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Ask any of its hardcore users and they will tell you that Twitter is defined by its limits. The hard limit of 140 characters forces users to convey their argument as concisely as possible.

But according to re/code, that is going to change:

Twitter is building a new feature that will allow users to tweet things longer than the traditional 140-character limit, and the company is targeting a launch date toward the end of Q1, according to multiple sources familiar with the company’s plans. Twitter is currently considering a 10,000 character limit, according to these sources. That’s the same character limit the company uses for its Direct Messages product, so it isn’t a complete surprise.

There is no official launch date set in stone, these sources say. It’s also possible the character limit could fluctuate before it rolls out the final product, which people inside Twitter refer to as “Beyond 140.” Re/code first reported that Twitter was building a product like this back in September. A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment.

I know that the idea of a ten thousand character tweet sounds terrible; as TechCrunch showed, it’s longer than the average blog post.

But before we get into the yelling and vowing to flee to Facebook, let’s take a look at what Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey had to say. After the news broke yesterday, Dorsey tweeted a screensnap which explained why the change is a good idea. This screensnap is also an example of the problem Twitter is trying to fix, and it gives us clues about Twitter’s goals:

Tell me, did you have trouble reading the screensnap, perhaps because the text is too small or not in your language?

That is a problem I frequently have when reading screensnaps on Twitter, and I think it is the problem that Twitter is trying to solve with the 10k character limit.

If you don’t see the connection, then let’s consider the possibility that re/code got the story only half right, and that Twitter is not planning to switch to a 10k character limit on tweets.

What if Twitter is instead considering giving you the option of tweeting a 140-char tweet with a long text note attached, say 10,000 characters?

That would make more sense for Twitter, it would fix the screensnap issue, and it would also explain Twitter’s participation in Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages project (hat tip to Wolfgang Blau for giving me the idea).

Google launched the project with the goal of delivering web articles faster on mobile, but what if Twitter’s interest stemmed from an interest in delivering a 10k-char attachment quickly?

Web publishers could use it to share an entire article (as Mathew Ingram points out at Fortune), but Twitterati could also use it to share the text they currently put into a screensnap (they also use Twitlonger, but screensnaps are more common).

That would be an improvement over screensnaps in terms of accessibility, search, and just about any other metric.

It would also improve discussions on Twitter. As Ben Thompson reminded us this morning, people don’t click links. So embedding a supporting argument as an attachment means that it is more likely to be read.

Edit: Also, this would no longer be a problem:

https://twitter.com/elliotpage/status/685060432059609089

Then again, Twitter has yet to officially confirm the news (not even to the WSJ), so all this is pure speculation.

And so I will leave you with a factoid.  Twitter’s proposed new limit is not nearly as long as Facebook’s 63,206 character limit on updates, and yet the average tweet is about as long as the average update (68 characters vs 65 characters).

So even when people have the option of posting longer updates, they’re generally not using it.

image by Johan Larsson,  tashmahal

Long a contributor to  open source browser engines, Adobe is going to be getting into the guts of Project Spartan.

Microsoft announced on Monday that Adobe is going to be one of many tech companies which will contribute to MS’s new web browser. Adobe will be bringing improvements in the areas of layout, typography, graphic design, and motion.

The first improvements include Adobe’s work with gradients. This seemingly small contribution first showed up in the March update of the Windows 10 Technical Preview, and it gives web developers the option of specifying a custom gradient midpoint for a unique blend of the two colors in the gradient.

Another change that Adobe has recently committed is full support for <feBlend> blend modes. Where IE 11 supported only a limited part of the  W3C Filter Effects spec, Project Spartan sill fully support the spec (right up until something breaks).

While neither feature is critical, these are going to be fully supported options in other web browsers – but they wouldn’t have been fully supported in IE.

In short, this is good news for the web and for anyone developing for the web. With Project Spartan supporting more features, more web developers can adopt them knowing that they’ll be accessible to a wider audience.

Launching with Windows 10, Project Spartan represents a clean break with Microsoft’s past web browser work. MS has told us in the past that the new web browser features a new rendering engine, a new interface, and (obviously) a lot of third party contributions, but I think they may have downplayed the paradigm shift which Spartan represents.

