Isn't Technology Wonderful

We all seem to take technology for granted, but sometimes it's worth taking a few minutes to consider what is available to us and the way that it has changed the way we work.

We live in a time where some incredible things are possible. I'm writing this post on a train to Ipswich and rather than sitting reading a paper or something similar I have decided to:

• Write a blog post
• Update my web site
• Update another site I look after
• Write to my brother in Australia
• Sort out travel arrangements for next week including buying tickets for planes and trains
• Review my accounts
• Prepare and enter my expenses

I've done all of this online as the train was moving. As I said - we all take that for granted, but it's all rather remarkable.

What is also remarkable is the changes this technology has made to all our lives. I have a fairly peripatetic life and can often spend days at a time away from home. So long as I have my laptop, however, or even just my iPad, I can work. Most of my services are online - my accounting system (EasyBooks) automatically synchs between all my devices meaning that I can update something on my phone and find it almost immediately on my laptop. This has the added advantage of giving me an offline backup - so I'm very relaxed about my accounts.

Documents, too, are synched, sometimes using Dropbox and sometime iCloud - I often synch things with SimpleNote so that they are available to me on my iPad where with the addition of a Logitech keyboard I seem to be able to work at full speed.

I write my websites on my laptop but the source is copied into Dropbox each time I press 'Save'.

All of my train and airline bookings are copied (automatically - I just forward my confirmation emails) into TripIt and from there automatically appear (with all the necessary reference numbers) in my calendar. Most tickets (Great Anglia please note!) are now issued electronically so I don't have to carry around a whole bunch of paper tickets  - just show my phone as necessary.

I think this is all very clever. Fifteen years ago I would have to have employed a PA to do all of this and then would have been forwarding things around the country by post, I expect.

Every so often its worth noticing just how cleverly we can work!