February of 2022 has just completed and it was a big one in world politics. Since February is now over, it is time to cover my reading list for the month.

For the month I only listened to 20 different titles and of these only one was brand new. I can say that I will likely listen to at least one new item for the next few months because I have a few items on pre-order and there is one new item in March, April, and May.

The title I want to highlight this month is "After On: A Novel of Silicon Valley" by Rob Reid.

Meet Phluttr—a diabolically addictive new social network and a villainess, heroine, enemy, and/or bestie to millions. Phluttr has ingested every fact and message ever sent to, from, and about her innumerable users. Her capabilities astound her makers—and they don’t even know the tenth of it.

But what’s the purpose of this stunning creation? Is it a front for something even darker and more powerful than the NSA? A bid to create a trillion-dollar market by becoming “The UberX of Sex”? Or a reckless experiment that could spawn the digital equivalent of a middle-school mean girl with enough charisma, dirt, and cunning to bend the entire planet to her will?

Phluttr has it in her to become the greatest gossip, flirt, or matchmaker in history. Or she could cure cancer, bring back Seinfeld, then start a nuclear war. Whatever she does, it’s not up to us. But a motley band of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and engineers might be able to influence her.

Disclaimer: The links below will provide a bit of a commission if you purchase anything.

Previous Reading Lists:

• January 2022
• December 2021
• November 2021
• October 2021
• September 2021
• August 2021
• July 2021
• June 2021
• May 2021
• April 2021
• March 2021
• February 2021
• January 2021

Winter in the northern United States means that the temperature will likely be cold. Cold weather brings dry air. When you have dry air there are ways of rectifying this. If your heating system has a humidifier attached, you can use that to provide additional moisture throughout your place.

However, not everyone has a humidifier on their heating system, I am one of those that does not. For those who do not have a humidifier that can be used throughout your entire home, you might want to need a get local humidifiers that can put moisture in the air. Most of the time, I do not need a humidifier, but there are those times when the air is just a bit too dry. For those times when I do need it, I needed get a couple of humidifiers.

The first humidifier I purchased was a VOCOLinc FlowerBud Smart Diffuser. I purchased this back in November of 2020 and thought it would be sufficient. However, after using it for a month or so, it was not up to the job, at least not for the room I needed it in. Because this was not doing the job, I went looking for a different humidifier.

I ended up buying another humidifier. This second one could hold a lot more water than the Flowerbud Diffuser. The second humidifier I purchased was a "Movtip Cool Mist Humidifier". This one was a bit better suited for the room it was needed. The Cool Mist humidifier could hold 10 times a much water than VOCOLinc Flowerbud. The VOCOLinc FlowerBud can only hold 0.3 liters while the Movtip could hold 3 liters. This was a lot more water and could provide more moisture for a longer time.

The Movtip humidifier is a basic humidifier with no smarts to it. In order for me to control it, I ended up using an Eve Smart Plug that I could control using HomeKit. One feature it did have was the ability to shutoff when there was no water remaining. Even though it could do the job, it still had its own drawbacks. The first amongst these is that it is not natively HomeKit compatible.

The biggest downside to the Movtip is the fact that the fans in the device could easily get clogged. Not the bubbling feature, but the air intake at the bottom of the device would get clogged. When this occurred it would require cleaning. To add additional annoyance, it was not a straight-forward process. It would require disassembling the entire unit and then cleaning the entire interior. Another annoyance was that when it did get clogged, the fan would start making significant noise, to the point where it was difficult to ignore and could easily be disruptive if you were trying to watch something in the same room.

Because of these issues, I went looking for another humidifier. I knew I wanted another HomeKit enabled humidifier. I looked at a bunch of humidifiers and ended up going with another VOCOLinc humidifier. This one is the VOCOLinc MistFlow Smart Humidifier . Let us get into the device itself.

Device

The VOCOLinc MistFlow Smart Humidifier is a large product. But this is for a good reason. This humidifier can hold up to 2.5 liters, or 0.66 gallons, of water. This allows the humidifier to run for a long time, similar to the Movtip. While this is less than the 3 liters in the Movtip one that I had, but 2.5 liters is plenty of water and allows the device to run for a long time.

On the back of the humidifier there is a water gauge, with a mark indicating the maximum amount of water that the humidifier can hold. The humidifier has a translucent front that has two purposes. The first is to provide an easy way to see the amount of water remaining as well providing the mechanism for the light on the humidifier.

Connectivity

The VOCOLinc MistFlow Smart Humidifier connects via Wi-Fi. It can connect to a 2.4GHz 802.11b/g/n, also known as Wi-Fi 2, Wi-Fi 3, or a Wi-Fi 4 network.

