The Smarter Home Office: 8 simple steps to increase your income, inspiration and comfort. The "8 Steps" are simple and surprisingly easy to do. The Smarter Home Office give you practical solutions that work for you on any budget. If your home is your castle, why does your office feel like a dungeon? Does your workspace make your worklife more difficult? Do you avoid your home office because it is so depressing? Do you have a home office that is not working for you, but you don;t know where to begin? The Smarter Home Office is for anyone with a small business, home office or corporate office. Position your desk to support work flow. Discover the overlooked "best perk" of the home office. Use simplified ergonomic adjustment to prevent stiffness and back pain. Choose the best lighting to avoid eye strain and fatigue. Access nature to de-stress and energize yourself. Create a color environment to support mental focus or physical activity. Identify underused spaces for an office in a "room too short" home. Arrange photos and mementos for personal inspiration, because a boring office is just as unproductive as a cluttered office. Your problems working at home may have less to do with will power than with the set up of your workspace. Linda Varone is an award-winning home and office design consultant. She has helped entrepreneurs, telecommuters and work at home moms to add warmth, energy and comfort to their home office since 1991. Linda uses a unique blend of architectural psychology and interior design.
A Linux smart home is about controlling and monitoring devices and information around your home using a standard personal computer, Linux, and its vast array of open source tools. You don’t have to be a master programmer to create one. If you like to tinker with Linux, Linux Smart Homes For Dummies will guide you through cool home automation projects that are as much fun to work on as they are to use. Home automation used to be limited to turning on lights and appliances, and maybe controlling your thermostat and lawn sprinkler, from your computer. While you still might not be able to create all the Jetsons’ toys, today you can also Build a wireless network Create and set up a weather station Automate your TV and sound system Spy on your pets when you’re not home Set up an answering system that knows what to do with calls Increase your home’s security If you know how to use Linux and a few basic development tools — Perl, the BASH shell, development libraries, and the GNU C compiler—Linux Smart Homes For Dummies will help you do all these tricks and more. For example, you can Discover the best sources for Linux-based home automation devices Set up a wireless network, create a wireless access point, build a bridge between wired and wireless networks, and route your own network traffic Build a personal video recorder with MythTV that will record to DVD, or set up a wireless streaming music system Create a smart phone system that takes messages and forwards them to your fax, modem, or answering machine Build a weather station that notifies you of severe weather alerts Control and secure your home automation network, and even check on your house when you’re away The bonus CD-ROM includes all kinds of cool open source software for your home automation projects. Linux Smart Homes For Dummies even includes lists of cool gadgets to check out and great ways to automate those boring household chores. A smart home’s a happy home!
"An excellent guide on how teams can effectively work together, regardless of location." —STEPHANE KASRIEL, former CEO of Upwork IN TODAY'S MODERN GLOBAL ECONOMY, companies and organizations in all sectors are embracing the game-changing benefits of the remote workplace. Managers benefit by saving money and resources and by having access to talent outside their zip codes, while employees enjoy greater job opportunities, productivity, independence, and work-life satisfaction. But in this new digital arena, companies need a plan for supporting efficiency and fostering streamlined, engaging teamwork. In Work Together Anywhere, Lisette Sutherland, an international champion of virtual-team strategies, offers a complete blueprint for optimizing team success by supporting every member of every team, including: EMPLOYEES/small advocating for work-from-home options MANAGERS/small seeking to maximize productivity and profitability TEAMS/small collaborating over complex projects and long-term goals ORGANIZATIONS/small reliant on sharing confidential documents and data COMPANY OWNERS/small striving to save money and attract the best brainpower Packed with hands-on materials and actionable advice for cultivating agility, camaraderie, and collaboration, Work Together Anywhere is a thorough and inspiring must-have guide for getting ahead in today's remote-working world.
