Sometimes you meet the most interesting people in the most unexpected of places, as
evidenced by a recent weekend getaway I took to the Hamptons — a stretch of shoreline
towns at the tip of Long Island, NY. The ferry is my preferred method of getting to the
Hamptons, and it makes the trip in as little as 45 minutes. Although the ferry may not
save me much time, there is something extremely relaxing about watching the sunset as you
are leisurely ported to your destination. And what else, during such an interlude, would
be more welcome than a stack of prepublication drafts of articles for CTI? (I just love
proofreading.)
On one such recent journey, I got involved in a conversation with a few other people on
board and eventually met the ferry's chief engineer. My new acquaintance was curious to
know what I was reading, and very quickly the conversation turned to the magazines that
TMC™ publishes: Internet Telephony, C@ll Center Solutions™, and CTI.
Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised (but I was anyway) when I learned that the
engineer on the ferry had read CTI and that IS department staff at the ferry
headquarters were subscribers. My newfound friend was a treasure trove of technical
information resulting from years of working as a LAN consultant, coupled with vast
experience in mechanical and electrical engineering. Suffice it to say that next 30
minutes of my time— previously allotted for CTI article proofreading — was
spent in discussion with the engineer (so please don't e-mail me if you find any typos in
this issue).
Apparently, the ferry, which operates daily, regularly transports people who work in
either Long Island or Connecticut and who commute a few times a week to their jobs on the
opposite shore. According to the engineer, the number of laptops connected to cellular
modems onboard is staggering. He said that on each trip there are dozens of workers typing
away the entire time (those with whom the engineer doesn't strike up a conversation
anyway). Those who are not on laptops are on cellphones or using handheld computers. We
went on to discuss how the unprecedented industry demonstrated by the ferry's passengers
might contribute to a wider trend, a surge in productivity bound to prove salutary to the
economy.
Of course, you don't need to be a ferry engineer to understand that e-mail, unified
messaging, cellphones, voice mail, pagers, and many other CTI-enabled products have made
us all much more productive. With the advent of the Internet and the migration of
telephony to the Internet, we can expect even more productivity-boosting products in the
future. Internet telephony-enabled products make short work of creating a virtual office,
regardless of where you are. Java-based applications and wireless IP networks will further
enable us to have productivity-boosting CTI applications that are as powerful on a ferry
and at the beach as they are in our offices.
PERSONAL PRODUCTIVITY
Upon departing the ferry, I got to thinking about my own productivity — the
only two electronic devices I currently travel with are my cellphone and laptop. Perhaps
you think this traveling “electronically light,” but it still means I have to
carry three chargers (one car, two AC), two spare batteries (one for each device), a
DVD/CD ROM player, and an external floppy disk drive. My laptop is an IBM ThinkPad 770, and aside from the sheer weight of it and
its family of accessories, I love it. My cellphone is a Nokia
6160.
Many of you will remember that in October of 1998 I wrote about switching from Bell
Atlantic’s analog cellular phone service to AT&T’s
PCS, which included this very same Nokia phone, which I also adore. By switching my
provider and service, I saved over $300 per month and received a host of new services such
as e-mail and paging in the process.
The ability to receive limited e-mail messages on AT&T’s network has come in
handy when I am in informal meetings, allowing me to stay in touch with my office without
interrupting an ongoing discussion. Unfortunately, this feature and many other of the
bundled features that I depend on such as paging and voice mail notification aren’t
available in my home state of Connecticut, so I only make use of them when my trips call
for travel outside the state. Regardless of this limitation (which I was not aware of when
I got the phone), AT&T has been providing me phone service and voice quality superior
to that provided by Bell Atlantic, so I can’t say I regret switching providers.
Recently, however, I’ve been noticing that AT&T’s service frequently
disconnects conversations or has poor reception in many areas of the country. I often
travel with other members of the TMC team, and we all carry our cellphones with us on the
road. I’ve observed that almost every time my AT&T service was either poor or
nonexistent, the Sprint phones in the same car or restaurant performed exceedingly well.
And even in areas where my AT&T phone has great reception, so it seems does Sprint.
This comparison is pretty informal, yet the results seem pretty consistent over all of
New England, Florida, California, and other areas of the country I frequent. So I’ve
found that when I travel, I tend to use my co-worker’s phones instead of my own
— in fact, AT&T’s service is so poor in many areas that my office has begun
to call me on my co-worker’s Sprint PCS phones
rather than my own.
MAKING A CHANGE, AND MAKING IT EASIER
The reason I haven’t switched to Sprint sooner is that the phones Sprint
offered were bulky Qualcomm and Samsung phones. I just couldn’t stand to change
phones to anything larger than my Nokia. I already lug far too much in the way of
electronics, batteries, and chargers. A larger cellular phone was not an option for me. So
when Sprint informed me that they would soon offer the Nokia 6185 phone — an improved
version of my current 6160 with no size or weight penalty — I was ecstatic. I finally
received my new Sprint phone yesterday, and it has a few more features than my current
Nokia, such as a scheduling option I have yet to try but desperately need.
But I’ve also dreaded switching wireless service providers for another reason
altogether. I have over 100 names and numbers stored in my phone, and I don’t want to
re-key this information into my new phone using the arcane numeric phone keyboard. I would
almost rather stay with AT&T’s service than deal with the nightmare of tedious
hunt-and-peck data entry.
When I learned that Paragon Software has
developed a product called FoneSync that transfers names and numbers between cellphones, I
was absolutely ecstatic.
Now that I have my new phone, I am considering some other productivity-increasing
devices. I will soon purchase a 3Com Palm VII. I’ve shied away from these devices
until now, expecting Windows CE to overtake 3Com as the market leader in the palm
computing segment. But I can’t wait any longer, and 3Com is the clear leader for now
anyway.
Whether you are a publisher, a chief engineer on a ferry, or something else completely,
your productivity is directly affected by your ability to communicate with your office,
your customers, and the world at large. And the increasing numbers of portable devices and
programs supporting portable devices is a great boon to the many of us out there who do
not always work in an office. We are on the road, and we require our communications to be
on the road as well.
There are a slew of new products and services — many based on Internet telephony
— that are designed to make traveling workers (and more sedentary workers as well)
infinitely more productive. CTI magazine will continue to be at the forefront,
introducing you to the latest products and services that will keep you afloat on the ferry
of life, helping you stay on schedule, even during travel. Who knows? We might even free
up few moments to sit and talk with someone we might have missed, had we been distracted
by our everyday deadlines and stress.
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