This great office comes at the very steep price of 14,950 pounds in the UK, including installation and tax. The OfficePOD has an integrated desk and storage, heating, cooling and ventilation. Also LED lighting, windows blinds and insurance approved lock which is invaluable considering you’ll be keeping your computer, printers, etc. in the OfficePOD.

As a homeworker myself I can see myself buying one if I had a garden and cash for it. I live in an apartment where you cannot shut out your work. I should make good use of Gmail’s filters to tune out work email when not working. But it isn’t a perfect situation. A cheaper alternative to the OfficePOD would be a work laptop only where you keep all work related stuff including email. So getting away from work is a matter of turning of the laptop and putting it away. But if you have 14,950 pounds lying around and garden space an OfficePOD would be the way to go.

Having the working environment pictured above would make it more a joy to work then being closed-in in an office surrounded by office noise and what not.

This way of homeworking might as well become popular in the future now that working from home is becoming more common these days saving people time otherwise spend tackling traffic-jams and bad weather like we have been experiencing lately. With an OfficePOD it would be a matter of stepping outside a few steps to your office and get to work.

Products website

My dog ate my homework.

That’s probably the most cliche’d excuse one would ever hear. But as someone who has overseen students and writers at certain points in my professional career, I can say I’ve heard all sorts of excuses. Some of these come off as mildly amusing, while some are definitely annoying.

My computer crashed and I lost all my work.

My external hard drive got submerged in flood water.

These are typical excuses, and I don’t think anyone would fall for these anymore. But why not be creative while you’re at it. Gadgets like the Emergency Excuse Generator will surely bring in more novelty to your excuse-making. Now you won’t have to wrack your brains thinking of a creative excuse.

[The device] uses the immense computational power and the 8K words program memory of a PIC16F690 microcontroller to demodulate an advanced lexico-semantical matrix and produce inexhaustible supply of random statements in Professional Business English …

So at the push of a button you have thousands of possible combinations at your disposal. How about telling your boss that you “had to bring the ROI estimates in sync with our new vertical synergy paradigm shift.”

If you’re not much for printing PC Boards and fabricating gadget housings, you can just head on to the web-based version.

Of course, you could always try other web-based excuse generators, too, like Random Excuse Generator and the Tech Support Excuse Generator (meant for answering customer service inquiries). But that’s not as cool as having an excuse generator right in your pocket, waiting to give you an interesting way to cop-out at a push of a button.

[via makezine.com]

Decorating your home office isn’t an easy thing to do. The first thing that you need to accomplish is to blend great aesthetic design with products that are going to allow you to maximize your productivity in the work space. The next thing to tackle is how to create the feeling that you’re in a professional work space while allowing for that space to exist within the rest of your home. And finally you need to consider the types of products that really express who you are and what you believe in whether that’s ergonomic or eco-friendly design.

Your workspace can be funky or sexy, minimalist or post-modern, neutral toned or filled with bright colors – as long as you create it in a way that is true to your heart. To create the right space, you need to be able to find these products and to set them up in a way that makes the home office all your own. Here’s a look at 25 of the best, most unique products out there which can assist you in achieving these goals of home office design.

1. Bibliochaise: Toss out those boring old bookcases and make life more convenient by putting your reading materials right inside the chair that you use to sit in while you read them. It adds a funky design flavor to a cool home office and serves to help you maximize your space while reducing the number of separate furniture items that you have to arrange.

2. Antique Modern Chair: If your home is decorated with antiques and vintage decor, it may seem inappropriate to add a modern home office to the space. So why not decorate with modern furniture that’s been designed to look like antiques? You’ll get the function that you need with a look that doesn’t seem out of place in the rest of the home.

3. Computer Armoire: People who have a small home may need to place their office in the corner of a room that serves as a multi-functional space. A great way to do this is to use a computer armoire to keep all the cabling, printer cartridges, paper, pens and the usual office clutter out of the way when not in use. Choose any design that suits the rest of a room’s decor and then tuck all your belongings in there where no one has to see them (or mess with them) but you.

4. Bobo Lazy Chair: If you’re ever going to have clients over to visit you in your home office, you’ll need somewhere for them to sit. A chair like this fits perfectly on the other side of your desk for use by clients and it’s comfortable enough that you can use it when you’re reading through documents or doing other tasks around the home office.

5. Glass Desk: This type of desk is ideal for a home office that gets a lot of natural sunlight. It adds to the design of a room that has big windows and is particularly suited to someone who has a great view from their home. The home office that seeks to be modern can do well with colored furniture and a glass desk.

6. Art Stools: Instead of hanging art on the walls of your home office, choose furniture that reflects your artistic tastes. Furniture with painted upholstery and artistic designs can be made in such a way that it still has a professional air to it. Choose wisely, though, because this kind of furniture can make a room look ugly really fast.

7. Concrete and Glass Bench: If you’re lucky enough to have a home office that allows you some patio room outdoors then you should get furniture that has a more outdoors feeling to it such as this bench made of concrete and glass. This is particularly good for someone who works in the industrial or construction fields but could be suitable to anyone who finds it pleasing to the eye.

8. Ergonomic Chair: Every good home office has an ergonomic chair to keep your body comfortable while you work. This one from Ambience Dore is the kind of chair that considers every part of your body and makes it so that you’ll never again get that ache in the shoulders from having spent too many hours on the computer. Of course, you’ll have to feel secure in yourself to sit in a chair as funky as this every day.

9. Brass Knuckle Chair: Forget ergonomic – you want a chair that no one will ever forget after they’ve seen it. Ideal for the video game reviewer who works from home, this is a truly different chair that’s distinct from anything else that others are going to have in their home office.

