Armed with an excellent Internet connection, an iPhone and 2 Mac Laptops, I actually have better equipment at home than I do at work so there was no reason for me not to be as productive (if not more productive) in my home office than if I was physically at work. I also have access to my work email and network resources thanks to being able to log in remotely via the company’s VPN.

Of course, the fact that several hundred (if not thousand) others had the same idea meant that the VPN servers were unable to cope, constantly crashing and refusing to connect. No problem – the work I’m doing could be done offline. I’m currently learning about ITIL and Remedy and have plenty of videos and podcasts on the subject to keep me entertained and educated.

I worked at home for the whole week and the only potential problem I had was that on Thursday I was due to deliver a training course. Our team offers a global training service, providing both classroom training and online/virtual training and this particular course was being delivered via Webex anyway.

If this had been, say, an Excel course, I’d have had no problem as I could log into the Webex directly (i.e. bypass the VPN), run Excel on my Virtual VMWare Fusion machine and share my “Desktop”. However, the course was “Using the Intranet Content Management System” and required me being connected to work via the (flaky) VPN.

Rather than rely on luck, I logged into the system during the evening prior to the course (when usage was low and therefore it was less likely to crash) and “delivered” the course whilst at the same time using Screenflow to record my screen.

When it came to deliver the course for real, I logged into Webex, shared my Desktop and played the Mov (that I’d exported from the Screenflow recording) whilst delivering the audio live. As well as not having to rely on being logged in via the VPN, it also gave me the advantage that when people asked questions about specific features of the system, I could rewind the Mov file to recap the point.

The delegates were impressed – and so was my Boss!

My most commonly used apps are on the first screen and these are featured below…

3 Twitter clients – Twitterific, Twinkle and Tweetie. I’ve listed them in that order because that’s the order of installation. Tweetie is the one I currently use – why? No idea – I suppose because it’s the most recently installed one. Each time I install a client, that becomes my “No 1 choice”. However the others remain as alternatives. I had a problem with Tweetie and Twitpic recently (any photo I uploaded to Twitpic from Tweetie would not display – instead it displayed a [?]) so I used Twinkle for uploading posts with photos (however, I’ve now reconfigured Tweetie to use yFrog and it seems OK). I’ve just been having a play with the latest version of Twitterific and I must say that I’m impressed.

MobileLinked – a multi-services instant messenger, which supports MSN (Windows Live Messenger), Yahoo IM, AIM, Google Talk and Jabber.

AudioBoo – a tool for audio blogging. You can record up to 5 minutes of audio and publish the recording to a timeline on the AudioBoo website, complete with your GPS co-ordinates and a photo. There’s even the option to have AudioBoo auto-tweet – so when you publish a recording it also adds it to your Twitter timeline.

Facebook – an app for accessing Facebook.

Evernote – an iPhone client for Evernote.

SplashShopper – a shopping list manager. More information available on the Splashdata website

iTalk – an audio recording app. This is different to AudioBoo in that you don’t upload your recordings – but you can use iTalk Sync (which is free) – a program that runs on your computer (PC or Mac) to enable you to transfer your recordings from your iPhone via Wi-Fi. Your recordings are saved as AIFF files. There are 2 versions of iTalk – a free, ad-supported one and a Premium (ad-free) version for $4.99.

So what other apps do I have? Well I’ll save that for another blog post.

Schmap is a leading publisher of digital travel guides for 200 destinations throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. If you want to know more go here.

The photo can be found here. It’s in the Old Trafford and Salford section – and there’s a lot of photos – so it’s probably better to look at the original photo on Flickr.

But before getting down to business, I took a photo, which will form the basis for this blog post.

On the left hand side I have my ToDo board (or my GTD Board as I like to call it). In this high-tech world, sometimes it’s quicker to use good old pen and paper. I have 3 main headings – Website/DIBS, Vista and Other.

I maintain the department website which is integrated with DIBS – a booking and customer management system that I designed and built. For the techies amongst you the data is stored in a SQL Server database and the website is coded using ASP. Whenever one of my colleagues or I find a bug (which are few and far between by the way) or come up with a new feature, I write it down on a new sheet of paper and pin it to the board. This is by far the busiest section of my board.

So why the low-tech solution? Sometimes it can be easier to see all the tasks at-a-glance. I can make quick notes and take them into meetings without having to worry about network connections – and when Outlook was unavailable for a few hours the other week, I wasn’t as badly affected as I could have been. Don’t get me wrong, I do use Outlook for task management – but that’s a whole separate blog post.

On top of the cupboard I have a physical Inbox into which I toss all paperwork and other “Stuff” – yes the David Allen (not that one) influence is rubbing off. Also a few books – mainly Microsoft Office and VBA development books (well the Technical Lead of the team has to have some technical books). The books are too tall to live in the bookcase, so they live on top. The bookcase stores a couple of mice. a tub of multi-coloured pins (for the pinboard – red is urgent, yellow is normal and green is “someday I’ll get round to it”. There’s also a MacBites (remember them?) mug.

On the wall are my certificates – Fellow of The Institute of IT Training, Microsoft Certified Professional and Microsoft Certified Trainer and ECDL – Foundation and Advanced.

On the desk are:

• An Executive Writing Pad with the iPhone on top of it
• 2 laptops – 1 is a Vista laptop and the other is my MacBook
• An iPod and docking station
• An Adobe cup
• A Router

I can’t plug the router into the network – it’s used as a DHCP server. For developing ASP-based applications, I have IIS running in a VM under Parallels and Dreamweaver CS4 running natively on the MacBook. Although they are on the same physical machine, I couldn’t get them to “talk to each other”, however, by using the router to generate IP addresses, it works.

Also, I have had problems using the “Create Network” option on the MacBook so when I need to get the MacBook and the iPhone to communicate (for example controlling a Keynote presentation from the iPhone or using the Airshare app), the router comes in handy for creating a network that both devices can join (and i don’t have wireless in the office so there’s no clash – in fact I can’t even get EDGE).

So, back to the original question – “Why do you have 3 monitors?”. When I got rid of my PC at home, I had a spare monitor. I hooked it up to my iMac, configured it to use spanning (as opposed to mirroring) and now find it difficult (if not impossible) to live without 2 monitors. So at work I have an additional 15″ monitor for each laptop (that’s all we had spare in the office).

My colleagues didn’t quite get it, but once explained, they can see the difference it makes.

I just wish that my Windows 2000 machine (I use this the majority of the time – the system unit is under the desk on top of the drawer unit) had 2 graphics cards as I have a spare 4th monitor under my desk. The 17″ monitor attached to it is great but I wish the graphics card was capable of a better resolution than 1024×768.

Maybe that’s why I stayed for so long on Vodafone’s 60 minutes of calls and no texts for £15 monthly tariff.

We’d already made up our minds to get an iPhone when the Second Generation model came out in July 2008. However, a few weeks beforehand, my old cheapie Vodafone mobile died a sad death. So off I went to Argos to buy the cheapest one I could find…

This morning, I awoke to find my iPhone battery with only 10% juice left – despite the fact that it was on charge until 1:30am (when I went to bed), so with the dog desperate for his walk, I had no choice but to take my old Vodafone with me. (I bought a pay-as-you-go SIM when I got the iPhone and keep this spare charged in case of emergencies).

As I walked along I realized that for the next 90 minutes or so there’d be no Tweetie, no Internet, no eMail, no podcasts or music, no radio, no hooking into unsecured WiFi, no AudioBoo, no Facebook, nowhere to write little notes as things popped into my head, and no texting (yes folks, with a QWERTY keyboard I finally became a text-addict).

Though I could make and receive phone calls!

My other problem this morning was that I’d forgotten how to lock the keypad – and with only £5 of PAYG credit, I didn’t want to be making any unwanted calls. I tried all sorts of keypad combinations, but none worked.

Tonight I did a bit of Googling and I now know how to lock the Vodafone V716 (you know, I didn’t even know the model number as it’s not written on the phone – I had to look through images on the Vodafone website – a bit like an ID parade for phones!). Their help section tells me everything I need to know about the phone.

My only problem now, if I ever need to use the phone again, is to stop trying to press that damn button at the top. It’s not an on/off button, it releases the back cover, should I need to remove the battery or SIM.

There are, however, many apps that I find absolutely invaluable – to the point that I take them for granted. What I mean is that when I’m at work (I work for a very large company in a predominantly Windows environment where installing non-authorised software or connecting my MacBook to the network are sackable offences) I find myself constantly saying ” I’m sure my working day would be so much easier and productive if I could just have xxxx”. (Substitute xxxx for any number of applications).

So what are these “to-die-for” apps? I’m not talking about mega-priced apps like Photoshop or Dreamweaver (though when you’re stuck with Microsoft Photo Editor and FrontPage these are very appealing). Most of the apps are either free or inexpensive. Some of these apps are Mac only and some I’m sure have Windows equivalents.

Caffeine – a tiny program that puts an icon in the menu bar. Click it once to prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers. Click it again to disable it. Our corporate screensaver is set to kick-in after only 10 minutes (this cannot be changed) and as a trainer, I deliver both virtual and live (i.e. classroom based) training sessions, often spending more time talking than demonstrating. Consequently I have to remember to wiggle the mouse regularly otherwise my audience (especially on virtual courses) are constantly interrupted by the screensaver and the automatic locking of the PC.

1Password – a password manager that provides, amongst other things, automatic web form-filling. So I go to a website that has a login form (for example the admin login page for my blog) and I click the 1Password icon on my browser’s toolbar (or use a keyboard shortcut) and, providing the username and password are stored in the encrypted 1Password database, it logs me in. No more forgotten passwords. If the login details are not in the database, 1Password allows me to add them. There is an iPhone version, which syncs with my iMac. Although this doesn’t integrate with the browser (it’s really just a secure database of login ID’s and passwords) it does mean that I have my passwords available at all times.

A Clipboard Manager. How often have you copied something only to find that you need it a few minutes later but you’ve already copied another item? What you need is a Clipboard Manager. There are several Clipboard Managers for both Mac and Windows. I currently use PTHPasteboard. However at work, if I know that I need to store multiple copied items, I’m afraid it’s a copy of Notepad (and that only works with text).

Default Folder – provides additional functionality to the Open and Save dialog boxes. If you regularly use the same folders you can set up favourite folders. When the Open or Save dialog box is displayed, you simply click an icon and a list of these folders are displayed for quick access. Another great feature of Default Folder is the ability to save a file to an open Finder window with a single click.

Finally, screengrabbing software. I really miss the built-in functionality of OSX (cmd/Shift/3 and cmd/shift/4). At work I am reduced to pressing PrintScreen and editing it with Microsoft Photo Editor!!

Not being blessed with great creative skills (I more than make up for that with my programming skills), my previous avatar was a photograph of my MacBook with my MacBites mug next to it.

Deciding to go for the “personal” look, I now have a photograph of myself (the same one that is on the About Me page of this website.

Having changed the avatar via the Twitter website, I checked Tweetie (on the iPhone) – and the old one was still there, although Twinkle had updated.

So today I’m having an identity crisis.

IBM’s Research Information Services division is investigating the possibility of moving a significant number of employees to Apple’s Macintosh platform according to a report acquired by RoughlyDrafted.

“In line with IBM’s external strategy of offering a true ‘Open Client’ that may be Windows, Linux or a Mac,” the document noted, “[Research Information Services] is focusing on providing an IBM application stack on multiple Operating Systems, rather than be confined to one or the other.”

The first phase of the pilot program was conducted between October 2007 and January 2008. During this phase, 24 MacBook Pros were distributed to researchers and used as the primary notebook, with the employees’ existing ThinkPads acting as backups if needed.

Of the 22 of 24 who responded, 18 said that the Mac offered a “better or best experience” compared to their existing computer, one rated it “equal or good,” and three said the Mac offered a “worse experience.” Seven reported having no or marginal prior knowledge of using Macs, while 15 reported having moderate or expert knowledge of the platform.