By the size of it, it wasn’t a big surprise what it was: the 2.2 update (Froyo) had arrived. There aren’t a lot of obvious changes apart from some small changes to the interface, but most of them  seem to be under the hood. The much talked-about tethering (turn your phone into a WiFi hot-spot) is there, as are general speed improvements.

I also went to the market and downloaded the Flash player which means visiting a number of web pages is much more satisfying. In short, some new features, a bit faster, and nothing broke (yet) – I’m happy. Hopefully other Android users will be getting their updates soon.

There’s plenty of ways that kind of thinking can go right or wrong, but I’m wondering if what made Twitter what it is today was that it was kind of retro to begin with- and that’s what makes it fun. I’ve tried to explain Twitter to people for about 2 years now. The 140-character limit is kind of arbitrary- text messages can be up to 160 characters and computers-type limits would be multiples of 8, resulting in numbers like 128 or 256 characters.  So yes, it’s a bit of a toy, but it’s limitations are what make it a challenge, you can’t be sloppy with Twitter, it takes a bit of thinking to pack much meaning into 140 characters –spaces and punctuation included– and that in turn that appeals to certain people.

Google Buzz does away with that limit of course.  While  Buzz of course has no limits on text, it lets you add photos, links, probably video too. It’s certainly probably more practical, but it might not turn out to be as much fun.