It was just this week that MS told us that they had been "making changes internally to allow other major Web entities to contribute to the growth of our platform, as well as to allow our team to give back to the Web". With luck, this is going to result in a web browser which won’t force web developers to prove the 90-90 rule.

While Internet Explorer will ship with Windows 10, MS has already said that they view IE as a legacy product and that all of their attention will be devoted to Project Spartan.

A few days ago I posted some details on a new digital library launched in a subway station in the capital of Romania. That project wasn’t so much a digital library as it was a marketing ploy by Vodaphone and several local publishers which offered a paltry selection of sample ebooks.

That project wasn’t nearly as impressive as a similar one which the city government of Mexico D.F. launched back in September. The Libropuertos Digitales project makes ebooks available on all 21 stations of the 3rd line of the Mexico DF Metro.

Commuters will find signs like the one at right in a couple locations at each station.  Each sign shows 35 book covers as well as QR codes which can be scanned to download the ebooks. The titles displayed vary from sign to sign, and the signs will be updated periodically to offer a changing  selection of content. The initial selection will include books from  writers such as Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, Julio Cortázar, José Saramago, Mario Benedetti, Fernando Vallejo, and Xavier Velasco, among others.

This, too, is more of a marketing project than a library, which would make some sense give that the project title translates (roughly) as The eBook Portal. Readers can download sample chapters as well as book trailers and other info about the ebooks. There are plans to also include augmented reality videos.

The Libropuertos Digitales project is also going to be making use of the space set aside for an earlier project which had the same goal. The Ticket to Read program involved reading lounges at a couple stations on the 3rd Line which offered material for commuters to enjoy while they waited. That program also distributed printed anthologies which readers were supposed to bring back and trade for different editions.

The goal of this project is to encourage reading both on commonly available tech like smartphones as well as simply build interest in reading in general. Later this year the project is going to expand to other Metro lines.

Has anyone tried the new program? What about the older one?

Thanks, Edgar!

When I broke the news on the XO Infinity laptop from One Education (OLPC Australia) last spring, it featured a modular design where you could replace the CPU, battery, screen, storage, etc.

You could have thought of the design we saw last year as the Project Ara for educational laptops, but you wouldn’t get that impression from the Infinity laptop  which just went up for pre-order.

One Education is sending out emails this morning with the news that you can pre-order an Infinity laptop, only instead of the modular design teased last year, this laptop is a rather ordinary looking two-in-one design with a green shell.

The Infinity is now a 10″ laptop which runs Windows 10 on a quad-core 1.9GHz Atom CPU with 2GB RAM and 64GB internal storage.

Gone are the options for Android and Sugar OS. The laptop has also lost all of its modules, and replaced the promise of upgradability with the usual mix of ports, card slots, and a couple cameras (2MP and 5MP).

The Infinity costs $230, and is expected to ship in August.

O O O

If you’re wondering what the bleep happened to the original design, the problem was that this project never had the engineering team it needed and it never had broad support from the industry.

As you may recall, Project Ara had the financial backing of Google and support from industry standards groups as well as Intel, Toshiba, Qualcomm, Rockchip, Nvidia, Marvell, Sennheiser (audio), Innolux (screens), and a bunch of smaller companies including smartphone makers.

In comparison, the Infinity laptop did not even have the support of Google or Intel, two tech giants which have an immediate and direct interest in edtech as well as the engineering teams to make this idea a reality.

I’m sure One Education had great engineers, but this was a ridiculously complex project which required the backing of numerous tech experts in a variety of fields. That lack of support is why this project has (at best) stalled at an incomplete state and why One Education instead launched a substitute product.

There’s no word on when or if One Education will ever launch the promised modular laptop. I have queried them, and I will update this post with their response.

Edit: I have been told that the idea "has been parked for now. The market and manufacturing industries to support it aren’t just there yet!"

The best symbiotes keep the host organism healthy. On a similar note, Google is taking steps today to make sure that the supply of content for its search engine doesn’t dry up.

