Travelling Designers
Nomadic World
Meet Olivia Meiring, Nathan Swartz and Tristan—a family of three from Pittsburgh that live off a recreational vehicle. In these days of wireless internet, laptops and web tools, it’s indeed possible to work while on the go.
They have showcased their interesting journey on their website http://tumblewagon.com. Here, Swartz sheds light on the technology they use. He is quick to point to the fact that the two pieces of technology they have forbidden on their journey are the television and GPS. According to him, the television keeps you glued into other people’s lives when you should be living your own, and GPS on the other hand keeps reminding you where you are. He says if he ever wanted to know where he was, then he would have never left Pittsburgh.
They use their iPhone to stay connected to services like Twitter and Facebook, and are pleased with AT&T’s internet connection. Although they don’t use the phone for heavier coding requirements, requirements such as making changes to code or sending email is where they use their mobile connection.
They use a Sprint wireless internet connection to stay connected all the time. They connect their laptop, again a Mac to the wireless connection. The operating system of choice is Mac OS X Leopard. They use its Internet Sharing option in OS X to use the computer as a wireless router and WiFi hotspot. This enables them to access faster internet on the iPhone via Sprint, in case the AT&T connection is slow.
Finally, they backup all their data using Apple Time Capsule, a wireless backup solution. Entertainment is also taken care of. Airport Express with Airtunes lets them wirelessly connect their speakers to their laptops and stream music, so that there is no messy wiring around their vehicle.
As far as plain old snail-mail is concerned, they use Earth Class Mail, a service that sends your postal mail to you online. This way they don’t miss on connectivity in any way.
This story seems promising in this internet age. But switch back to India, and with our ISPs, consider travelling outside the metros into the towns and villages, in the hope of sniffing out last mile bandwidth! We doubt Apple would be able to help us here!