Project Planning Meeting

AgDscam is moving forward with Yuemei & Chris.


-- Post From My iPhone

Working From Your Bed

The paperless office will enable you to get work done from the peaceful environment of your bed !


-- Post From My iPhone

GO PAPERLESS AND WORK IN YOUR PJ

One of the advantages of going paperless is the flexibility and freedom:

Click Here!

Arrange Your Own Work Schedule
Pick and Choose Projects that are Best for You
No Dress Code

No Commute
Spend More Time With Your Family
Work in a Comfortable Environment: Your Own Home!

Energy Saving Strategies

Electronic devices account for about 15% of an average household's annual energy bill. That equals about $352.50 for powering everything from a television to a cellphone charger, considering that an average family is expected to spend some $2,350 for electricity and natural gas in a year. Here are some ways to decrease energy consumption of your paperless devices.

Use power strips
A great energy saving strategy is to plug all of your paperless electronic devices into one power strip that you can switch off when leaving the house or going to bed.

Smart-home upgrades
You can make it easy to switch it off devices without being at home. Special outlets, switches and sensors communicate wirelessly with your home computer or smartphone. With home management software, it is possible to access and control any connected device, from the computer to the stereo, and plugged-in appliance.

Reconfigure device settings
Browse the product manuals of your paperless gadgets to find their energy-saving settings. Most laptop computers, for example, offer several ways to conserve energy.

Get the energy-efficient models
Energy Star labels aren't just for dishwashers and air conditioners, but also for a variety of paperless devices. These devices consume less power, both when in use and on standby.

The Revolution of Paperless Paper

FROM BBC WORLD NEWS: Plastic Logic in Dresden has developed a new kind of newspaper, a bendable electronic epaper...read more at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7670371.stm

The Future: Flexible ePaper

Sony has developed a 2-inch flexible screen made from organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). OLEDs use less energy than plasma or LCD display technologies, offer high contrast and clarity from almost any viewing angle, and refresh rates more than 3 times that of standard video, as well as allowing a display to be thin enough to actually bend. This is the future of portable eBooks and eMagazines/papers.

Learn how to live with Paperless Joy

Some said it was a myth, others claimed it was impossible, while quite a few thought it belonged to the distant future. The paperless work- and lifestyle is now here to stay and transform our lives.

ORDER FROM: http://www.paperlessjoy.com/

LEARN HOW TO:
- Enjoy a paperless "freestyle" living.
- Make productive use of dead and otherwise wasted time.
- Transform monotonous and boring work tasks.
- Live with your biological clock.
- Open the doors to better career opportunities.
- Get things done faster, better and with a greater joy.
- Enjoy the many opportunities of being a global paperless citizen.
- Use paperless operations to boost competitiveness.
- Hire and retain the best talents in your business.
- Cut out the clutter and procrastination from your life.
- Enhance productivity and creativity by improving your work environment.

Enjoy a paperless lifestyle with Paperless Joy!

MINIMIZE THE TRAVEL PAPER CLUTTER

While traveling around you'll soon end up with an annoying number of paper receipts to keep track on for later filing and reimbursement. One way to minimize the burden on this paper and to safeguard for potential loss is to take a picture of each receipt and store it digitally on your pda phone, digital camera or computer. Before discarding the paper receipt make sure that the original won't be required for your travel report.

BUSH CELL PHONE STORE

Should you need an upgrade or a new battery, or something else, just go to your local cellular telecommunications store.

PAPERLESS EDUCATION: NEW OPPORTUNITIES

Durable and network capable laptops can provide unprecedented opportunities for global education: a prerequisite for development and improved living standards. It should become a major priority to provide these "windows of knowledge" to those who still have to rely on outdated static media for information gathering.

THE MAGIC OF A PAPERLESS LIBRARY

At the top of the Victoria Falls I found a nice spot to continue some of my reading, and the eBook batteries were still good for hundreds or maybe thousands of pages after two weeks off the electricity grid.

-------------------------------------

Work From Home Today and Be Your Own Boss!

Click Here!

RE-ENERGIZE AND RE-BOOT

I felt the need to add some adrenaline to my system after several days of calmness at the Macha field lab; a bungee jump seemed to be the perfect solution and Victoria falls offer a unique setting for this. Rafting will add some more physical demanding activity in addition to excitement. Take a brake and do something new, something daring and see how inspiring and energizing it can be.

PAPERLESS TRAVEL FLEXIBILITY

This is one of the beauties of the paperless location and time independent workstyle; the possibility to travel to exciting and interesting places while still be up to date with your professional obligations. The Victoria falls are simply majestic.

COMMUNICATIONS, UNLIMITED

There seemed to be at least one cell phone available in each village/community - offering global communications capability.

PAPERLESS BUSH OFFICE

I spent a few hours walking through nearby communities and was kindly offered a paperless office space by one of the families.
I was however soon surrounded by a curious youth wondering whether my typing made any sense at all.
I used the time to reply to some emails in offline mode. These messages would later be sent to their recipients once Internet connection was re-established.

