Because more and more company employees, independent contractors, consultants and startup founders have the tools to work from anywhere, there’s now an app to help them find the perfect places to go.Â
It’s called Cubefree, a free app that helps you find cafes with WiFi, power outlets, parking and even a table to share. CubeFree shows a map view with nearby cafes, along with user ratings and comments, as well as others who have checked in. Â
This perfectly complements the other tools the modern workforce uses to work portably: Virtual Desktops hosted in data centers, documents in cloud storage, mobile work apps on tablets. To power these, all that’s needed is a quiet place to sit, WiFi and power.
For many that means working from home if they are out of the office, but if you’re on the road or just want to escape the house or office, Cubefree may be the ticket. You can think of it as Yelp and Foursquare for mobile workers. In fact, the app includes thousands of locations based on Foursquare, plus users can submit new locations.Â
There also are social aspects to Cubefree. Users can rate, comment, share a table, offer a coffee, or chat – all from the app.
Cubefree is the brainchild of Marta Guerra, a user experience designer at Citrix in Fort Lauderdale.
“Once you find a suitable location, you can see if other Cubefree users are there, and make connections that otherwise wouldn’t be possible within the confines of an office,” she says.Â
“Share a table, offer a cup of coffee, or find a work buddy who can keep an eye on your things if you need to step out.”
If you want to escape your cube, the iPhone app is available now in the app store, plus Android or Windows phone users can use the HTML5 version at https://app.cubefreeapp.com/website/?
Chris Fleck is on the board of the South Florida Technology Alliance and vice president of mobility systems and alliances for Citrix Systems (NASDAQ: CTXS), a Fort Lauderdale company that provides secure remote access to data and applications.
