Travel with Your Tech What You Need to Know

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Taking a business trip can be stressful at the best of times. Whether you’re off for an overnight conference, a week’s partnership, or a longer project, you essentially pick up your entire business and take it on the road. Besides showing up in the appropriate clothing (which you absolutely packed, right?), keeping your tech up and running becomes your number 1 priority. Take a look at our tech tips for business travelers:

Be careful with free WiFi

Most hotels have free WiFi, as do libraries, cafes, and bookstores. It’s now easy for any business to open their WiFi to the public with or without a catchy password. Unfortunately, that convenience can come at a huge cost. The wireless network you use to check your email while relaxing with a latte could be operated by a hacker. Most of the time, even the wait staff at the café wouldn’t be able to tell the difference either.

Even if you connect to a password secured network, someone could easily capture your information as it travels through the air. In short, If you don’t own the network, you can’t trust it! Using a VPN (like ProXPN or TunnelBear) can help tremendously, and once connected make sure the sites you visit have the little HTTPS lock icon in the browser window.

Connect via your cell phone

Hotel WiFi is notorious for being slow or insanely expensive. You may find that your mobile phone allows you to tether or hotspot a connection. That means you connect your laptop to your phone via WiFi or cable and piggyback on its mobile internet connection. Many carriers and phones allow this, but not all. Just be aware of how much data your plan allows as a computer can use a lot of data in one night of surfing! Also, if you’re in a foreign country it can also be worthwhile getting a local SIM card rather than pay expensive data roaming charges. It’s a good idea to check with your mobile provider before leaving to find out what charges and limits you will have when traveling.

Don’t forget power adapters

You’ve seen it before…people scrounging around for a charger or cable, huddling around in groups until their device has enough juice to get them through a few more hours. Of course, it’s only funny when it happens to other people. Be sure to pack your correct power adapters and cables, along with any plug/voltage converters required to match your destination. It’s worth carrying your USB charging cables on your person, as many planes and airport shops now offer a place for you to plug in for a quick boost. Personally, I would not plug directly into an unknown USB port, you never know what kind of data may be traveling through that cable!

Have plans for being offline

Sometimes you simply can’t get online, which will do you no good when you’re checking into a hotel and your booking details are tucked safely away in your cloud email. You can print out essential travel and business details on paper, but if you have a lot or don’t want to carry them, you can also save them to a document. Emails can be copied and pasted into a Word document, or you can print to PDF by pressing Print > Save to PDF (or similar). Many apps also have an offline mode that allows you to store the information on your computer, including Evernote and Netflix.

New Year’s Tech Resolutions You Should Actually Keep

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If your typical New Year’s resolutions lasted about 30 seconds, you’re not alone. Pledges to eat better, start running and learn how to juggle can be rebooted again next year easy enough.This year, we challenge you to think about your tech health with some resolutions you’ll want to keep.

No More Junk Mail

Whether you checked a box agreeing to get newsletters, or you have no idea how you got on that list, it’s time to say goodbye. Start by emptying your mailbox to zero unread messages – no you don’t have to read all that spam – you have permission to delete it unread. Let’s face it, if you were going to read it, you would have done so already. Away it goes.

Now that you’re starting with a clean slate and a huge feeling of accomplishment, resolve this: Each day, unsubscribe from 5-10 lists. Generally, if a newsletter gives the option to unsubscribe or Opt Out, you want to do that instead of just marking it as junk. So, keep an eagle eye out for that gorgeous ‘unsubscribe’ link and click it with confidence. Before too long, your inbox will be a refreshing place filled only with people and businesses you look forward to hearing from.

ProTip: Search your inbox for the word ‘unsubscribe’ to quickly find anything that has that option! You don’t need to give a reason if the link redirects to a survey page, but do watch for tricky buttons that will actually resubscribe your address.

Go Password Pro

With all these password leaks from LinkedIn, Myspace, and goodness knows who hasn’t come forward, now’s the time to get smart with your passwords. Because most people use the same passwords on every site, a single breach can be the hack that keeps on giving. If a bad guy has a set of credentials for one hacked site, they have automated programs that will check HUNDREDS of other sites to see if those same credentials get them in! Now that you know how important it is to use different passwords for each site, let’s be real, that’s a LOT of passwords to remember!

Instead of writing them down, we recommend using a password manager like LastPass or Dashlane. They remember all your various passwords for you, so all you need to know is the super-protected master password. Master passwords are kept encrypted on your system, not theirs (no chance for them to be hacked and expose your info!), and optional 2-factor authentication checks with you via text or a code on your smartphone for all big changes. We use LastPass in our shop, so we certainly feel that you can trust it for your valuable data.

Backup. No Really, Backup.

“I’ve been meaning to backup!” is the cry of someone who just lost all their photos. Good intentions don’t count AT ALL in data security because once the data is gone, it’s gone. With new modern cloud backup options, there’s no reason to put this off because backup apps are now easier and more accessible than ever before. You can backup to local hard drives instead, but this will take a little extra remembering on your part as you’ll want to have at least one drive that stays disconnected in case of encryption viruses.

There you have it. Three New Year’s resolutions you can easily keep, and that will make a real difference to your year. Opening your email will be a pleasure, you’ll be a spectator only in any future password leaks, and your precious files will be safe against all manner of disaster. Feels better than any diet, doesn’t it?

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