Working From Home, Tools of the Trade

I've been feeling less than 100% for the last week or so, and the only thing I can figure is that I picked up a bug when on one of my many, many flights over the holidays (and that I hope it is not MRSA). So today I decided to work from my home rather than continue to gross out my coworkers with my constant throat clearing and nose blowing (which, according to this Boston Globe article about presenteeism, is really a favor to my office and the corporate world at large).

I feel like I've been getting sick more often this year than in the first year I moved to New York, which I think is odd because with all the people constantly in contact here (on the subways, in our huge office buildings, etc) you'd figure that the first year of life in this city would be comparable to the first year as a schoolteacher (although in some countries such as Japan and Britain it seems teachers may be taking sick days for other reasons)- with sickness abound - and that after that you'd be somewhat in the clear.

Well, anyhow, here I am. Lucky for me all of my work is Web-based, so it is actually a smooth transition from home to work and vice versa. But there are a few tools that make my telecommute much easier - so I thought I'd share those (sorry PCs, these are mostly Mac tools).

1. Adium - this combines all of my chat programs into one. People are often surprised at how much our office uses ichat programs, but it is sometimes just easier to ask someone for a hyperlink via chat than to walk over to their desk. When I'm at home it makes it so that I'm pretty much on call all the time.

2. Sendspace - this lets me send photos, files, whatever I need that is too large for an e-mail attachment.

3. Dashboard Widgets - I know that not everyone with a Mac uses their Dashboard, but I think it is pretty much the greatest invention since sliced bread. I use it as a dictionary, calculator, stock tracker, and most of all for the 15+ sticki notes that I have floating around on it reminding me what I need to do each day.

4. Firefox addons - this seems like an obvious one, and it really has to do more with tools I use in general rather than work-at-home tools in specific, but I love Firefox and I can't say enough good things about it. And I've added no less than a dozen applications to it (including foxytunes, clipmarks, and yoono) that have all enhanced my web experience greatly.

This is just a small (and somewhat generic) list of the programs/sites I use when I'm at home - we've got a huge list of great resources for work-at-homers in our Freelancing Web Guide. And, if you've got a cold like me and about half of the US population, take a gander at our Cold and Flu Web Guide.