Obrero de las comumunicaciones y artesano de la innnovación.

Every week we bring you fresh workspaces from the Lifehacker Workspace Show and Tell pool, all supplied by you—the awesome Lifehacker readership. Today we're highlighting the 25 most popular workspaces of 2009.

Featured workspaces cover a wide range of designs, budgets, and occupations. We've featured entire offices, individual offices, home offices, workspaces, work benches, and every possible configuration of places therein. Wherever you get things done, we love to see and hear about it.

The following are the 25 most popular workspaces of 2009. Each featured workspace includes additional photos and sometimes video of the workspace, so click on the name of the workspace to check out additional photos and information about it.

If you want to give your workspace a shot at fame in 2010, make sure to check out our guide to photographing your workspace for fame and fortune and then then post it to the Lifehacker Workspace Show and Tell pool!

Before and After: Barren Attic to Programmer's Paradise

One of the most popular workspaces we featured in 2009, Mitch's home office was a makeover to behold. He totally gutted his attic and rebuilt the entire thing as a programmer's paradise.

Floating Monitors and Hidden Peripherals

Lifehacker reader acflynn put together a home office with a lot of functional style. The small shelf beneath his monitors actually houses his network gear.

Office on the Forest's Edge

What can you say about reader Peter Frazier's office? It's awesome. It's built into a cliff with a scenic view. It's got grass growing on the roof!

Building The Ultimate Dorm Desk

When you're a DIYer with a desire to build an epic desk for your dorm room, it helps to have access to good tools and materials. One Lifehacker reader used great gear and forward-looking design to craft an ultimate dorm desk.

The Trap Door Desk

How do you maintain a completely uncluttered workspace, but also keep access to basic tools and peripherals? You build, as Lifehacker reader Roitsch did, a desk with a large storage compartment in the middle.

The Computer Cabinet Office

Lifehacker reader Steve Price had a two-fold problem. His previous desk was short on space for all his monitors and the noise and heat generated by having all his computers under the desk was unpleasant. By taking advantage of an alcove in his computer room he was able to cut down on the heat and noise substantially.

The Well-Planned Dorm Room

Just because you're in college doesn't mean that your room has to be a cluttered mess of schoolwork, piled with unwashed clothes, and overseen by John Belushi posters. Check out today's featured workspace to see a well planned room.

Custom Wire Management for Multi-Monitor Bliss

Brian Connolly was tired of cramped desks and messy wiring, so he built his own desk and wire management system to have the spacious and tidy spread he desired.

The Mac-tacular Lair

Lifehacker reader m2j2 has invested quite a bit of time, creativity, and cold, hard cash into his office setup. The result is an office that is not only visually appealing but packed with enough shiny tech toys to cover all sorts of work and play. His office is set up to handle just about anything he wants to throw at it, short of planning a zombie apocalypse resistance, although don't quote me on that—for all we know, the office is in an abandoned missile silo.

Unidentified Floating Desk

Brett wanted to get his monitor off his desk, but didn't want to waste money on an expensive mounting arm. With the addition of some lumber and LEDs, problem solved!

The Innovative Office

Lifehacker reader and architect Jeremy Levine has a spacious and well lit office that will likely be the envy of cubicle-dweller and telecommuter alike. Jeremy's office features a vaulted ceiling with exposed recycled wood beams and a combines clerestory and transom windows to bring in a huge amount of natural light and create an expansive work environment.

The Hidden Cable Workspace

Lifehacker reader Tomas Carrillo—responsible for sharing the handy chain sinnet method of cable tidying with us—has the kind of neat workspace you'd expect from a guy with that kind of cable wrangling knowledge.

The Triple-Monitor Haven

Combine dark colors, ample desk space, and an arc of viewing pleasure, and you've got a workspace dear to many a geek's heart. Throw in a few toys like an Ambient Orb and a break now and then to play some video games on a nearly wraparound display and the deal is sealed.

