A couple of mornings ago I restarted my Sidekick III. The machine came awake with a few notes of music and then presented me with a message telling me a new system was ready to load. Did I want it to be loaded now? With one click I was able to answer ‘yes.’ With not so much as a hum or blink, the Sidekick III received its upgraded system through the silent channels of the ether. How easy can it get?

Also this week, I upgraded my creative software to Adobe’s new Creative Suite 3. The smiling face above is from the Illustrator webpage from the Suite. I bought my first Photoshop license at version 2.0, have owned Dreamweaver and Flash for several years and am a recovering Quarkaholic (using InDesign since its inception). When I downloaded and installed Creative Suite 3, I realized my software-juggling skill set is now obsolete. Within an hour (mostly the download time via the Internet) everything I could do with all of the foregoing was integrated and moving as smoothly as silk.

I have no vested interests in Adobe or Sidekick’s maker. I just think there is something to be learned from stopping here to smell the flowers. Smartmobbing tools are still somewhere back in the Photoshop 2.0-3.0 era (remember how exciting it was when somebody thought of adding layers in Photoshop?). There is every reason to believe that flowing down the creative pipes is a time of handheld mobile connectivity that will be as lovely as a bouquet in May.