Programs that make Working Remotely Easy

Drew and I live 2 1/2 hours apart as the plane flies, or 20 hours as the car drives. This means we need smooth communication, and the surrounding technology we’ve come to use is key to that.

Chat is our main means of communication. At the very least we blip back and forth every day, and our friendship and business operations run all the better for it. Nothing waits to end up a surprise and we stay aware and on track. I personally recommend the chat client Digsby to anyone who will listen. It’s a great consolidator and keeps me notified of any updates via all my social sites and avoids the bugs that they many different chat clients have on their own.

Google Docs has proved to be our second-most relied upon means of collaboration.  It’s easy for me to write up an idea, share it with Drew and have him notified via email.  From then on we can both edit in real-time, and more often then not create goals and cross them off as we complete them. We were skeptical of it at first as it looks bare when compared to MS Word, but its behind-the-scenes goodness means you should check it out Google Docs. It also provides the ability to work on client presentations and export them the the more corporate PowerPoint format. There is also all of the features of Excel lodged into the spreadsheet, which we use for basic budgeting in a crunch.

Screenshots used to be tedious, but with JetScreenshot for PC and Skitch for Mac the process is quick enough to be part of our regular means of sharing ideas.  Instead of an in-depth description of a problem, it simply gets circled and shared. We’ve tried all sorts of screen-sharing applications, but none has proved as useful as the quick screenshot. (Tip for JetScreenshot, go to your Settings, Share Options,  and set Share to FTP as your default option. Jpgs are better than frames.)

Skype has been a life-saver when a large project needs to be done yesterday. We can leave it up and be able to swap information as easily as working in the same cubicle. To quickly switch my mic on and off I’ve adopted the use of global hotkeys.

We’ve refined our process over the past two years of working remotely, but by no means is the case closed. If there’s a technology you’ve come to rely on, share away in the comments.