Sara Sutton Fell, the founder and CEO of flexible and telecommuting job board FlexJobs.com, is in an ideal position to know. As the economy tanked and now waveringly rights itself, she has observed the quantity, type and behavior of both employers and job hunters on her site, sussing out the effects of the economic downturn on telecommuting. She spoke to WebWorkerDaily about her observations:

When I originally started the company a little over four years ago it was pre-recession. And that was a very different market. At the time my target audience was work-from-home moms, tapping into the idea that at least in the U.S. and probably in many other countries they’re one of the most under-employed audiences. Mainly because they’re highly educated women who have left the workforce because they can’t find something that offers them the flexibility, reduced schedule or alternative schedule that accommodates their commitment to their families. So that was definitely what I anticipated to be a large majority of our audience.

With the recession it’s very much evolved to be across the board. We’re maybe about 60/40, female to male. It’s everything from entry-level to executive level. I think the recession has raised awareness among people who were skeptical or previously wouldn’t have considered flexibility or telecommuting either in their hiring practices or their job-seeking practices. From the job seeker perspective, they’ve had to look out of the box because they haven’t been able to find the traditional, normal, full-time job that they would have looked for. The awareness has been forced by the recession, but has gained momentum both from the benefits telecommuting offers, but also from other trends that have been feeding into it for some time — technology supporting mobility, the environmental issues, things like emergency preparedness, bad weather. I could go on and on.

But it’s not just job seekers who have been forced to reevaluate telecommuting due to the dismal economic conditions. Employers have taken a fresh look at web work as well, says Sutton Fell.

It’s not how I would have wished it to happen, but I do think the recession has opened employers’ eyes to the fact that these opportunities are not just fuzzy, soft benefits for employees, but they actually offer quite a wide variety of benefits for them as well, including economic benefits, which is ultimately what it’s about.

IT and tech are the traditional sectors that utilize telecommuting, but during the recession organizations in a wide variety of sectors increasingly looked to web workers, according to FlexJobs data.

In telecommuting particularly we had an over 400 percent increase of jobs our researchers would find in the last three years alone. Our categories that have grown the most are medical and health. Sales has definitely been big. Education is a really big one with all the online education opportunities. Non-profit and philanthropy is an area that has been embracing the benefits, especially the reduced overhead benefit, and also the philosophical ones, especially with environmental organizations. IT and web and software development have always been big, but business development, account management, marketing, all of those areas have grown quite a lot in the last few years.

I think employers in all industries have been looking for ways to save money, and they’re exploring either reduced or alternative schedules or some level where they don’t having to hire a traditional, on site full-time employee.

Will a boost in awareness of the benefits of telecommuting among both employers and job seekers be the silver lining to the grim economy of the past few years?

Image courtesy Flickr user mnsc

Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):

• The Future of Work Platforms: An Overview
• The Future of Workplaces
• The Case for Increased M&A in 2011: Actions and Outlooks

alt=''
border='0'
/>

GigaOM — Tech News, Analysis and Trends

My Complete High Definition 720p Unboxing and Hands-On of Apple’s latest 27″ inch Quad Core i7 iMac! This beast packs a powerful punch to the previous iMac family, adding a complete Desktop i7 Processor and Desktop ATI 4850 Graphics Card, as well as the new monster 2560×1440 27″ Display. Follow me on Twitter for live updates and news at: www.twitter.com To those interested in my dilemma with the XPS 730x and Mac Pro, here goes. I found a buyer for my XPS 730x who would pay 0 less than what I originally paid for (because I used a 25% off discount) and accepted his offer. I was waiting for this beast to arrive before I shipped the thing out. From there, I went to order the Mac Pro. I picked up the Quad Core 2.93 GHz version (not the Octo-core) Nehalem model with 6 gigs of RAM, 1 TB Hard Drive and the ATI Radeon 4870 Graphics Card. I received it October 1st and owned it for about two weeks until Apple suddenly released this monster i7 iMac. I knew there was going to be a mild design and clock speed update coming, but I was not aware they were going to pull the trigger with adding desktop components. I looked up the price and my jaw dropped. Literally almost IDENTICAL specifications as the Mac Pro which I paid around 00 for. With this iMac though, I was paying over 00 less as this was priced at 50 (with education discount). I called up Apple asking if I could return my Mac Pro. They allowed me to return it, and THEY paid for the return shipping and didn’t make me …
Video Rating: 4 / 5

