The world just seems to be getting smaller and smaller.

I recently visited the USA for a conference and had to keep in touch with my work projects back home in Australia. The main problem, of course, were the time differences. To work effectively, I needed were a few tools to keep track of the different time zones back in Oz — Canberra (home), Melbourne and Adelaide — as well as the local times where I was staying as I travelled around — Miami, Florida, Anaheim and Honolulu.

Here’s the tools I used for roaming the globe:

• iTouch: Like it’s big brother, the iPhone, this MP3 player has the ability to add a number of different city times and includes an alarm to let you know when you’ve got appointments. It’s also good for flights with its fairly good music and video capabilities — especially good when you get stuck on long domestic flights without personal in-flight entertainment
• Google Calendar: A part of the Google Office suite, this Web 2.0 app is great at handling and keeping track of different time zones and the events and appointments that go with it. It kept the times as I needed them, but when I viewed my calendar as a widget through the iTouch, Google detected I was in Honolulu and change the time zones to Honolulu time
• Motorola Razr: It’s now an old phone, but it is quadband GSM, meaning with global roaming I can take it just about anywhere in the world. Global roaming tends to be very expensive, so I just bought a pre-paid SIM card from AT&T and a telephone card. It made the difference between $2 and 12 cents per minute calls from the USA to Australia. Obviously, the downside is the number of digits you need to enter before you actually get to listen to the person on the other end of the phone! I would have preferred to use Skype, but I wasn’t always confident that I would have internet access during the four weeks I was travelling.
• Dual time-zone watch: While it’s not uncommon, having a wrist watch that could display two time zones at the same time was incredibly valuable. I just changed one time to reflect the local time and at a glance I could also see what time it was back home in Canberra
• Toshiba R400 tablet PC: I’ve been using a tablet PC for about 6 months now and I’ve not picked up a paper notebook since. Weighing only 1.72kg (3 pounds 7 ounces … note that the Apple MacBook Air weighs 1.36kg or 3 pounds), and with all flavours of WiFi you could want, it’s the perfect travelling companion for those on the move who want to take all their stuff (paper and electronic) with them

It’s an array of tools that works very well for me. I might not have given up all my desktop software just yet — I still have a need for Microsoft Visio for creating workflow diagrams, Mindjet’s Mindmanager for creating mind mapping, and Axure’s RP for prototyping great user experience web app designs — but I can see that one day soon all I will need is an internet connection and I’ll be able to work from anywhere around the world.

What tools do you use?

M