At the office not long ago, we received the visit from a colleague form the States. That means he was a Physics PhD. During the lunch break he took out of his bag his mac book Air and as we were all staring at it and while he was telling to us all about how he got his laptop at work “Because he was more productive that way” he let us play with the gadget for a while.

This has to do with how much can we understand new realities. Productivity facts, and those things.Being productive takes place at the office only occasionally. The idea is to get the most of people in every moment. And being an Entrepreneur and all, best case scenario you end up being at the office too short too little.

I found on This on Digg recently and found the time to read it. It explains a little bit about uhow the world is changing the place and time of work also. The most common thing nowadays is to have two laptops. A big heavy powerful tool at the desk, and a mini laptop for the go.

Of course you can blame it on the UMPCs, and on miniaturization etc. But truth to be told, this micro machines make almost all the work you might need on the street, and they are comfortable to carry as well as light. The Asus EEE has revolutionized the market portability wise. The fact that our main machine is now also a laptop is related to the fact that portability and mobility invades also the office and home space, letting us go from the living room to the kitchen. In the mean time, desktop computers begin their obscure pathway through hardcore resources consumers or gamers.

So, maybe instead of buying a new laptop you could add a UMPC to your lines….

This was going to be a really long post about web office suites. but I found this video from common craft that really says it all and I do not want to exceed myself.

In recent past time I’ve come to work with several lawyers, some of which were freelancers. I’ve noticed some trend in the way the work. This is what I saw.

1. Almost none of them have a personal website. However, all of them have several email accounts.
2. They move a lot. Inside the city mostly, but also on the road.
3. They never get too all-terrain.Their environment is always somewhat safe.
4. They need to get every call.

So what I think they need is:

1. Good reception, it has to be the best there is
2. Car integration, bluetooth almost mandatory
3. Medium size. Bulky is never good.

So in this case I’m going to recommend the Moto Krzr K1 that you can get from $175

But, and this is a big but, if you want to do things right, you need a push mail system, to get your emails right away, In this case you’ll want to go in the blackberry direction and the Pearl’s form factor is your best choice there. You’ll be spending a little bit more for the phone and a lot more for the service, but trust me it is the way to go.

Many people out there  recommend (and explain why) to buy a mac with a conviction that resembles that of the most radicalised blood-signed-contract fanatics. Me for example

Macs are, beyond discussion, a bit more expensive machines, really difficult to tune up in hardware that usually ship more in capability than more of 90% of the consumers use.

The list of good reasons to buy a mac is also long and it is everywhere. However, if you are an entrepreneur, I think you should at least fulfill 3 of these 5 reasons to buy a mac.

1. You are relatively new to computers: Most people won’t try a new system just because it is new. They have to learn all, all over again. So, maybe, bad learned, why bother
2. you don’t like dealing with trouble: beyond the cruel truth (Macs being just  7% of US market) Macs almost never give you any trouble, and there is only one known virus over the las 5 years)
3. Image matters. If so, your only option is Mac.
4. Safe buy: In normal work conditions, a Mac will not grow old (that means it won’t become outdated) before 3 years passed. You’ll find it does all you want afterwords too.
5. If you are in a startup stage, presentations and all, the Mac is a great choice. It is great for presentations, it looks great, you have a remote, great projector compatibility. This reason alone could justify the mac purchase.

I mean Blackberry-wise. And here is why: The Blackberry 8700 does almost everything you need and is the cheapest one out there.

No matter how many people tells me about how good is the “SureType” the Pearl has, after a day of trying it out I could not get it to do what I wanted the same way the qwerty the 8700 does.

Ok, I’ll give you the fact that you won’t have video playback, or big storage, but the bottom line is that when you’re working, multimedia is not that a necessity.

The screen is as good as it gets, and it handles images very (really) well.

So start there, with the BB 8700, you’ll have time, in the future, to buy more expensive toys, trust me.

