Old-line managers who resist telecommuting and telework generally are steadily running out of places to hide their prejudices. The notion of "virtual" continues to collapse, as Apple and other companies maintain their push toward "videochat for all."
Apple has already brought touch-screen videochat to the iPhone (the service is known as FaceTime). Now, it's rumored to be moving FaceTime to larger screens with a new version of Apple TV -- iTV.
Cisco and HP continue to develop "immersive telepresence" offerings -- for the moment, primarily for the higher-end of the business sector -- and startup Vidyo is gaining momentum by bringing down the price and raising the quality of everyday business videoconferencing.
In the meantime, millions of home-based entrepreneurs (not to mention the news media) continue to use Skype to get things done. (Chris and I use Skype all the time to connect our home-based offices in Virginia and Connecticut.)
The old question still heard in federal government and other bureaucratic hallways -- "How can I supervise you if I can't see you?" -- is steadily being revealed for what it's been for years: Inertia for job security's sake.
The irony is, the more you resist these changes, the more likely you'll mess up your career. (That's for the bureaucratic world, of course. In the private-sector world, you'd simply be fired.)
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