I like things that simplify my life. Take the Post-It note. I used to scribble the week's groceries list on a piece of paper and tape it on the door. The Post-It skips a step - rummaging around looking for the sellotape. This is always a problem for me. If I could remember where I put the tape, perhaps I would not have needed to scrawl down my groceries list, and I would not have found the Post-It worth raving about.
The fact is most of us do not have flawless memories, and we need reminders or some sort of virtual secretary to help us organise and make sense of our schedules.
While this column is all about gadgets, I am not going to rave about the latest and greatest all the time. Technology is only great if it helps us become more efficient, save time and money or shorten a routine - like the Post-It.
I have been waiting some years for my personal digital assistant (PDA) to be a phone, too. To send and receive e-mail while I am on the road, I need to align the infrared ports on my mobile phone to my PDA - an impossible feat, especially in a Hong Kong taxi where you are almost assured of a bumpy ride.
However, at long last, we are seeing some sort of marriage between the PDA and the mobile phone . . . all a little too cumbersome at the moment. If you have a Palm V, Vx, m100 or m105, you have four choices - RealVision's Carpe Diem V, Ohfish Communications' Ohfish, Ubinetics' GA100 and the ClipModem.
The first three have similar-looking sleds for the Palm V series while the ClipModem is for the m100 and m105.