Periodic Ramblings

I was looking for a Twitter application for Linux today, and stumbled upon a Twitter plugin for VIM, called TwitVIM.  Now being a longtime Unix admin, VI has always been my editor of choice and VIM is just a more feature rich version of VI, so this plugin excited me.

I downloaded the plugin, sourced it in VIM then restarted VIM to use it.  The plugin is pretty simple in that it only lets you post entries and view your timeline.  There is no search or lists or  any of the other more advanced features of Twitter, but it does get the job done.

It constantly amazes me the interfaces to web apps that people come up with.

The New York Times posted an interesting article yesterday (January 22, 2010) showing the overlapping technologies from the four tech giants.

The list goes through and identifies which company is operating in a certain space, either with a product out today or a product in development.  The categories range from Mobile Phones to Operating Systems to traditional web services (IM, Email, Photo Storage).

The chart points out interesting changes in directions for the four companies:

• Google now competes in the Operating System and Mobile Phone space.
• Apple is in the Email and IM space.
• Microsoft is exploring the Social Networking space.
• Yahoo seems to be stagnant, not really offering any new products/services.

Over the past thirty years, the tech giants continue to change and evolve.  If this was done even ten years ago, who would be on this comparison chart (IBM and Sun maybe), twenty years ago, thirty years ago?  Technology will continue to evolve and so will the players at the top of the technology curve.