Handcrafted and Free Floating: The Wraparound Workspace

One of the best ways to cut down on cable clutter is to get all your equipment and cables right off the floor, so cables can never drape across the floor in the first place. Louis' workspace uses a system of shelves to keep everything in a position where the cords travel the shortest distance possible.

The Quad Monitor Alcove

Lifehacker reader Mandrake has assembled quite a setup for himself. From the custom ergonomic chair to the tilting work surface of the ergonomic desk, the workspace is geared for long term comfort.

The Serene Workspace

Lifehacker reader Schodts has been tweaking and tuning his workspace setup for some time. The current incarnation is a pleasing multi-monitor setup with plenty of space to work. Thanks to a wall mount for the TV and a repurposed glass table top turned monitor shelf the common desktop fixtures like monitor stands, phones, and pencil cups have been lifted off the desk freeing up more space.

Before and After: The Wire Loom Workspace

This featured workspace belongs to Lifehacker reader tehdik. He was pretty happy with this workspace, save for the enormous tangle of wires under his desk. Thanks to its sleek glass surface, he could see the mess not only across the room but every minute he was at his work station. Finally he'd had enough of the mess and ordered some supplies to make short work of it.

The Attic Playground

If we had to guess how Lifehacker reader edgefactor627 came about the idea of having such a pile of goodies in his attic, we'd have to go with him having a strong desire to serve as a beacon of fun for the whole neighborhood, drawn to the signal of condensed awesomeness in the highest room in his house.

The Floating Shelves and Hidden Cables Workspace

Lifehacker reader msweston took some basic building blocks from IKEA and assembled them into a sleek workspace with well manged cables and a tidy layout.

Before and After: The Loft Workstation

Lifehacker reader aloftindenver lives, shockingly enough, in a a loft in Denver. They've been cataloging their adventures in furnishing the loft-largely by creating their own designs and furniture-at their blog A Loft In Denver. While we'd highly recommend reading over the entire blog, especially if you're into loft living and modern design, what really caught our eye is the amazingly sleek workspace they built from scratch.

The Mac Lover's Bedroom

This featured workspace pulls off the office-as-bedroom tact without introducing clutter or bulk into the bedroom. Tucked neatly in the corner and with dual monitors to boot, reader ryopang can get work done in style in his bedroom office

Before and After: The Benefits of Basic Tidying and Cable Management

It doesn't float, spin, flash, or appear to contain glowing alien spore, but today's featured workspace gets the job done in a very practical and tidy way. Lifehacker reader Dani Cela just needed to tame the mess of cables at his feet and tidy up.

White Space and LEDs

This featured workspace is an example of how you don't have to spend a fortune to have a fun and functional workspace with a solid dose of style. Obviously Apple products don't come cheap, so we'll discount the presence of a gorgeous and pricey Apple screen as part of the total cost of the space. The rest of the space is composed of simple and inexpensive items, like $89 IKEA Vika Gruvan desktop and a comically large clothespin for temporally stashing important papers.

Land of the Colorful Cubes

Cubes are the antithesis of individuality. Tiny, colorless combs in the hive of industry, right? Not if you work at The Balcom Agency in Fort Worth, Texas.

The Media Mecca

What do you do when you and your roommate are media-loving computer geeks? Why, turn your mutual living room into a mecca of computing and media magic, of course!

Best Featured Workspace of 2009?

Before and After: Barren Attic to Programmer's Paradise
Floating Monitors and Hidden Peripherals
Office on the Forest's Edge
Building The Ultimate Dorm Desk
The Trap Door Desk
The Computer Cabinet Office
The Well-Planned Dorm Room
Custom Wire Management for Multi-Monitor Bliss
The Mac-tacular Lair
Unidentified Floating Desk
The Innovative Office
The Hidden Cable Workspace
The Triple-Monitor Haven
Handcrafted and Free Floating: The Wraparound Workspace
The Quad Monitor Alcove
The Serene Workspace
Before and After: The Wire Loom Workspace
The Attic Playground
The Floating Shelves and Hidden Cables Workspace
Before and After: The Loft Workstation
The Mac Lover's Bedroom
Before and After: The Benefits of Basic Tidying and Cable Management
White Space and LEDs
Land of the Colorful Cubes
The Media Mecca

View Results
Share This

Send an email to Jason Fitzpatrick, the author of this post, at wnfba@yvsrunpxre.pbzjason@lifehacker.com.