Or at least that’s one way to see it; I have a different opinion at the end of this post.

Google has announced today that it is launching an Innovation Fund for its Digital News Initiative. Originally announced in April, the DNI is Google’s latest effort to help online news publishers to find new ways to deliver high-quality journalism to the public.

From Google:

In April, we launched the Digital News Initiative, a partnership with eleven European news organisations to support high quality journalism through technology and innovation. The initiative is open to anyone involved in Europe’s digital news industry, large or small, established or newcomer, and since launch, more than 120 organisations have signed up to participate. Today, we’re excited to open up the DNI Innovation Fund for applications, and we hope that many more people will get involved.

The ambition and intent of the Fund is bold: to spark new thinking, which could come from anywhere in the news ecosystem, to give news organisations – of all sizes – the space to try some new things. We’ve set aside up to €150 million for that purpose, which we’ll make available in the form of no-strings-attached awards over the next three years.

Speaking of innovation funds, this isn’t the first time Google has helped out online news publisher. In 2011 and 2013 Google launched efforts which focused on Belgian and French publishers (and there could be others).

It’s not clear how the goals of the earlier initiatives differed from the DNI Innovation Fund, but I can tell you that the motivations may have been different; both of the previous initiatives were launched in response to hostile action on the part of the news industry (a lawsuit in Belgium, and the threat of legislation in France).

Also, neither of the earlier projects were on this scale; the 2013 Digital Publishing Initiative, for example, set Google back 60 million euros. It’s not clear whether that initiative was successful, and Google hasn’t said how many projects were funded.

But Google has told us that the DNI Innovation Fund will focus on three funding levels:

• Prototype projects: open to organisations – and to individuals – that meet the eligibility criteria, and require up to €50k of funding. These projects should be very early stage, with ideas yet to be designed and assumptions yet to be tested. We will fast-track such projects and will fund 100% of the total cost.
• Medium projects: open to organisations that meet the eligibility criteria and require up to €300k of funding. We will accept funding requests up to 70% of the total cost of the project.
• Large projects: open to organisations that meet the eligibility criteria and require more than €300k of funding. We will accept funding requests up to 70% of the total cost of the project. Funding is capped at €1 million.

As I have documented on this blog, Google has long had a contentious relationship with the news industry. That history has lead some to conclude that Google is now taking a more conciliatory approach. With revenues exceeding $45 billion a year, this is a very small price for Google to pay for an olive branch, but here’s the thing:

I don’t think this is an olive branch. I also don’t think this is Google helping a symbiotic partner.

Instead, this is just Google doing what Google does: cutting edge research.

Google has a history being the object of hate for news publishers, but they also have a history of suddenly developing a new interest in some tech field, and then investing a lot of R&D.  Past examples include Google Fiber, Project Ara, Google Glass, Android Wear, and Google Books.

And now Google has developed an interest in funding innovations in news publishing, and they’ve put together a broad coalition of partners – just like they did with Project Ara.

So while the earlier initiatives may have been an olive branch or peace offering, the DNI Innovation Fund is more likely simply Google being Google.

image by Bill Ward’s Brickpile

One Education is an Australian non-profit and OLPC partner that wants to take up where OLPC left off by developing a modular and affordable educational computer for students.

Earlier this year One Education announced  a modular laptop called the Infinity, and promised that the first prototypes would ship next spring. This week the organization started taking reservations from folks interested in buying an Infinity when it is available.

The first thousand optimists to reserve an Infinity will be given the opportunity to buy one for $249 to $299 when it’s ready some time next year.

The XO Infinity is designed to be the ultimate modular laptop where every component from the keyboard dock to the camera, CPU, and even the screen is a module that can be swapped out at will.

The core of the design is a tablet unit with an 8.9″ screen. It packs in a camera module with 2MP and 5MP cameras, a battery, and a CPU module with a quad-core 1.5GHz CPU, 2GB RAM and 24GB storage.

That’s a slightly different design from the original concept revealed 6 months ago; that earlier design also had a connectivity module (Wifi, Bluetooth, etc). and One Education also says that the new design is about 3mm thinner. They’ve also reduced both the height and width by about 1cm.

