Take Control Books has just published Take Control of Zoom — an excellent resource for both the casual participant and for those hosting the video chats.
Zoom has been under fire in the media due to privacy and security concerns — Glenn covers what happened in the past and what have been doing to remedy these issues. Since March 2020, Zoom has rolled out hundreds of fixes and dozens of changes, all well documented in the book. Take Control of Zoom doesn’t shirk discussing past flaws and Zoom’s ongoing plans, and offers insight into which purposes you can safely use the system for and how to re-establish trust in what they offer.
You’ll also find the following information;
- Learn how to install and configure Zoom.
- Decide if a web app meets your needs or it’s something to recommend to other meeting participants.
- Configure your physical setup and your hardware for best results on video.
- Don’t forget that even if you don’t see a stream of yourself, you’re on camera for other people.
- Upgrade your audio for better comfort and quality.
- Understand Zoom’s past missteps with security and what it promises now.
- Master participating in a meeting, including the various methods of “speaking up.”
- Get to know Zoom’s many mobile and desktop views for seeing other people and shared screens.
- Become a host and start meetings with one other person or 1,000.
- Dig into Zoom’s meeting controls to create safe meetings and manage public ones, keeping participants safe and blocking or removing problematic members.
- Find out how to preserve your privacy when sharing apps, presentations, or other parts of your screen.
- Record a meeting for later playback, presentation, or a podcast.
- Decide whether upgrading to a paid Zoom tier offers enough improvement and features for meetings you host.
Purchase Take Control of Zoom
Take Control of Zoom is available as an ebook in .epub (Apple Books and many other ereaders), .mobi (Kindle) or .pdf formats. It costs US$14.99 and in our opinion is worth 100x that amount if you use zoom once a week or more.
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Take Control of Working from Home Temporarily
The previous version of this book looked forward and speculated about how people might continue to work from home over time. Months further into the spread of the virus and the responses of different U.S. states and other countries led Glenn to revise the book to reflect what will likely be gradual shifts in 2020 and potentially far into 2021. The future of office-based work appears like it will mix full-time telecommuting and some amount of reduced staffing in offices, potentially alternating days or weeks.
A few places in particular were beefed up:
- More detail on virtual, physical, and hybrid backdrops as well as face and background detail blurring in “Be a Videoconferencing Pro.”
- As summer approaches in the northern hemisphere, I added a suggestion about air conditioning in “Think About the Air.” Worried AC contributes to global warming? Read the sidebar “Am I Killing the Earth While Cooling Myself?”.
- With more people having on-camera goofs, I expanded “Don’t Forget When You’re on Camera” and offer more tips on blocking your webcam when you’re not intended to stream video.
- As part of mental hygiene, getting outside, and new government rules and suggestions about masks, consider that you could “Buy a Cloth Mask If You Don’t Feel Handy.”