Online Public Relations Thoughts

Before I get back to the office, here are road notes. The Blackberry e-mail device was the most consistent tool I had on the road, even including locations that were inaccessible to the cell phone. The cell phone was nearly a useless tool on some days and had a nasty habit of remaining in roaming mode when it was supposed to be in full service. It had an equally nasty habit of referring calls to my voice mail and then ringing me from there. That trick messed up a teleconference I was supposed to participate in. The service provider is Verizon, in case you are interested, and I will call Verizon in the morning to find out what is happening.

I found that I am not much on typing on a Blackberry because the keyboards need a microscope to see. No wonder Blackberry users make typos and use bad formatting. On the other hand, the Blackberry kept me in touch with the office in ways the cell phone could not. I'm going to keep the Blackberry this time around. I had a Blackberry two years ago that I turned in after six months because it was useless for me then.

I adopt new technologies reluctantly. I believe one tool should do as many things as possible in order to cut down on expense and to maximize efficiency. I have opposed gadgeteers for my entire time in technology. Folks with laptops, desktop PCs, PDAs, cell phones and Blackberries have too much stuff around them to keep work straight. The best solution is one or two tools at most that do everything one needs and are integrated with one another to avoid transferring of data back and forth.

Technology should make you more productive. If it doesn't, get rid of it.