Size matters. But in the world of communications technology, smaller, not bigger, is what counts. Like cell phones, laptop computers are a necessity for anyone on the road. Putting the two together to transmit information wirelessly is a drag: you have to cable the computer and phone together, and then get the dialup and logon sequences right. Bulk and time-consuming procedures aren’t what the promise of instant communications was all about.

The good news is that new mobile technologies, standards, and tools can offer both voice and data transfers, securely and at high speed. The bottom line is that you can do e-mail, paging, fax, and connect to office networks wirelessly-from a device smaller than a bar of soap.

The Blackberry, developed by Waterloo, Ont.-based Research In Motion Ltd. (www.rim.net), is a pager-sized, wireless e-mail device that uses packet-switching for wireless e-mail along the Cantel (in Canada) and BellSouth (in the U.S.) networks.

Packet-switching breaks down transmissions as they’re transmitted over the wireless network, allowing both voice and data to be sent. It uses bandwidth more economically than switch-based systems, meaning you pay less to do more than on older switch-based systems, which are the basis of cell-phone technology. That also means users get national coverage along most of the routes used by the trucking industry.

The standard Blackberry product is available as a stand-alone handheld device that connects to your ISP, and sends and receives e-mail in much the same way as a desktop system. It saves messages, and can search received and saved messages according to user-defined text. (The device also has a scheduler, address book, and task manager). The Blackberry Exchange edition, which comes in the same size and shape as the standard edition, is the device version that links to an office LAN (Local Area Network), using Microsoft’s Exchange server.

At no cost, Research In Motion offers a software developer’s kit so you can create custom applications using the C++ programming language and Microsoft’s Developer’s Studio. This means you can integrate existing tracking and dispatch applications into your wireless communications system without having to contract out software development to some high-powered IT firm.

Such flexibility has given rise to companies like Descartes Systems (www. descartes.com). It offers delivery and field operation solutions via its DeliveryNet product. DeliveryNet lets you manage and optimize delivery of goods, services, and information using mobile and wireless technology and street-level routing applications.

These products and services are a new way of looking at how ordinary users connect to each other and to their work. Portability, ease of use, and consumer acceptance are the name of the game. And smaller, lighter, and faster is exactly what we’ve been looking for.