So I’m sick and tired of contact management applications.  I have not come across anything that does the job well enough.  I am frustrated with a specific aspect of contact apps at the moment.  I have a very common situation which is that I have many friends that are couples or married so I put both their names in one contact form.  Problem is they both have mobile numbers and there’s no way to differentiate who’s mobile number is who’s.  I know this sounds petty but how am I supposed to remember this with over 800 contacts?  Who ever created the contact list standards many years ago didn’t think this all the way thorough.

Am I doing something wrong?  What do you do? Do you only put 1 person per contact card?  What about their home number?  It can only be in there once, otherwise it won’t show the proper caller ID.

I’m really perplexed on how to handle this.  One couple in particular, close friends of our family, I have both their mobile #rs and can never remember whose is whose.  I actually specifically don’t put some peoples spouses mobile numbers in my address book because I might get their #rs confused.  Sad thing is, this was so much easier when I was using dumb phones (S40) back in the day, with only 1 number per name.  So you might have Jeb Cell, Jeb Work, Jeb Home, etc.

Is their a solution to this, I can’t think of one that I like?  I need whatever it is to be fully compatible with my MacBook Address Book app, Entourage, Outlook, Google Contacts (which still isn’t up to snuff), Nokia S60 phones (in my case), and all the other places I sync/back up my device.  This means that standards that are many years old must change.  Is this going to happen?  I sure hope so, but don’t hold your breath.

I was fortunate enough to be asked to participate in a promotion by Boingo to test out and use their service. Boingo is a service that unifies many paid and free wifi hotspots together to give you one log in at all of these thousands of locations. The service runs $10 for a mobile version and $22 for the computer based version, there is also a $59 international option. I heard today that they have over 100,000+ wifi hotspots in their world wide network and it is growing regularly.

I have used Boingo now a hand full of times and have really appreciated the service. Recently I was at a Marriott and was connected immediately upon opening my MacBook. I had 2.8mbps down and 1.8mbps up, this provided and controled by the service provider iBahn but I was still pleased. The speeds are not great but the fact that I connected automatically and was able to do work like check email and surf the net was great. I look forward to using the service more as I will be traveling this winter a great deal and think this will really enhance my time in between meetings and at airports plus it will open up remote out of office locations where I can meet with people and now still be connected.

Thanks Boingo and I will keep you all informed of how Boingo keeps me connected. By the way congratulations to Boingo and Telefonica for their new partnership and adding tens of thousands of new hotspots in Spain.

TripIt is good but!!! I can’t seem to export my flight details (like flight #rs and times) into iCal on my MacBook.  I love that all these great details are on line but I want to be able to see them in the calendar of the Nokia E71 I’m using without having to go online.  I might be stuck in an airport where I’m roaming on my mobile network or underground on a train or even on the flight and I want to check to see the number of my next flight.  I signed up for TripIt when I learned about it back in February at MWC in Barcelona but haven’t used it since.  I am now testing it and really like it’s online presence but I’m disappointed in it’s ability to sync with my calendar.  Please contact me if I’m mistaken, maybe I can’t find the right settings.  It would also be nice if there was some sort of integration with Dopplr, another web app.  I will say though that I’m happy to see that they have an m. site for the mobile web.

A friend of mine Andy Abramson has been signing it’s praise on KenRadio and because of that I will continue to play with it but I don’t see much potential if it doesn’t do what I need it to do most, make my life easier by syncing properly and in turn saving me time of having to do the data entry myself.

EDIT:

After being contacted by the lovely Kristin from TripIt just minutes after this post went live I found out I was mistaken.  For some reason beyond me, the default settings on my account were a miss and I am now able to automatically add my flight info to my iCal calendar.  All you have to do is go from your main page to “Account” and then to “Feeds” and select “Yes” for including your details under your personal calendar feed.

Kristin, thanks for making me an instant convert to your service for 2 reasons

1. It now saves me time and that’s worth paying for

2. Your customer service is second to none

Andy, thanks for reminding me about TripIt and Kristin thanks for helping with my settings.

So this morning started like any other morning except when my wife got in the car with my daughter it wouldn’t start. Being suburban living big city Americans the first thing we did was call AAA. They came out and diagnosed the problem as a bad battery (Joe was extremely courteous and helpful) so it got jumped. So instead of going to work like I usually would in my home office I had to take the car in to get a new battery, while I was there we decided it needs new tires, brakes, a brake flush, and an oil change. So what does a self employed mobile evangelist (I’m really an event planner) do??? You guessed it, I brought my trusty Apple MacBook and started working. Remember though, we jumped the car and I couldn’t just leave it for a half hour while I made sure everything was charged and ready to go, no I had to close the lid on my laptop, stuff it in my Crumpler bag (thanks Nokia) and go. Since this morning I have done all kinds of regular work related things, like making calls sending email and lots more. Gone are the days where spending time at the mechanic is time wasted. I have been working for about 5 hours until the MacBook battery gave out and now I’m typing this on my IGo Stowaway BT keyboard and the most amaizing Nokia E71. Today was not as productive as it could have been if I had my regular truly highspeed internet, duel screen set up and mouse, but working on a 13 inch MacBook with less then optimal wifi isn’t as bad as it could have been. I’m actually enjoying typing on this tiny bluetooth keyboard creating this post but wouldn’t want to do it every day. I must say though, being ready at a moments notice is a way of life and in this case very useful. I suggest everyone, especially you take a few minutes and make sure their laptop bag is packed or you have a little “go bag” packed.

Here’s a list of what I always, have ready to go either in my laptop bag which is for everyday life or in my go bag which is for emergencies or for longer then a day or 2 out of the office.

• Chargers for phone, bluetooth headset, laptop and other powered accessories
• Spare batteries
  
• Electrical currency converters for traveling outside my home country
  
• My Boingo log in information
• Log in and pass words all incoded for important sites
  
• A Cat 5 cable for the laptop
• A spare set of contact lenses
• The sim cards I have for other countries
• My MaxRoam sim card
• Ear phones
• Business Cards
• Pen and a pad of paper
• A Proporta charger
• Note: Leave a copy of your credit cards, drivers license, health insurance card, and passport with a trustworthy friend

Now as I wait for the Firestone guys to finish working on my wifes car I’m glad I won’t be working like this again tomorrow, but I could make this a lifestyle with a little more preparation. Take a look here at the Working Anywhere blog for tips on being a global nomad.

Wow, I’m so excited. I have been trying for the last 6 months or so been trying to upload my life and work to the “cloud”. I think the this is a great way to run your life for someone like me. I’m a huge laptop fan and I tend to randomly travel and be in different places at times when I may need something that I may not have with me if I don’t have my MacBook.

I have been using Google Docs for a while now and been more or less enjoying it. It’s biggest miss for me is that it was missing PDF support, NOT ANY MORE. I just noticed PDF support and am very excited. I will be uploading all my PDFs over the next few weeks. Let’s see how this goes.

What do you think? Do you use Google Docs and do you upload old work or something that someday need? Or just create new docs on it?

Boy this is time consuming. My MacBook came with iWeb software to help you with building websites. I like it but it is a bit to simple. I really need something just a bit more detailed but just as user friendly. I will announce on here when I can all the details about my TOP secret project and you will be able to check out the website I built.