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 Elon Musk , the new owner of Twitter , has declared that his version of the social media platform will be Twitter 2.0 .  Commentators are unsure of what this means or whether Elon Musk even has a plan for Twitter,  We do know he spent $44 billion on Twitter. Several analysts say that Twitter may have been worth about $25 billion. We also know that Musk tried to backtrack on his offer, only court action to enforce the legal terms of the purchase seems to have forced Musk to go ahead. It is reported that $13 billion of the money he paid for the company was in loans that have now been put on the Twitter balance sheet. Loan repayments are expected to be $1 billion per year.  Twitter has only made profits in two of the last ten years. Paying $1 billion a year on loans will be challenging. Most of Twitter's income, like most of the "free internet", comes from advertising.  Musk says that he wants half of Twitter's income from subscriptions rather than advertising. He has a

 My Twitter profile says I joined in 2008. A platform that emulated text messaging on a phone and informed the world of what's happening.  You could just tell people about your day or what you are doing now. The 140-character limit was based on the limits of text messaging. Over time this became 280 characters. People created threads of linked messages. People added links to news sources and the use of hashtags made subject specific tweets easy to find.  Those on Twitter numbered three hundred million by 2022. By social network standards this is small.  Much lower than the two billion Facebook users. Meta, the owner of Facebook, could also add the membership of Whatsapp and Instagram , which it also owns.  Whatever the social benefits of social media the business of financing it is troublesome. The founders of Instagram and Whatsapp simply sold up to corporation with a lot of money. Meta is estimated to earn more than 90% of its revenue from advertising. Its users are the product

 Not so long ago a PC was safe behind a firewall. The idea was that the physical infrastructure of a network would be enough. Anti-virus and anti-malware products sat on PCs to protect users. Then hybrid working came along. Digital nomads who could connect to networks from anywhere. New startups had users connecting to web based applications. People were bringing their own devices, tablets, phones, projectors and so on into the workplace. Security has now started looking at people. Microsoft call this zero-trust. You don’t just trust someone because they can login. You have systems that secure identity itself. There are three steps to identity security.  1.The credentials that give you authorisation. For most people this is an account identity and password. Often the identity is an email address or some public identity. This leaves the account secured by password. The strength and complexity of the password protecting authentication. 2. Authorization is the next step. What you can a

I suddenly realised it's been a while since I typed in my password to access my Microsoft account. This is partly because my browser caches information but also because the security model of Microsoft Accounts has changed. Microsoft send you a notification or can send you an SMS rather than ask you for a password.  My current Windows laptop has an infra-red sensor so that it can do face identification using Windows Hello. If that fails, I can use a pin.  If you want to go passwordless then you will depend on these biometric devices. Your face, fingerprint, or a pin. It has been an aim of the leading technology firms to ditch passwords for some time. The process is reaching a point to which tech is doing it across devices.  At the centre of this is FIDO. The Federation of Identity Online (FIDO) is a decade old group that has promoted a new way of securely authenticating people on online services. It has onboard Apple, Microsoft, Google, PayPal, Meta, Amazon and more. They don't

 One of the fun things we get every year is the production values of Apple Events. Originally these were presentations with Steve Jobs. Back in time, whether it was iPod or the first iPhone, it was just a series of slides and commentary from the CEO.  Jobs also had the "one more thing" moment. In an almost casual way, he would announce a significant product. There are compilations of these on YouTube. Central to the last few years has been the announcement of the latest iPhone. It was, for a long time, reassuringly expensive. Not at all affordable. However, Apple is unlike Android in a good way. The software updates mean that old iPhones keep going and going. In 2022, Chris Evans, the actor who played Captain America, said on social media that his iPhone 6 had died. That is a seven year old device.   iPhone is difficult to repair, is security locked that creates vast amounts of ewaste, but it is long living.  This means that "cheap" Android devices are now outnumber

 For years I have been an "Apple sceptic". I have thought they produced good products and I was fully aware that the iPhone and associated services pulled people into a walled garden. All things Apple work together. The web page you are looking at can be sent to a Mac. The map you annotate on a Mac will also receive the same annotations when you open the maps application on the iPhone.  A couple of years back I bought an Apple Watch . At the time I had some vouchers and cash from birthday gifts, the pandemic was ongoing, face id on my iPhone didn't work with masks. As an almost angry purchase to fix the problem of constantly typing in codes, I bought an Apple Watch.  It kept good time, counted my steps and generally did a lot of basic stuff very well. This week I have been on holiday in Paris. If you watch YouTube then you will know that pickpockets work throughout the city. You have to keep you bags sealed, your money hidden and your iPhone out of eyesight. Despite the f