Aquí la lista de los espacios de trabajo mejor evaluados, más prácticos, bonitos y entretenidos. Me da la impresión no son caros de hacer, sobre todo con los precios de hoy día de los lcds. Es más difífil dar con el arte de esconder los cables que sumar pantallas. Veré cual será mi config para 2010.

We all know it: Polish that resume all you want, but it's gonna be "read" for 10 seconds, tops. So it makes a lot of sense to ditch the resume altogether, and create a chart instead.

Via Patrick Dubois comes two examples. The first, above, is a graphic timeline with a couple of charts. A stickler for infographics would point out that the heights of the charts don't really correspond to any data--surely there's a way to fudge that with an axis, and make them into real graphs (this also illustrates the pitfalls of graphing your resume for a bunch of design geeks--the design better be tight). But nonetheless, it all works well enough.

The second example is somewhat more straightforward and utilitarian--it's basically a subway stop map, of the sort that has been used to graph everything from the best movies of all-time to the year's hottest Webtrends. These graphs are obviously good for showing the intersections between otherwise unaffiliated strands of information. Leaving aside the youthful arrogance of quoting Ayn Rand at the bottom of the key, the only confusing part here is the rather muddled timeline--it would have worked a lot better if the lines were rearranged to make the time periods of each strand easier to discern in parallel.

 

 

Some interesting experiments. The only dilemma is getting the right words onto these charts to explain exactly what all this stuff means. (What, for example, is APAC forensics?) Ergo, probably the smartest way to pull all this off is to insert charts at germane points of a resume, thus providing some context for things you'd like to highlight.

For other interesting but also less successful attempts at graphic resumes, check out this post.

[Via VisualThinkMap]

Related Stories:

Topics: Design, infographic, info graphic, data viz, data visualisation, graphic design, Information Design, resumes, jobs, getting hired, Innovation, Technology, Patrick Dubois, Ayn Rand, Business, Job Searching, Jobs and Labor

Alguna vez un amigo hizo un CV que tenía dos columnas y nos preguntabamos cuan disruptivo sería. En realidad eramos un par de ingenieros pensando que poner dos columnas en vez de una era diseño. Pasó el tiempo y si hoy recibiera un CV en forma de infografia como los que salen aquí, sin duda me dentendría a mirarlo.

6 Tips For Using Google Wave On Your First Project

November 9th, 2009 (1:00pm) Will Kelly 28 CommentsTweet This (263)

As Google is issuing Wave invites in a steady trickle, those fortunate enough to have an account are trying to figure out how this new tool might fit into their workflow and help them better communicate and collaborate with their teams and clients.

While the small number of people who actually have an account right now is probably going to be the first hurdle for many teams who would like to try it out on a live project, I count myself among the lucky ones who got a Google Wave invite early and spread my nominations amongst some colleagues and clients.

One of my clients to whom I sent a nomination wanted to try it out on our current project, so I thought I would share some of the early lessons we learned and some tips from my initial dip into using Google Wave for a real client project.

