meeting. We’ve used it with up to 6 people, but in theory, you could have many more. With folks scattered around the continent, being able to talk with them face-to-face makes a big difference! We don’t use this for every call, but from time to time it’s really nice to remind us all that we’re all people working as a team.

Teamspeak
www.teamspeak.com
Cost: free
Skype is great for a short, purpose driven call, but Teamspeak turns voice chat into more of a virtual office. It is client/server software, which means you need hosting, but most Internet companies already have access to servers with extra capacity. Load up the server and you can now have a “push-to-talk” style conversation with your whole team. Have the team hanging out in a Teamspeak channel, and hitting a button is the virtual equivalent to poking your head over the cubicle wall for a quick question. It allows those quick, informal, water-cooler conversations to happen despite the distance. Since it’s a push-to-talk setup, you won’t be burning up bandwidth having a skype call active all day with mostly silence.

Yugma
www.yugma.com
Cost: free
There are many desktop-sharing applications out there, but the good ones like WebEx or GoToMeeting cost a lot of money. Yugma is a free solution with all the features of the commercial solutions, including multiple viewers, and both Windows and Mac compatibility. A software download is only needed for the host, not for clients. Desktop sharing is useful for everything from viewing a powerpoint presentation to having several people doing a code review. One person hosts the meeting, and shares his screen, and everyone else can see, in real-time, what is on that screen. Combined with Teamspeak or a Skype call, and you can really see what we’re talking about.

Google docs
http://docs.google.com/
Cost: free
Google Docs are a great, free way of maintaining your documents or spreadsheets without using Microsoft Office, however there is also a huge advantage to having documents existing online in the cloud instead of within an application on one computer. Collaboration with Google Docs, specifically Google Spreadsheets, is as easy as inviting others to the document. If two (or 5.. or 50) people open a spreadsheet at the same time, they can all edit individual cells and others will see their changes immediately. If your team needs a common checklist, or you need to get information from many people, this is the easiest and most real-time way of setting this up. Google Documents can also have multiple people editing, but the experience isn’t as slick as the cell-locking based system in Spreadsheets.

These are the five that we use and have stuck with over time. There are many others that we have tried, and haven’t found as useful, but other organizations may. Which tools do you use within your work environment?

It seems that @BarackObama stopped using Twitter as of his inauguration, but really, he only has 2 tweets since the election back in November.  (Yes, I know he has taken over the @TheWhiteHouse account, but even that only has a couple of tweets since he has taken the reigns)

I’d love to say that Canadian politicians are making better use of the platform, but sadly, while many of the prominent ones have an account on Twitter, few are using them effectively.  It’s still pretty cool for a casual tweet from your Prime Minister, “Called Mexican President Calderon today”

Regardless, here are some of the big ones in the Twitterverse.

Federal Party Leaders:

• @PMHarper – Prime Minister Stephen Harper
• @JackLayton – NDP Leader Jack Layton
• @M_Ignatieff – Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff
• @gillesduceppe – Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe
• @elizabethmay – Green Party Leader Elizabeth May

Other Notable Federal Politicians and Groups:

• @BobRaeMP – Bob Rae
• @LiberalTour – Liberal Party

Canadian Premiers:

• @g_campbell – BC Premier Gordon Campbell
• @EdStelmach – Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach

Provincial Representatives:

• @TimHudak – Tim Hudak (Ontario) [HT: Joseph Lavoie]

Other Local Politicians:

• @MayorMiller – Toronto Mayor David Miller
• @MayorGregor – Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson

Let me know if I’m missing anyone in the comments below, and I’ll add them to the list!

Adding in some custom plugins built by Mike Schinkel, and a slick theme created by Todd Henwood and Bill Erickson, we’ve created a really cool site with all of the features you would expect from a mainstream site.  The best part about it, is that it’s all built on top of a Wordpress base.  Taking advantage of the ability to extend the Wordpress code using plugins and custom themes, we’ve created the ability for the editors to pull the best content from the blogs within those channels and present it in a way that can drive traffic and create a more mainstream audience.

That is the next great frontier for Wordpress.  In the coming weeks, Wordpress 2.7 will be released which is a huge refinement of an already robust product.  With this release, Wordpress graduates from the realm of the geeky blogger, into a mainstream content tool. 

When sites like these portals, or mainstream news and magazine sites like my last project, Green Living Online, have the tools the Wordpress provides, anything is possible!  When I look back on some of the large media sites I have built in the past (like TSN and DiscoveryChannel), there aren’t many (any?) features needed that couldn’t be provided within Wordpress. 

