Sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised by how much my various tech toys actually improve my life — or in this case, my workflow. For tomorrow’s “Tech Weekly” feature (see previous entry), the Citizen wanted to use a couple of my photos, and agreed to pay me for them. Some paperwork was naturally involved.

First, I had to sign the freelancer’s agreement. Time was, I would have printed the Word file, signed it, scanned it, and either faxed it or e-mailed it as an image inserted into a Word file or as a PDF. But now I’ve got a tablet. I was able to doodle out my signature and insert it directly into the file, save it as a PDF, and e-mail it back. No printing, no scanning, no faxing, no fuss.

Then they wanted an invoice. Being new and naïve in the ways of the freelancer, I didn’t know what format an invoice took. What to do? I started searching the web. But look! Pages comes with an invoice template, from which I was able to build my own. Signed, saved to PDF, and sent.

That was painless. That’s how it’s supposed to work, folks.