Beat the flu by working remotely

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Friday, October 9, that the H1N1 virus was widespread in 37 states. Fortunately, vaccines are on their way, and seasonal flu shots are currently available (the map on the Flu.gov site helps you find a vaccination center near you).

The best way to avoid bringing the flu bug home with you from the office is to stay out of the office. If you have the flu, do yourself and your coworkers a favor: stay home and rest! Not sure if you have the flu? Check the CDC site for a list and description of the symptoms of both H1N1 and seasonal flu. You'll also find information on the CDC site for taking care of people with the flu, prevention for people at high risk, and travel updates.

One of the best ways to track the flu's spread is via Google Flu Trends, an interactive map that indicates the frequency of flu-related search terms in various countries.

The Google Flu Trends map tracks flu-related searches by country.

(Credit: Google)

Additional information on flu trends is available for the U.S. and several other countries. For the U.S., you can compare yearly flu trends and view data for each state.

For several countries, Google provides more annual and regional flu data.

(Credit: Google)

Link to your office PC for free
In many work situations, there's no substitute for being face to face. But every year it gets easier to get your office work done from outside the office. One way to do so is via Windows' Remote Desktop Connection component, which lets you link to a PC that's on an office network, but only if the machine's running XP Professional or Vista/Windows 7 Professional, Business, or Ultimate.

Microsoft's help and support sites provide more information about XP Pro's remote-access features and Vista's version of Remote Desktop Connection. The How-To Geek offers instructions for enabling Remote Desktop Connection in Windows 7 and Vista.

The Windows approach to remote access is severely limited, especially compared with the alternatives. One of the most popular is LogMeIn, which is available as a limited-feature free version and as a Professional version that costs $70 a year, and the Hamachi release that provides a virtual private network and comes in free and professional versions.

Another widely used remote-access program is RealVNC (Virtual Network Computing), which is also available in free and commercial releases, although the free version runs only on Windows XP. You download the server component to the system you want to access remotely and the client applet on the ex officio machine. Prices for the Personal Edition start at $30 per year for one PC.

Add video to your chat sessions
If you haven't yet used chat at work, you soon will. As timely and to-the-point as texting can be, there's nothing like video for making contact in real time. Nearly every IM service has added voice and video capabilities. For Gmail users, Google's free Gmail voice and video chat plug-in converts any two PCs with Webcams into a videoconferencing system.

For a more generic approach to video chat, the former SightSpeed service has become Logitech Vid, which is free for consumers. The SightSpeed Business version costs from $20 a month or $190 a year for a single seat.

Free videoconferencing services are also offered by Skype, OoVoo, Apple's iChat, and the totally Web-based Palbee beta.

I'll take a closer look at these free video systems in a future flu-season post. Right now, I have to go get myself vaccinated.

[calculatorwatch]

i feel compelled to warn people that the because the vaccine had to be made so quickly it does have some pretty nasty stuff in it, like stuff that's been shown to cause mental defects in children and been linked to gulf war syndrome, look it up if you're actually considering being vaccinated, any vaccine has risks anyways especially new rushed ones and since swine flu isn't that dangerous you're probably better off without it or just working from home

[Gorifyny]

Documentation?

[ddunndtn]

Rather broad statement devoid of specifics. Shown to cause defects by whom? Linked how? Vaccinations work. When was the last time you saw a polio victim or a smallpox outbreak? Who wants to be sick, even mildly.

[CaptAdventure]

I hate totally BS posts like this. The H1N1 vaccine is made using the -exact- same process as every other flu vaccine in recent years. It's safe and high-risk groups (kids, pregnant women, elderly) should definately lean toward getting it.

I don't get these people who act like it was thrown together in some guy's basement overnight. Knock off the ignorant paranoia.

[calculatorwatch]

look it up, jesus, i read it in an article someone printed out (that was written by a doctor) so I don't know the URL, I don't care if you get the shot or not but even CBS and other news shows said there's probably less risk leaving yourself vulnerable, the point is you shouldn't just trust something someone injects into your arm, or your kids arm, but I realize this is america so trying to convince people to be skeptical is fighting an uphill battle

and @CaptAdventure, What BS convinced you it's the EXACT same process? the fact is most of the ingredients are confidential and we don't know the process

[krosafcheg]

>We've found that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity. Google Flu Trends uses >aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity.

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So populations with no internet access are basically invisible in this case. They don't exist.

[michaelbix]

The Google "method" is unfortunately very lazy and extremely misleading. In Region 2 (for instance - NY, NJ, Virgin Is. and Puerto Rico) the number of H1N1 cases are exceeded by the number of seasonal flu cases of all other types (A, N1, etc.) one of which, an enteric variety, just totally laid me over... probably more sick than I've been most any time in my life... for so far six days.

The combined cases of ALL types of flus (including H1N1) right now, at the peak opening month of the flu season with the kids back in school, is almost identical to last year's. The only "squiggle" in the chart (and why any calculation of "flu cases and deaths this year are blah de blah" is because of that big (and unusual) summertime spike of cases and deaths in the Southwest. Take them away - we're so far having an average flu season. 88 deaths last year were nothing to sneeze at - from so-called regular "seasonal flu."

This stuff from Google is, I think, "junk" statistics. Can everyone take a deep breath and maybe read the CDC statistics site? A lot of stuff there, including prior years (omitted here) - http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm#OISmap

[ml360com]

I'm sorry CNET, but why was Team Viewer left out? It's miles ahead of VNC and Logmein.

[tikoro]

TeamViewer has a pay per license version for businesses.
TightVNC will do in a pinch (much like RealVNC) and it's free.