Home Office Highway

By Jeff Zbar
www.homeofficehighway.com

After two weeks on the road, it's the simple observations that bring clarity to the home office adventure. Like…

- Sponsor or no, the Verizon Mifi 'personal hotspot' won the day — hands down. It was a true fan favorite and winner of the HOH'09 Product of Choice. Hey, anything that keeps the hoards from beating me up for my Internet connection is worthy of praise. Teleworkers and road warriors alike will find this tool extremely useful.

- Yes, family, we WILL survive two weeks without a TV. And we did. We talked, played more Yahtzee and Racko than we ever thought possible, and watched burning embers in the fire pit. And yes, we surfed the Web. A lot. Truth be told, we watched a few DVD movies on Zack's HP laptop. But that's NOT TV.Read more

By Jeff Zbar
www.homeofficehighway.com

To meteorologists and remote workers alike, The Cloud is a beautiful thing.

One makes his living off cloud formations. The other has discovered a mobility, flexibility and an untethered experience working in the cloud. These include teleworkers, telecommuters, road warriors and others released from place-based work.

For those not clear, the "cloud" — according to Wikipedia — "is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the cloud that supports them." In other words, all your applications — and even your documents, if you want — are stored and hosted via a computer with an Internet connection and a Web browser.Read more

By Jeff Zbar
www.homeofficehighway.com

To paraphrase the once-almost-ubiquitous line from a popular credit-card commercial, 'What's in your backpack'?'

Whether a family cruise or a two-week road trip, I make sure to pack my backpack with all the essentials needed to create a home office from the road. And with every trip, I find something new to stash in my travel case. I'm sure road warriors and teleworkers go through the same exercise.Read more

By Jeff Zbar
www.homeofficehighway.com

Call it a leap of faith.

Every time my family travels on Home Office Highway, I load up a flash drive with documents, files and notes for stories and columns in progress.

This year, except for a flash-drive built into a card reader for my camera, I brought no portable drive.

All my documents, files and notes were / are stored in the Cloud. Notes for my columns, interviews for pending stories, even all the notes related to our destinations, RV parks and other trip details were stored either to Google Notes, Gmail or Google Docs.Read more

By Jeff Zbar
www.homeofficehighway.com

More on the MiFi...

It's every home office, telework and road warrior's lament. At least those with kids (and a wife in search of 'net-time): How to get online, without attracting attention from the little scoundrels, who'll then want the Internet-connected laptop for their own.

Of course, RV parks across America promise "Free Wifi." Good luck finding a network that works...

Here's one review of the MiFi personal hotspot. Specifically, Daniel Terdiman said of mobile hot spot, it "converts the carrier's EV-DO signal into a Wi-Fi connection that up to five people can share. I had already used the MiFi to provide a signal for the iPod Touch at the very beginning of the trip so that, while sitting on a boarding airplane, I could download a large file from iTunes...Now, I realized that by turning the MiFi on and sticking it in my back pocket, I could become, in essence, a walking hot spot, allowing me to get online on the iPod Touch, no matter where I was. That meant that I could use the Skype app to make a phone call, run several other apps for one reason or another, and look up good places to eat using the device's browser..."

My two cents: This device has made working remotely seamless and breezy.Read more

By Jeff Zbar 
www.homeofficehighway.com

Are you a power broker? You have your laptop and broadband wireless card that provide access to the connected world. You may even have a back-up laptop battery in case your first does during the middle of a major project or especially thoughtful missive.

But what about the power that empowers you? Whether you’re in an RV or a hotel room, the stuff we use — our laptops, portable printers, iPods and cell phones — invariably require more power than some measly little two-plug wall outlet will provide.

So, power up. Read more

By Jeff Zbar 
www.homeofficehighway.com

When it comes wireless phones and my choice of hearing devices, this home office worker tends toward the dysfunctional. I’m a fan of Bluetooth and the wireless functionality and freedom it delivers.

But I like the clarity and simple effectiveness of wired headsets. Hence my confusion (my wife would argue that it doesn’t end there, but that’s another story).

Headsets are important — and sometimes legal must-haves — accessories for wireless phones. As you’re tooling around town or exploring the Final Frontier in an RV with better things to focus on than answering your wireless phone, they free your hands for note-taking or driving (helping avoid costly traffic tickets in those markets where hands-free cellular phone use is the law - see list below).

Yet sound quality, especially when driving, was lacking. Enter new Bluetooth products designed to enhance the speaker’s voice and eliminate background sounds, like wind, lawn equipment and crowd noise. Products like Jabra, Plantronics, and the novel Jawbone (which offers a pretty creative marketing ploy: Redeem your cell phone moving violation for a discount on a new Jawbone purchase). Read more

By Jeff Zbar 
www.homeofficehighway.com

When I first saw the RV we’d be driving for Home Office Highway, I wondered how I’d make the most of what was by all accounts a miniature space.

Some concepts and practices fell right into place — like using the Mobile Office Workmate or keeping clutter to a minimum. And some were learned, and depended upon the tools we had on hand.Read more

By Jeff Zbar 
www.homeofficehighway.com

Which road tracking and map tech to use was always a toss up in our car.

We’d traveled for years with traditional GPS devices, that British lass barking out orders and seemingly venting frustration whenever we’d ignore her suggested turns. She was good and reliable. As the kids always warned, “Trust the technology.”

Then along came the Verizon Wireless and its VZ Navigator Version 4 application. Our “traditional” retail GPS would just tell us, “Make left in 2 miles.” No street name audibly announced (though it’s there in print on the screen). I have to admit, though, the British voice was something last summer when we took an impromptu detour onto the Blue Ridge Parkway — and she couldn’t convince us to “Make the next available turn…” Frustrated, she was. Read more