One common problem shared by modular gadget projects is how a user might go about building their own module. The much-delayed Project Ara has basically made that option impossible, but it will be relatively easy for a hardware hacker to build a custom  module for the XO Infinity.

One Education has adopted USB-C as the standard connector for all the modules. That means that even if the official project falls through, a hacker would be able to build their own module by combining a module shell and a USB connector board with a Chrombit or Raspberry Pi. They could even build their own sensor module, or rebuild the battery.

You could conceivably use a commercially available USB-C accessory with the XO Infinity. There might be an issue with drivers, but the XO Infinity does run Android (Linux and Windows firmwares are in the works) so that won’t be an insurmountable issue.

And that’s a good thing, because the official XO Infinity project isn’t drawing a lot of support. That reservation list was first announced on 2 August, and it is still open as I write this post.

Let’s hope that One Education has institutional buyers lined up, because if they’re relying on single unit sales then this project won’t get much further than the core design and a set of schematics that you can have 3d-printed.

One Education doesn’t expect to ship the XO Infinity until next year, and they don’t have a working unit yet. but they did post a series of photos on their Facebook page which shows what the latest design looks like.

One Education via Liliputing

Google’s Project Ara is the best known modular smartphone effort, but those who want a simpler concept would do well to look up the PuzzlePhone.

A Finnish company by the name of Circular Devices is working on a simple modular smartphone concept which will enable owners to combine a CPU module, battery module, and a screen into a smartphone.

Like the Project Ara, the Puzzlephone can be upgraded piecemeal, and Circular Devices hopes to offer multiple screen size options.

The Puzzlephone crossed my desk this week with the news that it would be adopting ImasD’s ARM (Advanced Removable Modules) tech for its CPU module.

ImasD is a Spanish company working on a modular tablet, the Click-Arm One. Just announced this week, the Click-Arm One will feature a 10″ screen, a CPU module based on a Samsung Exynos 4412 CPU with 2GB RAM, other modular electronics including a 16GB Flash storage module, and up to 4 miniPCIe card slots.

The Click-Arm One is a much more complicated concept, so I don’t think that it will share many modules in common with the Puzzlephone, ImasD and Circular Devices have radically different approaches to the modular electronics; one is going for as minimalist approach while the other is going for an excess.

Frankly, I’m surprised that they will even be able to share the CPU module.

Circular Devices last got attention in January when they proposed that users could recycle their old PuzzlePhone CPU modules as cores in modular supercomputers. Given that there is no actual PuzzlePhone prototype, that plan is still literally on the drawing board.

In addition to ImasD,  Circular Devices also announced several other branding and tech partners, such as Grant4Com, AT&S, Fraunhofer IZM andOgilvyOne Barcelona. These partnerships, according to Circular Devices CEO Alejandro Santacreu, have the company on track to bring the PuzzlePhone to market later this year.

And that’s going to make 2015 a very interesting year.

Between Project Ara, Sole Notebook, XO Infinity, the Click-Arm One, and now the PuzzlePhone, 2015 is looking to be the year of modular gadgetry.

If even half these gadgets ship then I could well go bankrupt trying to keep up. What fun.

Liliputing,  The Next Web

One Education, OLPC’s partner non-profit in Australia, has been quietly working for the past year on a new educational laptop which it plans to launch in the next couple weeks (this has been confirmed).

Details are still scarce, and the entire story is still quite secret, but based on what has leaked and the two teaser images posted online I am very excited. If you thought Google’s Project Ara smartphone was a nifty idea, you’re going to love the XO Infinity.

Based on the background image posted to One Education’s email notification page (here), the OX Infinity is a hybrid laptop/tablet convertible:

As you can see, the design takes certain design elements now available in commercially available tablets and applies them to the XO laptop. A user will be able to use the XO Infinity as a laptop, or, pop the tablet out of the dock and use it by itself.

This is not the first tablet to come with a dock, and it’s not even the first educational tablet to have one. Intel shipped a similar reference design last April.

But this could be the first educational device to combine a laptop/tablet hybrid design with modular components.

Do you see how the units shown in the image above have a colorful shell? If you pop the rear shell off, you might see something like this:

I found the above image buried on the One Education website. I do not know if that is what the XO Infinity will look like, but I did find the image via a search for the XO Infinity.

What we’re looking at is a tablet with modular components. The green module is probably the CPU (and RAM, storage), the blue one is the battery, the maroon one a camera, and the orange one  is probably Wifi (or other connectivity).

In short, One Education has taken the XO infinity a step beyond the design of the original XO laptop.  Rather than simply be repairable, a child will be able to repair the XO infinity by pulling a module and plugging in a new one.

Or at least that is what I am speculating.

All of this is based on but a couple images which may or may not have anything to do with the actual XO Infinity.

Update: And here’s a third image which shows the modular nature of the tablet from a different angle. As you can see, there’s an extra module (which I think contains the screen).

But what I can report with absolute certainty is that I have been informed that the XO Infinity will be launched in the next couple weeks. Paul Cotton of One Education sent me this email statement last night:

We’ve been working hard at the XO-infinity for the last year or so, and things are finally getting to the point where we can show people. We’re due to make the official announcement sometime in the next week or two, at which point we’ll be able to talk about it all day, every day. Up until then though, we need to keep mum or our media partners may be upset with us.

Cotton also pointed me at the page on Medium where the official announcement will be posted, and he suggested that I sign up for email updates (here).

And when I told him I had the second image, he replied:

Hah, good find! That picture probably tells you quite a bit already, and tells you why we’re so excited. We need to cover our tracks better 😉

But aside from that, I have no other solid info to report at this time – at least, not about the new device.

I do however have a few things to add about the history of One Laptop Per Child and its repeated mistakes in developing educational hardware.

I’m going to have to take you through a bit of history, but rest assured that I do have a point to make.

***

As originally conceived in 2005, the XO laptop was a low-cost, easily repairable educational laptop with a long battery life. But by the time it actually shipped in 2007, the laptop had a short battery life and cost a minimum of $200. When it was first available to the public, consumers could pay $400 in a "buy one, give one" program and take one of the devices home.

The XO underwent several hardware revisions over the next 8 years. It was followed up by the XO-2, an early failed attempt to replace the original with a better design, and the XO-3, a tablet version which was launched at CES 2012 and cancelled in December 2012.

Coincidentally, there was also an XO Tablet which ran OLPC’s educational software on a commercially available 7″ Android tablet. It was released in 2013, and was going to be updated in 2014. The replacement tablet never shipped.

The original XO-1 was also updated, first with the addition of a faster and more energy efficient CPU (XO-1.5), and then again to the XO-1.75, which had an even faster ARM CPU and a slightly lower cost ($188). (There was also the XO-1.75HS, but that merely replaced the rubber keyboard with a more traditional KB with plastic keys.)

And of course let’s not forget the current model, the XO-4. This model looks almost identical to the XO-1, only it sports a dual-core CPU, touchscreen, and swaps one of the 3 USB ports for an HDMI port. And as I reported yesterday, One Education is distributing a version of the XO-4 Touch. They call it the XO Duo, and it runs Android Jelly Bean.

And that brings us to the current day, and an edtech market which looks very different from the one which existed in 2005.

Many companies, ranging from Google to Apple to commercial device makers like Dell are invested in this market.

Google is promoting its educational platform; Intel is pushing a number of laptops, tablets, and other classroom hardware, Apple sells the iPad, and Dell (plus other companies) make tablets and laptops for the edtech market.

My point, folks, was to help you better understand the landscape of the edtech market, and to make this one final point.

Given OLPC’s past failures and marginal successes, One Education would be well advised to find a partner.

I expect that the upcoming announcement will include at least one major tech company as a partner/sponsor. My leading candidates are Google and Intel, in that order.

Google’s interest in Project Ara makes them a particularly good partner for One Education, but Intel would make a nearly as ideal partner.

But of course, that is pure speculation.

We’ll have to wait and see what is officially announced.

Stay tuned.