Pajama Entrepreneur

If you are a pajama entrepreneur like me, you don’t have the luxury of hiring an IT manager for the office, especially if you have a home office. That means YOU are the person in charge of setting up and maintaining your Wi-Fi network, securing it, etc. So, I am pleased to see that Glenn Fleishman has just released updated versions of his very popular, highly readable books: Take Control of Your 802.11n Airport Extreme Network and Take Control of Your Wi-Fi Security. Go to Glenn’s site to get the discount code and order online. They are e-books so you can download them, print them at home or read them online. Very handy if you are traveling or work out of different offices (and it costs much less for their publisher to update because they don’t print them).

His “Take Control of your Airport Network” book which I bought a few years ago saved me a lot of time and took the mystery out of wireless networking.

Ever since I’ve been using Microsoft Office, first on a PC and since 2002 on a Mac, I’ve bought every single upgrade from Microsoft. Not this time. Microsoft is selling the upgrade for $239.95.

Here are the reasons why I won’t be upgrading:

• $239.95 is too much money to pay for - what? I use Word, Excel and Powerpoint but only its basic features. I do not use Entourage, the email client.
• I have been using Google Docs and Spreadsheet to share documents with people. Those programs are free and integrate well with Gmail, which I also use. Gmail is also free.
• Recently, I downloaded a trial copy of Apple’s iWork suite and have been using their new spreadsheet program called Numbers. I love it. I am thinking of buying iWork. I have already used Pages, their word processing program, and Keynote, which blows away Powerpoint. I like iWork very much and it’s only $79.
• There are many other free alternatives to Microsoft Office, for example, Zoho which offers free online spreadsheet, word processor, customer relationship management system, chat, database creator, etc.

The city of Paris has begun offering free Wi-Fi access in public parks and gardens, museums, libraries, and other public buildings. To find out which areas have Wi-Fi, go to wifi.paris.fr. Inspired by San Francisco, the mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, issued a public tender last year, seeking a provider to deploy the hotzones. SFR and Alcatel-Lucent won the bid. France Telecom, a sour grapes loser, is suing the city, saying it is unfairly competing with FT’s own paid hotspot access. France Telecom’s subsidiary, Orange, is reportedly Apple’s exclusive partner in France for the iPhone.

Ironically, San Francisco, the original model for this project, has no Wi-Fi. I guess depending too much on a private company to fund everything (in SF’s case, EarthLink) is a fantasy.

To read more about the Paris Wi-Fi project, click here. Another successful project recently launched by the city is Velib, free bicycles available at various points in the city, especially around metro stops. The city partnered with JC Decaux, the outdoor advertising company, to fund this project.

Paris Wi-Fi website: wifi.paris.fr

(1) UK telecom company Noodle pays you when you use your phone (from the Times UK):

“Some customers are already making up to £100 a week, more than enough to cover a phone’s running costs, according to Noodle, the telecom firm providing the service. Noodle customers make 2p a minute if they make or receive a call during peak hours and 1p at other times. You can also make money by signing up a friend. You earn money each time you receive a call on your Noodle number, which is obtained by texting “Noodle” to 81025. Calls made by dialling the Noodle number first also earn money. There is no contract or monthly fee and you can keep your mobile number and any free bundled minutes you have with your existing provider.”

(2) Share an office, desks, Wi-Fi, coffee, everything: this is a trend I’m seeing in Amsterdam too, where you can rent a large desk in an office with other entrepreneurs for 300 EUR a month. It’s definitely for people who can’t work from home (because of kids, noise) or those who crave company. See this post on GigaOm about co-working spaces.

France: www.bureauxapartager.com

Boston-Cambridge, Massachusetts: www.betahouse.org

Businessweek has posted a long article on how technology has changed the way people work on a daily basis, how goods are produced and services delivered. Laptops, the Blackberry, the iPhone, Skype, instant messaging, cheap data storage, broadband and video conferencing have allowed people to work remotely. The article fails to note, however, how large numbers of people have managed to never work for a boss again — entrepreneurs who start their own businesses precisely because the cost of setting up a business is much lower and they can now serve clients around the world.

If I were to write a piece on this new way of working, I would call it “The End of Office Politics” and talk about the freedom that people have working for themselves.

I am on a roll. This week I weeded out time-wasting activities such as Twitter and Jaiku. I closed my account at Linked In, stopped responding to stupid emails, and deleted 75% of my RSS feeds. To get organized and save even more time, I decided to try Backpack, an online application from the amazing folks at 37 Signals, creators of Basecamp (project management and collaboration), Highrise (simple CRM) and CampFire (group chat). There’s a free and paid version. The free version does not include the Calendar and limits the number of pages you can create.

Here is how I use Backpack:

• Created FAQ for journalists who call me and ask the same questions about municipal wireless networks
• Make daily list of things to do
• Created trip planning page for upcoming trips with links to airline ticket, hotel reservation numbers, maps, interesting places to visit, restaurants to try
• Canned email responses I can just cut and paste into a response
• use Calendar to send me SMS alert before appointments

There are many more uses I will find for it, but I just started today and already I feel very organized and calm.

If you want to try it, please click on this link .

It’s been a week since the launch of the iPhone. Walt Mossberg (Wall Street Journal) and David Pogue (New York Times) have posted their very positive reviews. A lot of people in San Francisco rushed out to buy it including my friends. At dinner the other night, I had a chance to play with the iPhone and I’m very impressed by the interface and the quality of the screen. If you own a Mac like I do, a lot of things such as widgets will be familiar. In fact, it feels like a Mac but on a portable device. Web pages are easy to read thanks to the beautiful crisp screen. Video is also extremely impressive. It also has Wi-Fi.

With all that going for it, I am disappointed with the choices Apple has made during this first launch:

- You need to sign a 2-year contract with AT&T. It would have been better if the iPhone were unlocked and you could pop in the SIM card of your choice. More people would have bought it, not just in the US but also in Europe and Asia.

- They crippled the Bluetooth functionality on the phone so you can’t send and receive files from other Bluetooth devices such as laptops. I don’t understand this decision, given that AT&T isn’t even subsidizing the phone. US carriers have a bad habit of castrating mobile devices.

- The first version of the iPhone does not support 3G, only the slower, more ancient EDGE network in the US.

- You cannot put applications on the iPhone. If you like Gizmo Project or Skype, there’s no way you can install it on the iPhone and use it to make calls via Wi-Fi. If Apple had opened it up for any applications, there would be a universe of applications developers making apps designed for mobility. Too bad.

No wonder hackers are already at work trying to open up the iPhone. And there are reports that they are making progress towards unlocking it. DVD Jon claims to have figured out a way to activate the iPhone without AT&T: The point of Johansen’s coding exercise, as he explains it, is that there are many potential iPhone purchasers who do not want to enter into a 2-year contract with AT&T, but do want to use the device for WiFi, web, email, video, music, calendar, contact management, and other features — basically, treat it like a bomb-ass iPod, forget about the phone part. (from BoingBoing)

This weekend, there’s even an iPhone Developer Camp at the Adobe offices in San Francisco! There’s such a demand to open this beautiful, revolutionary device. I don’t understand why Apple has launched it locked, crippled and castrated.

I would have run out and bought the iPhone but I refuse to do that until it becomes a computer in your pocket, as it is designed to be, with freedom of choice for the owner. I want to put MY apps on it, pick my own mobile carrier, and use it as I see fit (3G or Wi-Fi, depending on the circumstances and my budget).

Resources: www.iphonehacks.com