• SanDisk 8 GB microSDHC Card General Features: 8 GB capacity microSDHC (High capacity) flash card
• Speed performance rating: Class 2
• Built to last, with an operating shock rating of 2,000G’s, equivalent to a ten foot drop
• Compact and portable

High Capacity Flash Memory Card! This SanDisk microSDHC (High Capacity) flash card stores up to 8 gigs of your favorite music, photos, videos and documents and is designed for use with mobile phones and other compatible microSDHC devices! It provides a Class 2 speed performance rating and is built to last, with an operating shock rating of 2,000G’s, equivalent to a ten foot drop! Order today!

Rating: (out of 67 reviews)

List Price:

Price: $ 8.99

By Evan Ackerman

I’m not going to try to puzzle out whether or not the Muvi Atom is indeed, as it claims, the “world’s smallest digital camcorder.” At 2cm by 4cm by 1.5 cm, it’s damn small, and let’s just leave it at that. Despite its size, it manages a respectable 640 x 480 30 fps video capture, runs for an hour per charge (plug it in via micro-USB), and records onto microSD cards up to 8 gigs. It can be set up to be triggered by loud noises, and has a clip on the back that can attach it to a pocket or shoelaces. Wait, what?

The Muvi Atom is currently available from Firebox for $99.

[ Firebox ] VIA [ GeekAlerts ]

By Evan Ackerman

The Eye-Fi Pro X2, which debuted at the beginning of this year, offers “endless memory” by deleting pictures off of itself after wirelessly uploading them to your computer and/or online photo storage service using built-in 802.11n WiFi. Not unexpectedly, such a useful feature isn’t cheap, with the 8 gig Eye-Fi Pro X2 costing a staggering $150.

Eye-Fi has just released two more SD cards in the X2 series with the endless memory feature, the Eye-Fi Connect X2 and the Eye-Fi Explore X2. The Connect X2 holds 4 gigs of stuff (not like it matters that much with the endless memory), while the Explore X2 is 8 gigs and includes lifetime geotagging of dubious quality and a year of hotspot WiFi access. The best news is that the Connect X2 is only $50, which is way more than a regular 4 gig SD card but way less than the $150 Pro X2 or even the Explore X2, which costs $100. If you don’t have an Eye-Fi card yet, the Connect X2 is definitely the one to get. If you’re looking for justification to upgrade to the Explore X2, if you travel a lot, Eye-Fi would also like you to know that their WiFi hotspots now include Starbucks and BP gas stations.

Incidentally, at CES Eye-Fi told me that the card’s ability to delete pictures off of itself is a hardware thing, not a software thing, so it’s not something that they can add to older cards with a firmware update or something like that. Sad, but sometimes, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

You can find Eye-Fi cards at Best Buy, Amazon.com, Adorama, and B&H among other places.

[ Eye-Fi ]

By Evan Ackerman

Less than $100 probably means $99.99, but that doesn’t change the fact that the 2.5″ Onyx SSD from OCZ is actually in the realm of casually affordable, a first for SSDs. We’re used to seeing SSD drives that offer incredible performance, but at a price point that makes most of us just sigh sadly. The OCZ Onyx, while offering only modest speeds (125 MB/s read and 70 MB/s write) relative to other SSDs, is still fast enough that you’d notice a significant difference in load times if you stick your operating system on it. Unsurprisingly, the drive only has a capacity of 32 gigs, so your operating system may be the only thing you can stick on it, but that’s okay.