Controls

The VOCOLinc MistFlow Humidifier has only a few physical controls on the humidifier itself. These include a button to control the light and a button to control the mist. The light button will turn on or off the light. Meanwhile, the mist button will allow you to toggle between three settings, "High", "Low", and "Off".

Light

The MistFlow humidifier has a built-in light on it. The light can be controlled separately, so you can have the light on without the humidifier or the humidifier on without the light. When I am using the humidifier, I typically do not have the light on, but if you need just a bit of light it can be useful. The light can also provide a bit of ambiance in order to set a mood, if you so choose.

Those are all of the basics of the Humidifier, we will discuss more a bit later. For now, let us discuss the setup.

Setup

The VOCOLinc MistFlow humidifier is a HomeKit-enabled device. This means you can easily add the device through the Home app on your iPhone or iPad. This is done by scanning the code on the back of the device. HomeKit will communicate with the device, configure the wireless connection, and add the device to HomeKit. Once you add it, you can use Siri to control it or you can use the HomeKit app. You can also configure automation if you would like.

Next, let us look at the options that you have once you have finished the setup through HomeKit.

HomeKit Options

As previously mentioned, The VOCOLinc MistFlow Humidifier is a HomeKit-enabled device. This means that once it is setup and configured you can manage it through HomeKit as well as changing the settings.

When the MistFlow humidifier is added to HomeKit, you can configure it the light and humidifier to be shown as a single tile or as two separate tiles. I personally use have it configured as two separate tiles, because as mentioned earlier, I typically do not use the light, so it makes it easier to manage the humidifier on its own. When configured as two separate tiles you can control the mist portion separately from the light.

Humidifier

There are only two items you can control with the Humidifier tile, the intensity of the mist, and the power. There is a slider and a power button. You might think that the slider would control the intensity of the mist. However, it does not. The slider controls the target humidity level.

There is no actual indication on this screen for what the current percentage that the slider is at. The only way to see the current humidity target is to actually close the popup and see the percentage. If you need to adjust it, you can open it up again and adjust the slider to the target humidity level.

If you set the percentage to a number below the current humidity level, the unit will shut off automatically.

Light

When you open the light tile, you will see a slider. The slider controls the brightness of the light. You can slide it to anywhere between 0% and 100%.

Below the slider are six different color options. You can tap on any one of them and adjust the color for the light. When you configure the color you have two different types of color options. These are "Color" and "Temperature". With the "Color" option you can select from any color you want.

For "Temperature" option you can choose from a color temperature. Here you will see a circle with some gradients that go between blue and orange. In theory, if you were to select the "Orange" you would expect the color to be orange, but this is not the case. Because it is a color temperature the orange means it will be a "warmer" shade of light. Similarly, if you select the dark blue it will be more of a "cooler" temperature.

During my testing, it seemed like the best results were to select an actual color instead of using the color temperature wheel. You can select up to six presets and you can easily select any of the presets and the light will change to the select color.

Even though there are some options within HomeKit, these options are limited in their functionality. You can actually configure a lot more options via the VOCOLinc app, so let us look at that next.

VOCOLinc App

As mentioned earlier, the physical buttons on the VOCOLinc MistFlow are meant to be limited. They only provide basic on/off functionality. The VOCOLinc app provides some additional options for both the humidifier itself as well as the light.

Humidifier

The VOCOLinc app allows you to select one of five different mist levels. The higher the level the more mist that will be put into the air and the faster the humidifier will reach the target humidity.

If you are not aiming for a particular target humidity, but would prefer to set a specific amount of time, you can do so by tapping on the "Set Timer" button next to the "Countdown Timer" label. You can set any time frame between 1 minute and 24 hours.

Light

The VOCOLinc MistFlow Smart Humidifier comes with a full RGB light. This means that you can set the color to just about any color you want, depending on your mood. This means you can have a red, light, blue light, green light, lilac light, or any other color.

Besides the choice of color, you can also add one of three different effects. Thee effects are:

• Flow
• Blink
• Breathe

When you select one of these effects you will actually have the option of selecting up to six different colors to use for the effect. The default colors are:

• Red
• Yellow
• Green
• Light Blue
• Dark Blue
• Pink

You can tap on any one of the colors and select one that you would prefer. If you want to remove any of the colors you can do so by tapping on the "…" button, which will put it into "Edit" mode. Once in the Edit mode you can then tap on the color you want to move.

Next, let us look at each of the available effects, starting with Flow.

Flow

The "Flow" will slowly transition from one color to the next with a gentle transition between colors, similar to that of a gradient. The default interval for this effect is 3.0 seconds.

