The second App Showdown is Teambox. I myself tried few Team collaboration tools. Namely Bantam Live. Then last two weeks I remember fellow Mobilewarriors Arzumy/Hakim Albsrawy twitted about Teambox. Since Flavert/Weddingkami work remotely in every own spaces, we need few stuff like virtual whiteboards or service to share project updates.

Since I’m a fan of desktop apps, most of screenshot is desktop app version. Don’t worry, still the same with webview.

Let me start with an Overview Panel when you login to your Teambox

When you login, you can see the overview of your Projects. Definition: Projects in Teambox is a project that being run in a company. However, since we want to use the apps for free, I decided that Weddingkami is a Project. And all projects received by clients will be defined as Tasks.

Read more yea

And now this is task. I have one task not completed. That’s why 10 May is in red.

Now let’s proceed to Project View. Currently I only have Weddingkami, but with many task inside.

The Overview is the first view that you’ll see once you go into Projects. It is much alike Yammer window. You can paste attachment and all. You can see some attachment below the long post I blurred.

This is All Conversation. Conversation: Threaded topic/ discussion. And you can paste attachment and all too. The diffierence with the overview is I see Overview is kinda like announcement, and Conversation is much more topic oriented. Let’s go deeper into one of the Conversation

In this ‘Online Advertisement’ Conversation, as you can see, there’s a list of people following that conversation. Here it can be more oriented without roaming to other topics rather than Overview.

This is All Task List. Since most of our Task List using clients name, we decide to blue-ed it. Every main task have a sub-task. As you can see, Weddingkami Template Design is empty. And all below are our clients. So the Ideation has left behind is my assigned task, and there’s remaining two site assigned to Faisal Arba’in for Publishing task.

Now this is inside specific task. This task is assigned to Faisal Arbain and the status is still open. I can also view completed task to keep track with.

Now this is Pages. For me, this is can be a single repository to everything. Here I kept all details/notes/everything about the project and also future plannings. It is a directory that serve as references. Let see inside one of the Pages.

Now this is one of the Pages. Here I put all related info about this particular client. I can put inside Task list too but again as I said, for better maintenance, refer everything and every details inside Pages.

And lastly, this is Files. It simply list all files that you’ve uploaded. Now this is neat.

I skipped Time Tracking since we’ve yet to use it. It’s only one month we’ve been using it, and love it when we paired with Yammer. This video below is to show you how we make Teambox, originally a web-apps to become Desktop apps.

So get your Teambox now. Pair it with Fluid and you got a nice desktop apps

Stay tune for more App Showdown!

From this day on, all Apps Review that related with Mobile Office work will be called App Showdown. For this pilot episode, I’ll review Yammer.

Yammer is an application a-la Twitter, but for company. Imagine last few years, if you work in big companies, few email will gone through your department and others. Replies such as ‘noted’, ‘will be done’ is in Email form. And imagine you have 5 unread emails and all of them are the conversation/discussion between your colleagues and they cc’ed to you, since you’re the manager.

That for me is a pain in the ass that Yammer will solve.

Despite being called Twitter for client, you can post long message in Yammer.

You can also attach files along the message. It is as simple as drag and drop action.

This is how Yammer look like.

You can like certain message, book mark it, or view it as thread

Aside from that, this are some of the available functions in Yammer. You can DM other staff too!

And lastly, Yammer also support Multiple company. But in one session, only one account are active. Nonetheless, shall there an update for different company, a small number notification will appear at the network drop down menu.

With this application, it is like having a small company chatroom. If you missed your office mate during mobile working, this is the answer.

Click Yammer to know more about it. Do comment if you are using it

P/S: If you like to give your own review on certain apps you like, twit @officekami then

Do you always find it a problem to go to toilet when you’re working alone ? I bet most of us are. In fact, I am.

Of course for us, who work with laptops, it’s the most precious things. All the documents, files, spreadsheets, company secret weapon inside it. Not to forget the laptop itself is precious. So be cautious even when you ditch your bag at the sofa and proceed to the counter to make order. The moment your eyes looking away from your laptop, it isn’t safe anymore. So below I would like to share some tips that I practice to make sure my laptop always safe.

Order before taking a place

Depends on the location you go, if you went to Self-serviced restaurant, don’t ever leave your belongings to the spot you want to work. Even it’s for a minute. I know you want to ‘mark your territory’ and didn’t want other people to take it, but it will risk your thing. The alternative is always have a something else to mark with. Such as jackets, blazers ( but don’t put wallet/car key inside it ), or you could put tumbler or umbrella, to mark your territory, if you must.

