When we first set our ideaLab goals, I wanted to tackle having all of our reporters (news and sports) file their content from the field. My goal in this, besides just getting everyone familiar with the technology, was to help everyone realize that adjusting their work flow in this way could actually save them a fair amount of time and be more productive in their day-to-day schedules.

With our new reporters, this was a slow process due to the limited number of devices we have. I loaned out the netbook and iPad to reporters who were covering various court cases, town meetings, press conferences, and election parties – anything where they were out of the office and could take advantage of filing from the field while working on most of their articles remotely.

All of them have done this at least once now and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. They loved being able to use the netbook to take notes and write their articles as they went, rather than having to transcribe and try to read their own messy handwriting. They also like the immediacy of the process and how that especially helpful when reporting on deadline.

Sports reporters have been doing this for a while now and understand the benefits, as they spend most of every week out of the office covering their games, practices, and other events. Sometimes, such as when they're at high school games, they do not have traditional WI-FI to take advantage of or a real press box, so I'm lending them my ideaLab tools to help conquer that challenge.

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So, in a surprising turn of events, all of my ideaLab gear has now arrived. My HP mini net book showed up yesterday and the iPad came this morning.

After a bit of a wait downloading iTunes on the work DSL connection, I got things up and running with a few free apps.

As expected, I was blown away by how smooth the Flipboard app pulls in social media data, including photos and links.

There are near limitless possibilities for what I see as possible with this device, especially for the news industry.

The Wordpress app, which I am typing in right now, is a bit limited in it's functionality but can certainly get the job done for blogging from the field.

That's all for now - I'll update more later once I've had some more time to try out all of the features and download some more apps.