So, it happened.  I'm usually pretty careful, but yesterday, I lost my iMate KJam.

I left it on a seat in the Vancouver airport departure lounge (Gate A3) while I went to the bathroom.  Within about 5 minutes, I realized I left it and rushed back, but it was gone.  According to some other passengers, a guy picked it up and walked away.

So, all my data is backed up, and any sensitive information is protected, and there WAS a sticker on it with my home phone number and such, but nobody has phoned me. 

Lessons?

1) Use the new features of Windows Mobile and Exchange to allow your phone to be remotely wiped.

2) Always put some form of contact information on your devices (just in case someone with some integrity finds it.

3) Always back up your data, or better yet, don't store "one-off" data on your phone... ActiveSync allows you to store documents in a folder on your PC that's synchronized to your device.

4) Have a plan, and keep the information in your wallet or purse.  That is, I should have had a list of steps I needed to take, like commencing a remote wipe, as well as the phone number for my carrier's customer support line and phone numbers of key contacts that I have stored in my phone and nowhere else.

5) Try to have a backup phone at home somewhere that you can reactivate quickly in an emergency.  My carrier doesn't have a very good "Lost or Stolen" program.

6) Prepare yourself emotionally.  I loved my KJam.  It was imported (I bought it at MEDC in 2006), so replacing it will be next to impossible in the short term.

7) If you see a situation like this unfold (like the passengers that saw the guy pick it up), intevene... ask the guy where he's going and make him turn it in to someone in authority (in this case, the gate agent).

8) If it's possible, have it surgically attached.

Cheers

Vancouver is a great city, especially if you want to think.  I left Edmonton this afternoon to go visit my brother for Thanksgiving in Whistler.  My flight got in a little too late to drive up the Sea to Sky Highway, so I'm spending the night in the Westin Bayshore.  My room is amazing... rather, the view is amazing.  I overlook Coal Harbor, with Stanley Park in the foreground and Grouse Mountain in the background (and Whistler is somewhere beyond that).

There's something kind of mystical about these mountains. I lived in them about 20 years ago. If you head about an hour north of Vancouver, something about them brings you in touch with nature. You find yourself breathing a little better and relaxing a little easier.

Anyway, it's a perfect vantage point to do a little thinking about business and technical stuff with a clear head.  Very refreshing.

I think Outlook 2007 is terrific.  There are some great new features and for the most part, you can tell that the developers put tons of effort into usability.  But I do have one complaint...

When I expand the Folder List, I would expect that I could drag one of the folders from my mail store to the little "shortcut bar" on the left (I don't know what it's really called, so I indicate it in the picture here).  My expectation based on some other functionality in Windows and Office and such is that it'd create a shortcut.  It doesn't.

Hmmm... this looks new... I've been waiting for this for a while.  This is an add-in that allows you to synchronize your business contacts and a subset of your communication history to your Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC.  Though it's beta, it might be worth a look.

 I haven't had the time to confirm what magic makes this work, but I've got SharePoint and Adobe playing well with each other.  I'm using SharePoint 2003 and Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional. I can now:

1. check out a PDF file
2. Edit it in Acrobat (by choosing "Edit in Adobe Acrobat" from the drop down menu in the document library)
3. Save it (back to the document library)
4. check it back in

This is all just like the way it works in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint.

First, begin following the directions in KB article 837849, then when you're at step 2b, add the following text inside Mapping XML element: 

EditText="Adobe Acrobat" OpenControl="SharePoint.OpenDocuments"

so that the entire element looks like this:

<Mapping Key="pdf" Value="NameofIconFile.gif" EditText="Notepad" OpenControl="SharePoint.OpenDocuments"/>

Small business people can drown in paper. We see it here in our office. Every day, we get paper from all directions and we're never sure what do do with some of it. Seems like the day after you throw something away or shred it, you find you needed it.

 Solutions to scan to PDF have existed for some time, but Fujitsu has done a great job of making it affordable for small businesses.The ScanSnap S500 sells for less than $500 bucks Canadian, and has terrific output. It's as easy as pushing one button and a text searchable ("OCR-ed") PDF document gets saved into a folder of your choice.

Weaknesses? At first glance, there's little control over this thing programmatically, or beyond the out-of-the-box "ScanSnap Organizer". For example, on our Small Business Server network, our SBS server has network fax enabled. Wouldn't it be nice if this thing could be used to scan directly to this service without having to open up the document and "Print to Fax"?

Furthermore, with Windows SharePoint Services, and a PDF iFilter installed, these searchable documents can live in a document library whose contents can be indexed... that piece of paper can now be found by anyone in the company using SharePoint search. It would sure be nice if this thing had support for WSS out of the box...