Wired's 20 Favorite iPhone Apps of 2009
* By Brian X. Chen Email Author
* December 28, 2009 |
* 12:00 am |
* Categories: Phones
*
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2009 was the "year of the app," especially for the iPhone, whose App Store is overflowing with more than 100,000 offerings. While it's easy to make fun of the more ridiculous apps, some truly stellar wares stood out from that massive pile, and we're taking the time to honor them.
We recently published Wired readers' favorite iPhone apps of 2009, as well as Apple's top picks. Now it's our turn. The Wired staff has chosen its 20 favorite apps, broken into separate categories: productivity, games, hobbies, and travel and outdoors. These are apps we deemed exceptional either for their innovation, elegant design, usefulness or a combination of all these qualities.
Ready for this? Drum roll, please.
Productivity
beejive2BeeJiveIM
We've been using instant messaging for years, but BeeJiveIM is the most feature-rich, well-designed app we've seen that crams this communication method into our pockets. The app supports several IM services (such as Google chat, AIM and Yahoo! Messenger), as well as chat-room functionality and the ability to upload videos and photos. Plus, it's got push support, so IMs can pop up on your iPhone, just like text messages, the instant you receive them. It's a fancy app worth the $10 (on sale for $7 until Jan. 1, 2010). Download BeeJiveIM.
Dropbox
Who doesn't like Dropbox? The service allows you to store and share your computer's files online through a "dropbox" folder, and this new iPhone app allows you to access your Dropbox anywhere you go. On the iPhone, Dropbox really comes in handy for listening to your friends' shared music or viewing their videos and photos. The Dropbox service is free for 2 GB of storage per month. It costs $10 per month for 50 GB and $20 per month for 100 GB. The iPhone app is free. Download Dropbox.
Instapaper
We're gaga for Instapaper here at Wired. The app is perfect for tech-savvy newshounds constantly on the run — i.e., us. After downloading the app, you add a "Read Later" button to your web browser toolbar. Whenever you see a webpage with contents you want to save to read on your iPhone, you click the Read Later button. Launch Instapaper et voila — it's there. Very useful not just for saving web articles, but also recipes, map directions, airplane itineraries and so on. The app is $5; there's also a light version you can get for free. Download Instapaper.
Tweetie 2
We've been raving about this app for months, and with good reason: Tweetie 2 is probably the most loved app in the App Store. Its beautiful interface and rich feature set make using Twitter a blast. It's a must-have for any Twitter user with an iPhone. Tweetie 2 is $3. Download Tweetie 2.
Games
Canabalt
canabalt
Canabalt is braindead simple, and that's what makes it such a great game. It's a retro-style, side-scrolling adventure with one objective: Survive. Avoid running into obstacles or falling into pits; tap the screen to jump. The music is awesome, too. A fully playable Flash version of the game is available at Canabalt.com. It costs $3 to have it on your iPhone. Download Canabalt.
Doodle Jump
Another game that falls in the "charmingly simple" category is Doodle Jump. You take on the role of an adorable alien who bounces from platform to platform, with a goal of getting as high as possible. Trampolines, jetpacks and other goodies help you along the way. It costs just a buck in the App Store. Download Doodle Jump.
Flight Control
At this point in the year many of us have played Flight Control so many times we've grown sick of it. But that doesn't disqualify it from being one of the best iPhone games of the year. Who knew that using your finger to land planes could be so much fun? Somehow, this game pulled that off. It only costs a dollar. Download Flight Control.
Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor
spider2
You get to be a spider who swings around with his web while jumping extraordinary distances. And you don't even have to wear a lame red suit. For $3. Need we say more? Download Spider.
TowerMadness
There are plenty of tower-defense strategy games out there, but TowerMadness brings the genre to a new level. The game's objective is to set up missile turrets and laser cannons to defend your flock of sheep from aliens and giant insects. What's so great about the game? Web 2.0-savviness: TowerMadness regularly hosts contests for players to compete for the most points to get prizes; the game also issues free upgrades with new levels. High replay value, smooth 3-D graphics and an awesome web experience: a true winner in our book, and it costs a dollar. Download TowerMadness.
Words With Friends
Wired readers adored Words With Friends — a Scrabble knockoff that you can play online — and it was a favorite among our staff, too. No surprise there: The social integration of the game is excellent. You can play with multiple friends simultaneously, and you can even taunt each other with an in-game chat tool. It's got a beautiful interface, too. The ad-free version of the game costs $3; there's also a free version with ad support. Download Words With Friends.
