The country

Diane Darling flies around the country, speaking on &#x201C;Effective Networking,&#x201D; not coincidentally her company&#x2019;s name.</p><p>However this column isn&#x2019;t about her networking tips.</p><p>This is about Darling&#x2019;s born-of-experience advice to entrepreneurs whose laptops hold their work. And it&#x2019;s particularly about those who schlep their laptops from time to time.</p><p>At a recent speaking engagement, Darling returned to the car &#x2014; where her laptop had been hidden pursuant to this agreement the car seat &#x2014; and found the car broken into and the laptop stolen.</p><p>On that laptop were her slide presentations, a book draft and her Outlook e-mail files.</p><p>For many sole practitioners, a theft of the same type could have been disastrous. For Darling, it was a massive inconvenience, yet survivable.</p><p>&#x201C;Good news is that I use a fair amount of &#x2018;cloud&#x2019; computing,&#x201D; Darling wrote in an e-mail to business contacts.</p><p>She stores most of her crucial information on &#x201C;cloud&#x201D; computer servers that back up her files.</p><p>Darling uses Dropbox, a cloud server she migrated to afterwards testing another online system. She says Mozy and Carbonite are options.</p><p>She&#x2019;s as well investigating e-mail alternatives to Outlook to store her contact lists other than just on her personal computer.</p><p>And she&#x2019;s a big fan of Google&#x2019;s calendar function that syncs with her Blackberry, as so then as EverNote.com, a tool that syncs her notes between computer and phone.</p><p>Darling isn&#x2019;t afraid of research &#x2014; a barrier to many entrepreneurs who are groping through the cyberspace world. Her message is that it&#x2019;s not that scary.</p><p>Jump in! You must have backups. And that can include a backup external hard drive on your home computer.</p><p>Darling has decided to gravitate toward a tablet computer, just as an iPad, to make the hardware more portable.</p><p>&#x201C;Keep your laptop at home and your tablet with you,&#x201D; she suggests. &#x201C;You need something smaller than a laptop nevertheless bigger than a phone.&#x201D;</p><p>And don&#x2019;t get comfortable with one solution for long.</p><p><hr class="infobox-hr-separator" /><div class="infobox">@ Read &#x201C;How I Got The Job&#x201D; at economy.kansascity.com.</p><p></div>

The country

Diane Darling flies around the country, speaking on “Effective Networking,” not coincidentally her company’s name.

“Good news is that I use a fair amount of ‘cloud’ computing,” Darling wrote in an e-mail to business contacts.

And she’s a big fan of Google’s calendar function that syncs with her Blackberry, as so then as EverNote.com, a tool that syncs her notes between computer and phone.

Darling isn’t afraid of research — a barrier to many entrepreneurs who are groping through the cyberspace world. Her message is that it’s not that scary.

“Keep your laptop at home and your tablet with you,” she suggests. “You need something smaller than a laptop nevertheless bigger than a phone.”