The life and times of the Smart Wife--feminized digital assistants who are friendly and sometimes flirty, occasionally glitchy but perpetually available. Meet the Smart Wife--at your service, an eclectic collection of feminized AI, robotic, and smart devices. This digital assistant is friendly and sometimes flirty, docile and efficient, occasionally glitchy but perpetually available. She might go by Siri, or Alexa, or inhabit Google Home. She can keep us company, order groceries, vacuum the floor, turn out the lights. A Japanese digital voice assistant--a virtual anime hologram named Hikari Azuma--sends her "master" helpful messages during the day; an American sexbot named Roxxxy takes on other kinds of household chores. In The Smart Wife, Yolande Strengers and Jenny Kennedy examine the emergence of digital devices that carry out "wifework"--domestic responsibilities that have traditionally fallen to (human) wives. They show that the principal prototype for these virtual helpers--designed in male-dominated industries--is the 1950s housewife: white, middle class, heteronormative, and nurturing, with a spick-and-span home. It's time, they say, to give the Smart Wife a reboot. What's wrong with preferring domestic assistants with feminine personalities? We like our assistants to conform to gender stereotypes--so what? For one thing, Strengers and Kennedy remind us, the design of gendered devices re-inscribes those outdated and unfounded stereotypes. Advanced technology is taking us backwards on gender equity. Strengers and Kennedy offer a Smart Wife "manifesta," proposing a rebooted Smart Wife that would promote a revaluing of femininity in society in all her glorious diversity.
As the baby boom generation ages, it is crucial that designers understand all they can about bringing this group, as well as all others, design that will offer function, aesthetics, and quality of life. Full of examples and illustrated with pictures of good design, Universal Design: Principles and Models details how the principles of universal desi
"Smart homes are domestic spaces outfitted with networked technology made by brands like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple. However, Silicon Valley purveyors are not the only important actors in smart home development. Appliance makers, logistics companies, health and wellness conglomerates, insurance companies, and security franchises are all betting on the smart home in an economy that puts a premium on data. Together, major players in the smart home space have successfully attracted the attention and pocketbooks of millions of households by touting the virtues of ambient, networked technologies as an upgrade to modern domestic life. If industry predictions hold, nearly half of American houses will be "smart" by 2024. Yet, what it means to be "smart" is still unsettled. Threshold asks and answers the question: How do smart homes communicate cultural values about the role of technology in the 21st century? Answering this question is time-sensitive, as the coming years will determine how smart homes are configured, who has access to them, and what they mean to their owners, policy makers, technology companies, and others invested in these domestic digital platforms. The consequences of these decisions are significant because they impact both smart home residents and society at large. At present, much of the research on smart homes caters either to industry experts or scientists and engineers. This literature often describes or evaluates the technical capacities of the smart home or focuses on user interface and design. Instead, Heather Woods argues, we need a sustained cultural analysis of smart homes that considers the socio-technical variables-gender, class, income disparity, race, criminal justice, the housing market, and the future of both labor and domesticity-that give the smart home meaning. Threshold takes up this challenge from a rhetorical perspective, arguing that smart homes are lived, material embodiments of the digital cultures in which they are imagined, built, and used. Those considerations, more often than not, are relegated to secondary considerations, when in truth they are the most pervasive and consequential factors affecting anyone participating in a smart home ecosystem. Woods argues that smart homes are spatial manifestations of a phenomenon called living in digitality, a cultural condition whereby users engage with technology at every moment of every day. Using extensive fieldwork at smart homes throughout the USA, Woods traces how smart homes urge ubiquitous computing as a normalized, daily practice, readying domestic spaces and their occupants for an increasingly transactional digital future that is largely controlled by corporate interests. Threshold advances knowledge in three ways, by: (1) Offering definitional tools for identifying and evaluating immersive technologies, including but not limited to the smart home (2) Identifying three distinct configurations of the smart home according to their domestic and technological functions (3) Demonstrating the productive capacity of smart homes (and smart devices) to influence social life The book highlights the rhetorical force of smart domesticity for rhetorical scholars, digital humanists, political scientists, critical theorists, policy makers, and residents or prospective residents of smart homes. Ultimately, Threshold serves as a toolkit for recognizing and responding to the persistent encroachment of digital technologies in all parts of our lives"--