Travel and Outdoors
convert1Convert
Whoever thought unit conversions could be fun? Convert is a gorgeous unit converter and calculator that makes conversions for everything from money and time to air pressure and energy. It's a lot more useful than you'd think. When cooking, for instance, if you're trying to triple a recipe and need to convert tablespoons into cups, you can simply punch some numbers into this app. Or if you're traveling to Japan and need to convert dollars into Yen, this should come in handy, too. Convert is a buck in the App Store. Download Travel and Outdoors.
Postman
Sending postcards can be a real drag, especially when you're trying to take it easy on vacation. Forget about wasting money on a generic-looking postcard from the museum and just download Postman. With the app you can create your own postcard using photos taken during your trip and then send it off instantly. That spares you the trouble of blowing money on postage, too. Download Postman.
Red Laser
Everyone's familiar with this scenario: You're browsing a brick-and-mortar retail store, and you spot something you'd like to buy. But we all know you can probably find a better deal online, without paying tax, too. Red Laser's a great app to help you check. It's a barcode scanner that brings up online deals super fast. Beats the heck out of standing there and manually searching shopping sites with the iPhone's web browser. The app costs $2. Download Red Laser.
RunKeeper
Not all gadgets turn us into lazy couch potatoes. The iPhone proves that with the help of RunKeeper. It's a nifty app for tracking your progress for runs, bike rides, hikes, skiing and more. The app tells you total distance, time and current pace, and when you're done it uploads your data to your account on RunKeeper's website. The $10 version, RunKeeper Pro, has audio cues; the free version is cueless. Download RunKeeper.
Taxi Magic
Cabs can be as hard to get as a high-paying position in the journalism industry, but TaxiMagic pulls off the miracle of getting you a cab late at night in San Francisco. The app automatically loads with nearby cab services, and you can even use Taxi Magic to calculate a fare estimate for your destination and pay for the ride when you get there. Good news: It's free. Download Taxi Magic.
KCRW
We lurve public radio, and the KCRW app streams all three KCRW channels: On Air, Music and News. It accompanies the streams with clean art, and there's also an Events button displaying music, news and arts happenings around time. Totally sweet for just a buck. Download KCRW.
Hobbies
Best Camera
The best camera is the one you have with you. And unfortunately the first- and second-generation iPhones' built-in camera mostly sucks, but this app can still make shots look awesome. Best Camera grabs pictures from your iPhone camera roll, lets you process them and then share them via Twitter, Facebook and e-mail. A slick interface makes the process easy: A rolling strip of icons at the bottom of the screen contains your editing tools. The app is $3. Download Best Camera.
Bloom
Electronic musician Brian Eno turned the iPhone's touchscreen into a dreamscape of wonderful ambient sounds in his app Bloom. Tapping the screen in different places emits a different note; they change colors to create soothing visual animations as well. Bloom costs $4. Download Bloom.
CameraBag
Another sweet image-editing app, CameraBag is for photographers who want to keep things short and sweet. The app automatically applies effects filters to your photos by simply swiping from left to right. Effects include black and white, instant Polaroid, Cinema and more. CameraBag costs $2. Download CameraBag.
Eucalyptus
There's gold in them public book archives. Project Gutenberg has about 30,000 public domain e-books to date, including classics such as Gulliver's Travels, Oliver Twist and Tales of the Jazz Age. Eucalyptus is the best app we've seen providing for accessing and reading Project Gutenberg books on your iPhone. It costs $10 in the App Store, and it's worth it. Download Eucalyptus.
Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com, Charlie Sorrel/Wired.com
Wired’s 20 Favorite iPhone Apps of 2009 | Gadget Lab | Wired.com (28 December 2009)
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/12/wired-favorite-iphone-apps/all/1
http://snipurl.com/tw38z
Showing posts with label Telecommunication. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Telecommunication. Show all posts
Monday, December 28, 2009
Top 7 Disruptions of the Year
Top 7 Disruptions of the Year
* By Epicenter Staff Email Author
* December 28, 2009 |
* 12:00 am |
* Categories: Crowdsourcing, Future Shock, Media, Miscellaneous, People, Search, Social Media
*
yelp iphone app augmented reality
Technology is like a dog; each year of it seems like the equivalent of seven human years — at least when you get to the end of it and realize it's only been 12 months since that now indispensable service first launched.
