What's In Your Bag? Road Warriors Share Their Tools of the Trade...

Greetings everybody. Welcome to the Wednesday, January 20th, 2016 episode of Free Webinar Wednesdays. This is Eric Cook. I'm with WSI Internet Consulting where we work with businesses and organizations on helping them better understand and leverage the power of the internet as a strategic business tool. You can learn more about me and WSI and all the cool stuff that we do at www.poweredbywsi.com. With me this week is my good friend and Free Webinar Wednesday partner and all-around great guy, Mr. Jeff Simpkins. Jeff, say hello to everybody out there in Free Webinar Wednesday world.

Hello everybody, this is Jeff Simpkins. I'm with Community Bank Consulting Inc., and you can learn more about me and Community Bank Consulting Inc. online at www.communitybankconsulting.com.

Excellent. So you're getting some Michigan weather, if I'm not mistaken. I'm hearing threats of freezing stuff, maybe even a little white stuff coming down to your neck of the woods.

Yes, I'm sitting at my desk, and earlier this morning I saw snow. I went out a few minutes ago and felt some freezing rain. No, that means that the grocery store will have no bread, no milk, and no beer by the end of the day.

No bread. Yeah, all of the essential food groups— bread, milk, and beer— gotta have that. Maybe, uh, maybe some boxes of cereal tossed in there for good measure. You gotta have something for breakfast. So, you know, said the, said the guy hailing from the Battle Creek area where Kellogg's is, of course, headquartered. So gotta put in my breakfast cereal.

Plug.

So, well, we, we are actually on our annual trek down south. Those of you that have participated in Free Webinar Wednesdays for a while maybe recall that we are the relatively new owners to a small little RV, and we're traveling south and figured, well, once we maybe got out of Ohio, maybe south of Pennsylvania, it'd be nice and warm, we'd be able to enjoy some walks with the dog while we're Making our way down to visit my parents. We are in Virginia now, and it is freezing, and we're not even to Charlotte yet. We're going to have to do some hightailing to beat this mammoth storm that they keep talking about. They're threatening 6 to 12 inches of snow in the Richmond, Virginia area or something crazy like that. I'm looking forward to being in Florida very soon and enjoying some nice warm weather, but hopefully that doesn't follow us all the way down to the Sunshine State. We'll keep our fingers crossed.

There was an article in the New York Times this morning saying that some of the models that are getting the most press are saying that Washington, D.C. and the area that you're in right now are going to get Monumental amounts of snow, and other models say none. So I think it's going to be one of those situations where it's definitely going to happen, or it's definitely not going to happen.

Definitely one way or the other. Definitely positively, maybe.

Absolutely.

Yeah, exactly.

So you and I were supposed to see each other on Friday, but due to this. Well, more than likely here in the Charlotte area, we are gonna, are gonna get some snow and freezing rain on Friday and Saturday. So we're actually moving our meetup to Atlanta, going a little further south to meet.

I'm gonna make you drive a little bit further south where we'll hopefully be able to at least enjoy the ground without any white stuff on it. So I'll look forward to seeing you a little bit later in the week, but seeing you nonetheless. But one of the, one of the cool parts about Being able to kind of be a digital marketer and pick up and hit the road is playing off of today's topic because I was kind of inspired by it when I was meeting with a friend of mine that I had met who works for a bank, who's a loyal Free Webinar Wednesdays attendee. I don't see that she's logged in quite yet, but she usually hops on every week. But I was able to swing by their bank and actually we had met probably 3 3 or 4 years ago at a conference that I did in Virginia for their operations and technology division, and she stayed in touch with us through Free Webinar Wednesdays and has been a big fan of our webinar show and wanted me to pass along a hello to you as well, Jeff. But as we were talking, one of the things that jumped into my mind for today's show was since you and I spend a lot of time on the road and we're doing a lot of traveling, what are some of the things that we always toss into our bag? What are some of the things that maybe we think we you'd like to have or adding, because remaining productive while you're on the road is becoming, I think, more and more commonplace for folks. And even if you're not— I don't want to call either one of us a road warrior necessarily— but even if you're not on the road all the time, if you take off and go to a conference or an event, or even people that go on vacation now still need to check in, as bad as that may sound. the office and maybe work on a couple of things here and there, and having the right stuff with you certainly makes the whole process a whole lot easier. And so, um, so I thought this would be a good topic, and when I shared that idea with her, she's like, oh my gosh, that would be such a great topic. And she really liked last week's show when we talked about some of the apps, and there was a couple of apps that she actually uses, um, that also help with, uh, from a charitable perspective when you go for a walk. So it's good to, I guess, connect the dots and be able to get to meet some of the folks that you don't normally have an opportunity to meet. So it's been kind of cool. So with that, I think what we probably should do is give our typical disclaimer slash housekeeping. As a reminder, today's show and all shows at Free Webinar Wednesdays are being recorded for your listening and viewing pleasure. You'd like to visit us at freewebinarwednesdays.com, you'll find the recordings made available there. Share them with your friends and coworkers and help spread the word and encourage people to sign up and join us every week. And we also love to get feedback and participation from folks. And so if you would like to kind of share some of the things that you take with you when you travel, or, you know, gadgets or gizmos or other sorts of tips, Certainly post those into the chat area. We'd love to hear from you, and we'll be happy to add those to the list. And who knows, there might be some cool stuff that Jeff or I could pick up that we might be able to use on our next trip. So, so let's go ahead and kinda jump right into it, shall we, Mr. Simpkins?

