How To Be a Technomad8 September 2003 Last column I talked about living the mobile lifestyle, but I didn't really talk about howI do it. Here's how I use mobile technology to make myself at home anywhere. To make sure I at least cover the basics, I've split elements of technomadism into several categories. (And for those readers wondering what all this has to do with Mobile Writing, what do you think "mobile" means?) Gear The first thing you need to live a location-independent life is the right technology. The "right" technology is highly subjective and there are as many possible solutions as there are people to use them. I can tell you what I use and why, and what I plan to use in the future. Palm Zire 71: This PalmOS 5 device combines speed, solid multimedia and a wide variety of accessories into an affordable package. I'll probably replace this later this year with a Palm Tungsten T3, giving me more memory, more screen (320x480 with virtual Graffiti) and a faster processor. T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone: This Windows Mobile-based Pocket PC ties into T-Mobile's GPRS packet data network, allowing me to get my email and surf the web anywhere I have cell coverage. This will likely be replaced with a Sony Ericsson T610 when I get the Tungsten T3. The PDA and the phone both support Bluetooth, allowing me to pair them together to allow dialing the phone from the Palm and the Palm borrowing the phone's GPRS connection to access the Internet. Palm Portable Keyboard: Based on the original ThinkOutside Stowaway, this foldable keyboard unfolds from a compact 10-oz. rectangle to a full-size, no compromises keyboard capable of full speed touch typing. Laptop: Although this almost never leaves my house, it's nonetheless a vital part of my mobile lifestyle. Not only does it negate the need for office furniture in my apartment (my computer desk is my recliner), but it means that if I'm going on a long trip out of town I can take my computer with me if the PDAs won't cut it. Currently, my laptop is an ancient HP OmniBook (Pentium II, 160MB RAM, 3GB hard drive), but I'm planning to replace it this winter with a Centrino-based Tablet PC. Car: This may sound silly, but my car is really more a home to me than my apartment. While I love to walk, a car is an invaluable base of operations. (See below on an idea to streamline this a bit.) Power Keeping my various devices charged is probably the trickiest part of my technomadic lifestyle. It's really not that hard, though, to find juice on the go. Palm Power To Go: A thin backpack that fits on the bottom and back of the Palm that doubles or triples battery life. A lifesaver for writing on the go. iConceptsGear2Go: A collection of three wonderful little modules. The first is an USB sync-and-charge cable that allows you to charge directly off the computer's USB port while syncing. Added on to that are two modules that the USB cable can plug into to turn it into a AC wall charger or DC car charger. The three together make it trivial to power my PDA (and battery sled) at home, on the road or in strange hotel rooms. Connectivity Mobile computing is nearly useless if you still have to rely on a fixed location to communicate your work with others. I have two ways to connect now, with a third on the way. Cable Modem: When I'm at the apartment, I have access to my Comcast Cable broadband through my laptop. This is the best way to download programs and ebooks, with speeds over 300kbps. Audible would be just about useless without it. T-Mobile GPRS: When I'm not at the apartment (most of the time), I can still access the Internet anywhere I have cell access through my Pocket PC Phone Edition or Microsoft Smartphone. Transfer rates are lower (around 30-50kbps, 10% of my cable speed), but it pretty much works anytime, anywhere. T-Mobile Hotspot WiFi: Later this year, I'll likely sign up for T-Mobile's Hotspot service. For an extra $20/month (the rate for existing T-Mobile cell customers), I'll be able to access the Internet wirelessly at cable speeds from nearly any Starbucks, Borders Books, Kinkos and CompUSA. I'll have to install a WiFi SD card or WiFi sled to my Palm, but the high-speed access when I'm on the go will be worth it. If I install a WiFi router in my apartment, I'll be able to use my cable access wirelessly anywhere in the apartment as well. Data We've discussed the tools I use and how I communicate, but what about the data itself? As I inferred above, big stuff like audio books, music and movies pretty much has to be downloaded at the apartment via the cable modem or ripped from physical media and transferred there. WiFi will help this, but for now mobile data storage is still a barrier. I'll probably still download audio books at the apartment for the foreseeable future. Smaller stuff, however, like ebooks, email, pictures and whatnot are often downloaded mobile and accessed on the go. I buy as many ebooks from Palm Digital these days via my Pocket PC Phone Edition as I do via my