We spent 2009 documenting technology's disruption of how we live, entertain ourselves and do business. Looking back on the year from the comfortable perch of December, here are the seven most disruptive developments of 2009.
Google Stack
It's been a running joke for the last few years that Google knows everything you do online, but 2009 might be the year that Google became a full-scale technology platform — with technologies that layer on top of one another to create the "Google Stack." From your smartphone through to your enterprise's document-creation software, Google now has you covered, with promises of more to come. That means the list of companies whose revenues Google plans to undermine continues to grow (We're thinking about you, AT&T, Skype and Microsoft.)
2009 saw Google start to land in users' pockets, thanks to the the Android OS showing up on the coolest phones from three of the four dominant U.S. carriers. In July, Google announced the Google Chrome OS, a lightweight operating system that runs web services like Gmail and Google Calendar with a speed comparable to pesky installable software. Your Chrome browser will need to know how to get Google Apps, so it will use Google DNS (new for '09 too, just like Chrome for Mac).
When your friends want to reach you, they'll call your Google Voice number or they'll add a message to the right Google Wave. Or they'll visit your website hosted on Google Sites, click on the Google AdSense ads, which will fund the dinner you just added to you Google Calendar and will write about on your Google Blogger blog. And almost all of that is free so you won't need Google Checkout to pay for their services. And if there's a service missing from that stack (say photo sharing via Picasa), you can always use a search engine called Google to find it.
Mobile App Stores
Before Apple disrupted the mobile-phone market by granting thousands of software developers access to the iPhone through the App Store, cell carriers used to allow only a handful of companies to make stuff for their phones. Consumers and developers put up with it because we had no choice, but the App Store changed that.
Apple still exerts some control over which apps are sold in its store, but had approved over 100,000 apps as of November — an astonishing number no matter how you slice it. Google's Android app store now includes over 20,000 apps, and the concept is spreading to other platforms. Carriers now view third-party-designed apps as a way to augment their offerings and sell bigger data plans, rather than viewing them as an unconscionable loss of control. The app store phenomenon made the cellphone more like the personal computer, and we're all the better for it.
But as disruptive as the app stores are, they may not exist in five years, thanks to the next item on our list.
HTML5
Web protocols aren't as sexy as the iPhone, but they could soon replace the app store as mobile web browsers improve to run Javascript and HTML5, allowing developers to create what they make as apps today as mobile web pages tomorrow. Rather than developing a different app for every type of phone, they'll be able to write the code once and have it run everywhere.
Apps are everywhere right now — whatever you're looking for, there's an app for that, as the commercial says. But as the president of Mozilla's mobile division said, "Over time, the web will win, because it always does." Gmail's Mobile website already leans hard on HTML5 and is nearly as snappy as a native app. Still doubt that HTML5 can make Apple's apps obsolete? The same thing happened with applications that run on computers (see Google Stack), much to Microsoft's chagrin.
A New FCC
The FCC, under the leadership of Obama's law school classmate Julius Genachowski, is taking its job as the guardian of the nation's airwaves seriously again. The agency is talking about the politically controversial step of taking back spectrum from over-the-air TV broadcasters and making it available for wireless users.
Then this summer, the agency stuck their noses into Apple's app store to see why the Google Voice application was rejected — forcing AT&T to declare it would let VoIP applications on all their phones. They are setting formal 'net neutrality' rules and in the face of strong opposition from the wireless industry, plan to apply them to wireless, satellite, cable and DSL providers alike. It's trying to break the cable company's monopoly on set-top boxes, so you can buy one that actually does cool stuff.
And all the while, it's been hard at work composing the country's first-ever national broadband plan, which is due in February (though all signals are the plan will be pragmatic, rather than revolutionary). That's a far cry from the Bush era, where the agency took two years and a public roadshow before it ordered Comcast to stop blocking peer-to-peer file sharing.
journeyStreaming Music
This was the year streaming really took off, and Pandora and YouTube were the big winners in the music space — YouTube's video service allows it to stream on-demand music that music-only services can't afford.
Google's searches now link directly to on-demand music streaming services (see screenshot), which puts the phenomenon squarely in the mainstream. And more of us are listening to cloud-based music than ever before, through websites, MP3 blogs, MP3 blog aggregators, streaming software and mobile apps.