Let's do it.

Cool. So I've started a really big list, and I've got some tabs pulled up here, and it's no secret A lot of them you can find on Amazon. I'm not saying you have to buy them on Amazon. I don't have an affiliate account with Amazon. I'm not going to get any commission from Amazon if you buy them from Amazon. But it's going to go ahead and, you know, it'll give you an easy way for you to go ahead and actually find the items if you want to, if you want to purchase them and add them to your list. But, um, Probably the most important thing that always makes it into my bag, I would say, is my MacBook computer. I think Jeff and I have talked about our computer preferences, and I think we continue to revert back to the Macs. And even recently, my wife needed to get a new computer, and we went with a MacBook Air but installed actually Boot Camp and loaded Windows 10. So she's using a MacBook Air running Windows 10, and I know that seems kind of odd, but Apple wowed me with the service experience recently, and I think that's going to be my computer of preference. So from a computer perspective, that's what I carry. Jeff, do you always travel with a tablet, or I know you've got one of the bigger iPhones, but are you taking your iPad with you now, or is that something that doesn't need to be in your bag Because of the larger size of your phone?

I'm going to answer that and chuckle as I'm answering it.

I—

3 things that I always have, and we can talk about, are my MacBook Air. When I bought my MacBook Air, I actually have had mine for 5 years soon. The MacBook was heavier than I wanted. I might, the next time I choose a computer, I might go with just a regular MacBook because they are much lighter now. The other thing that I always travel with is my iPhone, which probably is the most critical.

device.

And then the third, and I still carry it and I bitch the whole time I'm carrying it, is my iPad. And the reason I bitch about it the whole time I'm carrying it is because I have one of the older, heavier models, and believe it or not, it noticeably weighs down my backpack. So I think I would be much happier and, you know, would continue to carry an iPad, but I really, really, really want to go to one of the Newer, thinner, lighter ones.

Cool. I also have, in addition to my MacBook, I carry a Nexus 7. That's my tablet of preference. And when I travel with my wife, we just picked her up one of the Samsung 9-inch tablets, which is gorgeous. And it's got a really, really nice screen. It's good for watching videos and whatnot. But the more people that I run into on the road, I think a tablet of some sort and a lightweight laptop are kind of their 2 go-to devices. And of course, you know, the phone is almost a given because we don't leave the house without our phone devices now. And so that's pretty much a standard. We can kind of continue on through the list. I've got— I mentioned our godson Mark is actually working with us right now, and I shot him a note and said, hey, if there's something cool that you would like to take— because again, being in the 20-something crowd, he's way hipper and way cooler than either of us could ever imagine— and wanted to know what sorts of stuff makes it into his bag. And this is one of the things that he shared that I thought was kind of cool. And as we're traveling more and more with technology and we're a slave To power. It's funny, when I go through an airport, you can find all of the road warriors because they're the ones that are actually sitting on the floor next to the outlets charging their device before they hop on their next flight so they don't run out of juice, because not every flight has got in-seat power or AC. But this is one of the things that Mark actually shared with me that I thought was kind of cool. It's a small form factor, but it's actually A solar charging device, and you can go ahead and kind of put your devices in there. It's got cables, but you lay it out, whether it's on your dashboard while you're driving down the road or when you get someplace. The solar panels actually grab sun's energy or light energy, obviously convert it, and gives you the ability to go ahead and even if you don't have a power source next by, this gives you a nice little charging option. It's not really much bigger than an iPad. And can be tossed into any computer bag. And you can see, you know, for, you know, less than, less than $60 as a Prime member. Obviously it's $100, but as a Prime member you get a pretty nice discount, which will practically take care of your first year's worth of Prime membership. But that's kind of a cool little device, and you can see an example there where you're out outside, you can go ahead and hook it so that it's charging while you're you know, doing a hike or a walk. Kind of a cool little thing. And I've been before without power, and one of the devices that I need, like my phone, craps out on me and dies. And would have been nice to have had something like this. I also carry a lot of those little mini battery packs. I think if you go to a lot of conferences now, A lot of vendors are actually giving those away as trinkets, and they may get you a full charge. So I've got a couple of those tossed into my bag as well. But, you know, battery and juice for all these electronic gadgets and gizmos certainly, you know, are occupying a lot of space in my bag. What else is on your list? Or I can just kind of keep going down mine.

