Jonathon Wilson, who works with a team of software developers, tells
LifeHacker how he maintains virtual presence in his office with Skype so
he can work at home.

He told Gina Trapani: "I still have my computer at work, in my office
cube (right in the middle of things). I set up a webcam there along with
speakers. I have second cam at home, and I simply Skype in to my own
cube at work. Skype can be configured to auto-answer, if desired, so my
'cube' Skype simply picks up when I dial in...for hours at a time."

Jonathon says that people walk into his office cube and talk with him.
Since he puts his home monitor onto his office monitor, developers can
see what he's doing and work out issues.

He said: "I can 'overhear' the dev conversations in the cubes around me
(just like when I'm in the office), and even pipe in. My coworkers and
managers are quite used to it and it's become completely natural."

So Skype is virtually the next-best-thing to being there.