The file was stored on SkyDrive, in the cloud if you will, so getting to it wouldn’t be a problem – I just needed a way to get too it.  Then I remembered that one of the new features of Windows Phone Mango that I had recently upgraded too was that the Office Hub could connect up with SkyDrive.  I was on to something.

As I sat in the meeting I managed to use my Windows Phone (a Samsung Focus for the curious) to connect up with SkyDrive, edit the file in Word on the phone and then save it back to the cloud and e-mail it back to my colleague.

Now. Tell. Me. That. Isn’t. COOL!

Isn’t it amazing how far technology has come.  At the ripe young age of 37 I remember the evolutionary path of how we used to transport data.  It started with floppy disks, and I’m sure many of you remember stuffing them into your backpack and running off to the school or library to work on those papers (“Sneakernet we used to call it for the fact that you had to literally walk the data to wherever you wanted it”) – you know back in the days before we all had 3 PC’s in our homes.

Floppy disks stayed around for quite a while and then came ZIP drives.  They stored a lot more data, but their problem was that they were just too darn expensive.  They had a few glory years in there, but they didn’t quite kill the floppy disk just yet.

As more and more of us got connected we started using e-mail to mail files back and forth to ourselves.  It wasn’t perfect by any means but it was good for small documents. 

Along the way we also experimented with CD’s and such, but the fact that they could only be written once made it impractical to use for documents and files that were modified often.  Though somewhere around here I think I still have a stack of about 500 America Online CD’s if anyone needs a coaster.

For the true geeks we also experimented with FTPing our files back and forth.  I remember in college you weren’t a true geek unless you had your own FTP server running – preferably one with the latest warez to share with your college friends.

Finally we got to USB sticks – and their low cost and popularity has made them the favorite for data transport for quite a few years now.  The problem is that if you are like me, you tend to lose the things or find out when you are in a hotel 700 miles from home you left them laying on the kitchen table.  There was also an issue of data integrity – USB sticks do fail and only have a lifespan of so many read and write cycles. 

Now we have “the cloud” – or the ability to store data “out there” on the Internet somewhere and access it using any device we choose to an extent.  Services like Microsoft’s SkyDrive let people store data and access it from work, home or even halfway around the world.  Forget that important presentation?  No problem, just connect up and grab it.  The latest, greatest copy always waiting for you.

It was so cool to see that my Windows Phone could connect up to SkyDrive and not only access my documents, but let them edit them and store them back out there.  Most of the work I do is with Office products, and this has broken down some of the final barriers of me having to be chained to my desk.  Granted, I won’t be writing a Shakespearean play using my phone just yet, but it’s great for touching up documents and adding data to them on the go.

Somewhere around here I have some 5 1/4” floppy disks from my teenage years.  Perhaps its time to find an old drive and upload whatever data has survived on them to the cloud as well.  My childhood could be immortalized in the cloud for generations to come. Now that’s cool.

I have a regular, basic Samsung phone from AT&T with txt messaging (SMS messaging).   I pay $9.99 a month for our whole family to have unlimited text messages.  For years I’ve just wanted something basic – something to say “hey, you got a new e-mail from Roger” or “Don’t forget you have an appointment at 2:00”.  A simple text message to help connect me to my digital life.  Unfortunately, nobody seemed to offer that.

That is, until now.  I stumbled upon Windows Live Mobile for SMS the other day and I’ve been an addict ever since.  Talk about keeping me connected – I think someone over at Microsoft must have been listening to my rants!

If you haven’t yet, go ahead and fire up a browser and head on over to mobile.live.com and take a look around.  Here is where the fun starts.  It doesn’t take long to get your mobile phone registered and to start exploring. 

It Started With E-Mail

Being someone who runs a small business and needs constant access to my e-mail (powered by Live Mail thanks to Live Custom Domains) the first thing I checked out was what type of alerts they had for mail.  Sure enough, I found out that my old settings for e-mail was carried over from my “Experiment” last year – the txt msg mystery was solved!

If you have a Live Mail or Hotmail account you are in business – and Microsoft makes sure they put you in full control.  Not only can you specify when you want the txt msgs delivered (for instance, I don’t want any between 11PM and 7AM) you can also specify under what circumstances you want to be notified through mobile alert filters.  For instance, I belong to several mailing lists that I don’t want to be alerted to – so I put in a filter for them to turn off the alerting for those messages.  You can setup as many filters as you wish to really give you granular control over how you will get alerted.

So after I got my e-mail alerts fine tuned I wanted to find out how else I could “connect” with my digital life from my “dumb” cell phone.   What I discovered next turned me from a fan to a pure enthusiast.

From E-Mail To Full Blown “WOW!”

After getting e-mail alerts setup I started looking around to see what else Live SMS alerts had to offer.  That’s when I discovered the full blown list of commands you can send from your phone to Windows Live to get back information in virtually real time.  I found out I could even access my calendar and contacts – score!

I recently started to use Live Calendar to keep track of appointments and events and have been very impressed with its abilities.  Now that I could query my calendar from anywhere at anytime with my phone and a simple txt msg I was ecstatic!  Once you query your calendar for your schedule you can even drill down into it for more details – all with simple txt msgs.

Another cool feature not to be overlooked is the ability to access your contact list on the go.  Now I know most of us (including me) keep our contacts on our phone stored in our SIM cards.  However, think about this – what happens if you ever lose your phone or your SIM card gets damaged?  I learned the hard way that its always good to store your contacts somewhere other than on your phone for long-term storage. 

So for example, while I may have my friend Roger’s phone number and e-mail on my phone, perhaps I need his work number or address.  Not a problem with Windows Live – it’s right there, at my fingertips!

Finally, as if I wasn’t impressed enough already, I also found out that the SMS alerts can also work with Live Messenger.  Now I’m not a big user of Messenger – though I find myself using it more and more each month, but I can see the possibilities here.  Say a friend or client wants to get ahold of me, but its not important enough to interrupt with a call.  They can just tell Messenger to send me an IM through SMS – to which I can respond back and have my reply delivered as an IM directly to them. 

So after all these years of drooling over all these smart phones I have to say that using Windows Live Mobile SMS I’m pretty happy that I didn’t bite the bullet and buy one of those expensive things.  I’ve finally found a way to keep my digital life connected with me on the go – and on the cheap!