We're finishing the year with less diversity in the music space than we started with; Apple acquired Lala, and MySpace bought iLike and imeem. But these acquisitions are a sign that the big players recognize that the future belongs not to iTunes and iPods, but to web-based services and connected devices.
The Real-Time Web
Twitter is mostly just a protocol for publishing short little messages to the web, but in 2009, the little startup continued its shakeup of the net's landscape, and is on track to become what its leaked internal documents show it hopes to be: the "pulse of the planet." It's not quite that yet, despite becoming a player in the battle over Iran's future. But it has launched the notion of a real-time web, where netizens are constantly and instantaneously updated — even if it's just about the funny billboard your friend just walked by.
Add to that location services like foursquare and loopt — which report where you are — and the unproven concept of reporting to everyone what you bought via Blippy.com, and you've come up with a recipe for a net that values headlines over nut graphs, narcissism over thoughtfulness, and speed over deliberation.
But the notion was powerful enough to send Google, Microsoft and Yahoo all racing to add Twitter and Facebook posts to their search results, regardless of the utility. And Facebook got envious, re-doing its entire approach to social networking by pushing all of its users to post publicly in an attempt to become the net's vanity press. The upshot of it all: Add "get a prescription to Provigil" to your list of New Year's resolutions if you hope to keep up.
Augmented Reality
This year the world got its first real taste of mobile augmented-reality apps, which overlay digital information on top of analog reality. The idea is to let you see restaurant ratings floating over restaurants, peoples' tweets appear over their heads, what song they're listening to and so on.
Augmented reality is still a work-in-progress as developers iron out kinks such as the floating tag problem, and as consumers get used to the idea. But in a sense, it's already here — from geotagged photos to phones with compasses and maps in them, the internet already intersects with the world at specific locations, letting us access data where it's most relevant.
What did we miss?
Photo: Yelp's augmented-reality iPhone app shows you a restaurant's rating simply by pointing a phone's camera in the right direction.
Top 7 Disruptions of the Year | Epicenter | Wired.com (28 December 2009)
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/12/top-7-disruptions-of-the-year?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher
http://snipurl.com/tw37w
* By Epicenter Staff Email Author
* December 28, 2009 |
* 12:00 am |
* Categories: Crowdsourcing, Future Shock, Media, Miscellaneous, People, Search, Social Media
*
yelp iphone app augmented reality
Technology is like a dog; each year of it seems like the equivalent of seven human years — at least when you get to the end of it and realize it's only been 12 months since that now indispensable service first launched.
We spent 2009 documenting technology's disruption of how we live, entertain ourselves and do business. Looking back on the year from the comfortable perch of December, here are the seven most disruptive developments of 2009.
Google Stack
It's been a running joke for the last few years that Google knows everything you do online, but 2009 might be the year that Google became a full-scale technology platform — with technologies that layer on top of one another to create the "Google Stack." From your smartphone through to your enterprise's document-creation software, Google now has you covered, with promises of more to come. That means the list of companies whose revenues Google plans to undermine continues to grow (We're thinking about you, AT&T, Skype and Microsoft.)
2009 saw Google start to land in users' pockets, thanks to the the Android OS showing up on the coolest phones from three of the four dominant U.S. carriers. In July, Google announced the Google Chrome OS, a lightweight operating system that runs web services like Gmail and Google Calendar with a speed comparable to pesky installable software. Your Chrome browser will need to know how to get Google Apps, so it will use Google DNS (new for '09 too, just like Chrome for Mac).
When your friends want to reach you, they'll call your Google Voice number or they'll add a message to the right Google Wave. Or they'll visit your website hosted on Google Sites, click on the Google AdSense ads, which will fund the dinner you just added to you Google Calendar and will write about on your Google Blogger blog. And almost all of that is free so you won't need Google Checkout to pay for their services. And if there's a service missing from that stack (say photo sharing via Picasa), you can always use a search engine called Google to find it.
Mobile App Stores
Before Apple disrupted the mobile-phone market by granting thousands of software developers access to the iPhone through the App Store, cell carriers used to allow only a handful of companies to make stuff for their phones. Consumers and developers put up with it because we had no choice, but the App Store changed that.
Apple still exerts some control over which apps are sold in its store, but had approved over 100,000 apps as of November — an astonishing number no matter how you slice it. Google's Android app store now includes over 20,000 apps, and the concept is spreading to other platforms. Carriers now view third-party-designed apps as a way to augment their offerings and sell bigger data plans, rather than viewing them as an unconscionable loss of control. The app store phenomenon made the cellphone more like the personal computer, and we're all the better for it.