Blink

The "Blink" effect will switch between each of the colors, like turning on and off a light. The color will stay shown for ever how long you have the interval set as. The default interval for "Blink" is 0.5 seconds.

Breathe

The "Breathe" effect is similar to "Flow" in that it will transition between colors, but it does so by starting at a low brightness of the color, moving to the maximum brightness set, and then transitioning back to zero. After it gets back to zero, it moves onto the next color. The effect is aptly named, because it just like breathing and you could even use the color change for breathing exercises if you wanted. The default interval for this effect is 1.0 seconds.

Effect Options

Each of these has the same options available. You can set the interval between when the light will change, as well as the brightness. These are both set via a slider. The interval can be between 0.5 seconds and 10 seconds between when the effect changes.

The second slider is for brightness, and this ranges from 0 percent (off) to full 100% brightness.

There is an option available for each effect that will reset the effect back to its defaults, including the colors and interval. This reset is on a per-effect basis. There is one thing to note, the brightness setting is not reset when you reset an effect, and it is a single setting for all of the effects.

Noise

Every humidifier is going to make some level of noise. The VOCOLinc Mistflow is pretty quiet. While I can hear it, it is not too loud at all. It is not loud enough, even at the highest level, to interfere while watching in the same room.

This significantly contrasts with the current status of my Movtip humidifier. I can hear the Movtip one when it is running, just about anywhere in my house, it has gotten that loud in just over a year.

Downsides

There are a few downsides to the humidifier. The first is that while it can have 2.5 liters, even when filled up to the maximum 2.5 liters, there looks like there is still room for more water. Therefore, it could be easy to accidentally overfill it. If you do overfill it, there will be no mist coming out of the top of the humidifier. If VOCOLinc were to do a revision, a different colored around the interior of the tank that shows the fill level would make it easier to know where the maximum is, without having to look at the back of the device. Either that or put a mark on the front to show the maximum level.

Related to this is that the container is secured to the humidifier itself. This means that you cannot fill the water container without using another container to fill it. This is something to keep in mind. Given that I mostly stopped using the Movtip, and it has a 3 liter tank, I now use the Movtip tank to fill up the VOCOLinc container.

This contrasts with the VOCOLinc Flowerbud humidifier that I have, because the Flowerbud comes with its own vessel to fill up that humidifier, and it exactly allows you to fill it up to the maximum for the Flowerbud. If one were to be included, it would not need to be a full 2.5 liters, but something that could fit inside the thank for shipping would be sufficient.

There is one potential downside, depending on where you intend to use the MistFlow humidifier. On the front of the humidifier are LED indicators for the light and mist level. These light can be quite bright and there is no way to turn them off, without unplugging the humidifier itself.

One of the best features of the VOCOLinc humidifiers is that they automatically turn off when the water level drops. However, on the Mistflow sensor leaves a good 1/4-inch of water left in the tank. This contrasts to Flowerbud model where the sensor sits below the bottom of the water container, so when the Flowerbud automatically shuts off there is very little water remaining. There is so little water that you could take a napkin and wipe up all of the water and the napkin would not be entirely saturated.

Closing Thoughts

Overall, the VOCOLinc MistFlow Humidifier is pretty decent HomeKit-enabled humidifier. The 2.5 liter tank provides enough water to last an entire day. It may be able to go even longer if you set the mist amount within the app.

It would be nice for VOCOLinc to separate out the color and brightness in some manner. Maybe even with just a horizontal line below the color settings. This could also have a label above the brightness that says "Global Settings" or something similar. This is a minor thing, but given that the brightness is entirely separate.

The effects are a nice though, if you want to use them, but the variety of color options is great if you want to create some sort of mood.

The VOCOLinc MistFlow humidifier is not inexpensive, retailing at nearly $70. However, given the feature set, including the amount of water that it can hold, it is a decent value and the MistFlow humidifier could be the right solution for you.

wwriteLite has been in development for almost 14 years. Over that time there have been many changes. The app has gone from being a very basic text editor, to now having a significant number of features, including templates, writing prompts, one word prompts, and even rich text file support.

wwriteLite 8.3.0 is probably one of the biggest updates thus far, and it includes only a few features, but they are big ones. The new features include:

• Saved Prompts
• Prompt Searching
• Saved Prompt Syncing
• File and Template Syncing

Let us look at each of these in turn, starting with Saved Prompts.

Saved Prompts

Version 8.0 of wwriteLite introduced "One Word Prompts" and "Writing Prompts". Now, with 8.3.0 you can save any of the prompts. This is done by opening up the One Word or Writing prompt screen and then tapping on the "star" icon. This will save the prompt.

