My Experiment With Digital Nomadicism

I’m technically on family holiday vacation this week, holed up in a lovely cabin in the mountains north of Asheville.

We have wifi here, but I decided to opt for the Touch and my Blackberry (and Kindle of course) over lugging up the Macbook Pro. I’m actually writing this on the Touch with the fantastic WordPress app. Honestly, it’s pretty smooth and I need to do this more frequently.

What I’ve realized this week is that I can do most everything that I do on my laptop with just the Touch and the Blackberry. Tweeting, reading feeds in Google Rader, answering email, playing in Facebook, and now blogging are almost more enjoyable on the Touch over the laptop.

But what about “business stuff” like checking stats, reading and writing Docs and spreadsheets or FTP’ing into sites? All are (easily) doable and smooth in this sort of a mobile scenario. Actually, I’m really enjoying stretching myself and learning the new skill of mobile aptitude.

Of course, much of the content I create and consume is based in cloud computing rather than relying on a desktop. I make heavy use of all the Google apps. When I have needed a doc, I just access it in either Dropbox or on drop.io since I keep things sync’d on those places anyway. It’s worked out well.

So, my grand experiment in digital nomadicism is going surprisingly well. I could easily see myself just bringing the Touch and Blackberry to Affiliate Summit this month and leaving the Macbook home. 8 of my text books for the coming semester are in the Kindle, so my load for school will def be the Touch (Bible software apps are tremendous), blackberry and Kindle.

Digital nomadicism isn’t for everyone, of course. I unabashedly rely on web and cloud apps over desktop bound software and I’m not tied to an enterprise infrastructure that requires any special software. But a lighter load in a new year is always a good thing!

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8 Replies to “My Experiment With Digital Nomadicism”

  1. I only brought my iphone to sxsw and felt pretty connected. but then again I'm – gasp – laptopless anyway…so I don't really know what I'm missing.I also rely heavily on the cloud, as its not uncommon for me to jump between 3 or 4 computers in a single day. I'm all about lugging around the minimum. So if you can get by on the touch I say go for it!

  2. I could totally live only on my iPhone.The only reason I bring a laptop anywhere is so I can SSH into servers in a pinch if something goes wrong. Most trips, my laptop acts as nothing more than a big battery for the iphone.This Summit I'll be traveling with the eee and likely won't even crack it open.

  3. Amazing times we live in!I wonder if our kids will even now what a laptop is or if these types of devices will take their place and function?

  4. I have been trying using just the touch since I got it for Christmas. Unfortunately I find typing more than a few sentences very taxing. For any serious writing (which I am supposed to do with reasonable frequency) think I will still need a real keyboard. (This took 3 minutes to type with corrections!)

  5. Haha… I know the feeling. It took me about a month or two to really get(somewhat) proficient with the Touch's keyboard. I'm a longtime Blackberryuser, so I had to learn some new muscle memory skills. I still have theBlackberry, but find that I'm quickly getting up to speed with the Touch.Nothing will ever replace a “real” keyboard, tho! It's like playing realguitar instead of Guitar Hero 🙂

  6. Headed to Target now to copy you and pick up a wall charger for the Touch 🙂

  7. Looks great, Sam. I'm reading this post and commenting from my iTouch. Doing the digital nomadicism this weekend myself.

  8. The problem I have is that I prefer a large screen – the bigger the better. I've got the 17″ MacBook Pro, not because the 15″ is a lot worse, but simply for the extra screen space. If I could have a lightweight lappy with a 22″ screen, I'd take it! In fact, the recent issue of Mac|Life has an artist's conception on the cover of a MacBook with fold-out screens on either side… I'd buy one of those in a heartbeat.There was a trend for a while where phones were getting smaller and smaller and smaller–pre-iPhone–and I couldn't figure out why people wanted everything smaller. As far as I'm concerned, I'd be thrilled if the iPhone added another inch or two 😉

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