The Weekly Round-Up: 15.05.09

If you're reading this on Friday 15 May, there's a good chance you're not wearing any trousers. For today is the annual Work From Home day, and quite frankly the best thing about being WFH is the reduced importance of sartorial correctness.

Over the past five days the Work Wise initiative has been encouraging people to join in the event aimed at raising awareness of the benefits of flexible working, with the hope of increasing the number of homeworkers to more than 14 million by 2011.

As is traditional, the silicon.com editorial team has joined in the fun, spending a day this week working in the comfort of their own homes, eschewing the comforts of the modern office. That is apart from one member who struggled in through a wet and dour London morning to an empty newsroom and made a mental note to remind everyone to put their phones on divert next year.

As usual, it was a mixed bag.

One person managed to gouge a hole in his hand on a gate while attempting to work in a field.

Another spent fruitless hours trying to install a webcam, while others struggled with videoconferencing technology to run the morning news meeting. In the end they reverted to a traditional phone call rather than engaging in a collaborative video-over-IP meeting.

The old ways are the best ways, eh?

On the other hand there were some real positives. Prior to gouging a hole in his hand, one silicon.com reporter did manage to avoid a two-hour commute, enjoyed a lie in and logged on to his email half an hour earlier than normal. So some you win, some you lose.

Personally, the Round-Up loves working from home and has noted the following five truisms:

1. You drink lots and lots of tea
2. You wee a lot
3. You spend a lot of time on social networking sites and IM
4. You get a lot of work done
5. You miss real social interaction with real people, even if they can be a bit annoying and grumpy from time to time

The freedom from interruptions is welcome. In the office if you're really focused on completing the task at hand you can just about ignore emails, phone calls, chat requests and tweets but you can't ignore people leaning over your desk asking if you've read the email they've just sent you.

Also, there is the wonderful release from the endless meetings, music blaring on the computer, a whole packet of biscuits to yourself and no need to face public transport.

But there is the solitude. Most of us need human contact.

As a well-used Round-Up shout from E.M Forster, and a perfect axiom for the wired world states: Only Connect...

As it happens, it looks like we don't need much encouragement to work from home. Increasing numbers of recession-hit Brits are choosing to work in their jammies to save cash, a new report has found.

More than half (55 per cent) of employees are working from home more frequently since the financial crisis began, according to research commissioned by BT Business.

The vast majority (88 per cent) said their main reason for doing so is the need to save money.

One way the silicon.com team kept in contact while working from home was by following each other's Twitter ('I'm making tea', 'Hurt hand on fence' and so on). You can of course follow silicon.com's Twitter feed here.

But it's not just media types tweeting these days, oh no - a brave new world of digital engagement and social media awaits Her Majesty's Civil Service following the long-awaited appointment of a director of digital engagement this week.

The senior civil service position will be responsible for spearheading the government's strategy on all things social media.

So who is this self-facilitating media node? His name is Andrew Stott, and as soon as it read news of the appointment on the rather dreary Cabinet Office press release and learned that Andrew had a Twitter account, the Round-Up rushed to view his tweets.

And what was Andrew's snappy and engaging user name? DirDigEng.

Surely one of the first rules of digital engagement is to use your real name for starters. Still, perhaps 'director of digital engagement' was going to eat into that 140-word tweet limit.

So, what did DirDigEng have to say for himself? What tweets of wisdom? Well, at the time the Round-Up first started following him he hadn't tweeted anything much. Hardly surprising given that he'd only just started and was probably arranging his yucca in his new office. Still you would have thought he could have added a few links to amusing YouTube videos.

Within a few hours, DirDigEng - which sounds a little like the opening bars of a funk bass riff - was being followed by hundreds (600 at the last count). But Andrew is taking his time when it comes to tweating. Or he may have sent hundreds of direct replies, it's difficult to tell since Twitter changed their policy on hiding replies to people you don't follow (madness).

Either way, the future of government is here and its 140 characters long.

The Round-Up wishes @DirDigEng the very best of luck in his new role...

And finally this week, this pesky recession is causing some of us to take drastic action to make ends meet.

According to a survey by the fantastically named Booz and Company, a quarter of those surveyed are considering ditching their mobile phones altogether.

Forty-five per cent of telecoms consumers questioned will consider bundling media services and 44 per cent plan to use more internet-based phone services such as Skype.

A further 23 per cent may cancel their broadband/TV subscription and 43 per cent will use their landline more often.

Consolidation of media bundles is all very well but abandoning our mobiles? At a time when we're all miserable enough due to the economy and weather and being forced to work at home while everyone else in the office indulges in giant parties? The Round-Up thinks not.

Yes, they may be expensive and often not work very well. But give up ringtones, SMS and mobile internet as well as all the other things that irritate other people on public transport? You must be joking Mr Researcher.

You may take our movies but you'll never take our mobiles...

And finally, a brisk walk in the general direction of other big tech stories of the week, worthy of a mention but more difficult to make anything more than pithy comments about.

The exciting stuff that Microsoft has tucked away in its labs.

New. Google. Toys.

Still on the subject of Google, check out silicon.com's round-up of the 10 best Android applications on the block.

Finally, finally: caption > brain > words > Yay!