You can learn a lot — and be scared to death — by reading book reviews.

I was in my home office flipping through Newsweek’s 50 Books to Read Right Now looking for books to take on the road trip.

I came across No. 4 on the list: The Big Switch: Rewiring The World, From Edison to Google, by Nicholas Carr. This bestseller is touted as “the best read so far about the significance of the shift to cloud computing” by Financial Times.

Fair enough. Then The New Humanist chimed in: “Carr may take a somewhat apocalyptic view of the vast technological and social issues which a move to utility computing will raise, not least those of privacy, ownership and access, but he makes a compelling case for its desirability in a world where the network is pervasive. Whether we go gently into this world is, of course, up to us, but with the insight offered here we will at least be prepared to understand the consequences of our choices earlier in the process rather than later. ”

Truth be told, we all live in the cloud. Teleworkers who log on from home. Road warriors who access the corporate server via a customer’s conference room. Home officers who open the HP at some Starbucks to check Gmail or Google Docs. Moms on AOL. Dads checking their fantasy league stats. Bloggers blogging, tweeps tweeting, friends Facebooking.

We all live in the cloud.

Read More »

‘Home Office Highway’ RV Road Show Reveals Latest Digital Lifestyle, ‘Location Independence’ Technology

Coral Springs, FL (July 8, 2009) – Want to hit the road – but don’t think you can leave the job behind? Then take it along for the ride.

This summer, the “anywhere” office comes to life as Home Office Highway ’09 reveals the technology, tools and strategies that make taking a vacation a guilt-free and productive adventure.

The two-week road show and social media event will bring “location independence” to the open road in a recreational vehicle equipped with the latest small office technology. Hosted and produced by technology, telework and home office columnist expert Jeff Zbar, the tour will take his family throughout the American South, visiting small towns and popular tourist destinations – and revealing just how productive a traveling family can be. Read More »

Jeff @ work at the dinette home office

Cloud computing, Location Independence, the Anywhere Office…

Whatever it’s known by, remote work done beyond the traditional and home office liberates millions of workers every year. Already, countless teleworkers are untethered to work. And more agile remote work strategies and policies ould free even more to explore boundless opportunities – if they knew and used the tools needed to explore this New Way to Work.

Home Office Highway explores those tools and strategies. Over the next month, we’ll write about trip preparation and lessons learned, the tools we’ll use and the applications we’ll log on to from the road.

Travel with us as we reveal how the right technology, client expectations, and family ground rules can help you work wisely from the road. So hit the highway in your RV, a minivan or the family sedan, or set up shop in a beachfront cottage or timeshare.

For many businesses, the ability to work remotely creates a key disaster recovery / business continuity solution.

Remember: “Work is not a place. It’s a thing.” It’s a big country out there. Don’t let a thing like work get in the way of exploring up close and personal.

Online Backup Keeps Home Office & Telework Data Accessible on the Road — and Safe From the Storm

By David Friend, CEO, Carbonite, Inc.

‘Tis the season — for hurricanes and summer travel.

It always amazes me how so many business owners completely neglect the safety of the data on their computers. Or will travel without access to their documents.

Consider this:  during hurricane Katrina, more than 35,000 businesses had their computers ruined. According to U.S. Dept. of Labor Statistics, 40 percent of all businesses that have data disasters never reopen. Some 25 percent of the rest fail within two years.

In short, when you lose all your home office’s or small business records and files, you’re cooked.

And if you’re traveling and don’t have access to your data, files and records, it might as well be locked in a vault somewhere.

It’s likely that more than two-thirds of small businesses do back up their data regularly, but it’s almost always to external hard drives, DVDs or tapes.  Unfortunately, these are usually stored nearby. So if the computer gets flooded, so do the backups.

And they’re inaccessible from any remote location.

That’s why it’s so important to back up online where your data gets stored in a completely different part of the country (hopefully somewhere well away from the hurricane belt). Read More »

Hittin’ the road? Many home-based entrepreneurs and small business owners aren’t so sure.

Despite continued economic challenges, the percentage of small business owners planning a summer vacation of at least a week remains similar to last year (56% this year, vs. 59% in 2008), notes the American Express OPEN Small Business Monitor, a semi-annual survey of business owners.

Then again, some entrepreneurs are showing signs that they’ve had enough of the dour predictions and office: Fewer business owners are feeling guilty about taking time off compared to last year (22% vs. 28% in 2008).

What’s most striking about their vacation plans compared to last year is the fact that more business owners are opting to take a less expensive vacation in today’s uncertain economy (32% vs. 20% in 2008). Four of 10 business owners will not take a vacation at all because they can’t afford it.

(The American Express OPEN Small Business Monitor, released each spring and fall, is based on a nationally representative sample of 727 small business owners/managers of companies with fewer than 100 employees. The anonymous survey was conducted via telephone by Echo Research from February 24- March 9, 2009. The poll has a margin of error of +3.6%).

What’s in your pack? A tablet PC, walkie-talkie radio, flash drive, broadband wireless card, five-plug, surge protected power strip. That’s what in mine…

When we recently took a family cruise, I made sure to pack my backpack with all the essentials needed to create a home office from the road.

Along side my HP tablet PC were my broadband wireless aircard (essentially useless hundreds of miles out to sea), my Ativa Memory Stick card reader, a USB flash drive, and a Monster five-plug, surge protected power strip. You never know when you’ll have to plug the laptop, camera charger and some other device into one single outlet.

I also carry a stretch of ethernet cable, and a clutch of adapters.

Here’s what some other people had in their backpacks and laptop bags. Wireless Road Warrior found size essential. Webworker Daily had a review of the stash in one laptop case (read the comments for some more good ideas). Here’s some more threads on the topic.

Hey bud. Can you spare some wi-fi?

It’s the lament of any connected family, home office worker or teleworker who hits the road: Dad has a broadband wireless card for HIS laptop, leaving Mom and the kids disconnected with their iTouches or Nintendo DSis, and eagerly awaiting the call, “Who’s next…?”

No longer. Verizon Wireless will introduce its Novatel Wireless MiFi 2200 Intelligent Mobile Hotspot on May 17.  The device enables customers to create a personal Wi-Fi cloud capable of sharing high-speed Internet connectivity of Verizon’s 3G Mobile Broadband network with up to five Wi-Fi-enabled devices such as notebooks, netbooks, cameras, gaming devices or portable media/MP3 players. Read More »

What defines your perfect mobile office?

I was reading Trend Spotter this week and came across Nissan ‘s (not so) new mobile office concept vehicle. Except that it cannot sleep a soul, it’s a pretty cool active workplace.

Unveiled at the 2007 Tokyo Motor Show, the NV200 sports a well-hidden, full mobile office in the rear. Though its target apparently is “ocean photographers,” I could see this as a little giddyup run-about for Home Office Highway’ers and active teleworkers.

Read More »