mTrends - mobile media lifestyle trends

Disconnected Holidays

2 Comments Published by Rudy De Waele August 26th, 2007 in Mobile Lifestyle, Personal, N91, Nokia

While I’m most of the time always ‘connected’ with my laptop and/or my mobile phone, for this years’ summer holidays I decided to opt for a completely disconnected vacation. I felt a healthy need to get away for a couple weeks from a social media overload - and guess what? I didn’t miss my email or chat conversations, neither Twitter or Facebook, or other social media apps I regularely use…

It was more then 5 years I took such a long break and it was GREAT! Apart from some teenage “Can we go to check our email, dad?” hiccups, I managed pretty well to stay away from checking mails on my mobile phone or a computer… The last week I was actually completely disconnected in Formentera without GSM connectivity at all.

Last year, it was the first time I didn’t take an extra mp3 player with me for holidays, the Nokia N91 did just fine as a multifunctional device. This year, it was the first time I didn’t take an extra digital camera, since the Nokia N95 with its 5 megapixel camera has now reached a basic quality need for my holiday snapshots - the 2 megapixel iPhone doesn’t fill that need yet for me, sorry. You can check my Ibiza and Formentera pictures here.

The best part for me was our stay at Belgian friend Gilbert’s house in Formentera. On top of the cliffs of La Mola with a magnificent view on the Mediterranean Sea, completely disconnected with only a couple of boats passing by daily. The house, his painters atelier, and the garden house are all powered by solar panels only and provide enough electricity to comfortly host 10 to 12 people, electricity use is cut to a minimum whenever possible. Water is usually rare on Formentera so people use it with care: after every shower, the recycled sea water you used is captured and re-used for the plants, same with the water used for cleaning dishes, actually an ideal place for everyone who needs a personal global warming reducement training

No GSM coverage at the house - we needed to go to the village to pick up a signal, so you had that purely disconnected feeling you hardly encounter these days in the western world… alone with nature, daydreaming in the hammock, swimming in a Caribbean blue sea, lizzards eating rests of watermelon, the sweet sound of crickets, seeing the Milky Way again at night, the taste of local countryside chicken, well no more words to say I had a GREAT time! Anyone interested in a perfect place to rest, think, write or brainstorm give me a wink.

I had a strange feeling getting back the first day reconnecting, trying to find my ‘connected’ rhythm again, meanwhile I’m back on track, it’s going to be an exciting autumn with lots of new projects and events, more on this later here… stay tuned!

2007, digital camera, formentera, holidays, ibiza, imaging, lifestyle, Mobile Lifestyle, mp3, n91, n95, nokia, Personal, photos, snapshots

Following the response and feedback I got on the “Understanding Mobile 2.0” article I wrote at Read/WriteWeb a couple of weeks ago, I created a wiki space to start categorizing the so-called Mobile 2.0 companies.

You can acces the directory at mobile2companies.com.

I decided to use a wiki tool, called Wepaint, so companies can add their own information and keep it updated. You just need to sign-up to add your Mobile 2.0 company info page, you can add images, slideshows, video’s, and RSS feeds as well, and tag your page(s).

Companies can use the tool to keep the web community updated with latest news, elevator pitches, presentations of new products/services, etc. You can browse the wiki by category, by keywords, subscribe to the wiki feeds on new pages added or updated, comments and news, a lot of other stuff out there yet to discover.

The directory is far from complete, I just gave it an initial injection and added some companies I know to start with, so the best thing to do is add your page if you don’t find your company in there and update your page if you don’t like what I added, it’s a wiki, you know

Kudos to Carlo for helping me with the introduction texts.

Contact me if you would like to contribute to this project, to become a writer/moderator, to help develop the wiki, and for any suggestion and comments. I hope these pages will be usefull for the entire mobile value chain, spread the word!