Mobile Productivity

Travel Hacks: Camera Phone Hacks

With a crazy schedule, I find there are lots of details I fail to pay enough attention to while traveling.  I have found that my camera phone is a great tool to quickly capture the information that I would otherwise ignore and regret later.  Here are a few of my favorite camera phone hacks to improve my productivity on the road.

Rental Car
I get into a strange airport after midnight, or a foreign city, many timezones away.  Groggy I get in the car, drive to a hotel, and crash.  The next morning, refreshed, I head out into the parking lot, only to discover I have no idea which car is mine.  I then get to play the fun game of "which Ford is mine" with the remote keychain, wandering around until I make a car honk.  Instead, I now snap a quick picture of the back of my car with my phone as I am throwing my luggage in the trunk.  That allows me to identify the make, model, and color of the car when I need to find it later.  It also has the license plate, for those rare occasions when the hotel forces you to fill out that information on checkin.

While most airport rental car locations (for the big chains) don't check your car for damage either before you leave the lot or after you bring it back, the regional rental car companies and off airport locations are usually a little more stringent.  To be safe, if I see a major issue with the car when I pick it up, I snap a quick picture before leaving the lot.

Parking Lot
When I park my car at the airport and am not going to return for a few days, I will snap a picture of where I parked, so when I land, I don't have to rely on the freshness of my braincells to remember.

Hotel Room
Just like where I parked my car, I often don't recall which room is mine.  I hate carrying around the big bulky key jacket most hotels give you on checkin.  I used to rip just the room number off and stick it in my wallet, but that proved more trouble than it was worth.  Now I just snap a picture of the door when I unlock the room.

Valets
When I end up in my own car (BMW M3 Convertible with SMG transmission), I always cringe when the valet (using a kid around 18 years old) takes my keys.  I have taken to snapping a picture of my dashboard before getting out, so both the restaurant (through the windshield) and the odometer are visible.  I've used the picture twice.

Receipts
If your company will submit digital versions of your receipts on your expense reports, your camera phone is your friend.  Often I will snap a picture of the receipt and throw it away while I am still on the road, instead of carrying it around for weeks before processing it.

Trave Hack: Fax your boarding pass to your hotel

It's great to print your boarding pass at home or the office before heading to the airport on a trip.  Depending on the airport it can save half an hour or more...particularly when you are flying on an airline that doesn't have a strong presense in the at the airport from which you are flying.  However, once you get on the road and into the hectic nonstop activity of a busy schedule, it can become harder to find time to print at the hotel business lounge or the airport lounge.  One hack I use when I am pressed for time is to fax my boarding pass to the hotel at which I am staying. 

If you airline doesn't have a fax option (mine did briefly before it disappeared), it doesn't take much time to use a PDF printer (I use CutePDF under Vista) and an internet fax service (I use efax) to make it happen.  That way, my boarding pass is waiting for me when I get there to check in.

Travel Hack: Check in when you land

While I'm not sure if my travel patterns are typical or not, when I am traveling domestically, I usually only spend one or two days in each city.  Typically, I am travelling for a single meeting, make my plans and fill in other meetings opportunistically around my schedule.  That has a couple of implications.

First, I spend a lot of time on planes.  Like everyone that spends a lot of time on planes, if I am not productive on the plane, I will fall behind on my work load.  The number one key for being productive (for me), is to be in the right seat.  The key to getting the right seat on most airlines is Airport Checkin Time.  For most airlines, the early bird gets the worm.  For upgrades, airport checkin time is the usually the tie breaker for all passengers at the same frequent flyer status when going down the upgrade list.  Additionally, there is always a decent set of really good seats that are held back under airport control, waiting for passengers with disabilities, special needs, or unusual circumstances.  Many airlines use checkin time to dole those out.  Others, allow anyone (sometimes restricted by status) to have access, but only after they have checked in at the airport.

Second, I am always pressed for time.  Because I tend to wedge meetings, conference calls, and other activities into every nook and cranny in my schedule, I am always running late to the airport.  If there are no kiosks, or there is a long line to self checkin, or if I get the dreaded "please see a gate agent" error, I can easily end up spending an extra night somewhere I wasn't planning.

One travel hack I use all the time to combat these two problems is checking in the day before.  Most airlines (though not all) allow checkin 24 hours in advance.  This is primarily geared towards checking in online.  While checking in online and printing my boarding pass helps with the second problem (time pressure), it generally does nothing for the first problem (seats).  (Of course the big exception here is Southwest Airlines.)  While some airport kiosks won't allow you to check in until day of departure, I have found that in those cases, the agents in the airline lounge can often be pursuaded to print your boarding pass for you.  If you are at the highest tier of your airline frequent flyer program, this essentially guarentees you an upgrade if one is possible.  There is nothing like showing up for a 6AM flight with an airport checkin time of noon the day before.

Travel Hacks

As we travel, we pick up a few tricks that aren't obvious but are really useful.  Since it is a short week, I thought I would cover a couple of these that makes things eaisier on me.  Have a great labor day.  The first one should be out when you get back to work on Tuesday.

Productive Packing: Pack Your Keys

Usually landing in your home airport, no matter how rough the trip and how late at night, is a great feeling.  A few years back, however, I had a horrible experience that led to a new travel habit.  I had a nightmare trip...5 cities in 3 days with a stack of conference calls to further complicate things.  There was bad weather with travel delays across the country.  My airline had screwed up my flights as well, so I had middle seats all the way home.  I arrived at 3AM, totally wiped out.  In Austin, TX, the airport is deserted by 10PM, so there was literally no one around, save a couple TSA guys.  I reached my car in the parking garage only to discover I had lost my keys somewhere during the trip.  Because my travel routine doesn't require me to use my keys (my car, house, and office are far away :-)  ), I never noticed.

