Home Office Highway

By Jeff Zbar
www.homeofficehighway.com

This dispatch is from BestStuff technology and home office contributor Jeff Zbar, who's on a three-week family road trip through the American West. Whether you're a road warrior, a home-based business owner, a teleworker, or just a family in search of the freedom of the road, enjoy Jeff's commentary. Want to learn more? Hit www.chiefhomeofficer.com.

Sitting in a hotel room near Palo Alto, California, my family's enjoying some quality time, 21st Century style. Kids are on their MacBooks and iPod Touch. Robbie's on her Kindle. I'm on my Acer Iconia Android Tablet, and we're all surfing via our Verizon Mifi personal hotspot.

A little work, a little exploration. Nothing in particular.

We're each in our own orbit around the sun of the moment – a bio of Selena Gomez on the TV.

Call it what you will, it is a wholly different form of quality time, the New York Times recently commented. But it's quality time nonetheless. Robbie and I wanted the kids to bring their devices. To demand otherwise would have been to, 1. Ignore reality, and 2. Invite World War III.Read more

By Jeff Zbar
www.homeofficehighway.com

This dispatch is from BestStuff technology and home office contributor Jeff Zbar, who's on a three-week family road trip through the American West. Whether you're a road warrior, a home-based business owner, a teleworker, or just a family in search of the freedom of the road, enjoy Jeff's commentary. Want to learn more? Hit www.chiefhomeofficer.com.

My wife is no technophile. When her netbook wigs out, drops its wifi connection or otherwise gets kinda jiggy, she loses it and shuts the cover. "I hate technology," she'll grumble.

She's had a Facebook going on two years now. But she never uses it. Twitter? Isn't that a nervous response to an unsettling situation – like using technology?

You could say that, aside from insects, prison movies and my immature annoyances, she hates nothing more than technology.

Call her Robbie, Queen of the Luddites.

I think she's slowing realizing, though, that she cannot live — or at least work — in the 21st Century without some tech in her life.

As a nurse practitioner with a budding side business in patient tutorials, she should receive and reply to emails throughout the day. Yet, she could go days without checking email, leading her clients to re-send – and then call – wondering if she received their work assignments.Read more

By Jeff Zbar
www.homeofficehighway.com

This dispatch is from BestStuff technology and home office contributor Jeff Zbar, who's on a three-week family road trip through the American West. Whether you're a road warrior, a home-based business owner, a teleworker, or just a family in search of the freedom of the road, enjoy Jeff's commentary. Want to learn more? Hit www.chiefhomeofficer.com.

When I was a young teen, my father bought me my first real camera. It was a used Nikon F (heck, in 1975, all Fs were used). It was a workhorse of the Vietnam War and the trusted choice of professional and amateur photographers ever since. It set in place my desire for amateur photography that carried over from travel to my work today as a freelance, home-based writer.

It shot like a champ, was fairly silly simple to use, and with the right lenses, could capture images with relative ease and beautiful clarity. You had roughly two adjustments — shutter speed and aperture. If you mastered those (no small feat in its own right), and knew how to compose your shots, you could create some pretty compelling photography. Read more

By Jeff Zbar
www.homeofficehighway.com

This dispatch is from BestStuff technology and home office contributor Jeff Zbar, who's on a three-week family road trip through the American West. Whether you're a road warrior, a home-based business owner, a teleworker, or just a family in search of the freedom of the road, enjoy Jeff's commentary. Want to learn more? Hit www.chiefhomeofficer.com.

Ten days into three on the open road with my family – and home office technology – in tow…

As a writer, I get paid to observe. This time, I'm not getting paid. But sitting in the New York New York Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, I cannot help but observe and report.

I am NOT Clark Griswold from National Lampoon's Vacation – though being compared to Chevy Chase isn't necessarily a bad thing – "na-na-na-na-na-na-na"), no matter how many of you may think a family of five spending three weeks in a minivan in search of the mythical Wally World qualifies me as maniacal.

Took my kids to the Hoover Dam. Damn, they weren't impressed. All I wanted to do was marvel at this engineering masterpiece — and shoot a few pictures with my Nikon. They would have nothing of it. Maybe it was because…Read more

By Jeff Zbar
www.homeofficehighway.com

This dispatch is from BestStuff technology and home office contributor Jeff Zbar, who's on a three-week family road trip through the American West. Whether you're a road warrior, a home-based business owner, a teleworker, or just a family in search of the freedom of the road, enjoy Jeff's commentary. Want to learn more? Hit www.chiefhomeofficer.com.