So as I was thinking about this, you know, the iPhone is, like I said, top of the list for me. And then I started thinking, well, the iPhone in and of itself would be kind of— That are critical to my business travel. And one of those apps is the RingCentral, the the voice over IP phone service that we use here at Community Bank Consulting, and we've talked about it a number of times on the show. Their app for both the iPhone and for the Android is pretty amazing. Essentially, it moves your desk phone to your mobile device. A couple things I can do with it: I can either use the app as its own standalone voice over IP That's not always, depending on the quality of internet service that you have or if you're running on your cell carrier's internet service, may or may not always be the best choice. But with the Ring Central app— they're actually doing construction on the roof of my building today. With the Ring Central app, you also have the choice of using it just as essentially a control center that will route the calls through your cell phone service. So, you know, some of the really, really great things that make it such an essential tool when I'm traveling is I've got the dial-out capabilities. So whenever I place calls, I use my business caller ID. If I'm using the app as actual voice over IP, I've got transfer, conferencing, and all the features that I have when I'm sitting here at my desk.

Cool. Yeah, it's amazing to me that you still use your phone for talking on the telephone. Most people don't do that anymore. So one of the items that just made it into my bag, I tossed it on my Santa list and he came through for me this year, is Now unfortunately, I'll tell you the downside to this projector. Even though they advertise it as being something that you can use with your phone, I've not been able to get it to work with my phone. So that bums me out because I was thinking how cool it would be to be able to just pull out my tablet or my phone, plug in my projector, and then I could maybe throw Netflix up on the wall, or if I wanted to do a quick presentation when I'm at a client site. Instead of having to worry about them providing a projector, it'd be an easy way to really get all light and low-tech. And imagine how cool and impressive it would be if I whipped out my phone, connected it to a projector, and was able to pull up a presentation right from my handheld. I'm still waiting for those days because unfortunately that's not possible. But what it does do is it connects to my computer very nicely. So it just has an HDMI cable. My new MacBook Pro has an HDMI port, so everything syncs very nicely. This is about the size, and I kid you not, about the size of a deck of cards, and it easily goes into my bag. It's got a battery that lasts for a couple of hours. It even has an integrated speaker, although I do travel with a JBL Clip speaker that also serves dual purpose. Has a speakerphone. But I use this little device, and then I've carried a little mini tripod. And this little tripod basically sticks into my bag, and at the bottom of the projector, there's a screw mount. So I can go in and I can actually put this into the bottom of the projector, and this has got variable Adjustments where you can go in and control the tilt. And so this gives me almost a self-sufficient presentation mode where I can very, very easily take the show on the road or use it if I wanted to blast something up either at a campsite on a big white sheet or something, or in a hotel room. So, so this is Been a new addition to the travel family, but it's one that I'm pretty cool to have. Plus, it's just kind of neat. You pull it out and you give it to somebody, you go, guess what this is? And very rarely does somebody put 2 and 2 together and realize that it's an actual projector that's got pretty good resolution. It goes up to 50 inches. So it's, it's pretty cool.

That is cool.

Yeah. So What, what's next on your list? I feel like we're playing get you're up next.

I'm gonna actually let you go again. I've got to be kind of careful here because they literally are working right over my head now, so I have to go off mute most of the time.

Gotcha. Well, I know it's not super high-tech, But I now always travel with an extension cord. And it's got, I think, 3 outlets, a flat connector so you can plug it and it goes flush mount. And I've started doing that because for whatever reason, whoever designed hotel rooms across the country haven't figured out that you really should have more than one plug Next to your bed or it's in the wrong spot. And of course, I use my phone as my alarm clock, amongst other things. It also gives me a good extension capability. If I'm at a client site, I can kind of be self-sufficient. I tossed that in my bag last year, just kind of on a whim, and it has not left my bag since. I found it to be super, super helpful. And it's just nice to be able to have that handy when I'm someplace, even if it's just wanting a couple of extra spare outlets to be able to have access to. So I'm not going to pull up an Amazon page for an extension cord because I think you can kind of figure out what one of those looks like. But an extension cord is something kind of nice. And then I always make sure And I did this once and I forgot and I regretted it, but I've now got a little checklist. I always make sure to toss in some extra business cards. I've got a business card holder that I carry with me that has, you know, 20 or so cards in it. But if I'm at a conference, and sometimes I'll do back-to-back events where I'm traveling and I'm not going to be coming back to the office, I make sure that I grab extra cards. Because in my opinion, even though it is a little bit on the old-school side because you're handing out a piece of paper, having business cards available to just make available to hand out or put at everybody's desk during a break so that they all have your information— I've run out a couple of times and it's no fun, especially if somebody says, hey, can I have one of your cards? Now I do know, and I don't know what your take on this is, I do know some consultants that choose not to take business cards Because they want to get the person's information and then be the one that's in charge of doing the reach back. So, oh, sorry, Jeff, I just gave my last card out, but give me one of your cards and I'll send you all my info. You know, if I run out of cards, I do that, but I'm still very much in favor of handing cards out. So extra business cards also makes it into my list of things to take with me. I'm just kind of looking over my stuff here. I also make sure, because I do use a Mac, and a lot of times when I go to a conference they're using a projector that typically has a VGA connection, I make sure that I carry an adapter, a couple of different types of adapters. So You know, invariably I'll show up to a conference room, I'll see the audiovisual guy, he'll see me pull my MacBook out of the bag, and he'll immediately start sweating because they don't have the necessary adapter to connect my Mac to their VGA-based projector. So I've got a couple of those laying around, and I take one of those with me so that audiovisual guys love me, and it makes sure that I can always get connected to a projector. Unless of course I want to pull out my new little Brookstone and run off of that. So monitor adapters are pretty cool. The next thing that I'll take with me is— I'm going to pull back over. I'm going to get all Google on you again. Let me see if it can pull up. There we go. I've got the next-gen Chromecast.

