MOUNTAIN VIEW – “Wireless communication is changing the way people work, live, love and relate to places” summarizes a special report on mobility published by The Economist last week.

It all just makes so much sense, doesn’t it? Mobile devices with always-on Internet connections and the ability to immediately respond to an email are increasingly making our lives easier (and, interestingly, more complex) and are fast becoming the norm in our connected global society. If it’s 11:30 p.m. in California and my business partner in India is firing off emails or my colleague in Dubai is on Skype, communicating with these folks “right now” just works – it’s highly efficient, usually quick, and those 15 or 20 of late-night chat will save a day or two of multiple-time-zone ping-pong.

“The most wonderful thing about mobile technology today is that consumers can increasingly forget about how it works and simply take advantage of it.” Mr. Kluth points out in his article.

How true. The report raises some interesting questions and data points about working in a “nomadic environment” and features like location-based services (LBS). Concerns are also raised, about the importance of that all-elusive work-life balance. Mr. Kluth: “Nomads are constantly juggling the social rights of colleagues, relatives and friends, as well as their own right to downtime.” I agree. My BlackBerry is verboten at the dinner table, for example. (Perhaps I should finally write that book on mobile etiquette I’ve been pondering for so long?)

I was talking with a friend yesterday about the virtues of the connected business. In her case, she runs a small artisan bakery and, like many small businesses, does just about everything on her own. For businesses like hers, the company website becomes much so more than brochureware or a “here we are” type of statement: guiding prospective customers to actually DO something upon visiting that website is critical. (At minimum, to view options, ask questions, and place orders.) If my friend is in her bakery cranking out specialty pastry and wedding cake orders all day – away from her home office HQ where her laptop/email currently lives – a smartphone would facilitate quick, efficient responses to customers, prospects, and vendors, and likely improve productivity by several hours each week. Consider that there are there are several million small businesses (SMBs) in this country, many of them in the same situation as my friend the baker.

Helping solve these issues is what I do for a living, but I’d be interested in comments on how you manage your mobile life. Are you taking advantage of the mobile technology available to you? If yes, does it make working/living easier? How? Why? Indulge me.

((W))

Image courtesy Flickr/Miss Karen