So we checked into a Calhoun, Georgia, Hampton Inn, and it didn't take long for tech to start earning its keep. The hotel didn't have menus for local restaurants, so we fired up the Acer tablet, searched for local eateries (found a Ruby Tuesday), hit their site to read the menu, called the local location, and 25 minutes later were vanquishing ravenous appetites.

It didn't take long for me to realize I needed to "customize" the tablet. Email sent via Gmail went out without any sig. Once I synched it to my Gmail account, it dropped in my custom signature. Just for good measure, I input a simple signature – name, office phone, and links to my key web sites.

I also tweaked the home screen to include a Gmail icon and a few others I use regularly. I adjusted the clock, and several onscreen icons. I'm wary and protective of cyber fraud and theft. So, before I turn the review unit back in, I have to remember to delete all my personal information and data.Read more

By Jeff Zbar
www.homeofficehighway.com

This dispatch is from BestStuff technology and home office contributor Jeff Zbar, who's on a three-week family road trip through the American West. Whether you're a road warrior, a home-based business owner, a teleworker, or just a family in search of the freedom of the road, enjoy Jeff's commentary. Want to learn more? Hit www.chiefhomeofficer.com.

Power and peace of mind – two essential elements for any home office / road warrior. Even teleworkers and traveling families need security and safety. The two elements: Power – to charge or run various devices. And peace of mind to know your stuff won't become some thief's stuff.

To master these two basic needs, I always carry two items in my laptop bag: A Targus mini-surge suppressor / power strip, and a Kingston portable cable lock.

When on the road, my laptop is my power tool. It keeps me productive and busy, and helps us find restaurants, attractions, mileage from one place to the next. Losing it would be lousy for business — and my faith in mankind.

I leave nothing to chance. With a cable lock, I affix the laptop to a permanent object — a table, a large chair (within the frame, not around the legs – duh!), even a bulky lamp.Read more

By Jeff Zbar
www.homeofficehighway.com

Summertime's a great time to hit the open road – without leaving life behind. Technology widely available to the consumer market helps the "anywhere" office – and online personality – come alive without an electrical outlet or Ethernet cable in sight. This is Americana in a way Norman Rockwell never could have imagined.

This summer, the Home Office Highway '11 road show will showcase the tech, tools and tips that empower people to work and play from the interstate highway – or the information superhighway. The three-week excursion and social media event will highlight how "location independence" can be found wherever life's journey ventures.

This year, we'll travel from Fort Lauderdale to San Francisco. Part sightseeing trip, part college tour, all fun-n-games. The van will have laptops, digital cameras and other technology common to the modern family home.

As families grow up, so do their technology needs, even when they're on vacation. We'll file blogs, Facebook updates, tweets and videos from the road. We'll even manage family finances effortlessly from anywhere. "With wifi, the cloud and a computer, you can work and play from anywhere." Read more

By Jeff Zbar
www.chiefhomeofficer.com
www.homeofficehighway.com

I got a voicemail today. With email, texts, pins, BBMs, Facebook, tweets, IM, LinkedIn messages, and the like, imagine that someone actually left a vmail – and that I actually check it.

In the message, the person left her query. She also commented that my outbound greeting referenced Cinco de Mayo. A greeting a month old, eh? Goes to show how little attention many of us pay to our vmail greetings.

This got me to thinking, though… Assuming people actually listen to greetings, what should we say or request of those trying to reach us? What about for teleworkers, road warriors and even workationing entrepreneurs?

I once espoused changing greetings weekly – so seemingly timely and attentive that would make us appear. I got over that once it got sufficiently old and burdensome that I forgot to update the greeting (see Cinco de Mayo reference above).

Yet the question rises anew as I prepare for a three-week excursion on Home Office Highway.

Do I say I'll be on the road? Do I give contact details for myself, or contact info for others in my stead? Since I'll be working a bit, do I forward calls to my mobile?

What about other forms of contact…? Do I actually use my Gmail Vacation Responder? Do I suggest texts, pins, BBMs, Facebook, tweets, IM, LinkedIn messages, and the like?Read more

By Jeff Zbar
www.chiefhomeofficer.com

Seth Godin wrote recently of "the end of magic." He was lamenting how the newness of the new seems to have passed us by — how the really cool tools and applications that once wowed us in the workplace and life now are so commonplace that they are taken for granted, and no longer devices of Wow!

Wait. Take a moment to ponder the tools we use and what they bring to our daily lives. You might respectfully disagree.

Every day, I use services and tools that keep me connected with the world outside in ways that still seem magical. My BlackBerry brings the Internet and its motherlode of possibilities to a device smaller than a deck of cards (iPhone users will only smirk at the possibilities borne from their device).Read more

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