Baristas/Food servers is your guards

If you have an urge to go to toilet, or need to pick up a call and require some silence that will leave your laptop unattended, then ask the friendly waiter or baristas to look over your laptop. I’ve once, ask Bangsar Village 2 guards to look over my laptops even I already ask the baristas to watch for it. Can’t rely much on baristas and waiter sometimes because they’re gonna be occupied with customers so I decided to ask the guard. You can ask people nearby your desk to look over it, well that if you trust them.

Kensington Lock

Kensington Lock is one of the effective solution if you’re working alone, doubles with help from guards and waiters. Lock your laptop to an immobile objects such as pillars, or the desk. And when tying the lock to the desk, always makes it hard for thief to dismantle in minutes. I usually lock my laptop with table and chair. That way the thief will need more time and of course, they have to steal the table and chairs all along, unless they’re well prepared enough to bring Metal Cutter to cut in a snap. That’s why even I’m using Kensington Lock, I always ask the waiters and guards to guard my stuff.

Co-Working

At this moment, you’ll surely miss your officemate. What you can do is bring your officemate to work outside with you or ask your best friend who working with other company and can work outside to accompany you. This way, all of the problems and solution above can be solved. However, beware if you’re co-working with person who you didn’t know so much, you’ve just met them once or twice or ten times, or didn’t consider best of best of best of best of closest friends ( notice how deep the relation is). Why? They might be the one who can become the bad person too in this cases. I for one thing, still lock the laptops even if I’m having a meeting with client and need to go to toilet. If the clients ask your action that seem distrust them, just tell them it’s your policy.

Software – iAlertU

For Mac users, there’s a software named iAlertU that will arm your laptop. It’s pretty nifty Freeware. When you wanted to leave your laptop, you can ‘arm’ your laptop and leave it. The application will ‘arm’ your laptop with alarm and whenever something happens to your laptop, it will blast it alarm sound just like Car Alarm. There’s 6 detection sensors

1. Keyboard – it will alarmed if someone press the keyboard. I disabled this because I need to disarm the alarm.
2. Motion Sensors – it will alarmed if someone just pull the laptop and move it’s motion sensors.
3. Trackpad/mouse – it will alarmed if touch/use the mouse/trackpad. I disabled this because I need to disarm the alarm.
4. AC Adapter – it will alarmed if someone tripped and when they steal they just pull out the power
5. Devices – if you’re sticking your USB, and someone pulled it.
6. Screen close – You leave your laptop with ‘open-screen’ and when they steal they fold it, it will trigger the alarm.

Besides blasting it Car-Alarm sound, the application also will take picture of the thief and mail it to you. That’s nifty for a free application.

So I hope all the guides above will help you to secure your laptop. Be Aware. Be very aware of your surroundings.

Previously in BarCamp KL, I did make a short comparison between Twitter & Yahoo Messenger inside my slideshow, at slide no 43.

Inside this article, I will share with you on my opinion about this two services.

Let me start by explaining a bit both of the service.

Yahoo! Messenger (YM) is an advertisement-supported instant messaging client and associated protocol provided by Yahoo!. Yahoo! Messenger is provided free of charge and can be downloaded and used with a generic “Yahoo! ID” which also allows access to other Yahoo! services, such as Yahoo! Mail, where users can be automatically notified when they receive new email. Yahoo! also offers PC-PC, PC-Phone and Phone-to-PC service, file transfers, webcam hosting, text messaging service, and chat rooms in various categories. //– from Wikipedia

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length which are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers). Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow anybody to access them. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. The service is free to use over the Internet, but using SMS may incur phone service provider fees. // — from Wikipedia

While both of them serve almost the same thing, messaging, but in timely manner, I found Twitter is more useful rather than YM. Now all the following points are based on my humble opinion.

1. Followers isn’t same with just mere contacts

In Twitter, you’ll have some followers, or subscribers to your updates. This means those who follow you are eager want to know about you. They want to know what you’re up into. But dangerously, they might want to stalk you but fret not, there’s an option for you to set your status to private and hide it from Twitter Public Timeline, where strangers can see your updates.

as for this, your follower doesn’t need to engage you in chatting prior to YM, where I usually will ask, “who is this?” . In twitter, I just click at their profile, and decide, if I want to follow them or not.

2. Choose who you want to follow

This is another point scored by Twitter. Looking at my YM friend list, there’s about 300-400 list but, truthfully, everyday I just chat with certain people, mostly officemate, and job-related. During night I’ll be ‘Available’ but again it’s either I’m unfriendly or I can’t supply much joy of chatting towards chit-chatters. And when you decide to follow someone on YM? it’s not following, it’s chit chatting and you’ll be screwed if the person you wanted to follow ( or even stalk ) will questioning you.

It’s just like building a relationship, LOL.

