When I think about how I used start my day 20 years ago, compared to today, life is just way more convenient today.
In 1991 I was 38 years old and headed into my last 5 years of a 24 year career at the
Star Tribune Newspapers in
Minneapolis, Minnesota. At that point, for a very few of us who weren't in denial, the hand writing was on the wall for the future of printed newspapers. Our days of walking to the end of the driveway to pick up our daily newspaper were, for the most part, coming to an end with the first half of the
Baby Boomer Generation.
20 years ago, I would leave home a 7:00 in the morning and drive 22 miles to downtown
Minneapolis where I would attend sales and management meetings and take notes using a pens and a legal pad. When I wanted to write a memo about the meeting, I would write it in hand write it and hand it to a person, called a Secretary, to type in on her network computer only to read, make corrections and print again. When I think back, it's a wonder we accomplished anything.
Today, I get up in the morning and turn on my
I-Phone GS. Now I'm not Mr. High Tech guy, but I do pride myself in knowing enough to be dangerous about what I want to get out of this utility. I call my
SmartPhone as a utility because that's really what I use it for. I don't need to have the latest version of the phone. In fact, I purposely lag one model behind so when the version 5 comes out, I'll go for the version 4. I don't like to be on the front end of working out the bugs. I view my time as precious and use my
I-Phone GS for more work and very little play. The only game I play each day is one called
"Get Efficient with your I-Phone" I have no music loaded on the phone.
I sync the phone with my computer each day so my calendar and contacts are automatically updated and look the same in both places. I use several apps that are pretty basic and can be used when I'm away from the office. I use
Google Voice for my Voicemail because I have one click access to listen to my messages and the messages are logged for me up on my
I-Google Home Page.
The basics are the email downloaded from 3 different accounts that I can receive and respond to. As for the apps that I can access from my personal
ITunes Home Page, I downloaded the
Yahoo and
Google Search Apps for in the field research. My
Social Networking apps consist of Facebook,
LinkedIn,
Twitter and
Yelp. I also receive property alerts from
Zillow.com and
Realtor.com. I only open them when I see that I have a message.
The only real non- business apps I use, on a regular basis, are All Recipes,
Groupon,
Overstock, and
Kayak for travel.
As I mentioned earlier, I’m not Mr. High Tech Guy and I’m sure I’m only scratching the surface with the apps that I currently use. To keep me moving forward and upward in the mobile app world, I have a subscription to the printed version of
MacLife Magazine and I have the
MacLife Mobile App on my
SmartPhone.
If any of you have any mobile apps that really work well for you would like to share, please feel free to comment on this
blog. Thanks!!