Checking on home while away

By Jim Bernardo INQ7.net

HONOLULU-- I found some free time to write while spending some quality time with my favorite support team: my family. The year 2005 became our US travel year, when an opportunity to travel presented itself and I received some complimentary airline tickets for my kids.

Knowing we would be away for some time, I installed an IP camera device with four cameras to monitor the perimeter of our home. It is standalone--no PC is required and it is web-configurable and -accessible. The IP video server device supports dynamic DNS service, which is extremely useful for residential dial-up or DSL Internet links that do not have a fixed, external IP address, especially when you need to reach PCs or services while away from home.

Dynamic DNS provides free Domain Name Service by installing a Dynamic DNS updater client that reports the ISP assigned internet IP address http://210.213.145.81 to say: http://videoservice.freedomain.org. Check out www.dynDNS.org and see if it fits your DNS needs. Go ahead put that unlimited Internet link to good use.

By accessing the sample IP via the web, we can see the perimeter of our home and show my eight-year old her dog, which usually makes trouble.

Put your DSL to good use while you are away from home, or office. View your warehouse or 24/7 releasing area remotely. Or access your newborn’s nursery so working parents are able to watch over the area. If you are interested for such an IP video service, just shoot me an e-mail.

Accessing the password-protected video service from a notebook or personal digital assistant (PDA) is much easier since wi-fi hotspots in Honolulu (or for the rest of the US) are prevalent.

My last work-related US travel was the week of September 11. A planned stop to some relatives requires us to fly from Honolulu to Los Angeles , but that was cancelled due to the unavailability of return flights to Manila. We would have been stuck for days since they grounded all planes for some time.

September 11 was a very difficult time for the US grieving for the thousands of lives lost. It has changed their way of life.

Since 9-11 we limited our travel to Asia Pacific and the Philippines during summers, The year 2005 was an exception and everyone in the family was looking forward to this trip. The year 2004 was a no-vacation year for us as we lost my dad to a battle with cancer.

For an IT practitioner/technologist, the US is such a cool place to travel. It has wi-fi hotspots all over the place: the hotels, the malls, the factory outlets, the cafés, and even the tourist attractions have them. I e-mail/chat with my project team members in Manila at 5 p.m. local time using a wi-fi-enabled PDA that doubles as a phone.

Internet technologies allow you to leave home/office behind, but if and when you have the need to help out while on vacation, go ahead and put to use the few hours before retiring the day. Or use the waiting time for your next flight leg, to catch up on things via email, or chat or check on video, if and when you need it.

Now, vacation is normally time away from work, and it boils down to an individual’s choice to be carefree. But there are people who need to check that work being executed as planned, for their own peace of mind. It is an option to get in touch, redirect/intervention, and let your team hit the deliverables. E-mails and chat more than suffices to communicate such guidance.

Real Roaming

Armed with a wi-fi enabled PDA-phone(HP 6300), I read mails the past two days I missed out on since I flew out, thanks to the Hyatt Waikiki free wi-fi hotspot. Do you need to call a friend? Install Skype(www.skype.com) on your Pocket PC and leverage on Voice over IP instead of running for a 10-dollar phone card.

While waiting for my night flight to LAX at the Honolulu Airport, I managed to post some vacation pictures from our Waikiki vacation for three dollars. So for two hours, I got a T1 connection from www.shaka.net, Registration is a breeze and I was online in a minute flat. I normally would not login, but with a few hours for a night flight what are we to do?

Telecommuting is as real as it can get these days, and with Voice over IP as a very low-cost alternative, you are left to battle being in a different time zone. A very interesting article I saw in LA Times that addresses this negative effect of business process outsourcing (BPO).