Panos.gr | Late night blogging: The wonders of technology

During the last few months, I haven't been really updating my blog. And that is due to heavy work load but also a change in the way I'm using the net. The change is mainly due to facebook and twitter. Blogging, as WIRED magazine recently declared, feels so much like 2004... :-)

So yes, twitter is great and everyone is starting using it, but I feel I've come to a point that twitter can be for small and "live" chatter with friends plus sharing links, facebook can really be about photo and video sharing with friends plus discussing about a common passion, and blogging... Well, blogging can be about long posts like this one. Posts that summarize one's thoughts and get a point across in a way only the written world can.

So like I was saying to some friends the other day, in the age where everyone tweets and blogs, I really miss and enjoy the well written articles that carry a point of view. I'm not saying my rumbling here is worth your time, but... you know what I mean, right?

Anyway, the wonders of technology not only bring us new platforms to exchange ideas, but also new toys to play with.

So for Christmas I got a BlackBerry Bold, and I'm quite happy with it. It has a big crisp screen, 3G HSDPA connection (specially useful when one is on Cosmote's network) and it allows me to reply to emails and write down thoughts easily --and in Greek!-- with its qwerty keyboard, using a clean and reliable OS I'm familiar with. It also takes decent photos and videos, and yes, it copies and pastes!

But, only a few hours ago, my first "love" in gadget land, Palm, just came back from the "dead" by announcing the new Palm Pre smartphone. Now, this one just solves all the design problems of the iPhone, the BlackBerry and the G1, by having a full touch screen with a hidden portrait qwerty keyboard. At the same time, it has an amazing looking OS, based on Linux and Web technology like good old HTML and CSS. Additionally it has some magic gestures one can do to bring up various screens or go back in history, plus uses a "deck of cards" metaphor for all open applications. That all means that we'll soon have a very usable and beautiful phone is our hands that just might be the only real competition to the iPhone.

At the same time, Microsoft is trying hard to keep up with complains by releasing Windows 7 Beta to the public, in a hope to keep users from jumping ship to the Mac OS. While Apple just added some face-recognition magic to its iPhoto suit, enough to make us go "wow" again at.. the wonders of technology.

Being 39 myself, (just had my birthday the other day) means I got to experience times with a black-and-white TV with 2 channels and fixed phones you had to dial by turning your index finger in a circle. Something that felt like these amazing ads for 11880.