You know, right now people are more connected than they ever have been before. With the internet, facebook, iPods, even iPads, we’re all connected in ways we couldn’t have imagined just a few years ago.

And that’s great, isn’t it? But what if you don’t have a smartphone or iPhone? What if you want to be unshackled from your home router? How do you do it? How do you take your internet connection with you all the time?

Well, mobile wireless broadband is here, right now. You can buy small usb sticks – they call them dongles – and have an internet connection out and about. Imagine, for a moment, what that actually means. You take your laptop out with you for a nice picnic on a lovely day. Plug in a little usb stick and you instantly have internet access – talk to family overseas via voip, upload your picnic pictures as you’re taking them – even check the weather or pollen count!

How difficult are they to use, these little dongles? Well now you just plug them in, click on continue a couple of times and that’s pretty much that! There are even pay as you go models so that you’re not committed to a long contract.

I have one of these dongles myself and I’ve got to say, the freedom you feel being able to connect to the ‘net wherever you are (you have to be in an area where you would get a good mobile phone signal) is just wonderful. Email? No problem. Fire up your favourite client and check to your heart’s content – even reply.

At a wedding? You could take pictures, upload them and email them to relatives in Australia while the cake is being cut! And imagine compiling your best photos into a book and ordering a hardcopy online, or even better, uploading a full wedding photo site that the happy couple and guests could look at at the evening reception. Can you imagine viewing those pictures on the big screen, right at the reception?

The uses you can put mobile broadband to are limited only by your imagination.