Web tools make it far easier for travellers to work remotely

When the American aviator Steve Fossett disappeared in to the vast open wilderness of Nevada this summer, I was one of the many who went out to look for him... equipped only with my laptop. Like thousands of other first-time amateur photo analysts, I used any spare time I had to comb through almost 300 randomly assigned satellite photographs of barren hillside and scrubland, and in one photo, the parking lot of an industrial park. There was no sign of him.

From the simple African waterhole or cruise ship webcam to the self-operated, pay-as-you-go high-power astronomical telescopes housed in a field in the remote north of Canada, I am continuously surprised and delighted to discover ways in which the internet enables us to see and work remotely with things at a distance. But at times, I'm not sure we make best use of the internet to work remotely. Even with the current generation of WiFi enabled laptops, PDAs and mobile phones, today's road warrior can still find him/herself caught out, unable to connect—or more likely, unable to reach personal files. It happened to me recently when I stupidly failed to pack my charger, leaving me with a temporarily dead laptop. The only reason this didn't stop me from working was that most of the files I needed were written using an online word processor.

I was extremely sceptical back in the 58k dial-up days of the 1990s when it was first suggested that instead of buying and running our own copies of software, we would all one day use internet-based programs for word-processing, and other jobs. It was difficult to imagine Web word processing running as fluently as Microsoft or Apple office software.

But the advantages were clear, even if the network hadn't yet caught up. Your documents are stored safely online, reachable via any gadget that can connect to the internet. Your documents can be easily shared for collaborative projects, and it's free. So when online word-processors like Ajaxwrite and Writely appeared a few years ago I tried them, and was duly impressed.

So was Google. Last year it bought Writely and turned it into Google Docs. Then the company added a really quite sophisticated spreadsheet, and a few weeks ago quietly announced the addition of a presentation program (PowerPoint in all but name).

Last night I tried to persuade my 11-year old son to write his homework project in Google Docs. "Hmm, no thanks dad. I think I'll stick to Word".
Old habits die hard. But you can't knock progress.