A new study has found that employees who telecommute the majority of the workweek are more satisfied with their jobs compared to those working mostly in the office because working remotely alleviates more stress than it creates. The study, conducted by Kathryn Fonner, assistant professor of communication at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) and Michael Roloff, a professor of communication studies at Northwestern University, compared the advantages and disadvantages of each work arrangement. The main benefit reported by participants who telework at least three days a week is the decreased work-life conflict that a flexible work arrangement allows. Teleworkers reported exchanging information with others less frequently than office-based employees, but both groups reported similar timely access to important work-related information. Results of the study pointed to multiple reasons why telework is linked to high job satisfaction, namely that employees working remotely are, on average, shielded from much of the distracting and stressful aspects of the workplace, such as office politics, interruptions, constant meetings and information overload, says Fonner. The finding appears in the November issue of the Journal of Applied Communication Research , published by the National Communication Association. Read more: The Times of India

This is to let you know about a major software update for Taroby scheduled on 29th October, 2010 from 08:30 AM - 10:30 AM GMT. We apologize for the inconvenience and hope you will be happy to hear that this update includes the following corrections and features:

• Move to and Copy to menu items has been optimized.
• The attachment opening methods has been improved.
• Can insert templates at cursor point.
• Improved design template feature.
• Edit message subject issues has been rectified.
• Issues while replying to a text only message has been fixed.

We thank you for your cooperation and understanding. We would also like to hear your suggestions & feedback on these improved features.

The business world is an extremely competitive place, and companies need to take additional steps to make sure hackers can't get into their email systems and cause trouble. If this ever happened it has the potential of costing a business millions of dollars. Secure email systems can help you protect your business by keeping your secrets safe while encouraging a better flow of information between employees. Then there are situations when employees are let go from a business. What happens if they had access to important emails? Can they be trusted not to let the information leak to the public? This could also be devastating to a company, but it is something that could be avoided if there was a secure email system in place. There are also the times when business executives check their email at WiFi hotspots. Can you be sure the email is safe? Public connections are notoriously difficult to keep secure, and that is why it is a good idea to enlist a program that will give you the extra security on your email activities. The daily demands of modern businesses combined with generally busy lifestyles can cause people to cut corners and take risks. That could leave a lot of important data vulnerable to hackers, and that is just one more reason to find a secure email plan that will let you protect all your information. What should happen if you find yourself in a situation when, after spending hours on a report, it gets stolen on its way to the final destination? What if the perpetrator was someone in the company? Unfortunately this is a very real possibility and happens more than it should in companies where the competitive environment encourages employees to take any advantage they can get. Most companies espouse some sort of ethical code, but they are not always followed. There are many employees that could tell plenty of stories about observing other behaving in unethical ways. If you are working with people like that, they could very easily get a hold of your information if you don't use secure email. If someone really wants to get a look at your important information (whether in a business or personal situation) it really isn't that hard. It may be illegal, but that doesn't stop some people from attempting to get into your personal data. Secure email solutions, though, can help you prevent this from happening. Secure email is a simple but very necessary step for businesses and individuals who want to avoid most of these problems. If you take the time to find a quality solution you can be sure that your information will be safe. Photo Credit: Solid Blogger Source: Ezine Articles

Workers across the planet admit to being overwhelmed by the voracious volume of work-related information they have to consume and digest via e-mail and other information collection systems. Information has to be taken in, but how it is processed, organized and made useful is up for serious debate, say corporate employees. What is the consequence? The quality of their work is suffering say 62 percent of workers, according to a study on productivity of 1,700 white collar employees in the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Australia and South Africa by LexisNexis. Almost 60 percent of workers have noticed a dramatic increase in information since the downturn in the world economy, with a good amount of that information being viewed as primarily useless. "Workers across the globe are just about managing to keep their heads above water in a rising tide of information," said Michael Walsh, CEO of U.S. Legal Markets at LexisNexis. "The results of this survey reveal not just how widespread the problem is, but also the very real impact that information overload has on professionals' productivity and the bottom line. Employers need to do more than simply toss their workers a life preserver and hope for the best." Half of all the workers in these countries believe they are near their breaking points with information, and just over half are demoralized by not being able to manage it all. In the United States, 92 percent of workers have to search for old e-mails every week. In Australia, 58 percent of workers say they experience weekly disagreements with co-workers on how to best manage and organize information. Information overload is not constrained by the workplace. A 2008 study from the University of California, San Diego found Americans consume 100,000 words in non-work-related information, or about 34 gigabytes, on average daily. The study found between 1980 and 2008 bytes consumed in television, gaming and Internet-centric information increased by 350 percent, for an annual rate increase of 5.4 percent. With all that information, workers are admitting their consternation on the job. An astonishing number of employees in the United States—90 percent—report their companies could do more to help better manage information in the workplace, said the LexisNexis study. Eighty-two percent of workers across all five countries in this study say they want information-centric software to function more closely to the way they actually work. "The bad news is that wherever you find knowledge workers around the world, you'll also find information overload," Walsh said in the same statement. “Businesses that really come to grips with this problem could gain a competitive advantage over companies that do not.” Source: LexisNexis

