Mobile tech: UK for coffee, US for breakfast
This morning I had the great pleasure to appear on a podcast with an old mate from the U.K., Ian Dixon. Ian, James and I all worked together in our early days of podcasting; if you’re not familiar with Ian’s work, let me share a few tidbits. Ian is a Microsoft MVP in the Windows Media Center area and he provides a great podcast and a video series on Media Center. He also has a Windows Media Center book available and sure enough, he’s a UMPC owner too! In fact, Ian asked me on his podcast for a conversation on UMPCs; the show should be available in a few weeks and we’ll get a link up once it goes live. I had a great time this morning and I just got to thinking how amazing it was that we could actually do what we did.
Think back just three or four years ago. It would have required a bit of special recording equipment and we likely would have used a dedicated phone line for the show. Today, I literally rolled out of bed and fired up Skype at 8 am EDT with my cup of coffee. No muss, no fuss and I could have done the interview from nearly anywhere I had a good data connection. There was no cost for the voice conversation and I had near total flexibility in my location. Can you imagine a few years back if someone said "Hey, I did a UK interview in my pajamas from my PC at 8 with coffee and had breakfast in the US by 9 today." How much has your life changed in the past few year thanks to mobile technology? Mine sure has….otherwise, I would have had to change out of my PJs for the show!
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I completely agree. Technology has advanced so much in such a short period of time. My fall semester of 2006 was my first semester at school with a tablet (Motion LE1600) and it kept me more organized than ever. It enabled me to have notes along with recordings of the lectures all in one place. My wireless network at home allows me to have access to all my files on all 5 of my devices and will only be improved upon with the 802.11n standard and with Windows Home Server later this year. Thanks to advancements in hard drive recording tech, I have my entire music and movie collection stored digitally, allowing me to browse through it from my couch without having to go through tons of DVD’s or CD’s. I can be productive while on the road or take a trip across the country without having to worry about being away from the office since I have all the resources I need with me. I love where things have gone since my introduction to computing and technology (a Macintosh LC II when I was about 10), and can’t wait to see what the future has in store.
My umpc really helped pass the time at the airport in Dallas yesterday when our flight was delayed 7 hours. Fortunately. I had the Power Bank battery with me so we could stay powered up and my daughter could check her Facebook. I kept getting updates seat to my phone by text message and I was able to call the car service and hotel in NYC by cell phone to assure them we were still coming. As the father of 2 teen daughters I’ve learned to entertain myself during long bouts of shopping by reading RSS feeds on my phone. I love my mobile tech!
Tax Man
It was great talking to you Kevin. I thought everybody podcasts in there PJs!