Every once in a while — usually as a New Year approaches — it occurs to me that I’m getting a little too comfortable with the tools, technologies, gadgets, habits, and practices in my day-to-day life, and that I should find something that drags me outside my “comfort zone” in order to grow, expand my horizons, and rejuvenate myself. Some of this involves personal issues that I won’t bore you with — e.g., new diet or exercise regimens, new efforts to establish meaningful relationships with friends and family, new efforts to explore the arts or even take up a new sport. But given the nature of my profession, a lot of this “comfort zone” stuff has to do with the computing tools and practices that drive my day-to-day work.

I haven’t made any final decisions yet, but here are a few of the things I’m exploring:

• Windows Vista — I’m very comfortable, and very happy, with my Macintosh computing platform, and I’m looking forward to the arrival of the next Mac OS X, code-named Leopard. But if Vista is going to have as much of an influence on the overall computing industry as, say, Windows 95 or Windows 2000, then it might make sense to be an early adopter, and share my experiences and “lessons learned.” On the other hand, if it turns out that it’s the last of a breed of dinosaurs, then I may well be wasting my time. Perhaps more important: it’s not at all clear to me that I would be able to do anything qualitatively different or better than what I’m already doing on my Mac. But I’m still giving it serious consideration … all the more so, because consumers won’t be able to get their hands on it until January 30th, and I might be the first kid on the block to actually start using Vista.
• Ultra-mobile PC (UMPC) — I’ve been reading up on devices like the Samsung Q1, and some of the people using it are giving the handheld, ultra-compact device rave reviews. I think mobile computing is the way of the future, but the real future may be hand-held smart-phones like the Palm Treo, or similar devices. I certainly like the idea of being able to carry a full-featured PC in a jacket pocket, which I can’t do with my MacBook; but I’m not sure I want something that only runs the tablet version of Windows XP. Again, worth thinking about, but I haven’t made up my mind
• Transitioning to a full Web 2.0 environment — I currently use a variety of Web 2.0 online services, but virtually all of them are accessed from my desktop or laptop PC. And there are a bunch of day-to-day tools that are not Web 2.0 based, such as my calendar, to-list list, and contact list. I like the idea of being able to access these services from any browser, regardless of which hardware/OS platform it happens to be running on; but my main question here is whether the currently available tools and services are sufficiently rugged and “industrial strength” for my needs. For example, my calendar has events that date back to 1993, and that stretch forward a couple of years into the future; my to-do list has literally hundreds of items, many of them date-related, and all of them tagged and categorized; and my contact list has over 9,000 names with a variety of addresses, phone/fax/email numbers, and multiple notes. Most of the tools I’ve seen so far appear to be aimed at the casual user with a couple dozen contact names, a couple dozen to-do items, and a relatively simple calendar. But things have been improving considerably in recent months, and I think this is the area I’ll focus on most heavily.

If you have any ideas about additional, or alternative, things that you think I should be exploring — new hardware, new development environments, new Internet-based products and services, new companies, new anything — let me know.

Meanwhile, best wishes to everyone for a very Merry Holiday Season, and a very peaceful and Happy New Year!