In an international office like ours, the right tools are very important. My most important tool is the phone; I spend most of the day talking on the phone. All other important tools are electronic ones, as you can see from this screenshot (click for a larger version):
I e-mail a lot and use instant messaging through Trillian (MSN, AIM, ICQ, Yahoo and IRC in one application). But the handiest tool I have is the big image on the background: xearth for Windows. It shows me in a single screen which of our foreign contacts is awake. ;-)
; "Movable Type")
; "CeBIT")
; "ClamWin updating")
; "Google Notebook - New!")
; "Events report by file type")
; "Google Analytics")
; "Jesus at Christmas")
; "from e-mail to Enterprise Social Software")
; "Eleven")
; "Apple")
This is IDD cool. Another one, which is a little heavier is http://xplanet.sourceforge.net/. Only here you get REAL planetary shots of our Gaia - Mother Earth. It renders the images on a regular basis and then you get the latest image of the region you choose on your desktop.