E L S U A ~ A KM Blog Thinking Outside The Inbox by Luis Suarez

A Waterfall

Here we go again with the weekly section for some pictures that I have taken not long ago and which will give you an idea of how the spring is hitting over here in Gran Canaria. Last week I shared some pictures from Degollada de las Yeguas where you could see how the South of the island looks like after plenty of rain and lots of sunshine. This time around I have been sharing some pictures, already available at my Flickr account, of a waterfall in the center of the island just a couple of days after we had lots of rain from a thunderstorm. So this time around you will see how the centre of the island is all full of green all over the place and what the waterfall would look like with hardly any water. Then perhaps at a later time I will share a second round of pictures of the same waterfall but that time around with water. You will be able to see the huge difference. But let’s go with the first round of my favourite pictures of the week:

As usual, if you would want to see some more pictures around this very same subject I have shared some more in my Flickr account. And talking about Flickr, here you have got my weekly tip on another handy tool that would allow you to display your Flickr pictures as a screensaver. The tool itself is called Slickr and you can find more details about it over here. It would allow you to display pictures by user, group, Everyone and local (From a particular folder) and configure it in a couple of easy steps. Quite handy if you have got an extensive set of pictures and you would want to check them out every now and then directly in your Desktop. I can certainly recommend it.

Technorati Tags: Gran Canaria, Waterfall, Slickr, Flickr

Have You Found Your Plazer Yet?

In the past you would remember how I have been weblogging a few times already about one particular application very handy specially for the mobile workforce. The application itself is called Plazes and you can find more information about it over here. The reason why I have always thought that this application would be very beneficial for the mobile knowledge workers is because it offers people the opportunity to show other colleagues their whereabouts at all times. That location awareness is, perhaps, one of the key fundamental features that Plazes has been very popular for. I am sure you would remember how up to not long ago most teams were working together under the same location. However, nowadays, and as we move more towards a much more mobile working environment, we find out that people are distributed in different geographies, regions, timezones, you name it and still they would need to show everyone else where they are so that they can see if they would be able to collaborate further or not.

And this is where Plazes would become very handy because it just provides you with that and so much more. This application is very similar to another offering that I have also weblogged about here in the past called Meetro. They both try to address the raising need of telling your colleagues where you are while on the road so that if you happen to be close enough you may be able to get together with them much easier than going through whatever the traditional methods. However, both of my colleagues Ed Brill and Andy Piper have been sharing their experiences recently in different weblog posts about a new release from Plazes now called Plazer.

Plazer, pretty much like its predecessor, will give you now the opportunity to indicate at all times where you are by reading the MAC address of your machine the router through which you are connecting to the internet and sending it back to the Plazes server. Then from there people who may be able to check your profile will be able to find out where you are at that time. Here is my profile to give you an idea of what it looks like. You will also be able to notice how the new Plazer has got as well the integration features of other applications from the previous version, so you will be able to access people’s pictures from Flickr, connect with then through various IM clients, including Skype, send different e-mail messages from inside of the tool itself and so forth. And all of that manageable from a launchpad. Quite interesting if you would want to have all those resources available to you for all your mobile coworkers and with a very lightweight client installed in your machine.

I must say that so far I haven’t been able to use it much more other than from my home office location since I haven’t had much chance to travel in the last few months but one thing for sure is that whenever I get a chance to try it out I will certainly be doing so and that will be happening a couple of times this year where I will be travelling to mainland Spain and perhaps a couple of European countries. Thus if you would be interested in getting together just check out my profile and drop a message to say “Hi!” You never know. I might be closer than what you may think.

Technorati Tags: Plazes, Plazer, Location Awareness, Mobile Workforce