Canadians as well as the citizens and residents of many other countries take services such as roads, sewer/water, electrical power and phone service as basic rights.

Should broadband be in this category too? Especially given the country, the founding home of the telephone, has vast distances and complex geography that make extensive communications services a necessity?

Via TMCnet  Posted by: Steve

About 45 minutes later an eBay representative activated my chat session and asked how he could help me today. I told him that my concern/issue was with sellers raising starting price/shipping costs for auction items to avoid a final action price less than the BuyItNow price from a listing from the same seller and for the same item. The result is to completely negate eBay auctions. (e.g. current web cam listing BuyItNow price $79.32 with free shipping, Auction listing for the same item and seller has a starting price of $26.44 and shipping cost of $52.89 which results in a non-auction.)

My second concern I explained was for low BuyItNow prices and very high shipping costs (e.g. current web cam listing  – BuyItNow price $10.57 with shipping of $59.24.)

Thinking I had done a reasonably good job summarizing my concerns (since I had, had 45 minutes to draft my text in Wordpad while I waited) I was encouraged when the service representative asked for a couple of minutes to study my concerns. I thought to myself, what a great response this was going to be a productive chat session, my concerns were going to be heard.

As promised, a few minutes later some new text appeared in the chat window. It said “I’d be happy to help you understand how the buy it now option works.” What I thought, this was the reasoned response to my serious concerns about the decline of eBay. I knew how the BuyItNow option worked, my concern was about the increasingly broken business model as illustrated by my current shopping experience.  If the purchase price of items on eBay was essentially fixed, I might as well return to shopping online at retail stores such as New Egg, NCIX and Tiger Direct. So much for trying to save eBay. I politely thanked my chat partner for his time, wished him a good day and yes, I went back to searching for a wireless IP-based security cam on eBay.

Steve Lafontaine writes about teleworking in Northern Ontario among other things. He is an information technology consultant, manager and professor. You can reach Steve using our Contact form.

Working from home — or somewhere closer to it — may become reality for some city employees.

Council on Wednesday approved River Councillor Maria McRae’s motion that directs staff to proceed with implementation of “telework where operationally feasible,” and follow up with monitoring and evaluation.

Via The Ottawa Citizen Posted by: Steve

Telework has long been known as the healthier way to work, in more ways than one. It reduces airborne illnesses from pollution, chiefly vehicle exhausts, and from disease spread in workplaces and injuries from vehicle accidents. It relieves the strain on budgets by cutting costs and boosting productivity. For these reasons telework is an excellent strategy for resource-strapped healthcare providers.

Via TMCnet.com. Posted by: Steve

Myth: If I can’t see my employees in the office, then they aren’t really working.

Truth: Data consistently show that an employee who teleworks two days per week is 15- to 40-per-cent more productive than his or her office counterparts.

Via Working at home is a hit. Posted by: Steve

Despite the positive attention and federal dollars thrust upon the concept of telecommuting, a Montreal mom and a researcher from the University of Waterloo both warn that working from home is not for everybody.

Via canada.com. Posted by: Steve

Business Review Canada has an interesting article summarizing the best companies for employees over 50 to work for. According to the article the face of the workforce in Canada is changing as people begin to live longer due to improvements in health care and a healthy lifestyle. Today’s working population over 50 is healthier and better educated than older workers in the past and they are continuing to work past the typical age of retirement. Statistics by the Job Bank of Canada show that by 2015, 48 percent of workers will be between the ages of 45 and 64.

A number of the companies list telework as a benefit they offer.

Via Business Review Canada. Posted by: Steve

The Telework Association productivity survey, released today, shows that people working at home produce substantially more than when they work in an office. 85% of those surveyed had some improvement in the amount of work they get done.

Via Fresh business thinking.com.

Making the move to corporate teleworking may seem simple from the web worker’s perspective. However, the introduction of teleworking can have an impact on many facets of an organization; careful planning is a must if your organization is considering allowing its employees to work remotely. A telework pilot program is the first step for your organization to take prior to allowing full employee teleworking.

Via WebWorkerDaily

The back-to-back heavy snows of the past week should put a greater commitment to telework on the government’s front burner, to judge from the comments posted to our coverage. However, as much as federal employees favor the idea, many seem to fear that entrenched opposition will cause any push toward telework to fade as soon as the piles of snow melt.

Via Federal Computer Week