But as disruptive as the app stores are, they may not exist in five years, thanks to the next item on our list.
HTML5
Web protocols aren't as sexy as the iPhone, but they could soon replace the app store as mobile web browsers improve to run Javascript and HTML5, allowing developers to create what they make as apps today as mobile web pages tomorrow. Rather than developing a different app for every type of phone, they'll be able to write the code once and have it run everywhere.
Apps are everywhere right now — whatever you're looking for, there's an app for that, as the commercial says. But as the president of Mozilla's mobile division said, "Over time, the web will win, because it always does." Gmail's Mobile website already leans hard on HTML5 and is nearly as snappy as a native app. Still doubt that HTML5 can make Apple's apps obsolete? The same thing happened with applications that run on computers (see Google Stack), much to Microsoft's chagrin.
A New FCC
The FCC, under the leadership of Obama's law school classmate Julius Genachowski, is taking its job as the guardian of the nation's airwaves seriously again. The agency is talking about the politically controversial step of taking back spectrum from over-the-air TV broadcasters and making it available for wireless users.
Then this summer, the agency stuck their noses into Apple's app store to see why the Google Voice application was rejected — forcing AT&T to declare it would let VoIP applications on all their phones. They are setting formal 'net neutrality' rules and in the face of strong opposition from the wireless industry, plan to apply them to wireless, satellite, cable and DSL providers alike. It's trying to break the cable company's monopoly on set-top boxes, so you can buy one that actually does cool stuff.
And all the while, it's been hard at work composing the country's first-ever national broadband plan, which is due in February (though all signals are the plan will be pragmatic, rather than revolutionary). That's a far cry from the Bush era, where the agency took two years and a public roadshow before it ordered Comcast to stop blocking peer-to-peer file sharing.
journeyStreaming Music
This was the year streaming really took off, and Pandora and YouTube were the big winners in the music space — YouTube's video service allows it to stream on-demand music that music-only services can't afford.
Google's searches now link directly to on-demand music streaming services (see screenshot), which puts the phenomenon squarely in the mainstream. And more of us are listening to cloud-based music than ever before, through websites, MP3 blogs, MP3 blog aggregators, streaming software and mobile apps.
We're finishing the year with less diversity in the music space than we started with; Apple acquired Lala, and MySpace bought iLike and imeem. But these acquisitions are a sign that the big players recognize that the future belongs not to iTunes and iPods, but to web-based services and connected devices.
The Real-Time Web
Twitter is mostly just a protocol for publishing short little messages to the web, but in 2009, the little startup continued its shakeup of the net's landscape, and is on track to become what its leaked internal documents show it hopes to be: the "pulse of the planet." It's not quite that yet, despite becoming a player in the battle over Iran's future. But it has launched the notion of a real-time web, where netizens are constantly and instantaneously updated — even if it's just about the funny billboard your friend just walked by.
Add to that location services like foursquare and loopt — which report where you are — and the unproven concept of reporting to everyone what you bought via Blippy.com, and you've come up with a recipe for a net that values headlines over nut graphs, narcissism over thoughtfulness, and speed over deliberation.
But the notion was powerful enough to send Google, Microsoft and Yahoo all racing to add Twitter and Facebook posts to their search results, regardless of the utility. And Facebook got envious, re-doing its entire approach to social networking by pushing all of its users to post publicly in an attempt to become the net's vanity press. The upshot of it all: Add "get a prescription to Provigil" to your list of New Year's resolutions if you hope to keep up.
Augmented Reality
This year the world got its first real taste of mobile augmented-reality apps, which overlay digital information on top of analog reality. The idea is to let you see restaurant ratings floating over restaurants, peoples' tweets appear over their heads, what song they're listening to and so on.
Augmented reality is still a work-in-progress as developers iron out kinks such as the floating tag problem, and as consumers get used to the idea. But in a sense, it's already here — from geotagged photos to phones with compasses and maps in them, the internet already intersects with the world at specific locations, letting us access data where it's most relevant.
What did we miss?
Photo: Yelp's augmented-reality iPhone app shows you a restaurant's rating simply by pointing a phone's camera in the right direction.