Even if the speed and size aren’t that impressive, don’t forget about the other benefits of SSDs: they’re light, shockproof, durable, and use up a heck of a lot less power than conventional drives since they don’t have anything inside them that needs to be kept spinning at several thousand RPM all the time.

$100 is not going to get you some kind of incredibly awesome SSD drive. But it will get you this SSD drive, which, for the cost, is way better than no SSD drive at all.

[ Press Release ] VIA [ HotHardware ]

The method is quite easy.  After you have backed up all of your saved files, you can go on and format your hard drive.  Go to ‘System Settings’ then ‘Format use’.  You will be asked whether you want to format your drive.  Select ‘Yes’.  Now for the partition setting choose the ‘Custom’ setting.  This will permit you to distribute ten gigs to another operating system.

Yellow Dog Linux was specifically designed for your PS3 so this distribution should be the first one you need to look at when deciding on turning your PS3 into a home PC.  the majority of the Linux distributions, the most popular ones such as Yellow Dog Linux, Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE, and Gentoo, will work fine with your PS3 console.  They will all offer home, office, and server applications, web browsers, email clients, and lots more.  Actually, the Yellow Dog Linux distribution comes with over 2,000 packages for you to enjoy.

Go forward and insert your Yellow Dog ISO disk into your PS3.  If you haven’t downloaded it already, just search the web and burn it to disk using something similar to Daemon Tools.  On your PS3 menu, go to “System Settings” once again then there should be an option to “Install Other OS”.  Clearly this is the option we want!  The system will then scan for Operating System images, and will find the disk.  All you’ve got to do is follow instructions provided on the screen.  If you want further help visit Linux PS3
.

By Evan Ackerman

This TV from Haier (I guess they’re an electronics company or something) doesn’t just feature wireless HD… It’s totally, completely wireless. Wireless power, folks. What does it take to transmit 3 gigs per second of 60hz 1080p plus 100 watts of electricity? A gigantic antenna is what, as you can see right in front of the distracting jerk with the ponytail who got in the background of my shot:

We talked to the Haier reps about just what exactly would happen if you got in between the antenna and the TV, and while they said that it was perfectly safe, I’m going to assume that that’s just PR-speak for, “it’ll definitely turn you into a super hero while giving you some form of cancer.” We have no information on when you’d find something like this in your house, but the wireless HD probably won’t be available before 2011, about the same time as non-chafing lead underpants.

By Evan Ackerman

This is a PC. There’s no good reason why it’s a PC, but it’s a PC. Or if there IS a good reason why it’s a PC, there’s no good reason why it looks like this. From Artopz (”Technology In Design,” which is as literal a motto as I’ve ever seen) comes this series of three designer weird-ass desktop computers, each one of which is also a lamp.

A lamp!

As far as I can tell (and I can’t really tell), all of the PC bits are stuffed into the aluminum base, with the designer weird-ass lamp on top. The lamp is somehow connected to the PC in that it changes color depending on what the computer is doing, although it can also be controlled independently. The PC itself is decidedly lower midrange, with an Atom processor, 4 gigs of RAM, a DVD burner, and over 600 gigs of SSD storage. It comes with Windows 7 and no monitor, and you can buy one (after a seven week wait) starting at about $2500.

[ Artopz ] VIA [ Gizmag ]

By Evan Ackerman

We’re all big fans of Eye-Fi cards, and rightly so: these SD cards include a wireless antenna that automatically sends pictures you take to your computer and to any number of photo sharing sites over your wireless network (read our reviews here and here). Our biggest quibble with the Eye-Fi cards is that they’re really freakin’ expensive compared to other SD cards, but today Sellout.Woot has a 2 gig Eye-Fi Explore for $45 shipped. The Explore version is an upgrade that includes a kinda crappy but still functional geotagging service plus one year of hotspot uploads. Yeah, 2 gigs isn’t that much storage, but remember that the whole point of this thing is that it’s uploading pictures for you, letting you free up space on your card while backing up your pics and the same time. Awesome gadget, good price.

[ Sellout.Woot ]