Hard and soft SF have never been absolute and self-contained, of course. They've always been a continuum from stories where the tech or science drives everything, to stories where it is faintly in the background, or even not acknowledged.
In the past I think I've called myself a soft SF writer because I didn't want someone to ask me what kind of scientist I was. But one of the changes I've found in the last twenty years is that scientists have made great efforts to explain their work to the public in understandable terms. "Popular science" books now take up a large amount of shelf space in bookshops. I have a fair collection of them, books on DNA and epigenetics, cell biology, space and hyperspace, and a large number of pages stored on my iPad of research I've done while writing.
I've discovered that I prefer researching on the run. I write mainly in cafés, and my favourites are places which have wi-if so I can research as I write. The novella which I've recently completed saw me researching several disparate subjects. Since I bought an iPad I've found it invaluable for researching on the run. I will write to a certain place and then wonder what the science is on a particular subject. And it's now so easy to do an internet search for data.
The ubiquitous Wikipedia always comes to the rescue. I know we're always warned against relying on that data alone, but it's the matter of a few minutes to cross-check the data I find with academic, government, or research websites and confirm its validity.
As a result my stories have begun to take on more science elements. Where twenty years ago I might have fudged the science, now today I can do an Internet search and find out how that really works. Scientists have had to become "popularisers" of their work, and I can usually find a layman's explanation for even the most esoteric areas. All of which has made it easy for my stories to segue into harder science.
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