How To Split An Atom

Having come back from a trip to Philadelphia, hundreds of miles away from blogging and work, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at technology in the wild. Having traveled the length of the east coast I wanted to take a look at a few of the gadgets and applications that I found to be indispensable.

The Traveling Technophile

Gmail

When I am at home, I take universal address book access for granted. I had no idea how much I rely on Gmail as my “universal mailbox.” Mail from every fiefdom of my web empire was pushed to one place, quite useful considering the obscenely slow hotel room Wi-Fi. Also, since I didn’t have time to check my email 50 times a day, threaded conversations helped to keep the information intake manageable.

Google/Yahoo Maps

When you are traveling 18 hours up the length of the United States, you tend get lost. Even when I wasn’t cross-checking driving directions, Google Maps was really helpful in regaining my bearings and finding places to eat in every new city that I stopped off in.

Blackberry

I don’t own a Blackberry, but I saw enough of them this weekend to see why they are probably the most important weapon in the traveling technophile’s arsenal. Push email, web access, and zooming web browsers pretty much sold me.

Web 2.0 Roundup

From my little adventure on the road, I was a little surprised at how much utility I drew from a tiny subset of web applications. Just looking at this short list, I can think of four or five different products that do each task at least as well, if not better. Why then did I choose the ones that I did? I think when trying to use technology in the wild it all comes down to simplicity.

When your web access is limited and your Wi-Fi is weak, you need applications that run quickly and are easy to use. When you need information quickly, you are far more likely to pick speed over whizz bang user interfaces. When your lifestyle dictates the use of the web but the web does not dictate your lifestyle you are always going to choose the applications that just work over the one with the most hype.

Product designers should take time to understand not only who will use their products, but when they will. If you are reaching out to people who are on the road, keeping a tight feature list that is easy to use becomes critically important. If you think AJAXified voting is going to sell the traveling technophile you have another think coming.

Which web applications can’t you live without on the road?

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