Oh, nice.

And I carry that with me every place I go, and that essentially turns any television into my own personal projector. And so if I'm someplace where I've got access to a TV, but I want to watch Netflix or something else on my device, whether it's my phone or my tablet, I can just go ahead and stick this little device into the HDMI port, and it gives me the ability to cast. We've actually got one that stays at our house persistent on the main floor, but I've got one now that travels with me. And I think we've talked about Chromecasts and Roku sticks and Apple TVs and other sorts of streaming devices, but this is a cool little device. They've gone through and actually redesigned it a little bit. So it's a little easier to get plugged into the port on the back of the television. So it's a cool little device that I'm getting a lot of use out of. So that, I would say, is my next little item on the list. Take a look and see what other item we have here.

While you're doing that, Connie asked what brand the projector is. It's Brookstone.

There you go. Yep.

Do you know if that's available from anyone else, or is Brookstone the only place you found it?

Well, I think you can get it through— if we just do mini projectors, there's a lot of them out there. I mean, I, I kind of caught the Brookstone one. You know, I get the catalog and it's always got all the cool things in it. It's kind of like SkyMall. You look at it and you're like, ooh, I want one of those. So that was the one that I went with. But if you go on Amazon and just do a search for mini projector, you can see that there's a lot of other options out there. It could very well be that some of these other options will work with a mobile device. So, you know, you may be able to get it to work with an iPhone. I'm an Android guy, so when I tried my Android phone and my Android tablet, it didn't work. Of course, I looked at the advertisement for Brookstone and it had an iPhone connected to it. So Mark in our office has got an iPhone, so I commandeered that and said, we need to check this out, see if we can get it to work. And we plugged his phone in, nothing, didn't happen. And let's just say that their responsiveness and customer support is nowhere near that of our friends over at Apple. Probably 3 weeks ago.

I asked about the Brookstone brand because I gotta tell you, I will never buy anything there again. I've had such a bad experience with them. Yeah, I really, really in the past have had problems with quality and customer service of their merchandise. So it looked like when you did the Amazon search that there are some, some probably really good alternatives.

Yep, so I, I would agree with that. So it's what I asked for. Santa paid attention and he got me exactly what I wanted. So, and by Santa, I actually mean my mother-in-law and father-in-law. But they, they got exactly what I asked for, so I can't criticize them. Had, had I known, you know, but yeah. Swapping it out or getting a return or any of that stuff's gonna be more hassle than what it's worth. And it does work very nicely with my laptop. And so it's just not something that's gonna work with a mobile device, which is kind of a bummer. But I contacted them, had some questions. You know, I got it right around Christmas time, so I reached out to them, had an online chat, talked to somebody in customer service. She had no clue. All she did was basically pull up the page and read me what I already saw was on the page. I said, yeah, but that's not the way that it's working. And she said, well, we'll get in touch with our product development team or our technical support team, and we'll have them get in touch with you. That was 4 weeks ago, and I still haven't heard anything. So, um, so, air of caution, mini projector, cool. Brookstone, maybe not so cool. Yeah, so it's a— it's 1 and 1 there. But I don't know, we'll see.

Maybe the reason they operate from airports is so that you can't take their stuff back.

That's probably the case. Maybe next time I'm traveling through Detroit, I'm going to stop in the Brookstone store and say, show me how this works on a mobile device, and watch the guy sweat. So it ought to be an interesting conversation.

So, um, so Ken is saying because of us, uh, he's been using a MacBook Air for 4 years with no problems with iPhone and mobile pods. So we need to get our commissions from Apple.