I’m not suggesting that the folks at CTV should be rebuilding their tools from scratch, but for people out there looking to create competing products, you’d be hard-pressed to find a tool that provides all of the functionality, and the support community that is found here.

We’ve heard how todays economy affects Joe the Plumber and Joe Six-pack, but what about JoeTek?

This economic downturn has been compared to the Great Depression in the 1930’s, but the technology sector as we know it today wasn’t around at that time.  The dot-com bubble bursting 8 years ago was more of an indicator for how things will shape up for us in the coming months and years.

Economic cycles are to be expected.  They are typically a good thing for our industry – a filtering, a culling of the herd.  The weakest are taken out of the picture, so that the strong can thrive on the other side.  The problem is that some really good companies will not make it, and some really bad companies will. 

We are certainly not as vulnerable as we were in 2000.  We haven’t had the crazy IPOs and unrealistic valuations that plagued us in the 1990’s.  In fact, the big drivers of technology growth in the past 8 years were born out of the last recession – blogging, social media… The poster-children of tech today were all conceived during the last downturn, and grew through venture instead of going public.  We’ve learned from our mistakes in the 90’s and protected ourselves in advance.

The bottom line is that the technology industry depends on the health of the economy as a whole.  The hardware and software industries rely on the banks, manufacturers and big business to buy and upgrade thousands of PC’s on a regular basis.  The web industry depends on advertising dollars from traditional businesses to sustain itself. 

Without health in the overall economy, the tech industry will suffer.  When non-tech businesses are faced with tightening budgets, web marketing, advertising and capital expenditures for upgrades are among the most vulnerable for cuts.

So what should tech companies do in the face of decreasing budgets all around?  In the absence of client business, if you’ve got resources on the bench, now is the time to innovate. 

In the last downturn, web developers with too much time on their hands invented blogging, social networking, and ajax.  They turned static web pages into tools that have been used to connect people and change how we are productive.  YouTube launched.  Facebook connected people.  Even Google hit their stride and overturned the industry by launching AdSense and AdWords during the downturn. 

So, what will you invent as the economy crashes this time?

This merger has been long rumoured, and is really aimed at combining Yahoo and MSN’s Search products to compete head on against Google’s Search product. There will probably be discussions about combining other areas as an offshoot, but the real story here is search. Microsoft needs to join forces with Yahoo in order to take on Google.

On the content side if this agreement happens, I would suspect that at some point there will be some combination of the Yahoo portal with MSN/Sympatico to aggregate content acquisition between both companies. Google has not competed in this space so this would be a lower priority for them, but they could realize some cost savings by going this route.

As far as branding, I suspect the folks at MSN are probably a little worried this morning. They are not going to get rid of the Yahoo name, but could drop MSN, since that brand is quite dilute already.

We’ll see what happens!

“This bill will allow the police and CSIS adapt to new communications technology. Telephone and internet service providers will be required, subject to vigorous privacy safeguards, to include an interception capability in new technology, and make subscriber contact information available on request to designated law enforcement officials”

This is yet another example of treating the public as guilty before proven innocent. Essentially, he is asking ISP’s and Telephone companies to search and record the activities of all of their customers; collectively, all of the Canadian population… just in case we happen to be doing something wrong.

We don’t allow officers to randomly search people as they walk through Union Station. Why is randomly searching people online allowed?

The folks at Digital Ethnography have done a great job of breaking it down into a quick 5 minute video that walks us through it. Enjoy! (Video after the jump)
Click here to view the embedded video.

If you are good at what you do, in a corporate environment, you will be rewarded with promotions. It is a great irony that companies will take the best producers and promote them to the point where they are not directly producing. Depending on your personal strengths and aspirations, you do have some choices.

Why do companies promote?

The bottom line is that companies that have a great developer, want many great developers. It is common to look at the team and say: �It would take Bob a few hours to build this. Why is it that Bill hasn�t finished it after three days?� It is natural to try to get the high producer to work with the average developers to try to help them to become better producers. They will reward you by placing more responsibility on your plate as a team lead or manager.

The irony is that as you gain more responsibility, you have less time doing what you do best, the stuff that got you there. The real question for you, is what role do you want to play.

Career path choices

As a valued member of that team, you do have a choice, and it will require some real soul-searching to figure out which direction you should go. You will have to think about what your long term goals are. You want to take into account your career aspirations, your biggest strengths and weaknesses, and what you see yourself doing in the future.

As clich� as this sounds, you need to picture yourself five or ten years down the road and decide what role you want to be playing in the future. That desire is as unique as a fingerprint, and there are almost as many paths to get to that end point.