You can then go back and look at your Saved Prompts by performing the following steps:

1. On the File List screen, tap on the "+" button.
2. Tap on the "Prompts" menu.
3. Tap on "Saved Prompts".

Here you can tap on any of your saved prompts and it will create a new file with the saved prompt.

Prompt Searching

Also new is that the ability to search One Word Prompt, Writing Prompts, or even your saved prompts. This is done by swiping down from one of the prompt screens to perform a search. This is only available on devices running iOS 15 or later, or macOS Monterey or later.

Saved Prompt Syncing

In addition to being able to saving prompts, you can enable Saved Prompt syncing by performing the following:

1. Tap on Tools.
2. Tap on Settings.
3. Scroll down to "Syncing".
4. Tap on "Enable Saved Prompt Syncing".

Saved Prompt syncing must be enabled on each device. Saved Prompt data is stored in iCloud and only you have access to your saved prompts.

File and Template Syncing

Similar to Saved Prompt syncing, you can now enable syncing of your files between devices. The steps to enable File and Template syncing are similar to that of Saved Prompts. The steps are:

1. Tap on Tools.
2. Tap on Settings.
3. Scroll down to "Syncing".
4. Tap on "Enable File and Template Syncing".

Just as with Saved Prompt syncing, you will need to enable File and Template syncing on each of your devices. As with Saved Prompts, your Files and Templates are stored in iCloud and only you will have access to your files and template.

This covers all of the new features with wwriteLite 8.3.0. Syncing has been a long time coming and it is now here.

You can view the full change log on the wwriteLite website. As usual, wwriteLite 8.3.0 is a free update and is available as a free download.

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed things in many ways, including accelerating trends that had already begun. One of the trends that had begun prior to the pandemic was contactless payments. Apple Pay has been available since 2014 with the release of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.

Even though Apple Pay has been quite successful, not everybody can use Apple Pay. There is an industry standard that many cards have incorporated that allow you tap on a payment terminal instead of having to insert your card and wait for authorization.

Yesterday, Apple announced that the ability to use contactless payments is coming to some models of iPhone. That feature is called "Tap to Pay". Tap to Pay will allow businesses to accept payments by using the Near Field Communication, or NFC, chip that is in an iPhone XS or newer.

"Tap to Pay on iPhone will work with contactless credit and debit cards from leading payment networks, including American Express, Discover, Mastercard, and Visa."

This is not an automatic feature for businesses because it will require a "partner-enabled" iOS app as well. The first partner that Apple will be working with is Stripe.

Here is the best feature for businesses: "No additional hardware is needed to accept contactless payments through Tap to Pay on iPhone.". This means that as long as the business has an iPhone XS or newer, it should work.

Ultimately, this means that if you have a contactless credit, or debit, card and the merchant has an iPhone with a Stripe-enabled app that supports "Tap to Pay", you will be able to simply tap your credit or debit card and pay for goods and services. Similarly, you can also use your iPhone or Apple Watch to pay using its NFC chip.

The new feature will roll out in the United States first, and possibly other countries later on. Apple has stated that other payment providers. Tap to Pay will also be rolling out to Apple's own stores later this year.

Source: Apple

There have been some stories lately about Apple's AirTag and how they can be used for malicious purposes. Some of these include Silent AirTags on sale online, AirTags being used to steal cars, and AirTags being used to stalk women.

I am not going to argue that they are not being used for these purposes, because clearly they are. Despite these malicious uses, an AirTag can be used for its intended purpose, to find a missing item. The is not a super long story that involves things like diving into a river or anything like that, but it is still an example of their intended use case.

Last May I posted a review of Apple's AirTags. When I wrote the review I was not sure how I would use them and decided to put them on my various keys. At the time it seemed somewhat strange to do so, because my keys normally never leave my sight and are always put back into the same place when I am done with them. Despite this I have kept the AirTags attached to my keys, and I am glad that I did. I have not really had any case when I needed to actually try and locate one of the keys. However, that changed last week.

Living in the northern hemisphere in February means that it is likely that you will see snow, and we definitely have seen our share of snow this season. In particular we had a storm last Tuesday into Wednesday. Two things that typically go with snow are cold and wind. There's a Midwestern saying that goes "It wouldn't be so bad without the wind", and it is 100% true in the winter in the Midwestern United States.

My normal routine is to go grocery shopping at the end of my work week. It being the day after the storm, there was still a lot of snow on the ground, and it was windy and cold. I was returning to my car and pulled the remote to unlock my car out of my pocket. I unlocked the door, put the groceries into my car, and put the cart back in its proper spot. I removed the items from my pocket to find the key that starts my car, I realized that it was missing.

