Working from home can have many advantages: save on start up costs, as you do not need premises; save time that would be spent on looking for suitable property; avoid becoming tied into long tenancy agreements; arrange work around family commitments; get help from family, e.g. they may help you with filing or general administration tasks; save on time and money spent travelling to work; and avoid noise, distractions and smelly colleagues in the workplace.

However, there are disadvantages from home working too. You may find you have trouble with: separating home and work life; the initial expense of setting up; domestic distractions and interruptions; and going stir-crazy (take my word for it!). Fear not anti-commuters, BT Business is here to help. It has launched a new ‘how to’ guide, the ‘Remote Manager’s Toolkit’, designed to help close the gap in skills identified in new BT research showing that the majority managers have never received training on how to manage remote workers and are not familiar with their IT requirements.

Many businesses currently offer their staff the opportunity of remote and mobile working, but this is set to increase in just eight months time, with an extra 4.5million staff in the UK gaining the right to request flexible working under plans released in May by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. The lack of management expertise risks promoting feelings of isolation amongst remote workers and encouraging the culture of ‘presenteeism’, the long-hours culture, where staff feel that coming in early, staying late and battling on when they are ill is expected.

Though many employees are concerned that colleagues will accuse them of skiving if they work from home, workers are more fearful of missing out on the camaraderie, gossip and banter of the office, even though most are probably more effective when they are working from home. And many probably lack the IT support to work from home effectively.

Work is no longer a place you go, but something you do. Information and communications technology has provided the means for most of us tied to a desk to work remotely. We’ve all seen huge benefits from remote working for many years, so hopefully BT Business’ ‘Remote Manager’s Toolkit’ can help businesses enjoy the benefits of remote working, while overcoming challenges such as team collaboration, performance monitoring and worker isolation. The management guide was produced in conjunction with a panel of flexible working experts, and written by the Centre for Future Studies.

It worried me recently when I read about the escalating use of anonymous proxies by students trying to bypass Web filtering technology, mainly because of the risks associated with unrestricted Internet access. The Internet is an incredibly important and useful resource for education, yet it can also impact productivity as students have the opportunity to waste time surfing social networking Web sites or bandwidth-sapping media download sites. More importantly, there’s a lot of bad stuff on the Net which really shouldn’t be seen by children.

Teachers notice when students are spending too much time gossiping in the classroom, whereas quietly surfing the Internet is not quite so obvious, yet it has the potential to expose children to inappropriate and even harmful material if not properly regulated. This is particularly concerning for the education sector as school IT administrators are required to protect children from the pernicious aspects of the Internet.

As children’s knowledge of technology and the Internet continues to evolve, students are finding new subversive ways in which to access non-work related sites during school hours, creating further challenges for Internet filters and IT managers. The easiest and most popular means of doing this is by connecting to an anonymous proxy server, a Web site that enables users to access URLs that may otherwise have been blocked by an Internet filter.

An anonymous proxy server is a routing communications between a computer and the Internet that can hide or mask your unique address to prevent unauthorised access to your computer over the Internet. The idea being to help protect your privacy while you are online, but also to get around Internet blocks while at school or work. For instance while on campus, when you use the Internet at school it will likely block sites such as MySpace and Facebook. Students can use a freely available proxy server site to unblock MySpace, as well as any other site.

Child protection should be a school’s first priority and so blocking access to inappropriate content is critical - especially for protecting a school’s reputation. Hundreds of anonymous proxy sites are created each week and blocking them using traditional Internet filtering software, which rely on black lists, is simply no longer effective. Schools must be aware of how to manage and regulate Internet access by deploying the right technology in order to avoid children coming across inappropriate online content, whether accidentally or otherwise.

Patients who need physiotherapy following a stroke or accident could soon be put through their paces in a virtual reality (VR) environment.

A very clever person at the University of Portsmouth is creating a rehabilitation programme that places patients on a treadmill and into a virtual world. It works by using moving images to trick the patient’s brain into thinking he or she is walking more slowly than they are which in turn encourages them to walk faster and further.

Wendy Powell, a PhD student in the School of Creative Technologies, is obviously a cyberpunk at heart. But her early results are promising and suggest that patients using virtual rehabilitation may experience less pain than traditional physiotherapy alone. Wendy developed the software which works in conjunction with a specially adapted treadmill. Clinical trials on real patients are taking place in collaboration with experts at the renowned McGill University in Canada. A former chiropractor, Wendy hopes it will pave the way for a new and innovative approach to physiotherapy.

