Ergonomic is a huge buzzword in office supplies, and with the word being used to sell every thing from office chairs to correction tapes, it can be a little hard to take the concept seriously.

Ergonomics is not [just] a marketing ploy, it’s a science — one that’s been around since the 1800s and concerned with designing work spaces and tools to be safe, comfortable and easy to use. Ergonomic designs prevent repetitive use injuries, that buggaboo to office workers every where.

While  ergonomically designed office supplies such as corrections tapes are great, but unless you wield them all day, you should focus on ergonomically designed office furniture and workstations to improve your comfort and safety in the office.

As one who once ended many a work days with lower back pain, I recommend that you first invest in a good office or task chair. You need a chair that provides lumbar support, and holds you back and knees at a 90° angle to the seat.  Your feet should sit flat on the floor. If you’re on the short side, use a footrest.

Desk stands can help your complete the ergonomic design of your workstation. For example, our arms should be at a 90° angle and your wrists straight when you use your keyboard. You can use a keyboard stand and wrist wrests if your keyboard sits too low. Moniter stands, telephone stands and laptop stands can all make your work area more comfortable.

Once you’ve made these changes to your office, you’ll really notice a difference! You should experience fewer headaches and less muscle and joint pain.

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting quasi-investigative piece on whether or not a big-box store can adequately fix your computer. They basically take in a bunch of computers with various maladies and provide anecdotal evidence of how well their issues are addressed:

Our first stop was Staples, where a repair for a problematic desktop dragged on for about a week and involved four visits to the store. When we first brought in the machine, which was essentially not running, we were told by one of Staples’ “EasyTechs” that it shouldn’t take long to evaluate. True to her promise, the tech got back to us that night with word they needed to do an operating system restore, and that we needed to bring in the system disk to proceed with the repair.

But after that, things went awry: A different tech said repairs were delayed because they were very busy. And when we came to pick up the supposedly fixed computer, we were told it was now on the fritz again. A day later, we got the final verdict: The computer was hopelessly broken. Although the desktop could now boot up, it still had problems shutting down, and a bad motherboard was the suspected culprit.

The article goes on to list tech tests from Office Depot, Best Buy, and a mail-order company called IResQ. Not exactly hard-hitting, and nothing new to anyone tech-savvy, but overall, a very interesting read.

Just for a neat little just-for-fun article over at The Ledger.  It details the lives and times of some of the remaining typewriter repairmen, who apparently still do quite well for themselves:

Jerry Hatfield, 53, owner of Typewriter Service Center, agrees that business has changed over the past decade but says he won’t be leaving the field he enjoys working in anytime soon.

“We don’t get as many calls, but I still make a good living at it,” he said with confidence.

Overall, a really interesting article. Be sure to take a look; some of the information may surprise you.

Check out these sweet before-and-after pics of a classy home-office makeover from the “Under my Roof” blog over at AZ Central. Erica started with a tiny alcove in the bedroom, and with a little creative shelving and storage solutions, turned it into a functional home office.

Check out the full article for more awesome small office spaces.

Man, I need to get me one of these. GadgetReview is showcasing the newest in must-have office supplies: The Snackbot.

This may well be the king of all office supplies.  No, it’s not one of those sweet executive ball-clacker deals (even though they are sweet).  Nor is it a dartboard or a Blackberry or anything like that.  No, the unquestioned king of all office supplies has to be Snackbot.

Snackbot is a big talking yellow and white robot that delivers snacks directly to your desk on command.  There’s a downside, though…there’s only ONE SNACKBOT, and he’s currently being held at Carnegie Mellon University, where it’s basically under construction as a way to find how an autonomous robot can operate within the busy, highly complex operations of a modern office.  Apparently there’s a lot of programming involved for a robot that can successfully make snack runs throughout a typical office building.

Hopefully, one day, Snackbots will be as ubiquitous as the coffee maker in most offices, but until then, you know Carnegie Mellon will be getting loads of snacks out of this.

Examiner.com has a simple list of back-to-school suggestions for the planet-conscious. The typical players are there, including recycled items bought new, all-cotton lunch bags, and so on. One of the things that jumped out at me though was the idea of re-use. Instead of buying the same junk over and over again (I’m looking at you, big-box store-brand pencils that break after two days), stick with high-quality, reliable office supplies and simply take care of them. They’ll take care of you right back, season after season.