Now, I was at the grocery store, so obviously I had it and I put it in my pocket when I got out of the car to go into the grocery store. I panicked for a second and then realized that I had an AirTag attached to that key, so I should be able to find it.

I started by looking at the "Find My" app to see where the app said the key was. It indicated that it was last seen on the street next to grocery store. I then tapped on the "Items" tab to start locating it.

At first it said that it could not find the key. I started to backtrack to where I had been, so I went back to the cart that I put back, nothing there. As I began walking back towards the car, the app showed a weak signal for the AirTag. At this point I started to play a sound to see if I could locate the AirTag by sound while I walked back to the store. As I was walking back the App started showing that I was getting close and I found the key laying on the ground.

Within 2 minutes of it first finding the signal I was able to find the key. I had dropped it out of my pocket when I pulled the remote out of my pocket to open the car.

Suffice to say I am glad that I did buy the AirTags and that I put them on my keys, because it definitely came in handy.

It is now February of 2022 and that means it is time to provide the list of items that I read throughout January of 2022. There have been a couple of changes. First, there is now a graphic at the top of the post with the recommendation for the month. The second change is that there are now separate links for Amazon and Apple.

I only listened to 17 titles last month. Of which only 11.76 percent, or just two titles, being the first time I listened. This title is "Singularity Trap", by Dennis E. Taylor. This was a good science-fiction book that might be worth a read or listen. Here's a synopsis:

Determined to give his wife and children a better life back home, Ivan Pritchard ventures to the edge of known space to join the crew of the Mad Astra as an asteroid miner. He's prepared for hard work and loneliness—but not the unthinkable. After coming into contact with a mysterious alien substance, Pritchard finds an unwelcome entity sharing his mind, and a disturbing physical transformation taking place. With his very humanity at stake, Pritchard must save mankind from a full-scale interstellar war.

You may notice that I have listed the Interdependency Trilogy again, because I did actually listen to the trilogy again because it is a good series. I wish there were more stories within the universe.

Disclaimer: The links below will provide a bit of a commission if you purchase anything.

Previous Reading Lists:

• December 2021
• November 2021
• October 2021
• September 2021
• August 2021
• July 2021
• June 2021
• May 2021
• April 2021
• March 2021
• February 2021
• January 2021

2007 was a big year for everyone technologically, but a lot of other things happened that year for me as well. Some of these items include:

• Announcement of the iPhone
• Windows Vista
• Joining Twitter (This article)
• Purchase of a 21.5-inch iMac
• Bought the original Apple TV
• Bought a 4GB original iPhone
• Purchased a Black 13-inch MacBook

I thought it would be interesting to go back and look at how those events have had an impact, mostly on me, but on the wider technology world. I did not initially think about writing this post, because it did not occur to me, but in reality it should have. That topic is Twitter, so let us start with Twitter early on.

Early Twitter

Twitter is not that old in terms of social networks. In fact Twitter itself is almost 16 years old. The first tweet written by twitter c-founder Jack Dorsey was written on March 21st, 2006. Twitter began as a service that you could use via text message. In fact, this was why Twitter was originally limited to 140 characters, to take into account any sort of difference in cellular carriers. The idea was to publish what you were doing while out and about, via text message, and then read what others had written on the web. Twitter starting in 2006 meant that this was before the iPhone, before smart phones becoming common place, and definitely before unlimited data on cell phones. However, this was right when many had unlimited text messages, so it was a good time to start such a service.

Twitter started out as a place that comprised of mostly people into technology. This is because the service was shown off at South by Southwest, which is a combination technology and music conference. Twitter was conceived in the era of text messaging. This meant that Twitter was designed with text messaging in mind, and therefore was limited to 140 characters, which is the same as many SMS services provided by carriers.

I happen to join Twitter on January 28th, 2007 at 7:59pm, so just about 15 years ago as this is posted. The time I signed up is well before the service really took off. I heard about it from Justine Ezarik on a podcast, and she was talking about the service. She has been on Twitter since July of 2006. Once Twitter had started to become popular, it began to encounter some issues. In particularly, Twitter had some issues with scaling and early twitter users remember, sometimes fondly, the 'Fail Whale".

Twitter has since improved on this and the times that twitter has failures are few and far between these days, but it still does happen from time to time. Typically it is due to a larger problem, like DNS issues, and often affects many sites not just Twitter itself.

Early in twitter's life you could send and receive tweets via text message. This was a great way of interacting with the service while on the go, because some users did have unlimited texting plans, particularly after June of 2007 in the United States. This is because a new device, the iPhone, was finally available for sale.

