5 Digital Home Office Tools for the Remote Worker

Redloine Computers can create your own personal meeting room online. It's a wide-open space, where you can get together to talk, meet in video, share documents and socially connect with people.

Whether you're one of the privileged ones who gets to work outside of the office daily or your company is just starting to warm up to the work-from-home revolution, you'll need some digital home office tools to ensure maximum productivity. Here are the five essential mobile working tools you'll need to set off on your own into the great digital beyond.

1. Your Machine

Pick your poison here. There are a thousand fantastic devices for the remote worker to keep you connected. Between iPads, Droids, laptops, Playbooks, Xooms and iPhones, productivity is literally at the palm of your hands. Choose the device that best fits your needs and go with it. Just know that, within a week, it probably won't be the latest assembly line device.

2. Connectivity

This one is tricky because of the numerous options. If you're a world traveller who needs a go-anywhere connection anywhere around the world, you may consider a mobile broadband plan. If you have an at-home office, it's worth your money to invest in the most secure, fastest available network. Going cheap on your connectivity isn't worth the gamble in the long run.

3. Conferencing Tools

As a mobile worker, staying in contact with your colleagues and customers is all the more important. The ability to have productive, meaningful meetings and connections with remote colleagues is worth the investment. So invest in a collaboration tool that is easy to use and accessible from anywhere. If you can incorporate audio, video and file sharing, your online meetings will become more meaningful, productive sessions. A solid web conferencing tool is essential.

4. Project Management Tools

Keep yours and your team's projects organized online with a web-based, project management software like Basecamp, MS Project or JIRA. Make sure you can access your projects from any device. Being able to keep projects moving forward outside of a traditional office can be challenging, but this type of software takes on a lot of that burden.

5. The Cloud

Develop a habit of putting everything on the cloud. We can create your own personal cloud keeping your data private. Between Google Docs, iCloud, Dropbox and Evernote, you can pretty much access any document, calendar or file from anywhere for free. If you work with a team that is spread across the country or world, one of the most important decisions you can make is to select a system for storing and sharing information.