10. One of a Kind Desk. This creation by Tom Spina Designs is an example of a one-of-a-kind item that you could have custom built for your office (or that you could make yourself). This one has got a sci-fi theme that’s cool for some professionals but you could express yourself in any way that would suit your business.

11. Light Sculptures: Add some ambience to the home office with light sculptures that are both artistic and purposeful. Make sure that you find something that actually lights up the office, or consider getting a bigger, brighter computer monitor if you’re only going to have weak accent lighting!

12. Pencil Bench: This is an example of how every day office items can be used to create functional furniture art for the office. In this case, it’s a bunch of pink pencils that serve as a bench for seating in the office. Get creative or find a store out there that will get creative for you.

13. Vision One Computer Workstation: This is an ergonomic workstation designed specifically for computer gaming. Of course, it’s the fact that this looks cool which makes you want to buy it but it’s also nice that it’s good for your body’s health.

14. Treadmill Desk: Have you noticed that you’re getting what appears to be a beer gut and you’re not even drinking a lot of beer? It’s probably because you just sit at your computer all day long. Hop on a treadmill and get work done at the same time from the comfort of your home office by adding a treadmill desk to the home’s decor.

15. Trunk Station: This type of furniture is similar to a computer armoire but it’s not stationary. You just fold up your entire workspace and move it around the house. This means that your home office can be in the bedroom, the living room or even outside as you see fit throughout the day. Just don’t spend so much time moving it around that you fail to get your work done.

16. Design Pod: Another mobile office space that you can use around the home office is the design pod. It folds up into neat little furniture that can be stashed away anywhere in the home. Then it folds out to offer you a complete computer desk and storage of your files and important papers. This is another one that’s good for the home office that’s got to exist in different parts of the home due to limited space.

17. Vector: This looks like a cool piece of design furniture intended to hold random things around the home office. Indeed, that’s what it is. But it’s also supposed to allow you to note your successes by offering a ‘green for good work’ side and a ‘red for in trouble’ side which means that you can turn the piece around depending on how you feel about work that day.

18. Elefant Bar and Shelf: On those days when you’re not feeling so good about work, perhaps the only thing that you want is a stiff drink. You can have one accessible to you in the home office by including a mini-bar in your decorating. This one offers you a design that’s going to let you hide that booze from clients who will never guess that this shelf is holding drinks inside. And the colorful design is going to give a boost of freshness to a tired office.

19. Light-Emitting Wallpaper: If you want to include something really different in the design of your home office, consider this wallpaper that actually lights up the room. When you turn it on, the lights add ambience to the room and give a 3D effect to the wall. You can turn it off to make it look just like plain old wallpaper for those times when you’re inviting people to the home office who are a little more on the stuffy side.

20. Ball Chair: There are several variations on the ball chair, including one that hangs down from the ceiling to function like a swing, but they all offer a sense of fun style to the home office. They’re different in design from other home office furniture and can serve as the centerpiece around which you decorate the rest of the room.

21. Bike Furniture: One of the most important messages that you can be sending to others about your business is that it’s a business that cares about being green. What better way to do this than to deck out your home office with bike furniture? This stuff is designed in a way that looks classy and professional but it’s made from bike parts so it’s got that whole recycling / repurposed / functional art thing going on.

22. Moebler Bookcase: Take something really traditional about the home office, like the bookcase, and replace it with something that’s just a little bit different. It will throw off perspective in the room, creating a unique style that suggests a little bit of fun for the office. And it will make people who visit your home office think about you as a more creative person to work with.

23. Comfy Furniture: If you’ve got the luxury of working from a home office then you should make the space as comfortable as you possibly can. Forget the hardwood desks and the leather chairs; choose the bean bag chairs and flexible furniture that will make you feel right at home.

24. Copacabana Table: This table brings a curvy design to the home office and adds some color to the room. For the professional who is looking to get just a little bit funky while retaining the function of the professional space, this is a good way to get started.

25. Hand-Le Doorknob: You love working from home but sometimes you’ve just got to miss the camaraderie of working from a cubicle with a bunch of other cubicles around you. Take some of the sting out of being lonely at work by adding a doorknob to your home office door that will greet you with a handshake as you walk in. At the very least, it will be something to break the ice when clients come over even as you get more and more anti-social from always working at home alone.

Ryan is helping to develop Brainz, the top secret online information project.

On occasion, I am called upon to build a network diagram or a flow chart of some sort, and I’m sure many of you have been, too. Most of you probably know that despite Microsoft’s reputation for building shoddy software, their Visio software is actually quite nice (though not nearly as cool visually as OmniGraffle for OSX). The only problem I have with it is the stencils. At least in my copy (granted, it’s Visio 2000), the stencils are *ancient* — the computers all have 5 1/4 floppy drives, and I don’t think there’s a rack-mounted server in the whole collection. So a few weeks ago when I was asked to build a diagram of our new load-balanced intranet system, I was a little stuck. Until I did a bit of searching.

Turns out there are lots of free Visio stencils out there, including official ones from Dell and Cisco, which made my diagram far, far easier to understand for everyone involved. So I thought I’d share. Some others we’ve found of interest have been for Citrix Metaframe (If you’re not familiar with that, Metaframe is basically a sort of software thin client… you can use the metaframe app or a browser and remotely access a desktop instance on a server. I’ve never been entirely sure what the real benefit of it is, I think it’s mostly used so remote users can have a single workspace no matter where they access from, and so sensitive data stays on a single secured server cluster) and for the Sarbanes-Oxley Audit, provided on Visio Cafe, which also has stencils for HP and IBM as well as a number of unofficial stencils from a variety of places.

I was unable to find a good source for Mac stencils, sadly. How about you guys? Are there any places you go for visio stencils that I left out? What sorts of things do you use Visio for?