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This year I have set myself the goal of reading 30 books. I am currently on track to reaching that goal. Most of my reading material comes from two sources. Audible.com and amazon.de. What I like about reading books via Audible.com is the freedom it gives me to do something at the same time as people are telling me stories. This habit was born from listening to podcasts while I went for hour long walks. Over time podcasts went down in quality and my time was taken up by other activities. As a result of the scarcity of time I moved towards audible books. Audible books provide me with an opportunity to listen to stories and learn whilst I do other things. I can listen to them while I commute, while I go for hikes or while I mow the lawn. As a result of this ability to multitask I have finished many more books than I would finish if I was only reading. I am an audible platinum member and I pay in advance. This gives me the option to buy 23 books a year. Audio books are not cheap when you buy them individually so buying a subscription makes sense. Below a certain price I buy the books and use credit when the value justifies it. For at least two years I have felt justified in keeping the subscription. I am lucky because I like to read on electronic devices. I have used iphones, android phones, iPads, iPad Mini, Tablets and a kindle for reading. As a result of this I always have several books with me at all times. I have a tendency to buy many more books than I have the time to read. This is especially true of books when they cost less than an airport coke. Eventually I will get to read them. Today I took a step which may make conventional book readers envious. I will test Kindle Unlimited for the next month. I can “borrow" up to ten books simultaneously per month. I can be as uncommitted as ever with books. I am working through the James Bond Collection and reading three history volumes at the same time.  I “read” the history volumes as audio books and this allows me to enjoy the nice weather we have had. When I am in a fixed location I can read James Bon books on the kindle. At the end of the trial month we will see whether I keep using Kindle unlimited.

Parents in the silly con valley are idiots. They are in a trillion dollar industry and make billions a year because people want to use the technology they are developing. Think about how different my childhood would have been if we had learned camera work and video editing in art classes rather than painting, pottery and other less interesting art forms. Imagine if as a child I had not watched Cousteau Documentaries. Two of my strongest passions would never have emerged… scuba diving and documentary making. The luddites who amass personal wealth worth billions should understand that new technologies promote creativity and innovation rather than the opposite. Look at games and how they have evolved. Look at the emergence of multiplayer gaming right up to the leading edge games like Ingress among others. Without creativity and free time with new technologies revenue would be less forthcoming. My passions for video and editing were held up for many years because I had no access to an edit suite. Imagine how the children of Sillicon Valley execs are having their creativity stunted because of the very people who have most to gain from their children being early rather than late adopters. “Those who endorse this approach say computers inhibit creative thinking, movement, human interaction and attention spans.” These people demonstrate just how limited their understanding of modern technology is. News organisations are teaching their staff how to shoot and edit news stories using mobile phones, others are using tablets to write books and more. The idea that information technology prevents people from moving around in today’s world is redundant. How many of you still have a desktop at home that you use regularly. I personally use my mobile phone and a laptop most of the time. The laptop is with me everywhere I go. As a child and as a professional the thing that limited my movement is classroom and office time. In the classroom you learn at the speed the teacher chooses. There is no fast forwarding, skimming or rewinding. Everyone learns the same information at the same speed… in theory. In practice we learn at different speeds and information technology allows us to build knowledge actively. As children we had books and we learned by reading different chapters at different moments. Imagine studying the Roman civilisation as a child and wanting to see pictures and video from the time. Multimedia devices and computers would bring more to life quicker. I strongly believe that children should be given the freedom to use the technology or medium they want to use. It is not up to adults to decide which tools are relevant to their children. As an early adopter contemporary values and norms have held me back and stop others from keeping up.