Here’s an interesting article I found over at the Daily Mail: a company in the UK, WH Smith, is offering business owners or budding entrepreneurs a little slice of the office life (complete with coffee) for a reduced rate:

Budding entrepreneurs used to turn to WH Smith for pens and pencils – now they can pick up a whole ‘office-in-a-box’.

Just £10 will buy them office space for half a day, with internet access and coffee thrown in.

The voucher scheme also offers a number of costlier options which include a personal assistant and meeting rooms.

At roughly $16 US at the time of this writing, I feel like this is a scheme that could easily catch on in the US. Even working from home, I have found times when it would be beneficial to have an office space just for working, without the home-based distractions I can see every time I look over my shoulder.

This could also be the jump-start many people need to test out new office-based ideas before jumping in whole-hog and renting out space. Overall, a really neat innovation that I hope catches on stateside.

Over at user-generated content site The Examiner, they have posited an interesting conundrum: what happens when you buy TOO MANY school supplies?

The theory goes like this: you have a general list of things you think your child may need, and you buy enough of them for everyone before the first day of class.

Maybe you see a good deal at your local big-box store and, fearing the worst, snatch it up while you can. Now you feel you’re geared up for school, and this happens:

Picture yourself running out buying four notebooks here, five folders there, not to mention the six 2” ring binders that you had to get because you couldn’t resist the sale sign. All, only to find that after the first day of school, Mrs. Douglass only allows 1” ring binders. Mr. Pryor requires a 3” ring binder for science class and science labs. Now, Mrs. Rogers is simple. She only wants loose-leaf paper in a 3 Prong, 2 Pocket, $0.49 folder. What a waste.

Sure, it makes sense to buy pens, notebooks, and other simple items ahead of time. But don’t get caught up in all the back-to-school craziness, sending your kid off to their first day weighed down with a hundred and one awesome supplies that will end up going to waste while you scramble to buy the “right” ones.

Instead, try this: kit your kid out with a simple loadout: notebook, pens, pencils, simple folders. This will give them the ability to store any materials they are given, while writing down what supplies they still need. Then, find a reliable web distributor of office supplies who just so happens to offer next-day shipping, and boom. Your shopping is done, you have exactly what you need, no fuss, no muss.

According to “Malled!”, a blog focusing on South Florida retail, there are some depressing numbers out there about this year’s back-to-school shopping season.

Today, a survey came out from America’s Research Group that mirrors that gloomy retail prediction. It found that 34.4 percent of parents plan to spend less this year compared to last because they have “less money” (41.8%), “higher debt” (40.5%) and fear losing their jobs (8.2%).

“Back-to-school spending will be a minor blip on the radar screen for retailers this year,” consumer trend expert C. Britt Beemer, CEO and Founder of ARG, said in a statement. He predicted that back-to-school spending will drop 8.5 to 12 percent compared to a year ago, when back-to-school sales declined more than 5 percent.

The worst part about the economy still being in trouble around this time is that a lot of big-box retailers are going to try to use back-to-school shopping as a way to gouge innocent consumers. Since retailers know your kids need supplies, they’re going to do everything they can to increase their profits on those supplies and make back some of their long-last cash from earlier in the recession.

So what can we do? The same thing I always suggest: get your supplies cheap and fast from a reputable, reliable online dealer. Skip the big-box ballyhoo and order supplies from someone you trust, at low prices that don’t rise to fit the whims of the market. It’s just good sense.

At the Saudi Gazette of all places, there is a small article about the ongoing ISOT Office Products Trade Show in Tokyo. Highlighted here are USB Flash Memory cards shaped like Samurai Warriors.

With a lot of video games, movies, and television in Japan focusing more on the Edo period (1603 to 1868 AD), Samurai culture is once again on the rise in Japan.

Of course, when you’re making a samurai-themed USB device, and you’re in Japan, of course it’s going to end up being cute. Call me a sucker for these kind of novelties, but I’d take a teeny cartoon samurai USB stick over a plain ol’ black one any day. Of course, I’m sure the prices are outrageous. For most consumers, the regular kind will probably do just fine.