1. Set suitable expectations. Despite the months of buzz, and blogosphere- and Twitterverse-wide clamoring for Google Wave invites, the product is still in preview and has some rough edges. Therefore, it does all parties good to be realistic, even if everybody is psyched to be the first kid on their block to use it on a live project. If your experience is anything like mine, you’ll also encounter bouts of slowness, messages to refresh Google Wave, and perhaps even the random browser crash. Your project team’s level of tolerance for such things might vary.
2. Do a dry run with a Wave. The Wave concept is definitely a new model for many. It took me an impromptu “dry run” with my client for us to truly grasp the Wave concept and see how it could shape our online collaboration. For example, I could see how Wave could be used to keep all project information and communications online and out of our already cluttered inboxes, and it was great to able to see my client paste text as well as type into a Wave in real-time.
3. Take control of your Waves. It’s easy to get a little excited and end up creating Waves for all sorts of things, but you need to take control of the conversation in Google Wave, instead of letting Google Wave take charge of your conversations. For my project, we decided on one Wave per project document, for the sake of organization.
4. Use folders and tags. While the Inbox Zero and GTD crowd have yet to full plant their stakes in Google Wave, I must say that the use of folders and tags is prudent, especially because while the Wave platform breaks so much new ground, but folders and tags are concepts are familiar to many. I ended up creating a project-specific folder for all the Waves associated with the client project. My use of tags also came further into play as a tool to fine-tune my own organization. A simple tip is to remember you can resize the navigation pane to accommodate your folder list as it grows. By default, your folder list may not fully appear in the navigation pane.
5. Consider whether to use live editing or attachments. Google Wave melds email and word processing together. Thus, it is important to decide whether you want to collaborate on documents directly in Google Wave or via file attachments. Unfortunately, at this time Google Wave lacks version control for file attachments (thus putting the feature at the top of my wish list for a Google Wave extension). My client and I decided to work with file attachments for the project documents and write directly in Google Wave for direct communications with each other.
6. Have a Plan B. It’s cool to get jazzed as an early adopter, but if Google Wave isn’t enhancing productivity and communications, be sure that you have a fall back plan in case it end up causing more problems than it is worth.

While my initial entry into Google Wave on a real client project was really just scratching the surface of this new collaboration platform, I do see a lot of potential. However, with its rough edges, it may not be the collaboration platform for everyone just yet. Personally, I am looking towards more Google Wave extensions and gadgets going live, because my initial experience tells me that they are going to be key providers of critical functionality and user experience.

If you’re looking for more info on Wave, check out the report “Google Wave Explained” over on our subscription research service, GigaOM Pro.

He usado Google Wave hace un par de semanas de manera más activa y sin duca comparto estos puntos para tener presente. Ojo con las expectativas y denle un dry run a los proyectos iniciales para ir ajustando procedimientos.

Interesante ver la iteración de una metodología en base a una manera tradicional de hacer las cosas que no funcionó para un desarrollo específico, en este caso el de software. En la actualidad creo esto es aplicable a muchas más cosas que la creación de software, sobre todo en casos de innovación donde las iteraciones en base a prototipos son centrales.

What Is Agile?

Agile methodology is an approach to project management, typically used in software development. It helps teams respond to the unpredictability of building software through incremental, iterative work cadences, known as sprints. But before discussing agile methodologies further, it’s best to first turn to the methodology that inspired it: waterfall, or traditional sequential development.

Where Did Agile Come From?

In 1970, Dr. Winston Royce presented a paper entitled “Managing the Development of Large Software Systems,” which outlined his ideas on sequential development. In essence, his presentation asserted that a project could be developed much like an automobile on an assembly line, in which each piece is added in sequential phases. This means that every phase of the project must be completed before the next phase can begin. Thus, developers first gather all of a project’s requirements, then complete all of its architecture and design, then write all of the code, and so on. There is little, if any, communication between the specialized groups that complete each phase of work.

It’s easy to see how this development agile methodology is far from optimized. First of all, it assumes that every requirement of the project can be identified before any design or coding occurs. Put another way, do you think you could tell a team of developers everything that needed to be in a piece of software before it was up and running? Or would it be easier to describe your vision to the team if you could react to functional software? Many software developers have learned the answer to that question the hard way: At the end of a project, a team might have built the software it was asked to build, but, in the time it took to create, business realities have changed so dramatically that the product is irrelevant. In that scenario, a company has spent time and money to create software that no one wants. Couldn’t it have been possible to ensure the end product would still be relevant before it was actually finished?

Why Agile?

