Brian Junyor

Today was a vindication of my multi device strategy. I used my blackberry for email, iPhone for web surfing, digital camera for snapping pictures and my nebook to upload them to Flickr.

Normally when I travel I have limited access, but having the right tools makes all the difference.

I am writing this on my post on my iPhone. Could have used the netbook, but it is better to have too many options than none at all.

Good times.

I love Google Reader and like to check out my trends every so often to see how many items I’ve been reading & sharing.  My guess was that the number of read, shared and starred items would have decreased over the last 5 months. I spend more time getting my information from sources like Twitter & FriendFeed and just assumed that I was stealing it from Google Reader.  Apparently, that isn’t the case. 

It would have been fruitful to have installed a monitoring app on my system to determine what I have given up over the last 5 months.  I suspect now that Wikipedia, Snopes, and Facebook have taken the brunt of the loss. 

The last time I posted my stats (June 18th) I had read 4,672 items from 110 subscriptions, starring 22, sharing 217 and emailing 4 over the previous 30 days.  

In the last 30 days, I have read 6,053 items (29.5% increase)  from 116 subscriptions (5% increase), starring 56 (154% increase), sharing 209 (3.6% decrease), and emailing 34 (675% increase).

I have also noticed that what I am sharing has changed a bit over time.  Initially I was focused on GTD and lifehacks, now I don’t really have a strategy other than sharing what I find interesting.  

Recommendations weren’t in my top 10 last time, now scobleizer.com’s recommendations & chrisbrogan.com’s recommendations are high on the list.  Probably one of the reasons I find FriendFeed & Twitter so interesting. 

I am not sharing items more frequently than I used too, but I am starring & emailing them more often.  I typically star items to reread and/or research and email those that someone else will find interesting.  While I add feeds on a regular basis, I also prune them frequently too and have resulted in only a net gain of  6 feeds during the last 5 months.

There is a tech focus to what I am reading & sharing right now,  it might be time to expand my RSS subscriptions.  However,  most of the non-tech info (politics, sports, news, general interest) I read comes from FriendFeed and Twitter, so maybe I don’t need to broaden my RSS horizons just yet. 

If you are a Google Reader fan, it’s worth taking a look at your trends, if only to get to know yourself a little better.

I have made the tough decision, at least it was tough for me, to lug around two mobile phones.  Why?  It’s part of a much larger strategy to find tools that work for me.  For instance, I just purchased a new digital camera and a new netbook. 

It might seem more complicated to go with multiple devices and it may prove that way in the long run, but I have been working with cobbled together tools and it was taking me too long to get things done.  Under my new strategy, I have a device for taking photos (digital camera), a mobile computer (Asus Eee-PC), a mobile media player & personal phone (iPhone), and a dedicated work & email device (Blackberry Bold).  Instead of trying to find a one-size-fits-all, I’ve gone with a segmented approach, trying to find the best tools for specific purposes. 

For the last 4 years I have used with a Windows Mobile device that served all of those functions, but none of them particularly well for me.  Even moving to the full qwerty keyboard of the HTC Wizard & then the HTC Kaiser (AT&T Tilt) didn’t alleviate my problems.  Sure it has a full keyboard, but our IT department doesn’t support windows mobile, so I had to use xpress mail to push my email and calendar.  That approach didn’t work as seamlessly or as stabily as I had hoped it would.  It has a 3 megapixel camera, but it is slow and doesn’t take the best pictured.  It has a media player, but can’t sync with iTunes.

It might sound like I am knocking the AT&T Tilt, but I am not really.  It is a fantastic, flexible performer.  From maps to weather, gps to email, media to storage, it worked.  It just didn’t fit my life.  Sometimes you need a hammer, or a screwdriver, instead of a multi-tool.

For mobile email, now I have the Blackberry Bold.  It has the best keyboard I have ever used on a phone.  I can type away on the sucker and send emails a mile a minute.  Plus our IT department fully supports the Blackberry, so my email is pushed immediately, my calendar, contacts, tasks and memos are synced over the air. 

For mobile media, now I have the iPhone.  The iPhone, is well, it’s the iPhone.   I was already carrying around my iPod anyway, so it’s sort of a swap.  Since I am addicted to iTunes, for better or worse, it made sense to me to go with something that could sync up and take full advantage of my music & media libraries.

There is definitely an economic impact from moving from one device to two, but I am hoping the increased enjoyment and productivity makes up for it.  If it doesn’t, well, I’ve got two years on this road, so I might was well make the best of it.

Last week I wrote a test post from my blackberry using BB Meta Blog. Today, I am testing out the iPhone WordPress App. It is certainly more polished than the blackberry app and is focused on supporting WordPress. However, I can type much faster on the blackberry.

The net net — I can now post pretty easily while I am on the road. The only problem is that I am usually too busy to post or too focused on other things.

Maybe the BB or the iPhone will inspire me to stay more connected.

I broke down and decided to get myself a new notebook.  My last purchase was a mammoth desktop replacement notebook from Gateway.  Even though it is about 4 years old, it’s still perfectly good.  Coming it at 2ghz and 1gig of RAM, it served as my primary computer for about 2 years.  The only problem with it, it weighs 1000 lbs.  Okay, not really, but it is heavy & big.  I never consider taking it with me anywhere.  Did I mention it is big and heavy, I did, well, did I mention that it drains the battery in about 2 hours? 

This time around I was looking for portability over performance and I didn’t want to shell out a fortune for a notebook that will serve as a secondary device.  With that criteria I focused my search on netbooks.

Netbooks are light weight, low cost, energy efficient notebooks that focus on mobility over performance.  There were several in the running, but I settled on the ASUS Eee PC 1000H.  Primarily because of the user base, hacks & mods, and looks.  The MSI Wind came in a close second on my list.

After playing around with this little ASUS for several days, I am hooked.  I wouldn’t recommend it as a primary PC unless your eyesight is perfect and you’ve got small hands.  The small screen isn’t really a deterrent for casual use, but I don’t think I would want to spend all day working on it.

I’ve owned various types of notebooks & laptops over the years, from desktop replacements to road warrior, but what sets this one apart from the rest is the superb battery life.  I used it for a straight 4 hours with wifi and had only depleted a little over half of the battery life.

It’s a winner where it matters – portability.  One other thing that I will point out is that it didn’t come with DVD/CD roms built in, so I ordered a slim DVD writer.  Just in case I want to install some apps via CD/DVD.

Specs as ordered:

Hats off to ASUS for building such a superb little machine.