Working remotely can be hard. Tools like the sqwiggle, google hangouts, doubles, hipchat all help.
The most important thing though is having the culture that includes remove workers in the day to day conversations. The water-cooler is where a lot of magic happens, and that's the first thing that you miss if your corporate culture doesn't embrace remoteness.
I worked remotely previously and figured that the best way to stay in the loop was just have the line open all the time and listen to the office chatter like a radio. I had small screen in the corner of office that showed when I was sitting by the computer to remind others that I was there as well. Most of the time my mic was on mute, but I had hotkey to chime in if I wanted to say something.
I also got access to ethernet connected security cams to take a look around the office.
People adjusted to it quite fast I think. At least everyone said it felt normal after week or so. Having blurry wall projections or even bigger integration between the two spaces would be even better, but haven't been able to try that out yet.
I think wikis and group chats help to recreate the water cooler feel.
I also want to chime in about sqwiggle: It was switched on all day at my previous job and I absolutely hated it. Might work if you live alone but having a camera pointing at you when you're hugging your wife or playing with your son for 5 minutes is horrible.
Not to mention the fact that you can be in mid-thought and suddenly "bing!" and someone's talking to you.
Sqwiggle does have a "do not disturb" button. I use it pretty frequently when I'm in the middle of something. I turn it off when I'm just checking emails or doing the rote work of updating information, catching up on logs or what-have-you.
The always-on camera can be an issue if you don't have a private work area separate from the rest of the house. I had that issue before I moved into a new home. My wife, daughter and I were all living in a two-bedroom apartment and my, "office," was in the living room. I'm sure there were a few awkward moments caught on camera. Things are better now with my own office and I hardly notice it's even on anymore.
I do pair programming with my brother and we used Skype for face video and VNC for remote screen. Skype has audio problems (noise cancelling is bad) and VNC requires an external routable IP to let anyone connect and that is not possible in all situations. I found other tools, such as TeamViewer but they slow down my desktop considerably.
What tools are best for remote screen + cam video on an IP behind DHCP?
SOrry to be a broken record, but Sococo's product does all of this. IT uses P2P when it works; else it routes through a 'media node' when necessary, all automatically and on the fly. You can be walking around with your wireless laptop on VPN talking and video-chatting; stop at your desk and plug in, and all the streams switch almost-seamlessly.
Caveat: I work at Sococo (I architected the audio/networking system).
I've used Skype and Google hangouts before and haven't had issues (although I've been just screen sharing, not screen + video). If you have audio problems, you should get a headset. Even cheap ones are better than most laptop microphone / speaker setups.
The most important thing though is having the culture that includes remove workers in the day to day conversations. The water-cooler is where a lot of magic happens, and that's the first thing that you miss if your corporate culture doesn't embrace remoteness.