With twitter, it’s just one click button and even the person you followed doesn’t follow you back, doesn’t matter.You might want to see their latest discoveries about some technology, news updates, whatever. You want to know about him/her. So don’t bother if they didn’t follow you back.  I followed Grant Imahara and he doesn’t follow me. of course I’m just another fan and he has to blowing up something.

but beware, if you following too much people, you’ll later have to spend more time to read their twits. Still, you decide to read or not.

3. What are you doing?

I tend to set an attractive YM-Status to attract my long-list of contacts but, I failed! As for twitter, it was based on one question

“What are you doing?”

And based on that question, everytime I said  something, my followers, who’ve been following, if that tweets match their interest, would instantly reply. Sweet. Afterall, Keep It Simple Stupid!

4. Timely manners

If you’re chatting, high chances that you’ll stuck on the conversation. Depends on yourself, I find myself will stuck in long conversation if I’m chatting with person. But more over, actually you’ll waste time to picking up what are both of you into. In the process, you’ll wait for another response and there goes, seconds, minutes, and hours.

For twitter, for me, I’m using Twhirl so everytime it buzzing, I’ll check my Twhirl if those who I’m following twitting something interesting. That’s it.

I’m also ask my twit-friend Reuben Thum, because he previously work as server at Vintry, the restaurant and I still get his updates. I mean, YM of course cannot chat LOL. Here’s my question to him.

Me: wanna ask.. previously in vintry, did u twit while u work? u work as server am I correct ?

ReubenThum: Yeah, tweeted during work. Without degrading the service, that is. What’s up?

Me: I want to wrote about twitter vs YM for working environment for officekami.com . and ur response is totally valuable thanks a lot!

See,  did you YM on handphone? even if you did, I think it will took a lot of time. I think this is another valid reason why most of the offices blocked Internet and yes, Yahoo Messenger, distractions.

5. Virtual officemate

Try this at your office. Go talk bullcrap with your office mate and see  if your boss gets angry. of course but on daily basis, our chats with our office mate will go like

• hey what’s up for lunch?
  
• can you help me with this code?
• hey you know ah that girl… I like her lol!

The normal cycle of real chit-chat in office will usually go like that.Tit for tat. it will not drag like YM chats.  and the same to twitter, because of the character limit. For me, my virtual officemate is my twitter friends. If they didn’t follow up with my twits, I can always reply their twits back.

My Opinion

For me, Twitter wins. I now didn’t run YM on the day, but only when requested by my friend to online. Save laptop energy too. If you’re new to twitter, and want some suggestion for who you want to follow or need a virtual officemate, here are 10 people I suggest.

1. @kamal – he twits about Ruby & Git. If his tweets aren’t programming, he tweets awesome funny things.
   
2. @ramesstudios – he’s another photoshopper. be amazed with his funny witty photomontage.
3. @izuddinhelmi – he’s a wordpress theme designer that won Woothemes WordPress thingy
4. @limyh – Twitter-Elite + Social Media guy that run GreyReview. Good stuff to read.
5. @cerventus – barcamper activist. and while people listen to lightning talk, he reads onemanga.com :p
6. @hadramie – has his own brand coffee – Haddadcafe, that @thechannelc jokingly said Kiasu coffee, because 9 in 1 For The Win! ROFL! But really, his instant coffee real strong.
   
7. @bfmradio – if you listen to BFM, then follow their tweet as they’ll upload their podcast later.
   
8. @nazroll – anything google and cool stuff as Music 2.0 presos.
   
9. @bytebot – many different stuff he talks about, from bashing telcos, to utilizing his Google Latitude
   
10. @cheeaun – he talks manga, killing ‘bug’s, and heart free geek tshirts.
    

Oh and the person I’m asking about his experience is fun to follow to. Random stuff, Reuben Thum. I want to suggest more person but since they put their twits on private, I better not. If you want to stalk me, clicky but let me remind you that I’m a bit picky and choosy :p

//follow twitter @officekami to get latest updates + places + resources

If you have little time to know about mobile office, and don’t want to kill your office time now, then watch my not-so-lightning talks for about ten minutes during BarCamp KL  April 2009

Else if you lose your motivation and want to read, then here’s my slideshow during the same event.

I think both of the things above explain it all about Mobile Office / Office Kami

Yesterday after going for workshop to have Anubis’s scheduled maintenance ( Engine Oil + Gear Oil ), went to JCo Damansara Utama waiting for meeting with my client. Still have 3 hours before it so I decide to ‘mobile office’ at JCo Giant Damansara Utama.

Guess what I found? JCo print out their tissue to be useful ones – as a note.

This is one of the practice that my previous lecturer always said about it.

if you’ve been following my twitter or my YM status, you’ll discover that i always said ‘Mobile Office’. Today, it’s the 18th.

I do have office, but it’s there on a far far away in Cyberjaya, Malaysia. Going mobile is our solution, although here in Malaysia, it’s not the trend. People even ask “You didn’t have an office?”. Come on dude, be free. Be totally free. So here are the essential tools and also, tips if you’re planning to go mobile.

