During lockdown, we’ve ordered so much from Amazon that I sometimes expect Jeff Bezos to personally deliver a parcel to thank us
12 March 2020 was the last time I worked outside my home. Except for a couple of days in the Endava office in October/ November (more on that later), I’ve been working from home since.
Sometimes it’s been too easy to mentally distance ourselves from the reason why we’re in lockdown. Personally, it feels that each time I’ve got into the new rhythm of working from home, I’ve had a dreadful phone call that someone I know has been moved to a ventilator in hospital or passed away.
Every year I list my favourite gadget, book and app from the last twelve months, so here they are for 2016:
Favourite gadget
A smartwatch. I never expected them to be this useful.
During the summer I ran my first marathon and bought a running watch to track my runs. The watch, a Garmin Forerunner 235, has a number of smartwatch features, including alerts that show on my phone, such as text messages, calls, Facebook alerts and so on, also show on my watch.
The watch also has a step and sleep counter, which I’d never as useful beforehand, but the step counter is moderately addictive. I can tell how well I sleep – I don’t need a watch to tell me.
Although the user interface on the watch is terribly over complicated, I still love the watch. Friends who have an Apple Watch still need to charge them daily, and the Forerunner can last at least a week.
Favourite book
The book that stopped me tweeting before boarding flights
I haven’t read as many books this year, but my favourite was ‘So you’ve been publicly shamed’ by Jon Ronson. I like Ronson’s style of writing, and I’m constantly worried (and telling the kids) of the dangers of a simple social media update upsetting others.
If you are interested in social networks, I thoroughly recommend the book. Since reading the book I try not to tweet when I’m boarding a plane, just in case autocorrect strikes.
Favourite app
I have a few friends who have started producing podcasts, and they use Podbean. I’ve been using the Podbean app for a while, but I still don’t find it very intuitive. It could be much simpler.
My favourite app for 2016 was Google Maps. Google have released a number of new, really good features. As a family we travel all over the UK. Google Maps has excellent voice recognition and smart route navigation, taking real-time traffic into account. But the 2016 killer feature is being able to search for something en-route, such as a petrol station or a specific restaurant. This is also voice controlled, and results are shown along the route.
This leaves me to wish everyone who reads this site, and your family, a wonderful holiday period, together with a healthy, happy and prosperous new year.
Please share this post with your contacts because it makes me feel better.
