Category: News

It’s looking like this Google antitrust thing won’t be resolved anytime soon in Europe. Reuters is reporting that EU antitrust chief Joaquin Almunia said that the European Commission can reach an agreement after the summer break.

“We can envisage this as a possible deadline,” he’s quoted as saying. As Reuters notes, the Commission is closed for summer break throughout most of August, so it sounds like we won’t be seeing any resolution before then.

Several weeks ago, Almunia said Google had submitted its settlement proposal. The details of this have not been made public. At the time, Bloomberg reported:

Google sent a “detailed proposal,” said Antoine Colombani, a spokesman for Almunia. He said he couldn’t anticipate if the offer was sufficient to allay antitrust concerns or whether it would be sent to rivals and customers for comments. If this market test is successful, the EU can make the commitments legally binding. Such a settlement would avoid possible fines against the Mountain View, California-based company.

Google, of course, settled its antitrust issues in the U.S., ending a lengthy probe by the FTC, which found that Google’s search business was not anticompetitive. Google did make a couple voluntary concessions.

Yahoo’s impending roundup of its free-range employees reflects a deep corporate ambivalence toward telework. Yes, companies like giving employees the much-appreciated right to work at home, but can a worker really contribute productively to a team while sitting on the couch in her pajamas? My own recent research shows that managers aren’t wrong to worry: In an experiment, I found that mixed teams of remote and in-office workers are less productive than 100%-in-office teams.

But what Yahoo and other companies may not realize is the powerful role that employees’ perceptions play in the productivity of mixed teams. My research suggests that it’s possible to maintain these teams’ productivity — if they’re properly managed. And I’m not talking about managing work, per se. I’m talking about managing beliefs.

But let me back up a bit.

At one time, some people thought telework was going to be the way we all did our jobs. Studies showed that working remotely increases employee satisfaction and makes people more productive by eliminating interruptions and distractions. But the work-wherever movement is now being counterbalanced by a trend toward collaboration-friendly workplaces. As cubicles give way to bullpens and other types of open-plan workspaces, companies want their employees to show up and start collaborating. That seems to be what’s going on at Yahoo: The company says it wants to increase “communication and collaboration.”

But do you really have to bring the teleworkers in off the range in order to increase collaboration? No one had really looked at that question in a scientific way.

So along with Krista Jabs Saral of Webster University Geneva, I conducted a series of experiments in which we allowed research participants to work in an office-like laboratory environment or in the location of their choice. They were organized into three-person teams and paid according to the teams’ output on the task of decoding strings of letters.

We found that individual effort was highest in the 100%-in-house teams. The addition of remote workers reduced the in-house workers’ exertion.

And why did the in-house people reduce their effort when a teleworker was added to the team? Because they believed that the teleworkers were less productive. Which wasn’t true, by the way. We found no evidence that the teleworkers were shirking.

The implication is that teams containing teleworkers would benefit from knowing that remote members are working just as hard as everyone else. Managers can play a role in this, providing data about teleworkers’ productivity. Our research indicates that if team members know that all other members are working hard, the negative effect of including teleworkers in teams goes away.

So companies don’t have to get caught in a tug-of-war between letting their employees work remotely or forcing them to come to work and collaborate. Collaboration can happen even among in-house employees and teleworkers. It simply takes a different managerial skill set.

That should be good news for knowledge companies, because my previous work shows that there are times when the home — or the coffee shop or the library — is a much better place to work than the office. For certain types of creative work, you have to be in your favorite room, or listening to your favorite music, or sitting in your favorite chair with your cat on your lap. No other environment will do.

And when it’s time to collaborate, you can pick up the phone or go on Skype and rejoin your colleagues. It’s all a matter of balance.

Closure is an indie game, developed by the Eyebrow Interactive studio, that is good at doing one thing, and that is showing why we like indie games in the first place.

The indie game industry is now booming and more independent studios are making their mark on the gaming community. The rise of Internet 2.0 offered an unexpected helping hand for the develope… (read more)

Manager, noun.

Textbook Definition: An individual who is in charge of a certain group of tasks, or a certain subset of a company. A manager often has a staff of people who report to him or her.

Modern Translation: An individual who races through the halls in a frantic attempt to make the next meeting on time while also answering e-mails on his or her mobile device.

A few of you may adhere to the textbook definition of “manager,” and if so, kudos to you. But most managers no longer have any time to manage the people who report to them.

If you’re a manager caught in the frustrating cycle of frequently canceling one-on-one’s, delegating poorly, and feeling out of touch with your team, you probably already feel bad enough. I’m not here to make you feel worse. But I do want to encourage you to start taking steps to not only fulfill your own responsibilities, but also to develop an awesome team. These strategies come from my time coaching work with managers on how to more effectively lead their teams — without working more hours.

You can’t give other people what you don’t have. So if you’re confused and scattered, your team will be too. You need to make time to get clear on what you want to achieve out of every interaction; this means spending more time on priorities, prep, and follow-up, and less time in meetings. Reducing your meeting time so you have more time to think strategically will require a group effort, but you can make it happen with some simple strategies.

First, reduce the number of meeting invitations you accept. Ask yourself whether you’ve fallen into the common trap of looking at your calendar as a popularity contest. Do you measure your value by how many meetings you’ve been invited to? Going to a lot of meetings may make you feel important, but it’s not a good way to allocate your time. Before accepting a meeting invite, ask yourself, “Do I really need to attend?” If the answer is “no,” decline the meeting or use one of these less time-intensive strategies:

• Ask for a pre-meeting look at the agenda so you can pass on your comments to the facilitator to share. (Bonus: this may force the facilitator to actually make an agenda!)
• Send someone else from your group to communicate your team’s position.
• Request a copy of the meeting notes after the fact.