The iPhone increased the desire for third party apps. While there would not be any official app support until 2008, that did not stop people from creating apps.

Third-Party Apps

As mentioned earlier, Twitter was also accessible via text message, but Twitter has always had a website where you could see your timeline, send tweets, and send direct message to other users. The website was primary method of using the service early in its lifetime. While Twitter's popularity was increasing over 2007 and 2008, it was not until the official release of the iOS Software Development Kit, or SDK, that third-party clients began to be created.

While the web interface was the most popular way, there was a contingent of users who wanted to use Twitter while on the go and on their iPhone. In order to accommodate this desire, a bunch of third-party twitter clients were created.

Om Malik had a blog post from December of 2008 that had a number of the third-party clients. Having looked at this list there were some that I completely forgot about.

The ability to have third-party clients were made possible through Twitters APIs. This is because Twitter itself did not have its own app and actually wanted developers to create applications to access the platform. Some of the other early Twitter available at the time included:

• Tweetie
• Twitterific
• Echofon
• La Twit

I remember purchasing Tweetie and using that for a while. Tweetie was such a good Twitter client that Twitter acquired Tweetie in April of 2010 to be used as the official Twitter client.

While the early days of Twitter thrived on third-party Twitter clients, the service changed over time to put a lot more emphasis on the official Twitter app. Lately though, that approach has changed again that allows third-party to build comparable clients. No, they are not feature for feature the same, but many of the things that used to be exclusive to the official Twitter client have now become available for third-party apps to adopt if they so choose.

Clients and services are not the only things that have changed, my usage of Twitter has significantly changed over the years.

My Usage

Twitter has changed significantly over the years, both visually as well as how I use it. Twitter initially began as a way of posting things about my day, Over time though that has changed to be more of a place where I get my news. That is not to say that I do not use Twitter for communicating with certain people, I definitely still do use it for that, but it not the primary focus.

As time has gone on though, I ended up building some friendships with those on twitter. Some of those that I have followed early in my time on Twitter I still follow today. Beyond this, I have built up some friendships with those on Twitter. Some of these relationships are more recent than others, but none are more important than others.

Conversely, with Twitter being around so long there have been those that are no longer around. Some because they passed away, but also some left of their own accord due to harassment, or just due to non-usage.

In the early days of Twitter it felt a lot more like a giant group chat. The is because it was primarily used by early technology adopters, so you would be able to keep

There are two features that came about organically, but are absolutely essential on Twitter today. These are mentions and retweets. Mentions on twitter were easily done by putting someone's twitter handle somewhere in the tweet, typically at the beginning. If they were following you they would see the fact that you mentioned them and would be able to respond. Eventually Twitter added official support for mentions and Twitter would not be the same without them.

Early in the life of twitter you could easily be a Twitter completionist, meaning that you would read all of the new tweets from everyone that you followed. There are some that still do this, but even I no longer do this. I do have a list where I try to read every tweet, but sometimes that is too much and I ma not able to do so.

My usage has significantly shifted, particularly within the last few years. I used to be on Twitter a lot more than I am now, constantly interacting and keeping up with the latest developments around the world. Recently though, my twitter experience has been more of a "pop in see what is going on and pop out again". It is no longer my "go to" when I pick up my phone or use my computer. I am not sure why this has changed, but it has.

I have spent a lot of time talking about the early days of Twitter, let us look at where Twitter is today.

Twitter Today

Twitter is no longer primarily a place for just people interested in technology. Now it encompasses a whole range of interest in topics and Twitter has definitely become more mainstream.

If you can think of a topic of interest to yourself, I am sure you can find people who share the same interest. This could be something like the NFL, College Basketball, current news, video games, a tv show, or just about any topic, there is a group interested.

Each social network has its own unique function. Twitter's function is where you can find information about breaking news. Some of the information may not be 100% accurate, but there is a lot of accurate information surrounding the news as well.

Mentioned earlier is that Twitter began to move away from supporting third-party clients and instead opting to focus on their own app, to the extent that there was a great disparity between what features offered to third-parties and what the official Twitter app was capable of offering. The disparities were not just because third-parties did not implement features, but because they could not do so.

Within the last year, at least as of this writing, Twitter has begun changing their stance on third-party clients and has started to offer a whole new API that provides many of the same features that are available in the official Twitter app. There are still some things not offered to third-parties, but this is slowly changing. I suspect there may eventually be feature parity between what third-party apps can offer and what the official Twitter app has, but it will take time.

Closing Thoughts

I am not on that many social networks. I have a Facebook account but I hardly use that anymore. I also have Instagram, but I just view stuff on there and do not post a lot. I also have a Mastodon account and have been trying to use that more, but I do not have many people that I follow, nor that follow me, on there.

