Working Anywhere

Hotel Broadband Tips

When I travel I always pack either my Linksys or Asus travel router. The Linksys is a tad easier, but the Asus offers more options (with added Ethernet ports-four compared to the one on the Linksys).

Having one of these makes it possible to SHARE your connection with a traveling companion, in my case, my fiance, who is a doctor and needs to access the web to do various tasks.

Hilton Garden Inn-San Mateo, CA (HBE)

Hilton Garden Inn-San Mateo, CA

Stayed there two nights week of May 14th

Price-Free

VPN Available

VoIP Quality-Good

Overall Grade B+

 

Andy Abramson

Hotel Palomar-San Francisco, CA (HBE)

Hotel Palomar-San Francisco, CA

Stayed there week of May 14th for 2 nights.

Broadband experience B+

VoIP Worked and quality was good

Video Worked but not perfect

Andy Abramson

Hotel Broadband Experiences (HBE)

Over the past five months, since December, I have been the nomad, working in and out of hotels in Europe and North America.

My broadband experiences have gone from good to exceptional, but yet along the way I've seen things like port blocking, needed to call support to get a private IP address (Hilton Garden Inn in Philadelphia), have my MAC address registered (Homewood Suites in Seattle) to had the kind of experience (Sofitel in France, Kempenski in Munich) that makes me think that the road trip is like the home experience. I've also had marginal experiences that make VoIP and Video from in room less than what we need.

Hotel front desk staffs are not always that well informed, and sometimes even the engineering staff knows less than the customers (Renaissaince Hollywood-Los Angeles) where nothing worked until they reset the router (my suggestion.)

As Working Anywhere continues to to be a tips and tricks blog about being able to work anywhere, or what helps make it more possible, Hotel Broadband Experience will always be included here, but with the letters HBE in the headline and the category.

The grading will be simple--just like grade school. A, B, C, D, E or F for failure to offer broadband.

So get ready to learn where to stay so when you're on the road, it will be just like home.

Shared Copy Makes Working Anywhere Easy

Pal James Seng has a new application that while still having some rough edges is something that virtual workers will love.

Called Shared Copy, the multi-user Web based commenting tool has a place in the world of 2.0 applications that don't require much more than a browser.

Stuart has some comments.

SightSpeed in Financial Times

SightSpeed was featured yesterday in Paul Taylor's Financial Times Tech column.

While many in the USA based 'Net and Tech industry look only at the Wall Street Journal and their tech team here in the USA as Holy Grail, Taylor can easily be perceived the same way in the globally read Financial Times.

His "why this makes sense" commentary on now ready for prime time applications and services has been one of the reasons I used to have home delivery and now subscribe to the online version.

Avaya Developer Day

If you have a hankering to develop voice apps for the enterprise market next week's TMC VoIP Developer event in Santa Clara, CA you can score a free admission to Avaya's Developer Program. While this won't get you into the rest of the conference, it will be a worthwhile starting point.

Will You Get a DWT?

If a few states have their way, drivers who like to drive and text will be given DWT (Driving While Texting) citations and fines according to a New York Times story.

This means services that have IVR with Speech to Text capability and Text to Speech are going to be very big. This will help explain the acquisition of TellMe makes so much more sense now.

Its funny that the first of the states that has DWT legislation signed into law was Washington, home of TellMe acquirer Microsoft, a point missed by the New York Times.

Is that sheer coincidence or part of a greater plan by Microsoft? Regardless, laws like these are why Yahoo and MSFT both have moved aggressively into a speech based data entry and reply mode for applications and services. We live in a mobile society and mobile phone service is everywhere, and mobile data use, especially with Blackberrys and Windows Mobile 6.0 devices. People won't stop using them, so a voice interface while driving via a headset or in car speakerphone will be the way to do it, to avoid DWTs.

Trustive Grows Their Portfolio

Europeans who use WiFi are likely more aware of Trustive than many in other parts of the world.

The hotspot access aggregator is similar to Boingo here in the USA, and has taken aim at the SMB/SME market going after the same customer base that iPass and GRIC have had mostly free reign with for years.

More WiFi Hotspots Coming

When you look at the growing number of hotspots around the world one has to be happy as it means that Working Anywhere is going to become easier and easier.