Talking Silently Via IM

Early morning and everyone else in the house is snoring away down the hall. Nothing I like better than chatting with my girlfriend via IM quietly. Her kids are sleeping too, so it's the perfect way to talk without the phone. What did my mom do in an early morning kitchen, tea kettle on the stove ... not IM ... I can barely remember. She read the paper, looked out at the garden to see if it needed weeding.

I love the fact that we have a wide range of technologies that perfectly fit the time and space we're in. Like picking out the right clothes for the right weather, you have an electronic closet of perfect apps.

IM is ideal for quiet mornings in a quiet house. Text on a bus or other transit can be ideal, but don't drive and text (it's potentially more deadly than drive and drink scenarios.) Good old email let's you toss across a few paragraphs, with more thoughtfulness. Wiki at work or in social circles might be the group connection of choice. Twitter for hanging out fast and loose, jotting notes to a crew. And all the pages ... myspace and facebook and blogs ... and the interesting ways people use those. And the "here's what I love" apps like Digg. What a wardrobe of custom-fit e-duds. Just slip one on for size. Pret-a-porter, or maybe Pret-a-transporter.