Top 7 Disruptions of the Year | Epicenter | Wired.com (28 December 2009)
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/12/top-7-disruptions-of-the-year?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher
http://snipurl.com/tw37w
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Ring the changes on conference calls By Rhymer Rigby
Ring the changes on conference calls By Rhymer Rigby
Published: August 11 2009 22:37 | Last updated: August 11 2009 22:37
Mention conference calls and you will soon discover the corporate world is sharply polarised.
On the one hand are those who sing their praises as a productivity- boosting business tool that helps cut travel costs at a time when budgets are tight.
Then there are those who absolutely hate them, believing them to be unwieldy and a poor substitute for a meeting.
But, love them or loathe them, they are an unavoidable fixture in business life.
“I couldn’t do my job without them,” says Tony Reeves, European partner at Clifford Chance, based in Brussels. “My clients are all over the world, in different time zones. They’re the only way of getting people together.” However, he adds, there are two golden rules: “The first is that you have to have a disciplined chair with an agenda and the second is that you can’t have mobile phones without a mute function.”
Mr Reeves says without an agenda, a conference call can quickly become rudderless or hijacked. He also cautions that the agenda should be short, as participants’ attention drifts more quickly when they are on the phone and they forget where to come in on the conversation.
The reason mobiles need to be muted is simply that they are prone to pick up and amplify background noise, which can disrupt the virtual meeting when others are talking and greatly reduce its efficiency.
Jane Farrell, chief executive of the consultancy Equality Works, takes a similar view: “The rules that are important in conference calls are those which are important in meeting.” Like Mr Reeves, she’s a strong believer in a good chair. “You want someone who is going to direct the meeting, to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to speak. They will also direct the call – for instance, saying, ‘We need a bit more detail’ when someone has been unclear.”
Cary Cooper, professor of business psychology at Lancaster University School of management, says a good chair will also be adept at conflict resolution. “In conference calls, conflict can be much more difficult to defuse. In a meeting, if things get heated people will normally take a break.” Not being physically there, he explains, tends to make people less inhibited: “If you want to be obstinate and block things, or argue and behave badly, it’s far easier to do.”
Mr Reeves believes conference calls are far more effective when done with people with whom you have spent a bit of face time. “It’s important to know the people you’re speaking to, as you can’t see and judge their body language. You also won’t know their seniority or their level of knowledge.”
There is also the question of the number of people involved. Ms Farrell says ideally there should be fewer than six, with 10 as an absolute maximum, although Mr Reeves notes that “four very loud people who want to express their opinions and don’t listen can be worse than 10 well-behaved people”.
Whatever the case, though, in bigger conference calls you need to introduce yourself each time you speak – which can feel rather odd – and a good chair should summarise the call at the end. Speaking of which, there needs to be a definite time limit: anything more than an hour is likely to be subject to a law of rapidly diminishing returns.
All these rules are fairly straightforward for a normal conference call, but it gets a bit more complex when you have a split call, incorporating some people in a meeting room and others who are elsewhere.
Ms Farrell says this type of call can be tricky to manage but is worthwhile. “I’ve done meetings where most of us were in a room, but one person was in Edinburgh on a mobile and another was in Belfast. Having that flexibility is very attractive, especially when things need to be discussed quickly.”
Although conference calls are not the same as being there in person, she says, the real benefit is they allow flexible working. However, she adds, care must be taken to ensure that remote participants are brought into the conversation.
Not everyone is convinced. Amelia Hibbs, a media planner, is not a fan: “I think that they’re awful,” she says, “You have people in various locations and you’re led to believe that it’s going to be similar to a real meeting. In fact, it’s far from it. People have complete disregard for normal meeting etiquette. You can always hear them them shuffling paper, typing, and shutting doors when they nip out.”
Ms Hibbs adds that people will often dial in late and that if more than a couple of people start talking – which would be a natural part of a physical meeting – it quickly becomes unintelligible.
Moreover, if you have a split meeting it can create a real “them and us” culture.
Worst of all though, she says, working in advertising, where so much is about nuance, not being able to read the body language is a real disadvantage. “And what I find really funny is the immature behaviour they bring out in people. Sometimes you can almost hear the faces being pulled.”
All this invites the question: does video-conferencing get round these problems? The answer is “Yes”, but it throws up significant difficulties of its own, not least that it often involves the inconvenience of going to a booked suite. Besides, if you are just on the phone you can play a part no matter where you are. “Last time I went skiing,” says Mr Reeves, “there was a guy on the balcony opposite our apartment doing a very professional-sounding conference call in his boxers.”