I guess you did, didn't you? I, I don't know if anything— I didn't drop Free Webinar Wednesdays as part of my conversation, but I, I did get a rather nice thank you from our friends at Apple. So that was, uh, That was pretty cool. I'm going to pull— I didn't pull up the— I just kind of was thinking. I got this as actually a gift as part of being a presenter at an event a couple of years ago. Just for giggles, I'm going to pull it up over on— On OfficeMax. But, and I don't know if this is the exact item that I've got, I think mine's a little bit of an older model, but one of the things that they were giving away to all the speakers were portable LCD or LED monitors, and it basically looks like a big portfolio. It's folded up, it's got—

We're getting garbled voice here.

Garbled voice. Yes, now you're back. Okay, so before I got garbled and turned on my Darth Vader filter, one of the, one of the gifts that I got at an event was a portable monitor. And the cool part about it is it's not really any bigger than a portfolio that you would carry with like a legal pad in it of some sort. And I tossed that in my bag. If I don't have room in my bag, it travels just fine in my carry-on. And I bring that with me so that when I get to my destination, if I'm working in a hotel, I can have a secondary monitor. And I've mentioned we've moved to the Varidesk stand-up desks with the monitors and the swivel arms. So I'm now actually, when I'm in the office, working from 3 monitors, my laptop, plus 2 extensions. And so it's kind of spoiled me in having a lot of screen space, and being able to take one of these little monitors with me has been a real nice thing because I can use it to be more productive while I'm working. Or before I got the projector, I used it oftentimes if I was meeting with a client where I needed to share something, and I could just mirror the screen and push that out and be able to show somebody. I could turn that around, and it kind of served its purpose As being kind of a flip-around monitor. So all things, they're not that terribly expensive, and they're kind of nice to take with you. And it is with me. I'm not using it right now, but it is with me on this trip and will be making its way all the way down to Florida. So when I get set up, I'll at least have a spanning monitor that I can use. And it just runs off of a USB connection. There's no external power required, so it works pretty darn slick. Let's see, a couple more things that I'll share. I don't know if you recall the author, speaker, kind of optimization guru, Tim Ferriss. I think we've talked about his book, The 4-Hour Workweek, and The 4-Hour Body a couple of times. Um, one of the things Tim Ferriss does when he travels is he takes one of these wet bags, and, um, you know, they're designed obviously to keep water out, and you take them when you go to the beach, or if you kayak or surf or whatever the case is. But one of the things that he does with these bags is when he gets to his hotel, instead of worrying about keeping stuff inside dry, he fills it up with water and uses it as like a kettlebell or a medicine ball. So he's got, you know, a heavier exercise item and basically just uses it with water filled up. And so It packs very, very small because it's just a bag with, you know, it's just fabric basically, but it's totally waterproof. You can put water in it. It makes it heavy so that if you want to do crunches or trunk twists or, you know, kettlebell swings, anything like that from your room, just a quick little workout, it's nice. It's also kind of cool if you're traveling someplace and You end up buying a bunch of souvenirs and you need an extra bag to take some stuff home with you, it serves kind of double duty and you can go ahead and use it as a travel bag as well. So this has not made it into my repertoire yet, but it is one of the things that is going to be, is going to be added here very shortly.

It's a cool idea.

Yeah, I thought that was pretty sweet. A couple of years ago, I saw these inflatable fillable dumbbells where you could put water in and then they strapped on. So you took the actual bar and then it had dumbbell-like plates that were plastic that you— or rubber, whatever— that you could fill with water. And I think in theory, those were a good idea, but I could never get the water in them. And they were a little bit inconvenient to use. And, you know, this makes sense, and I already use a kettlebell when I'm back at the house doing my workouts. So this is kind of a cool little thing and gives you no excuse other than just laziness to not get a workout in while you're on the road. A couple of the other things, I guess, as long as I'm on the workout kick, I did a workout kind of rubber bungee cord that has a little, I guess, kind of a nylon loop in the middle that you can put under your door so you can do curls and other sorts of exercises. You can stand on it and do arm extensions and those sorts of things. So I've got a couple of different strength Or weight bungee exercise things that I'll take with me, and those are nice to have. And then one of the other things that typically makes it is you've seen those strength gripper things where you— they're spring-loaded and they're designed to strengthen your grip. I'll typically take that when we're doing our driving. I've actually got that sitting above the driver's seat. Every once in a while I'll grab it, pull it down, and start squeezing it just to kind of strengthen my hand and my grip. So a couple little exercise little nuggets there that, that make it with me as well. So, so I've done a lot of talking, Jeff. What else is on your list?

So like you, I hadn't even thought about this, but I do carry Not an actual extension cord, but I have a small power strip that I carry in my backpack that is my carry-on and technology bag. You didn't mention this. I actually have used it a number of times at the airport when there are— when power cables are in short supply. I'll break out my strip and share power outlets with people if it's a crowded waiting area.

Yeah, that's a good idea. Good way to make a little extra money.

