This past week, I took a vacation.  It is the first vacation in a very long time and felt kind of strange being disconnected that long.  But it was great to know that the Sinu team kept things running smoothly.

I was on a cruise and for most of the time had no data service on my Treo 700W, the only device I brought with me.  I used the ship's computer center once which I assume is connected via satellite but paying per hour and sitting in a computer lab setting is not that conducive to getting things done.  So all I really did was shoot off short replies to a few emails and just browsed the rest.

As I walked away from the ship computer after about 40 minutes, I was thinking that those 40 minutes would have been enough to sync up all my email on even the slowest of connections and at that moment I wished I had brought a laptop.  Well since I hate carrying a laptop - I actually wished for a fictional device like the new Palm Folio but one that ran Outlook.   I could have sat anywhere and really worked on some stuff without worrying about 'being connected'.  A lesson I learned a long time ago is that almost live is just as good and 95% cheaper.  I could have gotten a lot of communication done by just syncing up every day or two when I was docked on an island or by stopping by the wifi center for a few minutes.

So as I sat back with yet another of the one too many Arnold Palmers I had onboard I began to think how offline apps are the only answer and what a powerful position Adobe is in right now with one of the first technologies that allow an online apps to go offline and sync - Apollo (or whatever they call it now).  I guess Google through its heavy influence on Mozilla is also working to solve this problem but my sense is that Flash/Apollo has a huge head start and the Mozilla guys are just not good at this creative stuff.