As a blogger, life can be incredibly free. I am free to travel, can work from almost anywhere. It has so many lifestyle advantages – working from a cafe, working while waiting for the kids, working while waiting for a ferry. It is a job that has offered me more freedom than any other in life, but there is one important requirement – the access to connectivity. And reliable connectivity at that. Without good Internet, my beautifully free life becomes meaningless.
I was intrigued when I first heard about a new service called Roamfree Ninja this summer, a personalised hotspot for rent which works almost anywhere in Croatia (and soon in other countries as well). I contacted the guys and managed to agree a deal to try a Ninja for a month.
So how has it been?
The device, a little smaller than a phone, offers ten connections at once, with a generous 75GB a week at 21.5 MBS, and it is supposed to work anywhere in Croatia. In my first week, I was in Zagreb, running from meeting to meeting. The reality for blogging on such weeks is that you are running into cafes to get your online juice, ordering drinks as a trade for the WiFi, running from the next meeting into another cafe, ordering more drinks, and so the day goes on, and the kunas are handed over to the waiters.
This time was different. It was a sunny week in the capital, so I chose a nice spot in a park, activated my Ninja (a touch of a button) and enjoyed true Internet freedom, a freedom which befitted my carefree blogging lifestyle. I calculated how much I had saved in cafe drinks, and it came to more than the daily rent of the hotspot. The ultimate flexibility.
And so it was time to return home to the island of Hvar. A combination of train and ferry, eight hours travel in total, which had always been a blogging black hole. As a blogger, there is nothing more frustrating than having time but no connection, and for me this was the highlight of my Ninja experience, a full day’s work done while in motion, something not previously possible. It meant when I got home, I was a lot less frustrated and free to play with the kids.
Ah, the kids – they were intrigued by Daddy’s new little toy, and keen to try it for themselves with their iPads and Mummy’s phone. Out on the balcony, down on the street, even at the next door neighbours. We had six devices on it at one point, all smoothly connected, and each in an online world of its own.
But how to keep the kids amused on a longer road trip? With a Ninja and an iPad or two, the world of YouTube and beyond is at your beck and call.
While the Ninja is aimed at temporary visitors to Croatia, I found that using it for a month considerably enhanced the quality of my life, allowing me to plan my online time much more productively, and eliminating dead time such as those train and ferry journeys, and allowing better quality offline time with friends and family.
Getting online in Croatia is much easier than in Germany for example, and almost every cafe can give you access to the world for a drink, but for ease of communication at a pace important to you, there is nothing quite like the Ninja, particularly if you are in a group or are travelling somewhere a little remote, or travelling in between – by train, car or ferry. A great addition to the working and tourist life in Croatia.
Paul Bradbury