Jeff & Stella relax on Ft. Myers Beach.

After two weeks in an RV, I’m ready for a staycation closer to the home office.

Yet if the soft market has let slip any hopes of exotic travel this summer, don’t cave to “vacation envy.” Get creative and plan a “stay-cation” of your own.

Urban dictionary defines stay-cation as “A vacation that is spent at one’s home enjoying all that home and one’s home environs have to offer.” Don’t blow your stay-cation catching up on chores, straightening up the garage, fixing the roof or painting the house.  Make sure that you limit the time you spend on email.

The well-planned stay-cation, or stay-at-home vacation, can help de-stress and re-energize the soul, notes FAT Bastard Wines.  Here’re nine tips for planning a killer stay-cation… Read More »

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.

– Open a bag of animal crackers, and a dog’s nose knows. “Food, food, food…”

– “Yes, Mom, Spaghetti-Ohs make a perfectly suitable breakfast.”

Belkin Clap On Surge Suppressor

– Success is in the gadgets you choose. Like the Belkin Clamp On surge suppressor that, well, clamped on to the edge of the bunk and supplied power to all our gadgets (no small feat, given the number of gadgets we employed).

– When plugs aren’t available, old-fashioned cigarette lighters will work. Just the ticket for the Scosche reCoil retractable car charger for iPod and iPhone.

– Netbooks beget adaptors and accessories. And manufacturers are responding. The Targus Netbook Accessory Kit includes a nifty USB hub, a travel mouse and a slip case for netbooks with screens up to 10.1 inches. Read More »

With the cloud, what can your netbook do?

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.

So with a laptop or netbook, and our Mifi broadband Internet personal hotspot, I have worked – literally – from anywhere. Or as techies call it, Out There. In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve also used some apps that I’ve downloaded to my laptop. But they’re free, and more useful and utility-driven than those that come for free with Windows.

Among the applications I’ve used most have been: Read More »

More tweets from Home Office Highway (@homeofficehiway). And with Tweetlater, I was able to dual post to @chiefhomeoffice . Social Media tools helped spread the word…

22.  Midnight in the RV. Campfire’s burned to embers. Robbie & Stella sleep. Zack reads. I write. Mifi & laptop = productive time

23. Workation, staycation, camputing. Is Home Office Highway is part of a larger trend? From the Detroit Free Press http://snipr.com/nv31b

24. The greatest challenge for HOH ’09 is finding productive time to work. AM, Stella’s active. PM, I’m spent. Daytime, outdoors beckon.

25. Financial Times needs an pic of my home office. Good news: Even from Georgia, I can see all my pix w/Carbonite. Bad news: No recent pix

26. More on scale: Mobile Workmate is my mobile ‘home office’ (PC, tech, supplies, etc.), messenger bag for day trips, shoulder bag for netbook

27. Hikes beget scale. To walk w/ netbook in tow, my Be.ez messenger bag is a tad large. Next time, my cloth shoulder bag (a la Jack Bauer) Read More »

The week in review: Ten days of tweets for Home Office Highway. It’s a great way to recap the trip…

1. I told the tweeps at the Disney Entrepreneur Center today about ‘florists’ going on line. Then USAToday sez, http://short.to/l5ds

2. Remember, people – Social Media is all about your consumer, listener, follower or friend. The good vibe you get in turn is just gravy

3. See? This is how you tweet via mobile – sharing ideas & observations

4. Wow! What a crowd at the Disney Entrepreneur Center! Gotta love biz owners eager to learn!

5. Folks at the Disney entrepreneur center are about to get a dose of social media for small business. Remember: it’s about them, not you. Read More »

Mark Hayes with Fox Atlanta and Ruth King with On The Ribbon Business Network were two of the hosts we visited with during Home Office Highway '09.

Home Office Highway was created to showcase the latest in mobile technology. Among the people we met and discussed Mifi, netbooks and various accessories with were Mark Hayes with Fox Atlanta Channel 5 and Ruth King of On The Ribbon business television.

From camping overnight in the Fox TV parking lot (so to be sure we wouldn’t miss the 7am call time) to driving through Atlanta to find Ruth’s office, it was a day of adventure.

Hopefully, we left behind some valuable insights, too.

Packing wisely makes the difference between success and frustration on the road.

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.

Along side my MSI Wind netbook and Verizon Mifi personal hotspot, Below are the 10 (or so) must-pack accessories I carry with me:

– My laptops and netbooks don’t have card readers. So I carry a card reader and USB flash drive so I can import the scores of photographs I’ll shoot each day. Read More »