IvanAnywhere is soooo cool!

Imagine you’re a telecommuter in a company where everyone else works out of the office. Your only interaction is via conference calls, email and IM. You miss out on all the work and non-work related chatter that happens in the corridors, other people’s cubicles and in the lunch room. Ivan Bowman in a Sybase subsidiary in Canada was one of those people, but he wanted to change that.

Phase one was to install a webcam in the office, so he could see and hear what was going on, but he couldn’t answer back, and it wasn’t what you would call mobile. They ended up building a remote controllable platform with a webcam, speakers and a touch screen on a pole, so he can roam the corridors, attend meetings and drop into coworkers cubicles just like he was there. He controls it all remotely using a joystick, and the touch screen displays a live feed of his face from his webcam. Some would discard the idea as a toy or gimmick, but I see this as a very workable solution to the disconnect often felt by those who work away from the office.

The Record via Slashdot