The consequences were pretty painful that night.  The cabs were all gone, and I had to call one.  It was a $100 cab ride home arriving at almost 5AM.  I had to bribe a friend to pick me up and drive me to the airport the next morning to pick up my car.

My solution?  I now pack my keys.  When I arrive at the airport and am in line for security, instead of throwing my keys in a bin or bowl and sending it through xray, I clip them on a key hook in my bag.  All of my various pieces of luggage and laptop cases have one.  When I pull my carry on from the overhead bin as I land at my home airport, I unclip the keys and drop them in my pocket.

This has a few benefits.  In addition to ensuring my keys aren't misplaced, it also means my pockets are less full.  This helps since rental car agencies seem intent on providing you with multiple copies of your rental car keys, in addition to one or two remote door lock fobs and a rental car agency branded key chain the size of a coffee mug.

Productive Packing: Packing Cubes

I travel quite a bit internationally.  I make it a rule not to check my bags, so the packing logistics get pretty complex to fit enough clothes for a week long trip into a bag that meets the size requirements for a carry on.  One of the absolute best solutions I have found to getting more changes of clothes into a bag is the use of packing cubes. 

Packing cubes are small zipper bags that come in various sizes and are sold in most travel stores.  Different bags are shaped to optimize for different uses.

I use an Eagle Creek "Half Cube" to pack one day's clothes (minus jacket and shoes).  If you fold your clothes properly, this works great.  I fold my pants in half at the top, then roll them.  For shirts, I fold the shoulders back, then roll from the bottom to the top, careful not to crease the collar.  (Wrinkles can be ironed out in your room, but a creased collar is a bear.)  Undergarments go on top and the whole thing is zipped up, forming a cube.

I've found that in my compact sized carry on, I can fit four or five packing cubes in my bag, or an entire week's worth of clothes!  By removing one carry on, I can usually add a pair of shoes.  Remove two, and I can take a couple jackets.

Productive Packing: Travel Disaster Recovery Plan

Having built and run a number of data centers and Software as a Service based applications, one of the most vexing (and thus overlooked or ignored) problems is the disaster recovery plan.  What do you do if the building housing your servers (or your business) burns down, is hit by a tornado, or abducted by aliens?  The business ramifications of a disaster are staggering and can spell the end to some companies.  When traveling, equally terrible things can happen to you.  While being abducted by aliens is out of scope of this post, loosing your wallet (or getting mugged), loosing your laptop case, or discovering you left your cell phone charger in the rental car three cities ago can all cause major disruptions.

I can remember just after September 11th, while traveling in San Jose, California, I lost my driver's license.  I didn't realize this until I got to the front of the security line forty minutes before departure of the last flight home on a Friday evening.  I got to spend a good chunk of my weekend in San Jose instead of at home, while I jumped through hoops with airport security.  Now I make sure that I have a disaster recover plan in place for traveling.  In addition to emergency contacts and the other common knowledge items, I do the following:

• Keep a separate form of ID (usually my passport) in my luggage, in case I lose my wallet.
• Keep a package of identifying documents at my house so my wife can fax them on demand.
• Keep some extra cash in my bag, in case of emergency.
• Keep a second cell phone in my bag in case of malfunction or loss.
• Keep an emergency charger (iGo has a great one) in my bag in case I discover that watching the season finale of Lost on my iPhone meant I didn't have enoug juice to make an important call after landing.
• Tag my laptop, phone, bag, and Moleskin journal with a "reward if found" identification sticker.
• Keep an extra credit card in my luggage.

Do you have a travel disaster recover plan?  I'd love to hear about it.

Productive Packing: Working Out While Packing Light

I try to workout at least three to four times a week.  Given that I spend nearly 100% of my time on the road, that becomes quite challenging.  Specifically, I like to travel light.  I never check my bags and I try to take the smallest sized carry on I can fit my clothes into.  I've found that often, it is my workout shoes that are the first thing that I throw overboard when the zipper won't quite close.

A traveling companion has turned me on to a compromise between not working out (or working out in my hotel room), and packing a bigger bag.  For weight workouts and elliptical/exercise bikes, ditch the bulky cross trainers and pack a pair of aquasocks.


Aquasocks are a handy invention for pools, rivers, lakes, and other places where you're going to get wet, but don't want to go barefoot. They are incredibly lightweight and flexible, which means they can contort to fit the last little nook and cranny not filled in your bag. They offer enough traction to make a weight workout effective and offer enough protection that you don't rub your feet raw on an elliptical or bike.

I've found I get more looks of envy than amusement when I walk into the hotel gym in aquasocks.

Application Review: Jott

Today's screencast is Jott, a cool utility that allows you to call a number, leave a message, and have it transcribed to text and delivered to an email address, phone (as text message), or distribution list.  In addition to the interesting mobile productivity implications for those of us on the go, we'll also be giving specific attention to how it can interact with RememberTheMilk, the Web 2.0 Task list application we reviewed last week.

Enjoy!

To listen to the screencast, click here: Download jott_screencast.m4v

Productive Packing

Feedback on the last tips and tricks series around task list challenges received an overwhelming positive response.  We wanted to follow up with a shorter series on packing related tips.  With all the airline schedule disruptions these days, traveling light is key (nothing like ending up at your destination without your bags or being unable to hop on the early flight because your luggage is checked).  I'll be focusing on packing tips that will allow you to get more done with with physical baggage.  The first post will be tomorrow and will continue for the rest of the week.

If you have some productive packing tips, I'd love to hear them.