My Passion: Personal IT

After much soul searching (some of it automated -- see recent posts), I have finally arrived at a name for my favourite interest: Personal Information Technology.

I get excited about new free web services and software products -- things like GMail, Flickr, del.icio.us, Google Desktop. Not just any software, but software that gives us control over our personal "information space" -- the websites, emails, RSS feeds, phone calls, meetings that bombard us daily.

And not just software (Google Desktop), but also web services (GMail, Meetup.com), hardware (PDA's), personal management methods (Covey, GTD) -- I'm interested in technologies and methodologies to manage the personal information cloud.

The problem is what to call this interest. Some of my earlier attempts were: "free software and web services", "Information Technology", "the mobile lifestyle", "cyberculture" -- but none of these precisely described this space. Then today I hit upon it: Personal IT. It's about technology that persons can use to manage their information.

Personal IT is a hot industry right now, and many of the services are freely available to all. We live in exciting times!