laptop. Amazon's mobile site even makes it possible to shop on the go even for stuff that I have to have delivered to a physical location. And of course, most of my data, pictures and word processing, are created on the go. I do all of my writing in WordSmith, and currently I'm still drawing and inking the old fashioned way, on a sketch pad I carry around. The images are scanned and digitized later. In the future, I'll probably draw directly into Illustrator or Photoshop on a Tablet PC. Food This one will likely draw the condemnation of many, but I almost never eat at "home". I'm typing this section of the column at my local Chipotle, a Mexican grill where most of my columns have been written. I'm also a regular at my local Sonic, McDonalds, Panda Express and Baja Fresh (another Mexican grill -- so sue me, I grew up in Texas). I'm known on sight at Village Inns and Chili's around town, and I generally only drop into grocery stores (I live a five minute walk from a huge chain grocery store) to buy soda, pet supplies or something from the deli. I know this isn't good for me, but darn it, it is convenient and I get plenty of variety in my diet. More to the point, there's only so many peanut butter sandwiches you can eat, and cooking elaborate, well-balanced meals doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you live alone. Things were different last year when I shared a townhouse with a friend and her daughter, but cooking for one often just isn't worth the trouble. Shelter The apartment is quite sufficient for sleeping and hanging out with my cats. It's also a handy place to keep the many volumes of paper books I still have, my TV and DVD player and assorted furniture. The shower is nice, too. On the whole, it's not a bad place to live, even if I don't spend more than ten hours a day there most days. If I wanted an even more "rootless" existence, I'd have to get an RV. Hotels are too expensive to be a long-term solution, even if I could find hotels that would put up with my Destructocats. Down Sides? I've heard some interesting comments on the technomadic lifestyle. Oddly, a lot of them have been laced with pity or regret that I've fallen to such a state. I have to admit that I don't understand this. I'm quite happy with the way I live and work, but I can understand some of the objections. Here are the major ones that keep popping up and why they don't bug me. "When you're mobile and constantly connected, there's no way to 'get away' from it all." This one perplexes me the most, and it's by far the most common. One of the things I sell at CompUSA is cell phones, and the biggest objection I hear is that cell phones (like pagers before them) are a "leash" and people don't won't to be at the beck and call of others. Fine. Turn it off when you don't want to be bothered. While I almost always have my cell phone on, it, like most phones these days, has Caller ID. There are a few people (my parents, sister) that I will take calls from anytime, but most people get my voicemail if I'm working, hanging out with friends or doing something else not conducive to yakking on the phone. I really can't believe how many people seem to take it as a given that if the phone rings, you have to answer it. That just ain't true. I have the freedom to answer the phone when I want, so I don't miss the important calls, but I also have the freedom to not answer the phone if I'm doing something else. The same thing goes for email. I have the ability to check my email as much as I want thanks to my T-Mobile GPRS service, but that doesn't mean I have to read them right away or reply to them immediately. It comes down to prioritizing. There are some things I want to know about immediately so I can act on them. Other things I want to know about so I can deal with them at a convenient time. And still other things, like SOBIG virus emails, that I just want to get rid of so I don't have to deal with them later. But in the end, it's all my choice. "I'd hate to have such a rootless existence, never having a place to just go and relax." Again, this comes down to perspective. I see it as not having just one place to go relax, but having dozens. My technomadic lifestyle gives me the ability to be "home" virtually anywhere. No, I can't sit around in my underwear in Barnes and Noble (for which the Barnes and Noble employees and customers are thankful) but I do have my apartment for that. I am starting to kick around the idea of trading in my car for a very small RV with a satellite dish, a PO box and going completely mobile. "That may be all well and good for a single person, but it would never work if you had a family." Hey, I never said this was the life for everyone. Heck, I'm not completely sure it's the best life for me. I certainly have no business telling other people how to live. For now, this works for me, though, and I'm enjoying exploring the possibilities of being a digital nomad. Jeff Kirvin
Jeff Kirvin is available for consulting on mobile technology. Email me today! |