PieroCampanelli.info

My programs and my data (work and personal) are stored on an USB key which I plug indifferently where I need: home, work and mobile. It is gratifyng to have my working environment in whatever site I am and with whatever Windows hardware I am approaching my work.

Several yeas ago I advocated the use of ubiquitous data across different operating systems. After years of experiments I finally think you are more productive if you are able to roam your applications and your application settings too. Roaming applications clearly work in a single operating system: so I choosed Windows flavors as my default working environment. (as it is in 100% of the cases the working environment of my company’s customers).

There are two important requirements that I have accomplished: data’s privacy (usb volume is transparently crypted) and data’s safety (usb volume is automatically backuped on my home server).

My geek’s hearth pulse to show how I have technically organized my environment:

• USB key with 4GB storage (50 EUR on a local supermarket)
• Security is managed by True Crypt opensource software (which works well on Windows XP and Vista)
• All of my documents are stored in folders (excluding personal sourcecode which is stored on my home SVN Server)
• Mail is managed by Google Apps for Domain
• Professional Mail is managed by Thunderbird Portable (with data on the stick. I can have all my mail shortcuts at home and at work….)
• Contacts are managed by Open Contacts which is portable and it has a productive user interface (the only think I need from a contact management software is speed)
• Browsing is done with Firefox with the amusing Google Synch plugin. (Firefox is installed on the machine because portable version has some annoying limitation)
• Notes & Brainstorming is managed by EverNote (for text notes) and Freemind for Mindmapping
• TODO List (organized as GTD dictates) is managed by a recently opensource software called ThinkingRock
• I have a bunch of utilities which are fully portable such as: Putty, WinSCP, Filezilla, VNCViewer, Notepad Plus, Greenshoot, DiffMerge, ProcessExplorer, Cygwin
• Finally all of my data (> 2 GB) is automatically backed-up on my home server (which runs OSX) using the powerful Unison synchronizer (which backups only differences and allows to do a backup in a few seconds)

It’s very productive to have all of my data, all of my programs and all of my program’s settings while I am commuting on the train every day.

I’d like to see more portable softwares in the next few years.