Try to visualize yourself working 5 years from now. What kind of work are you doing? What projects are you working on? Are you spending your days cracking through technical challenges or are you spending time with co-workers, helping them to crack through technical challenges? Although the world is never this black and white, think about this: if you had a choice between spending all of your time hands-on, or all of your time managing and thinking strategically, which would you choose?

Try to identify that goal as clearly as you can, but don�t panic that you are painting yourself into a corner. As with anything in life, you may change your mind in the coming years, but you really do need an honest starting point to set your direction. Here are some of the directions you may take:

1. Stay where you are: Some people don�t like coming up with the ideas. They don�t want to lead a team, nor do they want to be responsible for the actions of someone else. If you would rather focus on delivering solid bug-free code, then no-one is forcing you to take on these responsibilities.
2. Chart a different course: Maybe you see yourself doing something different altogether. I have seen people leave development and move into all kinds of non-related fields from becoming a high-school teacher to opening up a corner convenience store. If this is your long term goal, then be honest with yourself and work towards that.
3. Management: If you really like the team environment and enjoy helping your co-workers through problems, then you might want to look at a management path. In this role, you take on the responsibility for the productivity and quality of the product your team is producing, and you are able to touch more of the technology within that group by not digging as deeply. You help others within your team to grow as developers and as individuals.
4. Architect: If you have a real passion for the technology, and coaching and mentoring people is secondary, an Architect role is for you. In this role, you can set coding standards and you get to sink your teeth into some of the larger, more complex projects within your organization. You will focus on setting up and documenting procedures and best practices. You will help to guide your organization to a better product.

The real key here is to build on your strengths and the things you enjoy (Most of us enjoy doing things that we are good at). If you have a passion around what you are doing on a day to day basis, you are more likely to succeed, be noticed, and have a fulfilling day at work.

These choices may depend heavily on the organizational structure of your current company. Within your company, there may be several of these options available within one role, or it may be divided even further. If through this exercise, the role you are looking for doesn�t exist within your organization, you may want to consider your next move.

As you move on, whichever direction you choose, keep these goals in mind. Crystallize the vision of what you are aiming towards in the coming years and work towards that goal. It isn�t always presented in terms of a promotion, or a change in role. Sometimes, you can move your career in a direction with a choice of one project over another, or doing some extra research in a specific field. If you are building on your strengths, you can take the things you would like to be doing and make them a strength over time.

This is not an easy task, and should not be something you rush through. After going through this process, I chose the management path, but at the time, I really struggled with the notion that I may not be able to be as innovative as I had been. I eventually came to the conclusion that I could continue to have great ideas and be innovative, but I could accomplish much more by coming up with the ideas, and getting someone else to build it. I could be building 3 or 4 of my great ideas at a time, making use of a team. This was my deciding point, you need to come up with yours.

First of all, all of the evidence suggests that technology is indeed having a rebirth. The industry as a whole has been somewhat dormant for the first few years of this century. The dramatic slowdown seen in Silicon Valley is eclipsed by an almost complete halt in the rest of the world. Progress has happened at a snails pace, but even at that pace, some key innovations have defined this next phase of Internet growth.

For those of you that have left for greener pastures during the drought, know that there are opportunities once again as the next generation of the web (commonly referred to as Web 2.0) takes over. There are definately some things that have changed and you need to be aware of those changes before you start looking for your next web startup.

1. Changes in development platforms: Web development has moved into two main camps: ASP.Net and PHP. There are others that simmer below the surface (like Ruby on Rails and Python), but these are the main two. Both of these technologies have evolved to allow plenty of flexibility, high efficiency, and rapid development. Java has all but disappeared, mainly used in legacy applications.

2. Leaning on the Client: Client-side code using Javascript is more important than ever, allowing real-time interaction with the user without resorting to a round-trip to the server. As client computers in general have become more powerful, we can use that power to save users some aggrevation.

3. No more reloads: Surfing the web these days, you can�t help notice that the dynamics of the web have changed. This is primarily due to a technology called AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML), which allows content to update by using Javascript calls to the server behind the scenes, so that you can update your page without reloading. Take a look at Google Suggest as an example of what I�m talking about here (As you type in your search terms, suggested queries show up). Another great exampe is Digg which dynamically updates the count when you Digg a story (You�ll need to create a free account and log in for this to work).

4. Web Desktop: Bookmark pages such as Pageflakes and Google Personalized Home allow you to drag and drop content to rearrange your personal portal page (try it, it�s pretty cool). If you are logged in, you can go one step further and each time you move something around, a Javascript call behind the scenes notifies the server so that your changes are saved for subsequent visits. While these sites are relatively self-contained, it opens up possibilities for every new company, product or startup.