Agile development methodology attempts to provide many opportunities to assess the direction of a project throughout the development lifecycle. This is achieved through regular cadences of work, known as sprints or iterations, at the end of which teams must present a shippable increment of work. Thus by focusing on the repetition of abbreviated work cycles as well as the functional product they yield, agile methodology could be described as “iterative” and “incremental.” In waterfall, development teams only have one chance to get each aspect of a project right. In an agile paradigm, every aspect of development — requirements, design, etc. — is continually revisited throughout the lifecycle. When a team stops and re-evaluates the direction of a project every two weeks, there’s always time to steer it in another direction.

The results of this “inspect-and-adapt” approach to development greatly reduce both development costs and time to market. Because teams can gather requirements at the same time they’re gathering requirements, the phenomenon known as “analysis paralysis” can’t really impede a team from making progress. And because a team’s work cycle is limited to two weeks, it gives stakeholders recurring opportunities to calibrate releases for success in the real world. In essence, it could be said that the agile development methodology helps companies build the right product. Instead of committing to market a piece of software that hasn’t even been written yet, agile empowers teams to optimize their release as it’s developed, to be as competitive as possible in the marketplace. In the end, a development agile methodology that preserves a product’s critical market relevance and ensures a team’s work doesn’t wind up on a shelf, never released, is an attractive option for stakeholders and developers alike.

El microblogging corporativo es una tremenda oportunidad, creo el servicio màs simple es la alternativa a seguir, y de ahi ir construyendo segùn se necesite. Aparentemente Yammer es la mejor alternativa en este sentido.

An Enterprise Micro-blogging Comparison: Yammer, Socialcast, Present.ly… and SocialWok

12 comments  

By Mike Brevoort on October 14, 2009

 

I’ve spent the last several weeks diving into many of the “enterprise”/private SaaS microblogging services available (a.k.a Twitter for the enterprise). This all began when I was trying out the new “social” features of Confluence. I really like confluence, and I like the new features like status updates and following other users, but it still is a bit limite

So I started poking around and tried out SocialText and my first impression was that it felt disheveled; it’s much more than a micro-blogging platform and more comparable to Confluence in fact. I decided to turn my focus on the more pure play microblogging apps. So I began a series of twitter searches to see what people were mentioning most with respect to “enterprise twitter”, “micro-blogging”, etc. So I decided to take a look at: Yammer, .com">Socialcast and Present.ly.

I created accounts in each of these and invited a couple coworkers. Here’s my quick take on each service.

 

Yammer

Overall Yammer has a very low barrier to entry, easy to register and easy to begin contributing. The feed can display as threaded or mixed chronological (like Twitter). The threaded view is only a single level threading though. Yammer comes in three levels: Basic (free), Silver ($3/user/mo) and Gold ($5/user/mo) and only has a SaaS hosting model so there is no longer a behind the firewall optio

Yammer segments your network strictly by email domain and you cannot invite members outside of your domain unless you are at a paid level. At the Basic level each user “owns” their data where with the paid version the user owns the data and you can’t get an export of the data unless you are at the Gold level.

Yammer’s desktop client is mediocre and the search capability is basically dysfunctional. There is a 3rd party Mac OS native application called Gabble that is a big improvement over the official yammer desktop client. You have a threaded view capability but no search capability. There’s a Firefox extension that works much like the Twitter extension that works well to keep you in the loop announcing “YAM” every time a new message was posted and twitter integration allowing twitter updates to flow into Yammer if you add the tag #yam to your tweet. There’s several other extension that I didn’t try. Yammer’s new iPhone app is really, really good. There’s a push capability and the ability to post photos. One of my coworkers said the 3rd party Android app worked well, but as I tried to find a link for it at nullwire all of the information is gone and the site is pretty much stripped.

Yammer’s group capability allows for public or private groups and what is really nice is the ability for each user to specify notification preferences for each group (email, IM or SMS). The profile has a good mix of data but doesn’t allow for custom fields. There’s also a very nice self directed org chart feature that allows each user to specify who they report to, manage and work with. I did not try the API.