GROUP MEETING

I run my group-meeting through one of the free teleconferencing/chat systems between Southern Zambia and Baltimore. The use of external microphone and earphones can improve the communication significantly. You can also make the experience more exciting by choosing an outdoor location for your conference "room".

SATELLITE -BASED INTERNET ANYWHERE

Direct satellite -based access to the Internet enables continuous and fast connections, at the Macha field lab, with the rest of the world. Costly but definitively worth it when it facilitates the work and life of many users. The entire campus can access the Internet through a wireless LAN network.

GLOBAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS

The rest of the trip down to Macha was on dirt road through some very rural areas. The cell phone towers were however there and provide excellent telecommunications throughout the region. This is a good example of how cellular telephony is transforming the developing world by providing paperless connectivity.

SMS: A CHEAP AND EASY WAY TO BE IN TOUCH

Arriving in Choma I had to send an SMS that the trip went well and I was on time. My second connection should be here any time.

MEDIA PLAYER MOVIE ON THE BUS

I watched a movie on the portable media player. It only has solid memory but can still hold some 8 hours of movies.

ACCESS TO MY eBOOK LIBRARY FROM THE BUS

My eBook reader had still 75% of its battery charge left after a week since it was plugged in last time. I read a few chapters; it made the time pass by faster. With 24 eBooks on this device and another 40 on my laptop there was little chance that I would run out of literature.

BUS RIDE IN ZAMBIA

The bus ride to the south of Zambia was very interesting as we were getting deeper into the rural areas. With the pay-as-you-go wireless modem one could even run a paperless office from on of the many huts we passed by.

WORK FROM ANYWHERE WITH IT

I had arrived much too early at the bust station in Lusaka and had to find a productive way to spend the next 2 hours. There was a simple café with a heater and hot tea; a perfect setting to work on my next application.

WIRELESS CONNECTION IN ZAMBIA

During my cab ride to the flat in Lusaka, Zambia, I though the IT infrastructure would be rather poor and I was a bit concerned about Internet access, but I was wrong. Bill showed me his new pay-as-you-go wireless modem that enables access to the Internet through the Zambian cell phone company. With this service one can stay connected in a location-independent manner.

Paperless File Transfer Without Internet Access

After the meeting I ended up again at my favorite spot on South Beach but without Wi-Fi access. I needed to get a file from my mail server onto my laptop and this would normally have been impossible. So here is the trick:
1. Download the email attachment on your PDA-phone by synchronizing with the email server (you need the international roaming capabilities here).
2. save the file on your PDA-phone's flash memory card (i.e. micro MMC).
3. Transfer the flash memory card to the laptop (it must have a slot for it) and save the file on your hard drive.
4. Continue enjoying paperless flexibilities and work.
This transfer between the PDA phone and laptop could alternatively have been done through wireless IR or Bluetooth connections. In the worst case scenario I could have worked on the MSW documents directly on the PDA phone but it is a bit tedious with the tiny display and keyboard.
Having a flash memory card slot on your PDA- or smartphone is a good thing for file transfer and storage of multimedia.

USE A TABLET PC FOR SEMINAR NOTE TAKING

I have used a tablet PC to keep notes from all meetings, seminars and other professional occasions in the past 3 years. The advantages are many and here are some of them:
1. Never lose your notes for years to come.
2. Always have your notes and all you other office documents available. It is particularly interesting to look at a speaker's last presentation and compare it with the current….to better appreciate the progress that has been done on the project.
3. Have access to internet. You can read background information, retrieved from the internet, on the topic that is being addressed in the seminar. You can also do email messaging and instantly send the presentation notes to your team. If a webcam is available you can broadcast the presentation to your team, but make sure to obtain permission from the organizers first.
4. You can save dead time, when a presentation becomes unbearably boring, to get work and communications done since you have all your office documents available right in front of you.
5. You can instantly search the conference program with keywords and rapidly identify interesting sessions, abstracts and people.

There are many more advantages such as better graphics capabilities through multiple shape and color pens, the import of webcam snapshots of the presentation into the note journal, the backlit screen for writing in dark seminar rooms, the unlimited writing space…etc..
A tablet computer is a must for replacing paper-based note taking with the more efficient paperless format.

WIRELESS INTERNET IN THE CONVENTION CENTER

The available free high-speed wireless internet service in the congress hall opened up many productivity opportunities. I could use dead time to get my regular office tasks done, and did not have to spend money on this service at the hotel. I rapidly caught up with email messaging, literature searches and other businesses.

A SUNRISE WORK ENVIRONMENT

The sunrise in Durban was beautiful, and the fact is that you could through a paperless workstyle transform your office environment to this. Getting away from routine in a grey office can boost productivity and creativity in a big way.

--------------------------

Write faster and make more money by learning the productivity skills of professional writers.

