The worker you have to plug in

The worker you have to plug in

From article:

When Bowman has a question for a colleague, he doesn't pick up the phone; he uses his joystick to drive his doppelganger to the team member's office. If Paulley needs Bowman's time on a software issue, he calls IvanAnywhere to his office, just as he would with any other employee.

For his part, Bowman uses IvanAnywhere to take part in meetings, even giving presentations with the help of a projector. Every once in a while, he'll motor to the floor's lounge area to look out the window and chat with passersby, much as he would if he were in Waterloo.

Bowman has worked for the Canadian database software company since 1993. Five years ago, when his wife got a job in Halifax, his employers allowed him to follow her east and telecommute. But although Bowman could type out code as well there as he could in Waterloo, he was missing out on the personal give-and-take essential to the flow of ideas. "We were, and we still operate really as, a small software development team where a lot of the collaboration happens face-to-face," Paulley says. "When it comes to coming up with an idea, we're almost always in each other's offices."

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1st monthly jobs decline in 4 years

1st monthly jobs decline in 4 years

From the article:

The economy in August unexpectedly posted its first monthly decline in jobs since 2003, with manufacturing and construction hit the hardest, in a sign that the danger of recession is rising as the housing slump deepens.

The jobs decline of 4,000 reported yesterday by the Labor Department, which also said 81,000 fewer jobs were created in the previous two months, will force the Federal Reserve to slash interest rates this month to revive what had been the strongest sector of the economy, analysts said.

Financial markets plummeted on renewed worries about the economy, with the dollar hitting a 15-year low against world currencies, market interest rates plunging in anticipation of lower Fed rates, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 250 points.

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