Tools

so here i have is my laptop bag and handphone. I’m using Golla Backpack, which is nice when walking, but a pain when riding a motorcycle with it. Because, it doesn’t have a back-rest padding. It has 3 compartments but before i proceed with compartments, why Anne, my handphone was there?

Handphone

Handphone nowadays is just another essential tool. but i include in this picture because my phone, Nokia N93, capable to scan any wifi hotspots. some cafes and restaurants do have that notice ‘ WIFI Free’ or something like that, but with Anne, apart to check whether the wifi around are secured or not, i can also check my emails quickly. with this handphone also i don ‘t need to switch on laptop or switch on Wifi catcher and so on thingymajig.

So this is the first compartment in the backpack. oh i didn’t put the power adapter in this picture so sometimes, it’s pretty messy inside this compartment. so the stuff inside the first compartment is the thing below

So i got Apple VGA Adapter, Kensington Lock, Sharpie Marker, Tissue, Eye Mo Moist, Lanyard, a CD and DVD.

Apple VGA Adapter = as wherever you go, there’s a little potential that you’ve to did a presentation. that’s why i always bring it.

Kensington Lock = your bestfriend when you’re alone. Always and always lock your laptop if you’re going to leave it unattended. even at the client office. better safe than sorry.

Sharpie Marker = a lot of things you can do with a pen, pencil, or marker.

Tissue = apart from normal usage, if you ran out of paper, you can draw on tissue anyway. = Cikjee’s idea, my lecturer.

Eye Mo Moist = reduce eye strains. use eye mo moist.

Lanyard = sometimes you went to conference or so and want to show your fanboyism towards branding on the lanyard. in my case, i bring Mobile.Actionscript.it that i got from Giorgio Natilli during last year Flash Lite Classes.

CD & DVD = your clients might want their files while you’re away from your office. rather than buying from nearest stationery shop, you might want to bring just one or two from your stock.

So this is the second compartment. unlike the first, the second compartment doesn’t have any section. so this is the thing i put inside the second compartment.

So here what i have is.. chop, pos express letter + envelope, a book, a kain sarong/pelikat, a name card holder, sketchbook and a clear holder.

Stamp Chop: you might suddenly have to send/fax your receipt/quotation/invoice so i always bring this. if only there’s a portable A4 printer, i already bought and bring it lol.

Post express letter + envelope = actually, i just receive this pos express, but then, i also bring an envelope to use if there clients wants recipt. the envelope will make it presentable.

Book ( Anif Sirsaeba: Berani Kaya Berani Takwa ) = just in case i need to get off from online world, this book accompanies me. still didn’t finish reading it. It’s up to you what books you want to bring anyway.

Kain sarong = hoho love this. this is for me to use when pray. if my trousers get dirty, i can use this.and if there’s no praying room inside the client’s office, just ask for a empty room/ place you can pray and so this kain can be your praying mat.

Name card holder = this thing pretty heavy actually. but i just don’t want to lose my handful of contacts.

Sketchbook = just another best friend. not a friend when it’s full of scribbles.

That clear holder = that is my company profile. when you have to search for a file inside your computer, give your client your company profile for them to read around with. this will distract them and also, promoting your services to them.

This is the small compartment. at first, kinda clueless how to utilize this compartment. but now im using it to put this

so a namecard wallet, cleaning cloth, earphone, and the mouse, Slueky.

Namecard wallet = as i carry my laptop around, so the namecards also around.

cleaning cloth = in the times where your laptop screen need it.

earphone = music helps my productivty when working. but please have courtesy towards other people, they have their ears also. that’s why i’m using earphone, just in case i play it again and again and again.

Bluetooth mouse =  when i need more precision the trackpad can’t offer. however, using bluetooth mouse does free my laptop from using another usb socket, but then it drains out the battery.

and the last compartment, is here,

the laptop compartment alongside this mousepad

since i care about my little tiny lovely gadgets, therefore this mousepad is a must :p

so tips about mobile office

• there’s one thing more, if you really love to go fully mobile, just go get a wireless broadband.
• be aware of your surroundings
• be aware of the power remaining for your laptop
• bring water for you to drink
• if you still didn’t have a laptop, buy a lighter one. heavy laptop wears u out.
• for muslims, find a place where you can pray. mamak also got surau.
• always and always, check the place you sit before you leave. it’s be a painful thing if you leave your things behind and it’s gone.
• make a short list of places with Wifi, the fastest, the easiest, and so on.
• and remember to enjoy your surroundings. cause if not, you wouldn’t enjoy working mobile

hope this helps for you who are going mobile. ( Golla should pay me because i receive question about their bags haha )