3 More Seriously Cool Offices

We made a post a while back about 3 amazing offices to workin, well here’s 3 more to tantalise you and start bugging your manager for a redesign of your own workspace.

BANK OF MOSCOW

First up, we have the offices for the Bank of Moscow in Kuznetsky Most. Designer Alexey Kuzmin has managed to keep the architectural integrity of a beautiful building and seamlessly integrate modern comfort and design elements. Centred around a hexagonal entrance hall, it leads into a plus and white interior that looks like one of the comfiest place to work.

SKYPE CLOUD 9

Well, maybe the Bank of Moscow is the second plushest place to work. The Skype’s ‘On Cloud 9 in an Historical Brewery’ offices in Stockholm look like the physical embodiment of the company’s software; light, soft and comfy. Designed by PS Arkitektur, the use of rounded shapes and bright colours, as well as some incredibly cool lighting, encourages a far more relaxed feel to the offices and feeds the creativity that the company expects from its employees.

COORDINATION ASIA

The Shanghai offices for the design company Coordination Asia are incredibly suave and elegant. Some might think that they are a bit dark, a bit moody and perhaps not the ideal office environment, but it would be hard to argue that the offices don’t just ooze of great taste and stylishness. Looking more like a rockstar’s apartment than an office, it must be said that Coordination Asia have created a beautiful place to look at, even if working in it isn’t your thing.

5 Portable Apps to Make Your Life Easier

A USB stick is a must-have for anyone working with computers. It’s great for backing-up important files or transferring files to a home PC or laptop. They come in especially handy if you have to use somebody else’s computer. Here are 5 apps to load onto your USB drive in order to make dealing with other computers less of a hassle.

• Opera@USB or Firefox Portable
A life-saving must-have for any USB drive, it means that you will always have your choice of browser in case the foreign computer uses Internet Explorer or another unfamiliar piece of software. It has the added advantage of keeping all of your add-ons and bookmarks stored to the USB, so there’ll be no trouble finding the sites or tools you want to use.

• PdfXchange Viewer
This is another piece of software that means that loading files onto another computer is a piece of cake. A fair amount of computers (especially if shared, for example computers used in presentation rooms) do not have a PDF viewer on them and installing one can take time and become increasingly annoying if you require administrator privilege. This piece of software means that you’ll be able to open any PDF files that you may need in an incredibly well-designed format.

• VLC/KMPlayer
These are multimedia apps that let you play a whole host of videos. It’s a personal choice which to use, as they both mean that you can play media files without having to worry if the foreign computer has the correct codecs installed. VLC has been downloaded over 100 million times, which means it’s pretty solid. KMPlayer has a huge range of features involved though, including video and picture capture, audio sync and subtitles.

• CCleaner
That’s not a typo. This handy little app is a great way to clean up any slow, clogged computers. Mainly to be used by those dealing with computer issues, it can clear gigabytes of rubbish data and tidy up the registry of the computer, resulting in a faster, cleaner and safer computer. Just make sure that you get permission from the computer owner first.

• TruCrypt
TruCrypt is a great security tool that encrypts all of the data on its host USB. This means that if your USB is lost or stolen, which is easy when they’re so small, you can be confident that the information on it remains under wraps. It runs constantly but doesn’t slow down your drive even when decrypting and encrypting in real time.

Kit out your USB with these features and you’ll find that there’s not much you won’t be able to do away from your main PC when you have your trusty USB in hand.