I do not have TikTok, nor Snapchat, nor any others. Twitter is by far the social network I use. It's the one I have used the most and also the one that I get the most benefit from. As mentioned earlier, I have built up some really good relationships through Twitter, some of them are local, but most are not. It is not likely that I will stop using Twitter anytime soon, but it is possible that the way I use it may change, but only time will tell. You can, of course, follow me on Twitter if you want.

There are times throughout our lives when particular years tend to be more important than others. For me, one of those years was 2007. A lot of things happened that year, at least for me technologically speaking. Some of these include:

• Announcement of the iPhone
• Windows Vista (this article)
• Purchase of a 21.5-inch iMac
• Bought the original Apple TV.
• Bought a 4GB original iPhone
• Purchased a Black 13-inch MacBook

Over the course of the year, I will look back at each of the events fifteen years after they occurred. Each of the posts will look back at my thoughts, and what has happened in the intervening time.

The first one, previously covered, was the announcement of the iPhone. It was a significant turning point for me in terms of phone platforms. There are instances where a new device can bring complete joy, awe, and inspiration. The original iPhone was that.

However, the iPhone was not available for sale until the end of June 2007. There was a other pivotal, at least to me, item that came out on January 30th, 2007. That product, was Windows Vista. Now, you might be confused given that I only use Macs, why I would be talking about Windows Vista. In fact, Vista was the catalyst that caused me to switch to the Mac.

If you were steeped in technology or even tangentially aware, Windows Vista was not the best release of Windows that Microsoft has released. Vista was an operating system that was released five years after its predecessor, Windows XP.

Windows Vista made some significant changes, like User Access Control, or UAC and Encrypted File System, and including support with the Trusted Platform Module, or TPM.

Windows Vista to this day still has the reputation of being one of the worst, if not the worst, version of Windows every released. While it did improve as the years went on, it could not outlive that reputation of not being a good product.

Along with these was a new Windows Display Driver Model, or WDDM required device driver manufacturers to re-work their device drivers. However, many drivers were not optimized for Windows Vista. Because of these non-optimized drivers, the device drivers would crash constantly, like every 5 or 10 minutes, without fail.

This caused nothing but headaches because the entire system to basically be unusable. The system would not blue-screen, but with the graphics drivers crashing consistently, it would not allow you to effectively do anything on the computer.

I cannot be 100% certain what I did to mitigate the issue. If I recall correctly, I think I ended up changing the theme to be the basic theme, which would disable the advanced graphics features and would allow Vista to actually run. Even with this mitigation in place, I think this entire event put the seed of doubt in my mind about whether or not to continue to use Windows.

It turned out, that less than two months later, in March, I ended up buying the 21.5-inch iMac, but more on that closer to the time that I bought the iMac.

Today Microsoft announced their intention to acquire Activision Blizzard in a deal worth $68.7 Billion, all-cash deal. This is a huge acquisition for Microsoft for a couple of reasons.

First, because Activision Blizzard is the maker of some of the most notably franchises around, including Call of Duty, Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, Pitfall, and Guitar Hero, just to name a few. This is a huge get for Microsoft, and the Xbox in particular.

The second reason is that these franchises are already big on Microsoft's platforms, Adding the catalog of games to Microsoft means that even more games to Game Pass could easily entice even more subscribers to use the service.

Along with the announcement today, Microsoft also announced that they had 25 Million Game Pass, and as John Gruber pointed out, at an average of $12.50 per month, comes out to about $4 billion per year, and that is just the current subscribers.

Challenges

Even with the announcement there are some uphill challenges to overcome. These include regulatory pressure and Activision Blizzard culture issues.

Regulatory Issues

Today's political landscape could prove challenging for Microsoft to get approval for the acquisition. That is because governments are looking at every acquisition, particularly in the tech sector, and they could stop the acquisition. One thing that Microsoft does have in its favor is that if the acquisition were to go forward, they would still be smaller than Sony and Tencent. One thing that would be in favor for the acquisition is that it would keep the United States competitive with Japan and China.

The second, and bigger, challenge is the culture at Activision Blizzard. There have long been indications that Activision Blizzard has had a problem with sexual harassment and discrimination, to the point where the Security and Exchange Commission is investigating.

In order to help change the culture, Microsoft is making some changes to the leadership amongst the gaming unit. Here is a graphic that they produced showing the changes.

What you might notice is that among the leadership there are seven women and five men. This should help change the culture at the Activision Blizzard, at least that is the hope.

We will see if the acquisition is blocked or allowed to go through or whether it will be blocked. If it is approved, I hope Microsoft cane make some major changes to fix the issues at Activision Blizzard.

