ExpertCEO

Nifty gadgets and novel apps play an ever-increasing role in executive life—as productivity tools, communication devices, and entertainment platforms. Are you mainstream or on the ‘bleeding edge?’ Is there a must-have service/device you’ve yet to discover? As the options proliferate, we thought it might be intriguing to gather a snapshot of members’ habits and preferences. Share with us your choices, and we’ll summarize the results.

Best Way to Reach You?
-snail mail
-telephone
-cellphone
-email
-text
-chat
-skype
-other (pls specify)

Preferred Handheld

-cellphone
-Palm (Pilot or Pre)
-Blackberry
-iPhone

Favorite Frivolous Applications

-Facebook Scrabble
-Flight Control
-Twitter
-Other (pls specify)

Email and chat are clearly my preferred methods of communicating.

I'm addicted to my iPhone... although I didn't race out to buy the new one.

I am finding Twitter increasingly powerful and find myself checking it more and more every day.

Best Way to Reach me? On my cell, definitely. It's on from 7am to 10pm. SMS and email next. Skype or chat is hit and miss, I'm on the go a lot. Snail mail? If it does not have a check that I can cash, forget it.

Preferred Handheld: My Blackberry Pearl. Second place: my iPod Touch

Favorite Frivolous Applications: Twitter (by way of TweetDeck), iCandy, Pandora

Best way to reach me - via email. It's amazing that I get so few phone calls. And I use a voicemail service called phonetag that transcribes my messages and emails the text to me. 90% of the time, I can discern the context of the message from the automated transcription, even if it is inaccurate.

I'm an obsessive iPhone user, and it has many frivolous apps. Flight Control is my current favorite, and I always have a couple of Facebook scrabble games going with my Brother.

Skype is no nicely uncluttered, cheap, and location independent. We use it for everything from in-house communication to a quick Q&A with a customer or system integrator. The land line is mostly a spam collector these days, although I still occassionally check messages.

A new gizmo:
Seriously thinking about getting a Kindle DX. Lunch is still a nice time to stay informed; yet hardcopy papers and magazines are so archaic and just clutter up your car or office.

Best way to reach me - email.
Handheld - iPhone
Frivolity - Twitter (although NetNewsWire, if you consider that frivolous!)

The best way to get in touch with me is on my mobile. I have a love/hate thing going with my iPhone but I have phone/email/skype/iPod running constantly on the device. Like some others on this list, I'm a sucker for useless iPhone apps. I like my BlackBerry for business but the iPhone is great for everything else.

I tend to use Twitter a lot for communicating. The AirCard for my laptop is probably the most valuable gizmo I've come across - I honestly don't know how I ever got along without it.

Email for anything that does not require an immediate reply. Landline phone or mobile phone for stuff that does. Get LOTS of email though and not many calls. Skype for international calls. If I'm at the computer (which I am a lot), chat is good for a quick answer. Initially bought a Palm Treo 800 that no one at Sprint could get to work so I dumped it for my Blackberry Pearl, which is great. Am definitely seeing the value of Twitter. I do a LOT of networking and have been thrilled with Gwabbit, an app that was suggested in one of your weekend reading posts. It's a huge timesaver over entering business cards into Outlook . . . instead, I Gwab (sic) the signature blocks from the emails I receive and it works great. I just installed DubMeNow to get business cards beamed to my phone while at an event. Too early in the use to know how good it will be for mainstream use, but it has been light-years better than the Minglestick I used at a recent event and found worse than worthless.