The Asus EEE, for those of you who haven’t heard of it yet, is a UMPC that costs 400 bucks in the US and come (as you read) in Windows and Xandros flavours. It supports a 2 GB expansion and etc, etc etc.

Talking of it like that is really boring, you can read that, by better informed people elsewhere. What I want to tell you is who should buy it and who shouldn’t.

• Salesmen: This is great for you, only thing to care about is battery life. But with a car charger it’ll all be good.
• Designers: You need to buy it if you’re the PowerPoint presentation kind of guy. If not this is not an option, a 7 in. screen is no place to work, and though you could plug in a mouse, it would be very uncomfortable to design on it.
• Bars: no use for you guys
• The integrated camera and the ability to connect to the world via WiFi makes this gadget a must have tool for the average executive.  Word and Excel documents are easily modified and reviewed and your mail will be with you… always.
• If I was a writer this would be my travel machine, it’s really light and maybe the keyboard is too small, but that is not really something that will make you uncomfortable.

So I was wondering the other day how much cheaper can it be to talk via Skype instead of phone. It turns out a lot of people don’t consider the possibility not because of costs, but because of reliability. That’s that! When you don’t trust something is really not likely that you’re going to use it.

But in any case, I think people should give it a chance in the work field, as an alternative to communications of any other sort for a number of reasons and a number of uses, these are not all but are good ones.

• Suppose y need video conferencing, well Skype costs literally nothing and supports up to five lines.
• It is free and multi-platform
• Its really cool (and TV like) to be able to communicate with your coworkers and partners and see each other, it changes the dimension of things, obviously.
• It is a really practical in training programs, distance ones, like learning Spanish.
• It is great to monitoring the state of some remote project, AND ITS FREE!
• Oh! and maybe last but not least, international calls are really cheap.

So I recommend you give it a try, I can assure you’ll like it

This issue always finds me arguing with people about it every time it arises in a conversation.
I think there are little to none businesses left that don’t need internet. And it doesn’t matter whether you have a jeans store a TV producer office or if you’re a dentist. If the governing idea is to deal with people, if they find out how, they will be coming to your place, and when they do they won’t like to feel “disconnected from the world”. Making people feel comfortable can never be a bad. Worst case scenario they won’t mind returning.
So, for when you install a hotspot, I think you should think about these things.

1. Buy a powerful and compatible wireless router (specially in big places). Vista does not work with every router out there.
2. Change the name of the network to your business name
3. Don’t encrypt the connection. You can always keep free riders outside by using a mac address filter.
4. Publicity. Place some stickers that let people know you have wifi enabled. If people don’t know, all this is pointless.

Sometimes I really would like to know what’s going on in a bar before going, And maybe find out if someone I Know is there. Of course I would also like to known the menu, its telephone number and address.

This kind of service is not new, is just that I was watching The GeekBrief the other day and they were talking about yahoo’s new service Live that is very similar to Stickam from the older days. Anyway I forgot about it and yesterday watching Diggnation the issue came up again.

It is really interesting if you’re a reporter or maybe you have a bar. It is a really cheap way to add value to your site, and sometimes, It is really original to show people what is going in on this side of the fibre.

Down here I leave the Live transmition from some drugstore in Brazil. Hey, call me anything but boring!

Fact: everyday people care less and less of where your business is.
No point in arguing that statement. Truth is you can’t think your business as a neighbourhood leader any more. These days global is such a common word we all take it as a default feature.
The thing is no matter how digital we become, we’re still flesh and bone. And we like to known where things are.
So go to maps.google.com, google your business address, or your business related places, and embed that in your site some how.
You have nothing to lose and you can gain these things.

1. Trust: as I said people like to know where thing are.
2. Exposure, you’d be surprised how many people would actually go to your shop/office/showroom
3. Google results: tag yourself in google maps and your location will add relevance to related searches (this works great with google ads)

See you soon!