If you still struggle with feeling guilty or possessive about turning down any meeting requests, reframe the question this way: “If I was sick on the day of this meeting, would it need to be rescheduled?” If you answer, “No,” there’s a good chance you don’t need to attend. If you do need to go to quite a few meetings, but only to give strategic input, not to assist with tactical implementation, then request your part of the discussion happen at the beginning of the allotted time. Following that part, excuse yourself from the discussion.

Second, reduce the number of meetings you schedule — and reduce their length. Do you schedule meetings where you spend most of the time talking — perhaps giving “updates” to a room of people subtly checking their phones? Do you default to scheduling hour-long meetings (or longer)? If so, you need to reprogram your default response of “when in doubt, schedule a 60-minute meeting.” Here’s a decision-tree that you can use as an effective replacement strategy:

Your new default should be to choose the least “costly” time investment that still accomplishes the end goal. Don’t schedule a meeting for something that you can solve in a phone call, and don’t make a phone call for something that can be communicated in an e-mail. If you must schedule meetings, challenge yourself to make them leaner. Try out 30-minute or even 15-minute meetings, and set a goal to finish early. If you find you consistently need more time, you can increase the meeting length in the future, but often with increased focus, you won’t need it.

Once you are modeling good meeting etiquette, ask your direct reports to follow good meeting procedure, too:

• Don’t schedule meetings for FYI items that you can communicate via e-mail. Only use meetings for discussions and decisions that must happen with a team, in real time.
• Send a clear agenda when you send the meeting invitation — not two minutes before the meeting — so it’s easier for everyone to tell whether they need to attend.
• Designate someone to take thorough notes on the discussion, the decisions, and the rationale behind those conclusions. Circulate those to your manager, and anyone else who might need to be in the loop — but doesn’t need to come to the meeting.

Finally, keep your calendar clear by blocking in work time. Seize the freed-up time before it evaporates. As you transition from a reactive state to a proactive state, you might feel a little disoriented with all your new-found time. But now that your calendar isn’t so full of “busyness,” you can fill it up with actual business. Do so quickly, before work expands to fill the time available. Set aside time for e-mail, meeting prep, one-on-ones with direct reports, and strategic thinking time. Keep your commitments to yourself in the same way that you would with someone else so that you (and others) can trust you to get things done — and on time.

By cutting down on the number of meetings you’re in, you’ll free the people around you to make reasonable choices without always looking to you for input. That will automatically reduce the number of meetings you need to attend, and instill more confidence in your team. And if you’re using that time to shape strategy and set clear priorities, your team will make the right decisions — whether or not you’re in the room.

Google announced that Google Apps for Nonprofits is now free for all nonprofits. Before, the free version was only available for nonprofits with less than 3,000 users.

“Now, whether your nonprofit is 10 people or 10,000, you are eligible to start using Gmail, Calendar, Drive and more,” says Katie Kellogg with the Google for Nonprofits team.

“Google Apps for Nonprofits allows your organization to reduce IT costs and helps your team collaborate more effectively,” says Kellogg. “The suite of tools uses cloud computing to securely store and update documents, calendars and email in real-time – meaning you can access data anywhere, anytime. Google manages all of the updating and maintenance in the cloud, so you’ll never be required to install hardware or update software. And if you need help, we have a 24/7 support team available.”

New users can join the Google for Nonprofits program here. Google will then send instructions on how to enroll. There’s also a guide here.

In other Google/nonprofit-related news, Google.org is donating millions of dollars for increased access to the Internet in emerging markets.

[Warning: one possibly offensive word appears in this article]

On Sunday night, while the movie industry was celebrating its biggest night, satirical publication The Onion started a Twitter-tantrum by posting a no-holds-barred tweet meant to shock docile red carpet watchers. The tweet involved nine-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis, who was up for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Beasts of the Southern Wild. The tweet was vulgar and quickly deleted, but read:

Everyone else seems afraid to say it, but that Quvenzhané Wallis is kind of a cunt, right? #Oscars2013

The tweet was obviously meant to be shocking, but it seemed to have touched that American nerve that is super-sensitive to certain words, especially those that imply racism or sexism.

Though The Onion issued the internet version of a retraction by deleting the Tweet (why bother?), the sentence had already spread and the flame war had started. Sensing the need to go even further than retraction, The Onion CEO Steve Hannah has issued an apology on the publication’s website and Facebook page. From the apology:

On behalf of The Onion, I offer my personal apology to Quvenzhané Wallis and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the tweet that was circulated last night during the Oscars. It was crude and offensive—not to mention inconsistent with The Onion’s commitment to parody and satire, however biting.

No person should be subjected to such a senseless, humorless comment masquerading as satire.

Hannah also stated that The Onion has put in place “tighter Twitter procedures” and that the publication is “taking immediate steps to discipline those individuals responsible.”

After launching with Windows 8 in October of last year, Internet Explorer 10 has only been available as a release preview on Windows 7. That all changes as Microsoft pushes out the final release to all Windows 7 users starting today.

Just like Windows 8, IE10 will reportedly speed up your browsing experience on Windows 7. Microsoft says that internal benchmarks put it about 20 percent faster than IE9. To test it out for yourself, you can try out Microsoft’s Minesweeper benchmark test. It’s built entirely in HTML5 and will measure your browser’s performance.

IE10 is also a marked improvement over its predecessors by finally adding a number of HTML5 and related Web technologies to its repertoire. Developers and consumers now have access to the following features in IE10: