So I’ve been thinking about mobility for a little bit today – I’ve been trying a few neat things to connect up and get online. Nothing radical or new really, just using my MDA, some free WiFi hotspots and my laptop.

I really don’t get a chance to go mobile too often with my job. Since my job is rally contained within one building, I seldom travel for work. Yeah, the occasional conference, maybe visit a remote site from time to time, but nothing in my day to day routine. But that’s ok, the work is really rewarding and challenging. I can’t say that I don’t get my share of opportunities.

But to be mobile and have other external influences while blogging I think could be beneficial. Today I’m sitting on a lake near Turtle Lake, WI – a very beautiful spot at my wife’s grandmother’s place. The setting sun is shining in my eyes creating quite a glare, and I need to move back inside for now. You don’t get that problem in the office!

The range of technologies that are available to us is amazing. The fact that a vast majority of them are reasonably priced for our consumption makes finding viable connectivity options fairly – even in rural areas. Can you remember back even just 3 years ago – yes GPRS was in deployment, and CDMA2000 had decent speeds, WiFi was in the process of its fantastic growth, and laptops were already widespread. But it was a real novelty to get connected on the road, I remember connecting up while my wife was driving and managed to perform a speed test at 70mph – the connection speed was about 42kbps.

In comparison, today, we have vast stretches of the country covered by some kind of wireless carrier. The options abound and the solutions are fairly easy to use. There are two of each GPRS/EDGE and 1XRTT/EVDO networks in the U.S., and each of the carriers have a wide variety of unlimited data plans. Some even include extensive WiFi networks in addition to their high-speed cell networks.

And mobile access devices – you can buy a PCMCIA card for a laptop, you can tether a mobile phone to a laptop, or you could get some version of a smartphone. With devices like BlackBerry, Palm, Windows Mobile (Pocket PC or Smartphone), Symbian, and Linux based solutions, there is likely something there for everyone.

So get out there everyone and blog, write, work, or simply converse when mobile. It’s a lot of fun, and is a great way to get yourself a fresh perspective. After all, there are thousands of great coffee shops with free WiFi and a great cup of coffee waiting for you.