Having recently joined English Heritage in an attempt to increase the number of interesting and child friendly places to take the kids I was surprised to find the effective application of technology, in particular, at the Wroxeter Roman City in Shropshire. Upon entry to the venue we were supplied with small hand-held mobile phone style units to use as we wandered around the site; these came with handy little lanyards to stop them getting in the way.

Information posts were dotted around at various points around the site, pressing the relevant number on the keypad rewarded us with our own virtual tour guide so we could learn as much, or as little, as we liked about each particular point of interest based on our personal preference. This site is great with plenty of area for the kids to run around and a picnic area to settle down, eat, drink and watch the little dynamos running around with their seemingly abundant energy.

The use of technology was interesting for two reasons, firstly because the kids loved it, wandering about looking for posts, pushing buttons and trying to converse with the tour guide and secondly because I just finished my research project at Uni that looked into the area of mobile push applications. It struck me that if these audio information devices were made location aware, perhaps based on RFID or localised Bluetooth technology, then we would pretty much have a demonstration of exactly what I have been researching for all these months.

It is always exciting to see technology being usefully applied in unexpected places and even more so for its application to so naturally add value and complement the facilities which it supports.

At a passing glance you may think I am leaving my job. My desk drawers are empty, the files on my desk are gone, the various catalogues and magazines that were kept ‘for reference’ have been given a decent send off. The only things on my desk now are a laptop, my pencil case, a memory stick and a phone. Before the collection tub starts getting passed around I should clarify that I am not actually leaving but attempting to go paperless (again). Here we go again. In fact a further point of clarification would be stay that it is not just paperless but clutterless - which involves all those gadgets that have built up, cables that lie around and other items that have been popped down temporarily and ended up staying for a few years.

The project started out of a need to tidy our open plan office in general as it was getting very cluttered from mounds of paperwork that threatened to take over. Not everyone shares my enthusiasm for the project though - many people still appear to hold the belief that a messy desk is a busy desk; the more paper you have on your desk the less likely you are to be given more. This may be true, only time will tell. However I have found the deconstruction of my immediate working environment and practices somewhat therapeutic and it has helped refocus on projects that have ended up on the back burner for one reason or another - a spring clean perhaps?

If someone approaches me for a work project with a bundle of paper ready to hand over I tell them that, as the project sponsor, they are best placed to keep hold of all their paper work - anything that is essential for me to use during the project can get scanned in and filed neatly in my computer folder. My folders are beginning to fill up and I can’t help thinking that a natural extension of the project would be to reduce the number of electronic documents floating around.

That said, every morning the post arrives and a pile of paper varying from magazines, literature, flyers, catalogues and seminar invitations is dumped on my desk. I give it a quick flick - if it looks dull then it gets binned. Perhaps, if it has a passing interest, I tear out the relevant bit to read about later (some lucky ones get stuck in my journal). Other things including invoices, quotes, etc are duly scanned and sent to the archive - best hold on to them for the time being at least.

The only paper I have left is my daily journal/work planner which I still havent found the nerve to dismiss just yet. It is surprising as there are many tools around me that would perform the job admirably but for some reason I just cant let it go. As I look at my desk now the irritating thing is the number of cables and wires, to which end I have replaced my mouse with a wireless mouse (a Microsoft wireless presenter mouse 8000) and the keyboard is next. I still prefer a wired network connection to a wireless one and there is very little I can do about the phone and various power cables but so far the project is going reasonably well.

I currently have nineteen to choose from. My e-mail address is what I refer to of course and which one in use depends on what I am doing at any particular time.

It seems that over a long period of time my email activities (and associated email address) have become context based. I have e-mail accounts for work, home, social networking, my various Blogs and hobbies/interests and some from long ago services that I just cannot bring myself to let go. The email interface varies from email account to email account, some use Outlook, others are web based whilst one or two are mobile push solutions. Very rarely do they cross over so checking emails these days becomes a long task of logging on to various systems and remembering their various quirks and inconsistencies. I could forward them all to one address but I really do not want them cramming up one inbox - what I really need now of course is a system to manage my email systems.

It makes me