How can I keep people engaged during my presentations? What can I do to my office so that I look forward to coming to it on Monday? How can I improve the productivity of our team, our department, our company? Scientists know. Brain Rules for Work by developmental molecular biologist and author Dr. John Medina, explores the various aspects of work through the lens of peer-reviewed science. Having written New York Times bestselling works Brain Rules, Brain Rules for Baby and Brain Rules for Aging Well, Dr. Medina turns his expertise towards the professional world, guiding us through what brain science and evolutionary biology have to say about topics from office space and work/life balance to power dynamics and work interactions in the time of COVID-19. Medina's charming descriptions and hilarious anecdotes break the science down to practical applications that you can put into use next Monday to improve your work life and the work lives of those around you. You'll learn: Why taking breaks in nature during the workday improves productivity How planning a meeting beforehand makes it more effective Why an open office plan isn't a good office plan How a more diverse team is a more potent team What exactly about talking to co-workers online is so exhausting Why allowing for failure is vital to a company's success What power can do to an executive who has just been promoted Procrastination is not due to laziness, rather an avoidance of negative feelings Which personality tests will help you find the right fit for the job-hint: it's not the Myers-Briggs The surprising source of a leader's charisma And what our work lives will look like in a post-pandemic world Whether you are an employee at a company looking to become successful or an executive who wants to ensure the success of your employees, Brain Rules For Work is both a useful tool and a compelling guide for you and your co-workers.
Who benefits from smart technology? Whose interests are served when we trade our personal data for convenience and connectivity? Smart technology is everywhere: smart umbrellas that light up when rain is in the forecast; smart cars that relieve drivers of the drudgery of driving; smart toothbrushes that send your dental hygiene details to the cloud. Nothing is safe from smartification. In Too Smart, Jathan Sadowski looks at the proliferation of smart stuff in our lives and asks whether the tradeoff—exchanging our personal data for convenience and connectivity—is worth it. Who benefits from smart technology? Sadowski explains how data, once the purview of researchers and policy wonks, has become a form of capital. Smart technology, he argues, is driven by the dual imperatives of digital capitalism: extracting data from, and expanding control over, everything and everybody. He looks at three domains colonized by smart technologies' collection and control systems: the smart self, the smart home, and the smart city. The smart self involves more than self-tracking of steps walked and calories burned; it raises questions about what others do with our data and how they direct our behavior—whether or not we want them to. The smart home collects data about our habits that offer business a window into our domestic spaces. And the smart city, where these systems have space to grow, offers military-grade surveillance capabilities to local authorities. Technology gets smart from our data. We may enjoy the conveniences we get in return (the refrigerator says we're out of milk!), but, Sadowski argues, smart technology advances the interests of corporate technocratic power—and will continue to do so unless we demand oversight and ownership of our data.
We often conceptualize that older adults retire into a life of carefree luxury among palm trees, golf courses, and pristine beaches. Unfortunately, reality differs today – many retire in place, and often it is the case they retire in rural areas far from hospitals and care-giving centers. For instance, over half of the older population in the state of Minnesota lives in small towns away from the center of care, which is Minneapolis/St. Paul. This year, ICOST 2008 aimed at focusing on this important reality and on gerontechnology––the use of technology to enhance the quality of life of older adults in rural lands. We had a strong technical program this year spanning many critical topics incl- ing: remote monitoring and tele-care, access control and privacy preservation, und- standing user requirements and needs, autonomic learning and reasoning about user behavior, activities and contexts, user interface design, middleware for sensing and actuation in smart homes, cognitive assistants, context-aware service provisioning, among other topics. We received a total of 54 submissions of papers, abstracts and posters, from 14 diff- ent countries. Through a blind review process, we accepted 24 full papers, 9 abstracts, and 7 posters. Each submission received two or three reviews with the exception of a few that received four reviews. We are thankful to all the reviewers who helped in the review process including members of the Technical Committee and the additional reviewers that we needed to compensate for unreturned reviews.
