Less-Is-More Blog by Pierre Khawand

I found myself at Starbucks this week, trying to take advantage of this precious hour I had in between meetings. It was quite noisy but this didn't bother me for too long. I quickly got my iPod ready and put on my favorite music. Then within minutes, I was setup, connected, and fully functional. This made me think about productivity on the road and the tools we use today compared to those we used in the mid 90's when many of the technologies that we take for granted today were then in their early development.

My on the go toolkit today

Laptop + Spring 3G card + iPhone + iPod (classic) + headset + paper journal + pen

And power cord, extension cord, and network cable--just in case.

When on the go internationally

Even though these are applications and services, but they play such an important role in staying connected and being productive overseas:

Add Google Voice, Skype, Skype-Out, and Skype iPhone App.

And not to forget one more useful addition to the mix the Kindle iPhone App.

How can it be optimized?

• Consolidate the iPod and the iPhone
   
• Would be nice to have one provider instead of two (but for now AT&T has a hold on the iPhone and offers the voice/data capabilities internationally, while Sprint has the impeccable signal in the San Francisco area).

Soon, I will write more about what this looked like in the mid 90's

What does your on the go toolkit look like today? And how can it be optimized?

Technology can be frustrating at times. And usually it decides to fail exactly at the time when we need it the most. At least this is our perception because this is when we really notice it (when it is working seamlessly in the background, we don't seem to stop or notice that it is working and doing amazing things).

Even on a daily basis when computers or networks slow down, or when services are not available for 10 or 15 minutes for one reason or another, we can get quite frustrated. I was frustrated recently when my Windows 7 system was slowing down a bit and showing some of the signs that got me to switch from Windows Vista-slow application loading and slow switching from application to application. I had to remind myself that I only had about 20 browsers open, another 20 or more documents of all kinds and some of them quite large, and I was connected to a dozen of services that are accessing a variety of databases. I had to remind myself that is quite amazing!

This comedian takes a closer look at how technology is amazing and gives us some funny stories to remember: