For those of us that are constantly on the go, trying to achieve the right mix of mobile accessories is a constant challenge. Of course none of our battery operated accessories such as our our notebook computer, smart phone, wireless headset, MP3 player and other portable devices use the same charger or connector which can make keeping weight down extremely difficult. My method of dealing with this has been to try and select devices that can be charged from the USB ports on my notebook so all I have to carry is the notebook power brick and a number of cables. But what about when you are actually traveling and you don't have access to your notebook to charge that dying smart phone, music player or other device?

My friend Courtney Kennady, Practice Management Advisor of the South Carolina Bar Association, recently shared with her fellow PMA's a link to David Pogue's June 25, 2009 article What’s in Pogue’s Travel Bag? . In this article, David discusses what he keeps in his bag when he is traveling. One really interesting piece of technology was the USB POWERSTICK by Ecosol. 

David writes:

It's a tiny universal gadget charger, looks like a flash drive, that draws its power from my laptop's USB jack. You equip it with the charging tip you need–I use it for my cellphone.

Why? Because it's much smaller than my actual phone charger; it lets me leave the real charger plugged it at home; and, best of all, the PowerStick itself also stores a second charge, so I can do another recharge in the field, without the laptop. (A "fuel gauge" display on the side lets you know how full it is.)

The intriguing thing about this gadget isn't the fact that it can charge your device from a USB port (I can already do that with my cable and notebook) or the fact that it weighs a mere 3.2 ounces,  but that it STORES  SECOND CHARGE! As a new Palm Pre owner(which rapidly eats through a battery charge with heavy use) I can easily carry a booster charge for it without the need of plugging into my notebook or a wall charger. But the POWERSTICK isn't limited to just one device, with the correct tip, you can recharge potentially all of your mobile devices in the event you forget to do so prior to leaving or need extra time to watch that movie on your iPod.

You can get your very own, David Pogue recommended USB POWERSTICK from Amazon.com here for under $60.00. 

I've come to really like Word 2007 and the other Office 2007 applications. While the Ribbon toolbar took some getting used to, I know find it to be much more intuitive than the old Word toolbar. For those having difficulty or are afraid to upgrade to Office 2007 because of the Ribbon don't be dissuaded: think of it this way - we spent years being trained by Microsoft to use their old non-intuitive toolbar, with Word 2007 we have to 'unlearn' these bad habits.

There have been changes to Word 2007 one of which is that switching between open documents isn't as easy as it used to be. Another big change is that when you clicked the "X" in the top right corner it not only closed the open document but Word as well.I learned to use the"Close" command from the Office button at the top left, but hadn't thought about a keyboard shortcut until I was checking DailyRotation this week and came across Rick Broda's PC World post Close a Word 2007 Document without Closing Word You can also check thi out on The Industry Standard website here.

According to RIck:

"… just memorize a keyboard shortcut. Both Ctrl-W and Ctrl-F4 will close the current document without closing Word itself. No fuss, no muss." 

What a great and simple tip to make working with Word 2007 easier

As Twitter becomes more popular with lawyers ( or anyone else for that matter), it becomes a larger target for people with malicious intent to use for their own nefarious purposes. The latest round of attacks has been occurring in the form of a worm which attacks when users click the shortened URLs in a Tweet. 

According to Technibble in its post Best Video! - Yet Another Twitter Worm,  …the worm began compromising the accounts of people who clicked on a link to a video on the juste.ru domain."  

Firefox users have a tool that can be used to expand these shortened URLs before they're clicked:LongURL Mobile Expander available as a Firefox addon here. Shortened URLs expand once the addon is installed.

However, use of this tool isnt'a cure since you need to know that the URL is in fact a bad site for it to be truly useful, but it's a start. At the minimum, you have a better idea of where the link is taking you before you click. Unfortunately, it only appears to work within Firefox, so if you use TweetDeck (or one of the other Twiiter readers) as your primary reader, you're out of luck.

I've posted before about CrossLoop as a potential IT solution and remote support tool for smaller firms in  Cover Your Assets: CrossLoop - Affordable IT Support for Small Practices. CrossLoop provides a free screen shraing utility that allows you share your desktop with a friend. Or you can use it to work on someone else's system. You can also connect with one of the computer support people who offer their services for a fee on CroossLoop ( CrossLoop refers to them as Helpers). However, at that time, CrossLoop was only available for the PC, not the Mac. That is no longer true with the release of CrossLoop for the Mac which you can download from the CrossLoop site here.

CrossLoop lists the Requirements as:

• OSX 10.4 (Tiger) or later
• an Intel processor
• 20MB disk space and 500MB of RAM.

One caveat though: PowerPC Mac users need not apply - it won't run on them. 

You can read more on the CrossLoop blog post CrossLoop Mac Gets a Lot of Love .. and Hugs which also inlcudes links to stories picked up by the NYT, Washington Post, LifeHacker, TechCrunch and other major outlets.

With CrossLoop available for both the PC and Mac, you now have an easy to us,e cross platform support program that's free, but which can also help you get professional assitance if you need it.

Interesting and timely article from PCWORLD titled Will Your Data Disappear When Your Online Storage Site Shuts Down? The article discusses how some of the glamor may be wearing off the cloud storage mania of recent times. For many of us, this is like Deja Vu with what happened with many ASP's in the Dot.Com bust in the early years of this century, with the poster child being Red Gorilla.

If you're not familiar with the sad story of Red Gorilla and what happened to its customers, you can check out stories like this one from CNETor this one from TechRepublic.

While I advocate the use of online back up as part of a multi-layered backup approach, I would never rely solely on online backup for my critical or irreplaceable files.