Click Here!

TIME- & SPACE-INDEPENDENT WORKSTYLE

Instead of forcing myself into bed without being able to sleep, why not take advantage of IT (computers, phones) and get work done…..working on my jetlag - I found one of the outdoor bars on Durban's south beach particularly inspiring for editing text. A light laptop in a small backpack is a must for spontaneous creative work while on the go. This is one of the many advantages of going paperless.

FACE-TO-FACE COMMUNICATION

Later in the day I chatted with friends back in the US; it was still morning there. A good webcam in combination with a high speed internet connection can make this communication type a quite lifelike face -to - face interaction (upper picture).
You can also make the chat window smaller on your desktop and work on something in parallel while communicating live (lower picture). This is ideal when collaborating remotely on a document with colleagues or clients.
Use any of the many free messenger services available on the internet to video chat. You'll

need a laptop. webcam and internet connection.

DURBAN

The next morning was great in Durban; sunny and fresh. I got quite a lot of work done in my room with the available high-speed wireless internet network (wi-fi) prior to my walk on the beach.

POWER PROBLEMS AT AIRPORT

This was an unpleasant surprise at the Johannesburg airport; the electricity sockets are not compatible with my laptop power supply and I had not got the appropriate converter with me… I had also run out of battery during the flight. This is a situation where an extra laptop battery could be very handy. The only thing to do now is to read books from the electronic ink -based ebook reader, or go shopping.

PAPERLESS READING IN THE AIR

The tablet PC is a great ICT device for reading during flights. I have my entire ebook library and my scanned books on this device. Battery life is of course a real limitation to consider, and the eBook reader may therefore be more appropriate for reading for longer durations.

PAPERLESS HAND WRITING IN THE AIR

Typing on the laptop keyboard can become complicated when in economy class and the passenger sitting in front of you has decided to lean back. This is where the tablet PC works better. It's also great for editing manuscripts through direct hand writing on the typed text. I'll email this back to my editor once I have access to the internet again.

TYPING IN THE AIR

I usually get much work done during flights through my laptop computer, and this also makes the time pass by much faster. This is particularly important when its long-distance flight…. yet 17 hour to go…
Make sure to have the laptop set at low power consumption mode and an extra battery will also be essential for extended work time. You can also use a PDA or PDA phone to read or take notes while in th eair.

LAST MESSAGE

Right before the airplane doors close, and passengers have to switch off their electronic devices, is the last chance to check the email on my PDA phone. Paradoxically, this is usually the moment when you get some of the most important email messages….

POWER SUPPLY AT AIRPORT - 1

This is what we all are looking for at the airport; power outlets. Most airports have unfortunately not been designed for mobile workers and finding an electricity source for running your laptop computer and load the battery for the flight may be complicated and force you to sit on the floor or end up arguing with some other traveler. I was fortunate this time. Airports should be better designed in the future for mobile workers; they should have plenty of power outlets and free wireless internet connections.

WORKING WHILE WAITING

I have spent many many hours waiting for flights at airports in the past years and this time is quite dead if not used for something productive. There is much time to save by getting work done at airports and other occasions when you 're just waiting for something. Most airports also have wireless internet services to use for getting communications and other internet based tasks done paperlessly. Prior to a long-distance flight this may be your last opportunity to reply to those last email messages.

BUYING BOOKS AT THE AIRPORT

While waiting for my flight at the airport I bought a couple of more books, just in case, and instantly downloaded them to my eBook reader wirelessly. I should not run out of reading material during this trip ……and if that would happen I can always buy more eBooks books through my laptop connected to an internet -based book store. The main advantage with this type of electronic ink -based eBook reader is the extremely low energy consumption, low weight and small form factor. This is a paperless triumph!

PAPERLESS TRAVEL GEAR

I'm just about to leave for my 3 weeks work trip to South Africa and Zambia. Here is my gadget gear. The tablet laptop PC will take care of all computing and internet based communication tasks. In my 200 GB hard drive I have just about every file and document that is sitting on my regular paperless office computer and I should therefore be able to perform as if I was in office. My PDA phone will do email , SMS and wireless telephony communications. It will also be useful for downloading files from emails when internet is unavailable. I just got this new eBook reader and have already loaded it with about 50 books or the trip. The webcam will be used or fate-to-face communications and video conferencing. My portable media player is loaded with musing, pictures, a movie and can also allow of digital broadcasting TV in case such media would be available. Note the earplug type headphones; very useful when flying since they will effectively reduce the jet engine noise. A video camera for HD footage is always a good ting to have when traveling to exotic places. I also intend to use it for an educational movie on malaria related field work. Note my light travel gear to the right. Having only hand luggage makes traveling so much more flexible and there is virtually no risk to loose the luggage. If you use laundry services to wash clothes this will be enough even for a 3 weeks trip. Note that I have no paper except of my passport with me for this trip, nor a pen.