I was given an iPod Touch three months ago for my birthday. As an early adopter of the original generation-one iPod I am amazed to discover that this latest acquisition has lasted three months in my hands and never yet been used for playing music!

In many ways, I think that experience shows how technology is moving on and how our lives are changing.

Armed with a number of (mainly free) applications from Apple’s iTunes App Store I now use the iPod Touch to

• keep up with news
• monitor Twitter
• check and send email
• keep my calendar up to date
• find phone numbers and addresses
• browse the internet
• check the weather
• keep notes and shopping lists
• and much more.

With all that going on there doesn’t seem to be time to just listen to music.

One of my favourite applications is Newsstand. With a little bit of setting up to the address of all my favourite newspapers, radio, television and other RSS feeds, newstand brings me a customised daily news read of all the news items that I am really interested in.

You click on the stories that are of interest and, as long as you are in a wifi network area (or if you are using an iPhone anywhere with cellular coverage) you can read the full story.

Since getting this all set up in my iPod Touch I have become much more aware of the news that interests and affects me, without having to buy half a ton of newspapers and magazines. For anyone whose life is hectic, it is such a boon. Pull your iPod Touch or iPhone out of your pocket anywhere were you have a five minute wait and your time is not wasted but useful

Yes, I know you can do all these things with a computer, but carrying my MacBookPro around in my pocket would be a bit difficult. But the really clever thing is that everything I have on my iPod Touch is kept in synch with my laptop without me having to do anything.

Now that is why I like this technology.

Tags: blog, technology