Home Office Highway, a Digital Adventure that reveals how to workation from the open road, will travel the South in Summer 2009.

Discover the tools needed to transform a hotel, lake house, sedan, minivan - or RV - into a perfect workplace for the home officer, road warrior, teleworker or parent. Check back & learn more!

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Vocation meets Vacation on HomeOfficeHighway!

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Home Office Highway has several new features for home officers, teleworkers, road warriors or anyone who wants balance when they work remotely. First, we’ve posted a library of videos, and created a sister site rich with great cools for working from the road.

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There’s also Chief Home Officer, where home-based workers can discover the technology, tools and tips to work from the home office. With News, Reviews & Tips from the home office’s front lines, Chief Home Officer explores how to become a well-balanced home-officer.

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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 »

Your industrious cottage can make remote work workable by Nancy Doniger for the New York Times.

The New York Times had a piece on the tools needed to make a second home or vacation getaway an industrious place. I lent a few insights.

For home office workers (entrepreneurs or teleworkers alike), top tips included:

- Wireless broadband. Internet is central to any effective home office or remote workplace.

- A computer. Netbooks and small laptops allow people to take their work anywhere — without dragging a luggable in tow.

- Cloud with Web-apps. “The cloud is the concept of working in an untethered environment, so all your documents are out there,” writer Billie Cohen quoted me as saying. Click here to learn more…

BlackBerry? Check. MP3 player? Check. Camera? Check.

Forty-two linear feet of wires, cables and cords attached to transformers to recharge all these devices? Uh… OK. No more.

Home officers and road warriors are entangled in lengths of wire — unless you use something to master the morass. Enter CallPod, and various products designed to keep the juice flowing…

Fueltank

Fueltank™ can simultaneously charge two small electronic devices NO OUTLETS NECESSARY. It contains a rechargeable lithium ion battery which has more than 7 times the capacity of a standard mobile phone. The Fueltank utilizes device-specific adapters - the same ones used for Chargepod® - so you can customize your Fueltank™ to meet the exact needs of you and your family. Proprietary voltage regulator technology senses the amount of power required to charge your devices. An LED fuel capacity indicators displays when the charging indicator button is pressed. www.callpod.com/products/fueltank

Read More »

The people at CoolTools recently reviewed several cool apps — ideal for the home officer-turned-road warrior.

According to writer Arthur Heafer, the Versacharger is a combo 110V AC and 12V DC USB converter to charge phones, PDAs, and various other electronics. Purchase additional USB connectors and “tips” as you go for specific gadgets. Some GPS units also can be charged with appropriate voltage transducers.

Heafer has used this charger over a year, mostly when traveling. It greatly reduces the amount of cables, chargers, wall wart and the like carried around. Heafer keeps all my devices (GPS, Palm T/X, cell phone) and charger in a small cloth, drawstring bag, along with a Ziploc bag for all the various tips (Add’l Tip: He uses a gold marking pen to write which tip goes with which device). Read More »

Wired Magazine takes a look at the Nomadic Geek's lifestyle -- when the desk is exchanged for the driver seat of an RV or the dinette of an Airstream.

The good folks at Wired took a novel look at mobile home officing.

Where Home Office Highway hit the road in a C-Class RV, Wired’s take on “Nomadic Geeks” was to “Take Your Job and Shove It — Into an Airstream.”

Cell phones and swiping bandwidth. Biofuel and satellite reception. Very cool — and kinda high-tech.

One guy even said to do this full time you’d have to lower your fee in exchange for spotty availability (hey, we gotta explore the woods and hike the trails a little bit, no?).

“Yesterday’s freeloading hippie is today’s wireless world traveler,” they wrote. They “talked to some nomadic geeks to find out how to trade in your mortgage for flexible hours and an ever-changing, million-dollar view.”

Home Office Highway does the same — sans the million-dollar view and permanent vocation-meets-vacation lifestyle. Temp as our trip may be, the lessons learned and technology used make being a nomad a life-changing experience everytime you hit the road, Jack.