Tomorrow morning, June 28, 2005, at the blast of dawn, I'll be climbing into the driver's seat of a Ford Econoline van and heading out for a 6000-mile trip. My co-pilot is Jesse Vohs, longtime employee and proprietor of MacMaster Consulting. Jesse and I will be visiting 14 cities in 24 days for the purpose of shooting author videos.

Along the way, Jesse and I hope to talk with IAOC members and maybe shoot their videos, too. We'll be blogging in this space as often as possible about the project. We are also blogging about the AuthorViews Tour at two other sites. Here at the IAOCblog, we'll be sticking to the subject of communications, with insights on technology such as VOIP, WiFi, blogs, telecommuting, etc. At the new AuthorViews blog, we'll be talking about video: shooting, capturing, editing, rending, storing and serving. And at Fast Company's blog, FCNow, we hope to be talking about business plans. We'll be meeting with numerous business planners along this route.

Online Communicators will be interested in the way we are using technology to improve communications. Jesse Vohs has been working with me doing Internet publicity since 1995. He lived in Port Townsend, Washington, which is where my business was located until I moved to New Orleans and lost Jesse's services in 1999. Since then, he has worked with me as a freelancer and as a summer employee while on vacation from school. Jesse is currently a college student in Bellingham, Washington -- the turnaround point of our six-week tour.

This past year, Jesse has been attending conference calls with the team here in New Orleans using Skype -- a Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) program that is free to install and free to use. Several of my clients now use Skype to communicate with the staff at Patron Saint Productions. Europeans are particularly fond of it, and I'm keen on not paying international rates for overseas calls. Skype makes it easier to combine hands-free computing with conference calling. The sessions with Jesse have been very effective. If you haven't tried Skype yet, it's worth experimenting with.

To enable Jesse -- my main tech guru -- to access our computers from afar, last year we switched to a fixed IP address on a high-speed DSL line, enabled file sharing, and disabled some safety features in our firewall. Jesse has been able to get into our computers at night to troubleshoot or optimize performance. This worked great for about nine months and then last week we were hacked! We caught the hack quickly and closed the security hole, and there does not appear to be any damage to our systems or lost data. It was a wake-up call, though, and it leads me to the first questions I have for IAOC readers:

1. How do you balance the need to communicate across borders with safeguarding your computing systems? Is there any software that you recommend that is both permeable and secure?

2. What new technologies have you implemented in the past year? What changes are you happiest with and least happy with? What are you anxious to try next?

Easing Out Onto the Road,
STEVE O'KEEFE