5. Content by the people: The days of �Big Media� are gone, well at least in Internet circles. Self publishing tools allow anyone to publish quality content without needing a contract with CNN, MSNBC or the Wall Street Journal. In fact, blogging has the ability to bypass the editorial process of these Media organizations and really effect change, as seen in recent elections and war coverage on the Internet. Social bookmarking sites such as Digg and del.icio.us make this dispersed content easier to find and filter.

6. Syndication through RSS: RSS (or Really Simple Syndication) is simply a specially formatted file (using XML) to provide a catalog of articles that are available on the site. The real spin off of this is that RSS readers are commonly available to allow users to be notified when content on their favorite sites change.

7. Bandwidth and Storage is cheap: Well, it still costs, but it is cheaper than it was and getting cheaper every day. Hosting providers offer tons of disk space, and most users have broadband connections to take advantage of this. Photo sharing (such as Flickr) and video sharing (YouTube) are the norm, allowing users to distribute their content through these standardized tools.

8. Content doesn�t neccesarily mean text: The Internet has fulfilled its promise to be truly multimedia, allowing content to be produced as Photos (such as photoblogs), Audio (podcasts) or Video (referred to as Video Podcasts or �Vlogging�). Combined with RSS, users can �subscribe� to these feeds to automatically download these �shows� or �updates� as they become available, and even synchronize them to your portable devices such as an iPod.

9. Sparse design: The new breed of web sites and applications make much more generous use of white space and combinations of bold and neutral colors. This new look and feel can give any new site a cutting-edge feel, while ignoring these trends can make a site look dated.

10. The Web is run by technologists: The biggest lesson learned from the last bubble is that Venture Capitalists can�t judge technology. In today�s boom, startup costs have dropped to the point where VC funding is less necessary, and startups are very weary of accepting that funding with the wrong type of investor. The myth of the �New Economy� has been dropped. In essence, it is no longer the dotcom�s vying for the VC�s attention, it is the other way around.

The Internet industry looks very different today than it did 5 years ago. It has matured. It has evolved. It has learned from its mistakes. In answer to your question, �Is the technology industry is ready for a resurgence?�, I say that it is, but don�t expect to to look like the 1990�s. That day is gone, and a new day dawns.

Once you add staff responsibility to the mix, demands on your time will be spread over your other tasks. In addition to your hands-on functional role developing, or building and maintaining architecture, you now have the added responsibility of managing your staff. Managing their workload, assigning tasks, authorizing vacations, performance reviews and everything else takes time away from your technical work.

The key to managing this is to be realistic about the demands on your time. If you have 100% of your time at your disposal, in the past, you had almost all of that time for your functional role. The rule of thumb is that for every person you have reporting to you, he or she will take 10% of your time. I call this the “10% rule of Managing Staff”.

In other words, if you have 2 people reporting to you, you will probably spend about 20% of your time managing them, and 80% of your time performing your functional role. If you have 5 people, then your time is spent half-and-half. Any more than 7-8 people and you are essentially a full-time manager. It is unrealistic to expect to do your functional role effectively in only 20% of your time.

Obviously, this is an estimation. Some staff members and some roles will require more supervision, and others less. Some organizations require more onerous administration work associated with staff, while others have very little. At certain times of the year this percentage will increase (during staff reviews or at year-end), and at others it will decrease (when things are really busy and everyone is focussed on meeting a deadline), but take it as an estimation and it will help you to plan your group.

Why does this matter? Every geek that I know would like to stay in touch with the technology. How strongly you believe in that will determine whether you are looking to manage large groups or small ones. Know that if your team grows beyond 4 or 5 people, you will spend less time working on your own tasks. That doesn’t mean you are removed from the technology however, keep in mind that you will spend more time helping your team with their tasks, and your team will be able to accomplish more with more people, allowing you to touch more variety of projects. It just means that you will not be as hands-on.

It also means that it is unreasonable for you to manage more than 10 people. Now, don’t get me wrong, it is possible – I’ve done it. But if your group starts to grow beyond that level, it is time for you to look at breaking up your group into sub-teams. If you create three sub-teams, each with a team lead, then you only have three people reporting to you, and the three team leads each have three or four people reporting to them.

Always keep the 10% rule in mind. If you have 7 people reporting to you, and can’t figure out why you can never get anything done, now you know. If you have 12 people reporting to you, and are completely buried, now you know.

This rule also helps you to evaluate changes you are proposing to your organization. If you are completely buried with 12 people reporting to you, and your plan is to promote one of those 12 people to manage them, now you have 1 person, and that person has 11. You haven’t solved anything, all you’ve done is moved your workload to someone else. Always keep this in mind when planning your time.