Surprisingly, this isn’t the first time VR has been used for treatment. A virtual reality theatre was built in 2006 for treatment and therapy purposes at the Cleveland Hearing and Speech Center in the U.S. The IVR-Cave is a patient’s own personalised IMAX Theater, complete with three screens which encompass the patient with 180 degrees of high-definition film and surround sound. The patient is able to watch interactive movies on the big screens from an elevated platform in the middle of the room. The interactive movies provide patients with practice in social situations, but also allow the therapist to monitor results.

For example, someone may be undergoing speech therapy for stuttering problems. After stepping into the room, they are presented with a film featuring a McDonald’s worker asking them for their order. Depending on the response from the patient, the therapist can choose particular branch points through the scenario. If the patient is acting belligerent, the worker may go and get the manager, while if the customer’s stuttering becomes overwhelming, the worker may show amused facial expressions.

VR is also being used today by the military. Dr. Greg Reger, a clinical psychologist at the Telehealth and Technology Center of the Defense Center of Excellence, is utilising a virtual world where U.S. soldiers can walk the roads of Iraq with a standard issued M-4 in hand, feel the shockwave from an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) blast, experience the feeling of being ambushed by Iraqi forces and then smell the scent of gunpowder from fired weapons after the battle is finished. Created by developers at the Institute of Creative Technology at the University of Southern California, Reger does not use this virtual world to train soldiers for deployment, but rather to help them after coming home. While some service members are able to easily transition from war to life back home, others may have a more difficult time as a result of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Wendy’s virtual system encourages patients to walk more quickly and for longer, almost without them realising it. She said it effectively fools the brain and the body. The environment is apparently stimulating and entertaining and there’s less fear of falling over. Wendy hopes that the system will also help older stoke patients who often find traditional approaches to improving their speed and distance difficult because it relies very much on self-motivation.

After a stroke or fall many older people lack motivation and confidence and they don’t feel steady on their feet so getting out and about can be an issue and they can find the whole process rather dull. Wendy’s system uses a variety of different images from urban landscapes to forest and mountain scenes. She has built a system of rewards into some of the programmes, which encourages the patient to pick up objects and collect points. She said that older people were not at all put off by the ‘computer game’ element but seemed to enjoy it.

Stroke survivors are in luck too. The vast majority of stroke survivors cannot use a normal treadmill because they are not in control and many can only hold on with one hand making it almost impossible. Walking is the best possible exercise for their bodies and this system would help enormously. I can see it working very well on improving strength, endurance and stamina. Consistency and practice are key to making progress and this system has huge potential across a wide range of activities which can be tailored to meet individual rehabilitation needs.

I wish you all the very best with your work Wendy!

UK customers are paying 70% more than they need to for their broadband connections despite the credit crunch. Masses of broadband customers (70,000 in fact) on 8Mbps broadband packages have been interrogated by Broadband Expert to find out how much they pay for their connections. Compared to the deals currently available on the market, it’s no surprise that there’s a huge disparity between the two figures - much like the energy market!

On average UK broadband customers pay £16.98 per month for an 8Mbps broadband package, despite some providers offering a similar package for under £10 a month. BT and Demon customers lose out most, while Sky and O2 customers are quids in.

You may not be aware that broadband prices have dropped dramatically in the last few years. A customer who signed up for a broadband package 2 years ago could be paying two to three times the amount they would pay if they signed up to a similar or better package today. Broadband providers (and mortgage lenders while I’m ranting) could - and should - do more to ensure long standing customers are not overcharged by moving them on to the same pricing a new customer would receive.

Some customers are aware that they could save money by switching to a new provider, but are not willing to spend the time to move to a different ISP. Switching broadband is no longer the traumatic process it once was. Under Ofcom regulations, Internet Service Providers must provide a MAC code (a numerical code like a serial number) which can be passed to the new provider and is designed to make switching from one provider to another as painless as possible. Even with the best planning in the world you can expect 1or 2 day’s downtime, but aren’t the cost savings worth the hassle in the long term?

A postgraduate degree which allows students to develop a professional IT qualification without getting off their butts has been launched by the University of Aberdeen. Whatever next, jobs you don’t have to wake up for?

One of the only degree programmes of its kind in the world, the Master of Science Degree (MSc) in Software Project Management uses virtual learning technology to enable students to study part-time from their home or work environment. How is all this possible? The Net of course - studies are undertaken entirely online with no requirement for students to attend classes on campus or even dress for the occasion/at all.

According to the University of Aberdeen, the MSc in Software Project Management is a unique and innovative course that utilises cutting edge Web-based technologies to provide quality teaching for distance learning students. While the virtual learning environment probably allows students undertaking the programme to essentially study wherever and whenever they like - be it from work, home, the other side of the world, or even on Daddy’s yacht - I can’t help but feel that there’s more to education than a user ID and password.