Here we are again: the beginning of a new month with its procession of bills of all kinds, falling around just like the dead leafs of some trees. Mmmm, a little foretaste of Falls @ the beginning of August…
I though just realized today, while checking my online mobile phone bills of the last three month, that I actually managed not to overrun my monthly fee! And that’s the first time since 2006!
So where’s the trick?
I was at least expecting to have to pay my mobile operator a comfortable fee for extra calls given from abroad, as I was “sailing the seven seas” since the end of April. But I was not claimed any extra money to feed my provider with. Good news (for me)!
I then realized that, as a dyed in the whool digital native, I had not so badly prepared (digitally talking at least) my trip throughout the Atlantic ocean… as one of my first concerns was to be able to stay in touch with my family and friends at sea and while landing @ our ports of call.
When we were ridding the waves, thousand of nautics aways from any piece of ground, the only widely available communication resource for the crew was the email. One very same email adress shared by 30 people. In that case, you’d better warn your friends, and particularly those amateurs of weird stuff you can find on the Internet, about this peculiar thing! Else, you could end up doing the least entertaining chores available on board…
Since we were most of the time kept busy with hundred of things to do, the big challenge was to be as efficient and savvy as possible with the free time we were granted, while updating as much as possible our friends and family on how the odyssey was evolving. Twittermail has probably saved me from being else tied to writting dozens of emails per day to relatives, or to facing a bunch of disappointed friends kept appart from the wonderful adventure I was living.
One status update sent to my Twittermail adress was enough to keep updated my Twitter followers and Facebook contacts at once, on how things were going down here. You can see some samples of what I posted while at sea here under What happened on my twitter this week.
Land in sight!
During my 3 month sailing trip my cellphone has switched between something like 20 different mobile phone providers’ networks. Which one was the most convenient? I have no idea, as, luckily, I never had to use any of them.
Today most cities, at least in the West, are real webs of wifi networks. Internet access can be found almost anywhere and for free or for an outrageous low fee. So why should I pay for cellphone communications, when I have at the reach of hand, the possibility to call for free using softwares like Skype on my PC and Nimbuzz on my Symbian phone?
After three month of intensively using both applications I can testify that in our today’s world it is “soooo 1990″ to communicate on a cellular network and pay for it!We now have to take a maximum profit of what is made available to us FOR FREE, which is no luxury today in our economy, and get ready for the next big leap in our habits to communicate (WiMax).
Let’s just hope that mobile phone providers will accept to face that truth one day soon and become reasonable when it comes to charging their loyal customer a fee, which is still unfortunately today, disgraceful.
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Yep I can testify, this twittermail trick was really cool to get news from the middle of the atlantic ocean by saving bandwith and time.
This kind of extrem adventure is also a great experience in term of geek skills, forcing to rethink the way we use technology, at the age of high speed internet access.
By the way, this post is “sooooo 2009″
@ Kerolic: I was wondering whether I was the first to actually twitt from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean… I recently read a post on someone who twitted 30,000 feet above sea level. Interesting experiences! We should try once to post on twitter from one of those fabulous montains here in Austria to ad to our extreme geek experience in terms of mobility/nomadism! But you’re right: twittermail is just a great app to have!