In terms of cables, I've got a set of various cables that I carry with me. So I've got a cable for charging and syncing the iPhone and the iPad. I also carry a couple different styles of USB cables in my bag. I found that it is a really good idea to carry a couple adapters for charging whatever electronics you have. So I will typically make sure I've got at least 2, and preferably 2 iPad charging devices, because— You can use the iPhone charging device for the phone, and you can use it for the iPad, but it doesn't actually charge while you're using the iPad. It only provides power. It doesn't provide charging.

That's a good point. Trying to find the one that we got. Carrying some newer chargers now that have actually got a higher voltage. Because typically, if we're rolling down the road, or even if you get someplace and you rent a car and, you know, you use your phone, you know, you want to make sure if you're on the phone talking, if it's synchronizing email, if you're using GPS, you know, some of the chargers that are out there won't keep up. So we've actually upgraded to a higher wattage charger. charger. I'm having a hard time putting my finger on the specific one that I got, but we did upgrade those. And then one of the other cool little tools that our buddy Greg McPherson actually shared with us was— let me see if I can find it here real quick.

While you're looking for that, most of the rental cars have USB ports, but I found I can't count on them, so I always have a cigarette lighter charger in my bag.

Yep. So there was— there we go. Mark's coming to the rescue for me here. That's the one. Nice job, Marky. Gotta love Skype. So this is the one we got, you know, so for $10, but it's dual port, which is nice. Comes with a cord, so you're getting a cord and a charger at the same time, which is really cool. So just really handy to have. We picked up, I think, 3 or 4 of these just to have extras laying around. And the black one was on backorder, but we ended up getting the white one, and that showed up a whole lot faster, which was kind of surprising. Although it looks like they're charging a premium now for white. It's going to cost you an extra buck if you want to get a white one than a black one. So maybe that's the Apple effect. Who knows? But I was going through and trying to find just a little— nothing real complicated, too complicated. This guy, similar to this guy right here.

Here we go.

The Kenu. Love this little device. So tosses in your backpack. Makes it to your bag. You just go ahead and stick it in the vent. It's got 2 different size options. It swivels, it opens. There's a couple of different sizes. If you've got one of the big fat phones, you want to get the extra size. If you've got just a conventional phone, but this makes it super nice because you can go ahead and stick it into your vent. Gives you heads-up display so you're not having to balance your phone on your knee or figure out some other way to hold it. This works really, really good and super nice. And then you can see here, if you ever need to use your phone, you want to just kind of watch video, maybe if you're on a flight or someplace, you can just toss a credit card in there and it doubles as a stand. So you can go ahead and just set your phone up. And everybody has a credit card or 4 in their wallet, so you can go ahead and toss a card in there and it gives you a nice little portable stand too, which is really cool.

This is going to sound kind of old school.

Old school, but—

Old school, but I still carry a very small portable GPS because when I have a rental car, Hertz offers rental GPSs. They're always overpriced, and I find that very often the maps in rental cars are out of date. So I carry a very, a very thin Garmin GPS that has traffic service built into it.

Hmm.

I don't like using my cell phone for traffic because I don't have a good way of Of mounting it in a rental car. Even though, you know, with Google Maps, the mapping service is outstanding, the traffic service is good, but I've just gotten accustomed to carrying a portable GPS with traffic service built into it. And I've got a little beanbag dashboard mount so I can set it on the dash of the rental car and I've got the perfect size little bag that all of it zips up nicely in my checked bag. And as soon as I get in the rental car, I just unzip the side pocket of the checked bag, pull the Garmin box out, and set it up.

There we go. That is old school. I, uh, I've got a Garmin. I've got a Garmin that sits in one of our vehicles in the dash area. Just had to have that several years ago, and I bet if we've used it a dozen times, I'd be surprised. So, so if your Garmin happens to go out at some point down the road and you need a replacement, just let me know, because I think I even got one of the beanbag things.

Stick it in the RV if you have it.

There we go.

Because the Garmin is going out.

Yeah, maybe, maybe that would be a good idea. So, uh, I am not an iPhone user, so this is not something that I would necessarily use. But Jeff, you are an iPhone user, and again, this is one of Mark's suggestions when I said, uh, in addition to the solar-powered battery charging station, um, what other cool stuff do you always, uh, take with you anytime you kind of leave the house. And this is one of the other little items that he added, because even though having cables handy are always nice, and certainly I carry a lot of cables with me when I go, that most of my stuff is mostly micro USB because of the Android preference. This is a cool little tool that's got the little Lightning charger for the newer iPhones and iPads and a USB power. I don't believe It's any sort of a storage device or anything like that. All that basically this is is a charging element, but you can see that it doubles as a keychain. It's got some flexibility in it, which is kind of cool. But, you know, if you've got your keys and you've got your laptop, you're going to be able to go ahead and actually power your device. And, and so most people usually aren't without their keys, without their laptop. And they're not without their phones, so you kind of tie all 3 of them together, and this looks like a pretty cool tool. I'm going to have to do some picking around, or who knows, maybe Mark or somebody in the chat room will see whether they've got a micro USB version of this that would be suitable. And my suspicion is Mark's going to send me a Skype message here within the next probably— 30 seconds with a link of something that I'd be able to see. So, um, now let me see here. I think that kind of rattles down everything. Um, one of the other devices that I'm thinking about acquiring, um, uh, I've talked about this before. There we go. Mark didn't let me down. Let me pull this link up here real quick, get over to it.

