3 Must Haves for Road Warriors

If you travel at all, here's a few tools to make life on the road more livable:

• Orb - I just discovered this. It is essentially a personal Web server that lets you access your files, audio, video, and even TV as streaming data. So last week in Los Angeles, I watched Battlestar Gallatica from my hotel room. If you have a MPEG in hardware TV card, this thing will work like a remote control TiVo -- you can record your shows on your PC while you are at any Web Browser and then watch the shows from anywhere -- including many mobile phones, PDAs, etc. You could set up your own streaming server, of course, but this is point and click and works great. Oh, and it is free!
  
• Thinkfree Office Online - I've written about this before. Still my favorite online text editor, presentation maker, and spreadsheet. Very Office compatible and it is great to always have the latest version of a document at your fingertips online. Also free.
• UltraVNC - My favorite of the VNC programs let you access your desktop computer from anywhere. Unlike many VNC derivities, this one makes it simple to use high security and transfer files. It also uses a video driver for good performance on screen updates.

Orb is hard to explain but priceless once you've used it for about 10 minutes. But with these tools you can get to all of your data and applications with a minimum of fuss as long as you have an internet connection.