Source: Xbox News, Microsoft News

"Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything". When someone states something like the previous quote it is often seen as hyperbole. However, in the case of this exact quote, it was quite prophetic and not hyperbole at all. Although it would take a bit of time for it to catch on.

This is the opening line to a keynote that introduced a device that would change the way that people use technology. The keynote was for the MacWorld San Francisco that took place 15 years ago today, on January 9th, 2007.

I have not been lucky enough to attend any of Apple's keynotes. Instead, I would watch them at home. I distinctly remember feeling that this would be a different one, and indeed it was. As Steve Jobs stated, "Today we are introducing three revolutionary products, A Widescreen iPod, Revolutionary mobile phone, and an internet communicator…Are you getting it, these are not three separate devices. This is one device, and we are calling it iPhone".

Apple introduced the iPhone well before it was to be on sale. The iPhone did not go on sale until June 29th, 2007. The rationale for announcing it so early in order to avoid any information being leaked. Jobs even stated as much in the keynote. For years there had been rumors that Apple was building a phone. In fact, Apple started by making a tablet, but they could not get the technology to scale properly, so instead they turned to making a phone.

Was the iPhone the first Smartphone, no, that would likely go to the Palm or Blackberry. Yet, the iPhone has indisputably been one of the most popular lines of devices ever produced. The introduction of the iPhone sparked the modern cell phone revolution. Many of the paradigms and interaction methods introduced with the iPhone remain to this day, including swiping and pinch to zoom, just to name a couple of examples.

The iPhone not only changed the way we interact with mobile devices, but it also brought a much more prevalent and larger revolution, the mobile app revolution. Again, the iPhone was not the first to have apps, but it was the device that help usher in a new digital economy. While it is entirely possible to use a mobile device using only the provided applications, it is very very likely that every smartphone user has installed at least one additional app to their phone.

Skeptics

At the time of its launch, there were many who did not think as though Apple could pull it off. For instance, Nokia's Chief Strategist at the time, Anssi Vanjoki stated:

The development of mobile phones will be similar in PCs. Even with the Mac, Apple has attracted much attention at first, but they have still remained a niche manufacturer. That will be in mobile phones as well.

Another example is from Palm CEO Ed Colligan, he said

We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.

The last example is from Research in Motion's Co-CEO of Blackberry, Jim Balsillie,

It’s kind of one more entrant into an already very busy space with lots of choice for consumers. But in terms of a sort of a sea-change for BlackBerry, I would think that’s overstating it.

At the same Macworld event Steve Jobs stated that Apple was hoping to sell 10 million iPhones in all of 2008, which would have been one percent of the overall market at the time. It took Apple just over 74 days to sell their one millionth iPhone. Apple did reach their goal of selling 10 million iPhones in 2008, when they sold 6.9 million iPhones in their 4th fiscal quarter, alone, which was from July to September 2008.

Personal Journey with iPhone

As for my own personal journey with the iPhone, that is an easy one. I did not buy an iPhone on launch day. I actually waited until the second day, June 30th. While there was definitely less fanfare that day, it was actually probably better because I was the fourth person in line when I went to get mine. I can clearly recall the delight of being able to use a whole new type of cell phone. My Motorola Razr V3 was still a great phone, but the iPhone was different.

Since that day, I have only had an iPhone as my preferred mobile device. While I would prefer not to give up my iPad, if I had to choose only one device between the iPhone and the iPad, I would choose the iPhone every time. My iPhone the device I use the most. It is usually not more than a few feet away from me at any point throughout the day. The iPhone has come a long way in the last 15 years. Will the iPhone last forever, no, nothing ever does. But I am sure it still has a long life left in it.

We now have many things that were not present on the first iPhone. Things like Copy and Paste, Multitasking, and vastly superior cameras and even video recording capabilities. The original iPhone did not even have 3G capability, that would come in 2008 with the release of the iPhone 3G. It is strange to think that the iPhone that begun the entire journey of modern smart phones can no longer be used as a cell phone. Even its four successors, the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and iPhone 4S will no longer be capable of being used more cellular connectivity as of July 1st, 2022.

While there are many who prefer to use Android-based phones, they cannot argue that the iPhone is the device that pushed Google to create Android. I do not think that today's modern technological landscape would be nearly where it is today if it were not for the iPhone. It was, and remains, a truly revolutionary device that has transformed an incalculable number of ways that we do things. It will be interesting to see the next 15 years of the iPhones life will be like. It is possible that the iPhone may be a secondary market and something else may take over.

You can watch the full Macworld keynote on YouTube.