Published: August 11 2009 22:37 | Last updated: August 11 2009 22:37
Mention conference calls and you will soon discover the corporate world is sharply polarised.
On the one hand are those who sing their praises as a productivity- boosting business tool that helps cut travel costs at a time when budgets are tight.
Then there are those who absolutely hate them, believing them to be unwieldy and a poor substitute for a meeting.
But, love them or loathe them, they are an unavoidable fixture in business life.
“I couldn’t do my job without them,” says Tony Reeves, European partner at Clifford Chance, based in Brussels. “My clients are all over the world, in different time zones. They’re the only way of getting people together.” However, he adds, there are two golden rules: “The first is that you have to have a disciplined chair with an agenda and the second is that you can’t have mobile phones without a mute function.”
Mr Reeves says without an agenda, a conference call can quickly become rudderless or hijacked. He also cautions that the agenda should be short, as participants’ attention drifts more quickly when they are on the phone and they forget where to come in on the conversation.
The reason mobiles need to be muted is simply that they are prone to pick up and amplify background noise, which can disrupt the virtual meeting when others are talking and greatly reduce its efficiency.
Jane Farrell, chief executive of the consultancy Equality Works, takes a similar view: “The rules that are important in conference calls are those which are important in meeting.” Like Mr Reeves, she’s a strong believer in a good chair. “You want someone who is going to direct the meeting, to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to speak. They will also direct the call – for instance, saying, ‘We need a bit more detail’ when someone has been unclear.”
Cary Cooper, professor of business psychology at Lancaster University School of management, says a good chair will also be adept at conflict resolution. “In conference calls, conflict can be much more difficult to defuse. In a meeting, if things get heated people will normally take a break.” Not being physically there, he explains, tends to make people less inhibited: “If you want to be obstinate and block things, or argue and behave badly, it’s far easier to do.”
Mr Reeves believes conference calls are far more effective when done with people with whom you have spent a bit of face time. “It’s important to know the people you’re speaking to, as you can’t see and judge their body language. You also won’t know their seniority or their level of knowledge.”
There is also the question of the number of people involved. Ms Farrell says ideally there should be fewer than six, with 10 as an absolute maximum, although Mr Reeves notes that “four very loud people who want to express their opinions and don’t listen can be worse than 10 well-behaved people”.
Whatever the case, though, in bigger conference calls you need to introduce yourself each time you speak – which can feel rather odd – and a good chair should summarise the call at the end. Speaking of which, there needs to be a definite time limit: anything more than an hour is likely to be subject to a law of rapidly diminishing returns.
All these rules are fairly straightforward for a normal conference call, but it gets a bit more complex when you have a split call, incorporating some people in a meeting room and others who are elsewhere.
Ms Farrell says this type of call can be tricky to manage but is worthwhile. “I’ve done meetings where most of us were in a room, but one person was in Edinburgh on a mobile and another was in Belfast. Having that flexibility is very attractive, especially when things need to be discussed quickly.”
Although conference calls are not the same as being there in person, she says, the real benefit is they allow flexible working. However, she adds, care must be taken to ensure that remote participants are brought into the conversation.
Not everyone is convinced. Amelia Hibbs, a media planner, is not a fan: “I think that they’re awful,” she says, “You have people in various locations and you’re led to believe that it’s going to be similar to a real meeting. In fact, it’s far from it. People have complete disregard for normal meeting etiquette. You can always hear them them shuffling paper, typing, and shutting doors when they nip out.”
Ms Hibbs adds that people will often dial in late and that if more than a couple of people start talking – which would be a natural part of a physical meeting – it quickly becomes unintelligible.
Moreover, if you have a split meeting it can create a real “them and us” culture.
Worst of all though, she says, working in advertising, where so much is about nuance, not being able to read the body language is a real disadvantage. “And what I find really funny is the immature behaviour they bring out in people. Sometimes you can almost hear the faces being pulled.”
All this invites the question: does video-conferencing get round these problems? The answer is “Yes”, but it throws up significant difficulties of its own, not least that it often involves the inconvenience of going to a booked suite. Besides, if you are just on the phone you can play a part no matter where you are. “Last time I went skiing,” says Mr Reeves, “there was a guy on the balcony opposite our apartment doing a very professional-sounding conference call in his boxers.”
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