When I was younger (and quite frankly had more spare time on my hands) one of my favorite things to do was surf the Internet looking for new, innovative software programs to play with.  The early days of shareware were great for that.  That’s why there’s a whiff of nostalgia the past two days, when I’ve been playing with three new toys: Photosynth, PPTplex and Collabio.  (Disclosure: all three are connected to Microsoft, a client of my firm.)  In fact Photosynth has been so successful the site was down yesterday, which was quite frustrating when I had just spent 20 minutes taking photos of my study to upload!

This is why I started my PR career working with Technology.  I’ve never been a programmer (short of six months as an in-house editor for a software house when I wrote a user manual and created a Windows Help file, or even earlier, fooling around with BASIC on my sister’s Apple ][).  But I have enormous, enormous respect for people that create innovative software that solves a problem in a new way, makes life fun, or is just plain Cool.  I love playing with it, writing about it, telling the world about it.  Over the years that passion and respect has extended to hardware, consumer electronics, and virtually Innovation in all its different guises.  But I still experience that frisson of excitement after downloading and installing new software, and clicking on “Finish” in the installation box.  I know I can then start playing with my new toy.