 

Socialcast

Next up SocialCast, more of a Friendfeed for the enterprise, and although missing a few key features, there’s something about the app that makes me want to like it. Maybe it’s how responsive and friendly the team are (thanks @carrieyoung @socialcast); I don’t know. This week Socialcast released a new version that included a a UI overhaul which is MUCH better making it the slickest application of the lot. They also launched a Social Business Intelligence capability that looks really compelling. With Socialcast you own your own data and can request a full data export even in the free version. They offer two versions: Basic (Free, SaaS) and Enterprise (Behind the firewall virtual appliance, price? offered as SaaS as well?). Even in the basic version you can “claim” your administration rights and then set your theme, upload a custom logo, manage various metadata and view reports. You can also send a broadcast messages to the entire community.

In Socialcast you can create custom streams based on people or tags/keywords. There is similar group functionality as in Yammer, except better with the ability to import feeds from the likes of Twitter, Googe Reader etc.. a la Friendfeed. That said, Socialcast doesn’t have the custom notification settings I liked in Yammer. The profile is similar to Yammer though you can add custom profile questions.

The desktop app is functional, but bland from a UI perspective. The search works much better than Yammer’s desktop search. They have an iPhone optimized mobile site that works well, but no native mobile apps *yet. They do have a nice Google gadget though that’s perfect for those organizations using Google Apps. The REST API looks very capable.

 

Present.ly

I spent the least amount of time using Present.ly though it is a very capable service as well. There is a free SaaS version and an enterprise behind the firewall version with perpetual licenses by number of users. Even the free version has a superior array of configurability allowing you to set custom mail servers, LDAP servers, etc. There’s a nice array of apps including an iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows mobile versions. I did discover that if you upload a video file (in this case an avi) that Present.ly would process it and render in an integrated player – that was sweet.

 

SocialWok

At the tail end of my research I stumbled upon SocialWok – basically a social app for Google Apps that runs on Google App Engine. Since we use Google Apps internally I was excited by the prospect of this app. With many thousands of companies using Google Apps, already having taken the SaaS cloud plunge, I believe SocialWok is in an incredible sweet spot. IMO there’s still some key areas of development to be done, specifically there are not private groups and though the UI is a blatant (and intentional) Google copy it’s still rough around the edges in places. However, the core functionality is there and there’s a solid foundation to build on. I’m certainly going to keep my eye on SocialWok.

Overall I learned a lot from my survey of these services. Yammer was the simplest to use and had a stable of applications and even some 3rd party apps. They seem to have the most momentum and the largest user base. Thus you have to pay for data “ownership”, the ability to export, etc. Socialcast in my mind is the most exciting given their new Social Business Intelligence capabilities and the strength of their platform as a whole. Like I said before, for some reason I just like them. Present.ly seems very capable and would certainly warrant more time if I had it. SocialWok has reinvented itself exclusively for Google Apps, and they are going to develop the hell out of the niche they are in.

So there are some key differences between each of these services, some others I didn’t mention and many features and capabilities that I just didn’t have time to mention. In truth I just scratched the surface. The best way to learn about these services is to sign up for account and try them out first hand. It’s so easy to get going that it’s scary. I can only imagine that there are 1000’s of rogue yammer communities out there operating under the noses of organizations. These things can be very difficult to control once they proliferate. Now I wonder when Twitter will join the party? With a $1B valuation and very little revenue you would think that enterprise micro-blogging would be a strategic opportunity for growth…

I’ll tell you what I do. I take a one-gallon Ziploc bag, and I put my Kindle in my one-gallon Ziploc bag, and it works beautifully. It’s much better than a physical book, because obviously if you put your physical book in a Ziploc bag you can’t turn the pages. But with Kindle, you can just push the buttons.

—

Jeff Bezos in response to a question about why a Kindle is better than a book in the bathtub.

Procrastinating is uploading this video...

Implicará esto el verdadero nacimiento de la venta por Internet? Será la validación del modelo que causó la burbuja el 98 finalmente? Amazon ha jugado bien sus cartas, por lo que no me extraña ver ese valor de la empresa. Veremos como se configuran los players en esta nueva economía de la "nube".