As I’ve been doing a little tidying up hereabouts I’ve stumbled across a few little things that have become part of how I do things. These are little items that make life in a home office just a little better.
LifeHacker is part of my Feedly stream, even though I often find myself at odds with many of their assertions or recommendations. However, a few weeks back they revisited a Top 10 list that I found myself liking a lot; Top 10 Superior Tech Products You’ll Never Go Back From. In fact, I am completely in agreement. It’s all good info, and largely unexpected.
Audio-Technica are a long-standing manufacturer of professional microphones, headphones & turntables. Earlier today they released a nice video documenting their difficulty in achieving good audio pickup from a zombie. I think it’s great that they selected a head-worn microphone as…
How do I love thee? Let me count the upgrade cycles. I bought my first copy of ThumbsPlus in August of 2000 when v4.0 was released. For going on fourteen years it has been my preferred software for managing our…
Last week a pair of comedians, Tripp and Tyler, released a video called A Conference Call In Real Life. The video lampoons some of the common issues of user experience with corporate conference calls. It’s part of a campaign designed to promote the Leadercast Live event that they have coming up in May.
The video set certain corners of the social media space reverberating with guffaws, likes, +1’s and commentary. Corporate types like Orange Business tweeted about it. While it was released over a week ago, the echo of its impact is only now decaying from the vast expanse of cyberspace.
Apparently it held a ring of truth for many people. Frankly, it caused me some agitation.
Lacking for any specific consideration of acoustics, many workplaces simply sound bad. Hard surfaces like drywall, glass, tile, stone and hardwood floors combine with arbitrary dimensions to create boomy, boxy sounding spaces where sound bounces around a lot. This creates a muddled sound that can make it more difficult to understand conversation. Sadly, this is also true of a lot of meeting small spaces and home offices.
This acoustic reality impacts how we work, especially the quality of our communications. Speakerphones and conference phones suffer in sub-standard acoustic environments. Intelligibility of conversation can be significantly degraded. You may not notice, as you are in the space and accustomed to that environment. However, the person at the far end of the conversation may find it more difficult to understand what you are saying.