There we go.

We talked about when you're on the road traveling, a lot of us connect to Wi-Fi networks, whether it's at Starbucks or the hotel or some other public Wi-Fi. But we've also seen a lot of news stories where people have had their computers taken over, viruses, Trojans. Keyword or keystroke loggers, other sorts of malware has been added. This is one of the services that I subscribe to if I ever get on a public Wi-Fi access point. I'll fire up Private Internet Access. It basically tunnels you in and gives you the ability to have a protected connection that doesn't reveal your IP address or anything about you, which is kind of cool. This is an interesting little service. I think it's like $50 a year. Inexpensive. We travel with our own personal Wi-Fi hotspot, so normally that's our go-to device that doesn't broadcast an SSID, so it's not something somebody can hop on and, and participate on. But if I do have to get on public Wi-Fi, this is one of the services that I have available. And once you get a subscription, you can use it on multiple devices, which is really cool. But this gives you a way to keep your identity safe and secure when you're using the free Wi-Fi service. There's also another actual hardware device that I've heard about. One of the podcasts that I'm an avid fan of is called This Week in Google. The gentleman's name is Leo Laporte, and he does a podcast, all sorts of different podcasts under the But on This Week in Google, he's talked a couple of times about this tiny hardware firewall. So if we can get the page to actually load, we can show you what it is. While we wait for the page to load, we'll pop back over to Amazon. For those of you that are Android users, voilà, we do have a solution for an Android micro USB. So you can see, here's an option.

And notice the $20-some to $30 difference in the price.

Exactly. Not nearly as sexy. You know, I can see the swivel thing revealing, uh, the, the end when it comes up. But yeah, you take a look at, uh, where was it, this guy for $25 versus this guy for $7.

So, uh, I'd like the $7 Apple version, please.

So I'm having a hard time getting the Tiny Hardware Firewall to come up, and so if it doesn't load, let me just tell you what it's all about. But it's, uh, as you think about a hardware-based firewall, you plug a connection into it and that essentially blocks the bad guys. PrivateInternetAccess.com is a software-based firewall that you load and it runs in the background and protects you, but the Tiny Hardware Firewall Can also do it from a mechanical perspective, and it's just a little device you can toss in your bag. You can have that configured to pick up the Wi-Fi network, and then you just plug in your computer directly to that device. So it serves as a VPN client— there we go— serves as a VPN client. And the cost of the device, as I understand it, there's no cost for this physical equipment, but you are committing to purchasing a year's worth of their VPN service, which I think is like $9 a month or something to that effect. But this is kind of a cool little platform that, you know, depending on your security preferences, you can use a physical device like this and take it with you, or you can do an internet service like Private Internet Access, or I'm sure there's others out there as well. But online security and protection certainly is very important these days. And I've sat in on way too many cybersecurity presentations at banking conferences and been a little freaked out, to say the least, of what a bad guy could conceivably do to you if he wanted to. Or she, not that all hackers are males. Of course. But this is one that if you've got a little geek in you, take a look at tinyhardwarefirewall.com. They've got a couple of different options that you can actually take a look at. This isn't the only one that they provide, but this might be a cool little device to make it into your travel bag to keep you safe and secure.

So a comment that kind of ties in with Mobile internet access. Some of you may have noticed recently that AT&T is promoting a plan that they say if you either have or buy AT&T and bundle it with either their DirecTV service, which is now owned by AT&T, or— what is their other TV service called? Do you remember, Eric?

Dish Network?

No, AT&T has another cable-based service.

Yeah. Anyway, that one. I know, sorry. Yeah, that one. U-verse.

Yep, yep.

U-verse.

Mark, thanks. So they're promoting if you get cell service with either U-verse or DirecTV, You can get 2 cell lines with unlimited data for $100, which is an awesome price. One of the things that I will mention sort of as we are talking about mobile internet is be aware that that particular service does not allow you to tether anything to the phones. And when I travel, and actually sometimes even when I am around the office and have a need to I'm limited to 3 devices here. When I have a need to get a 4th internet connection, I'll tether to my phone. And I can tell you it's kind of a big deal not to be able to tether devices to your phone because my old AT&T plan did not allow me to tether to the device. And if you're not able to do that, you end up Probably spending more money to add an additional internet device. Eric, it looks like you were about to show one.

Well, a couple of things. We just got a question in the chat box where somebody asked if I've ever played with the Amazon Echo. Thank you, Rob. And if so, are there any travel benefits? OMG, I cannot believe I forgot to introduce everybody to my electronic girlfriend, Alexa. I don't have her plugged in right now, and my wife is not scared because, you know, it's purely an intellectual relationship between Alexa and myself. So there's no physical attraction there. But I will tell you, the Amazon Echo— my wife is actually sitting across from me rolling her eyes right now, which is very uncharacteristic.

