Techno Family Howe (The Rise of the iPod/iPhone)

Things have certainly changed technologically since the last time we were confined to an isolation room. I had to use a phone line to get an internet connection and nobody had heard of an iPod/iPhone.

Now we're camping in a room of 3x4 metres with three laptops, two iPhones and an iPod touch. No shortage of communication media, then. Kay is currently plugged into her (new) iPod touch, which I have packed with 22GB of music and films, namely the entire "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.

I have recently opened a Facebook account so I can keep in touch with Lauren and other far flung folk. Now I have added Windows Live Messenger, since only the older folks seem to rely on Skype. And of course we also have our Blogspot. Keeping track of all this is going to become a nightmare, I suppose. This leads me to wonder if there's not a business case for a meta-website that organizes all the information spread across the others. However, to be honest I don't know what the business case is for any of the mentioned sites anyway - how can people make money out of all this free stuff?

For some time I've been looking for a reason to buy a Slingbox. The idea of being able to stream Sky HD to my iPhone or Laptop wherever I am sounds great. But frankly, "wherever I am" is mostly at home - at least when I have time to watch TV, so not much point in a Slingbox. But being confined to an isolation room has given enough reason, so I've ordered a Slingbox Pro from Amazon. Playing with a new gadget is always a useful distraction from daily matters, so I'm looking forward to setting it up and trying it out. You can imagine that Kay & I will be sitting here watching mid-afternoon reruns of "Midsomer Murders" or "Tom & Jerry" by the middle of the week. Great! (if it works).

Last time Kay was sick, digital cameras had only just started to become reasonably good. We have loads of film photos of her from that period, but I bought a decent digital camera back then and so the photos that we look at are all the digital ones - can't remember ever having seen the film ones. Now of course we have the cameras in two iPhones, my Canon 50D, Marion's Canon G6 and Kay's Canon something or other. So you can expect to be buried in photos and low grade iPhone video. If I feel as though we don't have enough consumer technology here, I'll bring in my HD video camera!

Rob.