Google has an excellent reputation for server uptime and reliability. They pride themselves on making processes so efficient that hundredths of seconds after a request is sent the answer. As a result of their very high work ethic and desire to excel logic would indicate that Niantic labs would follow the same work ethic and strive for the same quality of service. Over the last few months of game play I have found they resemble an early twitter. Loading the game for the first time of the day can take several attempts, loading the inventory can be unreliable, charging portals can be unreliable and sometimes trying to do any action can fail 70 to 80 percent of the time for several hours in a row. Unreliability is perfectly normal for web services. They are pushing the envelope and they need to find ways to do new things and prevent bottle necks. Twitter had severe issues for months and so did many other services. A few people say that Ingress is a free game, that because it is free we shouldn’t worry about unreliable actions. Ingress is not a free game. At the very least it takes a lot of time to play such a game. Levelling up can take progressively longer going from hours from the first levels to months or even years for the higher levels. There are a number of costs associated with Ingress: A smartphone: A local data plan International roaming plan A battery pack A car or other form of transport petrol parking space Hotel rooms You also have to consider whether you live in a village or a town or city. If you live in a village you may have to travel to another village several kilometres before you can play the game. I created the account but did not play until several months later due to a lack of local portals. Towns and cities have a lot of portals so this is a city slicker game. If you drive half an hour, from the country side to a city to play the game and when you arrive at your destination and the game is laggy then you have wasted money on petrol, you have wasted time on driving and you have to wait until the next weekend to play. As I have said lag and server issues are part of online life. From 1996 to 2015 I have grown accustomed to these problems and have no issues. I am less forgiving of companies whose policies make servers issues worse. Niantic labs is making mistakes. They created a new badge to encourage people to sign up more accounts which resulted in more server stress and a degraded quality of service. They then encouraged people to make mega fields which the servers can’t deal with. We have seen that every single time a megafield is created the game suffers for periods of time ranging from a few minutes to a few hours. Yesterday agents created a 6880km link which resulted in a degraded quality of service for hours afterwards. If Niantic labs and the story line continue encouraging actions that Ingress servers cannot cope with then I will see my passion for the game degrade further. My willingness to drive 40 minutes to participate in activities will vanish. I am not picking on Niantic labs and ingress. I have seen twitter have problems, I have seen facebook have problems. I have seen Seesmic have issues. I have seen suunto movescount have issues. I have let each of these companies know that I expect more. I will only continue using an unreliable service as long as I don’t find a better alternative.

Hello Twitter-ers! As you may already know, Obvious is the parent company of Twitter and it’s never a dull day around here. Today our little building is abuzz with activity surrounding an announcement that Odeo (another Obvious product) is ready for a new home. We’re entertaining offers from potential buyers because Odeo deserves the same love and attention we’ve been heaping on Twitter these days. Have you been by lately? http://twitter.com More about Odeo: http://tinyurl.com/2yoy84 Defamer Brings The Oscars to Twitter Popular Hollywood gossip blog Defamer.com is going to the Oscars this Sunday and they’re bringing Twitter! Sorta. Follow Defamer on Twitter and you’ll get live from-the-scene updates. Who won what? What’s happening in the seats? What are the stars doing? Get the updates on your phone while you watch on TV to make things more interesting or if you can’t watch, just get the updates. Text FOLLOW DEFAMER to 40404 or, Visit http://twitter.com/defamer Oscars: http://oscar.com If you haven’t set up your phone to work with Twitter yet, now is a good time! You can do that here: http://twitter.com/devices. The Oscars are broadcast live February 25 at 5pt/8et on ABC. Speaking of coveted awards, you can still vote for Twitter and help us win the SXSW People’s Choice awards. We will be so psyched if we win. Vote Twitter! https://secure.sxsw.com/peoples_choice/ SXSW Update There’s going to be lots of folks from three industries represented at the SXSW Conference in Austin next month. We’ve heard from people in the Interactive, Music, and Film industries who are excited to get on Twitter during the week-long event. We’ll have big screens set up in the hallways and we’re setting up a special, easy way for folks to get their updates on the screens. Once we set that up, we’ll tell you more. Even if you can’t make it to SXSW, you’ll still be able to catch all the buzz. Office Full of Great Folks Obvious employs less than ten people but the building is filling up fast since we’ve opened our doors to some other really cool companies working on interesting projects. Two of the projects are still top secret, there’s a couple Y Combinator startups sharing space with us, and the other folks are 30boxes.com, Boso.com, and the illustrious Niall Kennedy. (Hi Niall!) When the secret projects launch, we’ll tell you about them–they’re cool! http://30boxes.com http://boso.com http://www.niallkennedy.com/ http://ycombinator.com/ Okay, back to work. Lots to do this week! Happy Twitter-ing, Biz Stone and the Twitter Team http://twitter.com/biz

There are around 220 countries around the world and 150 countries will participate in Ingress Saturday next week. That leaves out about seventy countries.

70 Years since the liberation of Auschwitz.

A visual and auditory experiment to demonstrate what effects sounds have.

The selection of Netflix Switzerland just became a little more interesting. They have added eight seasons of House for us to enjoy. If they could add a few more series this would be most welcome.