She does push-pull transactions.

She's not anywhere within earshot. Shot normally when I do a Free Webinar Wednesdays, but today is different. But yes, I did get the Echo and absolutely love it. We typically keep it in our kitchen area where we spend most of our time. It's centrally located on the main floor, and we can use it a variety of different ways. We've started adding some of the additional modules that are available that you can install, but So we use it a lot for keeping track of our shopping list. So when we're thinking, oh my gosh, we need to add such and such to the list. Alexa, add Keurig K-Cups to the shopping list. And we've not moved to the point where we're automatically or with an instruction or a passcode ordering that from Amazon. But that's ultimately the goal is to be able to take a lot of the things that we buy on a regular basis and we probably can get in less expensively on Amazon. And start automating some of those things. So we're going to the grocery store less and less. The things that we can buy on Amazon inexpensively, we'll just do there. But typically when I come down in the morning and I make the coffee, I'll have her play back my daily news brief. And so she reads me the news. I can have her play the latest episode of the Google podcast. So This Week in Google, I can play that.

Okay.

She can replay my schedule as to what's going on, look things up, tell me a joke if I need a chuckle, play music while we're doing the dishes or something along those lines. And again, I don't have her connected, but she is in the bin right above my head right now and will be making her way down to Florida with us. And when we get located there, we'll go ahead and get her set up. So yeah, very cool little device. Unfortunately, it doesn't have battery backup power, so you have to be someplace where it can be plugged in. They don't have a battery-driven device yet. That may be something coming down the road. So you have to be someplace where it can be plugged in, which can be a little problematic when you're traveling, obviously. But yes, this device did make it in my travel bag, although it's much bigger travel bag because we're in an RV, but I don't know if I would necessarily toss her in my computer bag and take her with me. But if I'm going someplace for an extended stay, I definitely will bring the Echo along with.

I did notice when I looked at it recently that she has her very own travel jacket that you can purchase from Amazon for her now.

Yeah, I'm sure there's all sorts of things. I'm waiting for Oh, you know those, those concrete goose statuettes that you can get for your steps? And I'm waiting for them to come out with Alexa hats and Alexa little outfits that you can— okay, maybe I'm being a little facetious there, but yeah. It's been a lot of fun, actually, and it's coming out with more and more cool things all the time. So definitely, if you get an opportunity to play with it or you've got $179 burning a hole in your pocket, it is an investment and one that I don't think you'll regret. It's pretty cool.

I think before they introduce the Alexa costumes, they need to introduce the Alexa regional dialects. Regional dialect.

Oh, gotcha. Yeah, it'd be kind of cool if you could change the name or maybe give her a little of an Australian accent so you can, you know, give her something that—

This lady that I mentioned—

A?

Yeah.

Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't catch that.

Hey.

Hey, I love my Canadian friends. It's rubbed off on me to the point where sometimes I'll say something in an airplane like no worries or some other catchphrase that I've heard one of my Canadian colleagues, and somebody will say, are you Canadian? And I'll have to fess up. Michigan, pretty close, but not quite. The last item that I'll mention, just because we were talking about Wi-Fi connectivity, this is the hotspot that we carry with us every place that we go. This actually works great. We even use it at the house as a backup device if for some reason the internet goes down. It's got good connectivity. Up to 10 devices can be connected to it at the same time. It typically grabs a nice powerful signal. We've been very, very pleased with this. So that, I believe, is the last one that I have on my list. And I look at the clock and it looks like we are right at the top of the hour, Jeffrey. As is always the case, we know how to kill 60 minutes.

We sure do.

Yeah, so thanks for everybody for participating in the chat dialogue and giving us some ideas. We'll certainly reach out to our friends at Apple and see if we can get some sort of a commission structure in place for All of you Apple fanatics that we've converted with the Airs and the Pads and the phones and whatnot. I say tongue-in-cheek, that's not going to happen, but it's good to hear that people are listening and taking our suggestions. Jeff, I will look forward to seeing you, not this weekend because I'll let you have the snow and you're going to come down to Atlanta and join me down there. But I'll look forward to seeing you on Monday, my friend.

Sounds awesome.

Yeah, and then who knows, maybe next week I will be someplace stationary and we'll get an opportunity to introduce everybody to Alexa so we can run her through the paces, maybe have her read us the weather and possibly even tell us a joke or two and kind of see how that works. So we'll, we'll see if we can queue that up, but Until then, we'll go ahead and sign off for this week's webinar. We appreciate everybody joining us Wednesdays at 1 PM Eastern time here at freewebinarwednesdays.com. Until next time we meet, have an awesome week, and we'll see you at freewebinarwednesdays.com.

Bye.