I've observed colleagues for years walking around with their Blackberries staying connected with their work. While I've stayed connected with work via cellphone and texting, I haven't until very recently used a smartphone to connect to work e-mail, intranet, and other work applications. I've just installed IBM Lotus Notes Traveler and I absolutely love it. I now have my work e-mail, calendar, contacts, to do lists all directly integrated seamlessly into the relevant apps and services on my iPhone. Through VPN on the iPhone, I also now have access to the company intranet and services like chat messaging.

I find it amazingly convenient to be able to quickly check my work e-mail while in line at the coffee shop and to look up where my first meeting of the day is when I'm running late and don't have time to take out and open up my notebook computer. It's an amazing time saver and uses the form factor I so love.

When I think about the convenience of having work information available like this on the device that's always in my podcast, I can imagine the utility of having it available on the somewhat larger but equally enjoyable iPad. I'm looking forward to that. There is one feature that I haven't heard anyone mention with regard to these devices that I think is critical for accessing work systems and that's fingerprint recognition. That would be so useful and Apple cool.

As always, I'd appreciate any thoughts you may have on my thoughts. By the way, I also wrote this post on my iPhone.