Quality of life

Think back over the past year. What single change — ignoring relationships with friends, family and partners — has most improved the quality of your life? And what was the best change within the past two years?

If you can't think of anything, that probably means that you are either incredibly happy and therefore can't see how your quality of life could be improved, or you are desperately unhappy and can't see how...

For me, the answers are clear. Over the the past two years, the best change was starting to play football with my colleagues at Spotlight Verlag.

Each Tuesday evening, we play for an hour or so. This is fun, is good for my fitness, and is a bonding experience with my colleagues — mainly men, but also two women from the Business Spotlight team: Carol Scheunemann and Michelle Carstens.

Over the past year, the best change was getting an Apple iPhone. Groan now, if you must, but I'm serious.

Let me say in advance that I am not being paid by Apple for saying this. Nor does Spotlight Verlag receive any money from Apple.

But the iPhone has revolutionized my communication habits. I now have permanent access to the internet when I am travelling, access to my private e-mails and the chance to play my favourite music. Wonderful. Oh yes, and it's also a phone.

But many of the key benefits of the iPhone come from the mobile applications — known as "apps" — that you can download, often for free.

Some are simply toys, such as the app that turns the iPhone screen into an old-fashioned phone ("Bakelite") or the one that lets you steam up the screen and write your name on it ("iSteam"). Other apps are moderately useful, such as the ones that help you find the nearest bank or work out how fast you jog.

But some apps are real killers, because they are so useful. For example, the apps that create interfaces for Facebook or Skype or the ones for publications such as The Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times.

Apps are now big business, as this BBC report makes clear. There are some 65,000 different apps, which have been downloaded more than 1.5 billion times. They are also being discovered by language publishers, including our friends at Cornelsen, with their new "iTalkBusiness" app.

It would be wrong to say that I couldn't live without my iPhone. Of course I could. But the point is that I wouldn't want to. Just as, despite various injuries, I wouldn't want to give up playing football with my colleagues.