HAVE INTERNET, WILL TRAVEL LIGHT

The Internet has brought on several lifestyle revolutions and sired many pioneering products with no end yet to this trend in sight. The most ubiquitous social revelation in the history of the computer age is, of course, the introduction of micro-devices. It is often stunning to recall the staggering amount of raw data, music, video, and programming that will fit easily into the breast pocket of a generic shirt.

The Internet has made child’s play of literary research and academic report writing. Anyone can live in one continent and track in real time the overnight delivery of any item ordered from any of the other five continents. University undergraduate degrees can currently be completed in a year from the comfort of one’s own home!

A cousin of mine was stopped at the airport with a small cache of perfumes he wanted to give away as gifts to everyone upon his return and was asked what he wanted to do since the ban on carry-on liquids included perfumery. He looked around, thought a bit, told them he was no terrorist and would be remiss of him to lose simultaneously both the expensive perfumes and the money used to purchase them. So, he sent all the chotchkes ahead of him by courier service.

A man on a transatlantic flight can put in an order for a British suit, a pair of Malaysian shoes, a designer French shirt, Swiss watch, Texan hat, Japanese car, and other accessories from Italy and China before boarding the aircraft and get delivery upon disembarkation, while having an apple strudel for dessert in Cologne. He could as easily travel literally with only the shirt on his back and still employ one of the fast and secure financial services organizations to outfit himself at his destination.

Before I digress too far, there are now two new small-size Internet-based technologies that will enable you to communicate cheaply over continental distances using only the USB port on a laptop computer. It is assumed here, in all seriousness, that no one would normally toss a full-size desktop system into a backpack and board a long flight. The two products are the Vonage V-Phone and the Belkin Skype phone.

The V-phone is Windows-based and has its own inbuilt software that produces a virtual keypad when plugged into a USB port of a broadband-enabled laptop or at the Internet café, while the Skype phone requires a WiFi VoIP setup but no mandatory computer connections to function. The Skype phone has been described by Peter Lewis of Fortune magazine as being ideal for “global road warriors”, who often travel to lands abroad where the phone system is different.

The V-phone costs about US$40 plus a variable monthly service charge. Call rate plans and other details for the V-phone can be found at http://www.vonage.com/, while the price of the Belkin Skype phone for cheap / free international and domestic calls is available at http://www.skype.com/.