As a member of Information Overload Network, I think Information Overload Awareness Day Online Event would be great experience for all knowledge workers.

In conjunction with the observance of Information Overload Awareness Day, Basex, InboxDetox.com, the Information Overload Network, and the Information Overload Research Group have issued a joint challenge to knowledge workers everywhere: starting October 20th, send 10% fewer e-mail messages. The average knowledge worker receives 93 e-mail messages per day and many are unnecessary. If every knowledge worker in the U.S. were to send 10% fewer messages, the cost of Information Overload would be reduced by as much as $180 billion per year.

via Information Overload Awareness Day

We are working relentlessly to add new features to make Taroby an even better experience for you. We are Closing Taroby Public Beta sign ups temporarily from July 22, 2010. Here are a few changes you'll find in the Newly Released version of Taroby:

• Significantly faster in both speed and responsiveness.
• Simplified and better organized menu elements and tool bar.
• Moved the position of the folder tree permanently to the left side.
• Detailed information section per message on the right side in order to know more about the contact, to view recent conversations, and to get the files sent in the previous mails.
• Moved the buttons on bottom to top for easy access of functionalities like download new mails, assign, comment, reply, forward, print, and history. A 'More' button calls the entire context menu directly.
• Search functionality is now available from all tabs.
• Filter layer is now near to the search box. Some common filters like 'All', 'New' and 'Mine' are there on the left side.
• Ability to close the Messages tab. To open it go to 'View' menu on top and click on the menu item 'Messages' in the 'Module tabs' menu.
• The count of messages is now available at the bottom.

We thank you for all the overwhelming support and the feedback you've given us over the past 2 years. We hope to receive such support in the future as well, in making Taroby a better application for all.

Keen friends of the Taroby Collaborative E-Mail Suite have been approaching us with the idea to make an iPhone App based on our upcoming API. The work is already full under way as you can see from the following screenshots.

This would possible make Taroby the first email client with real mobile collaboration features (assigning, commenting and so on).

Will be posting more on this soon! Keep your ideas coming and thanks to all Taroby fans who keep pushing hard for the iPhone App.

Taroby was exhibited at the Business Technology Summit, held @ IISc Bangalore. Our Director Mr Tobias Rueckert also gave a session to the audience about "The strategies to Counter the Information Overload Conundrum". Abstract of the speech: As the world moves into a new internet era with collaborative web 2.0 tools, social networks and the semantic web, an excess amount of information is being provided, making processing and absorbing tasks very difficult for the individual because sometimes we cannot see the validity behind the information. Through the amount of information being produced from various people on the Internet, the problem of Information Overload arises. The implication arises from the psychological field, society and individual. E-mail remains a major source of information overload, as people struggle to keep up with the rate of incoming messages as well as filtering out unsolicited commercial messages (spam), users also have to contend with the growing use of e-mail attachments in the form of lengthy reports, presentations and media files. Come to this session to learn about possible solutions and strategies to counter the information overload conundrum. [gallery orderby="title"]

AMT Director and Founder Mr Aby Varghese spoke to DNA,  Bangalore - a prominent English Newspaper. In the interview, Aby elaborates on the advantage Taroby can bring into team productivity. You can read the entire interview by clicking here. [caption id="attachment_64" align="alignleft" width="457" caption="Sep 10 2009: DNA Newspaper Interview Aby Varghese Taroby"] [/caption]

Don't miss the following video about Information Overload Syndrome (IOS): Use Taroby's Information Overload Strategies instead to manage your complete Communication and Messaging needs. Visit Taroby for more details.