How Twitter’s Edit Button Might Work; MS Looks to Bring Ads to Free-to-Play Xbox Games; Apple iPhone 15 Periscope Telephoto; Developer Shortage Due to Great Resignation

A big noise made by Elon Musk as he bought stock in Twitter, then made a take over offer revolved around getting an edit button. Techcrunch.com reports that after Musk’s buy in and posting of a survey, Twitter admitted that it actually has been working on an Edit button for some time…and such a button has been a top request of users. Twitter had said that it was taking care to ensure the Edit button would not be able to be misused by bad actors looking to “alter the record of the public conversation” after the fact. Right now, the in-development button would be accessed by a three dot menu at the upper right of your tweet. From this menu today, you can do things like delete a tweet or pin it to your profile, among other things, so this would be a natural place to correct a tweet, as well. At least at this point, the button doesn’t seem to actually alter the tweet or delete it…it creates another, new tweet. This new, edited tweet would include the list of the old tweets prior to the edit. In other words, the new tweet would point to the original tweet and the edit history. Actually, to avoid a lot of misuse and abuse, it will almost have to do something like this in the finished feature. 

Oh, joy…more ads. I can hear the excitement now. (Actually, I just hear Microsoft rubbing their collective hands together over more money coming in…) Redmond is working on a deal that would ‘let brands showcase advertisements’ within free-to-play Xbox games. According to theverge.com, the ads wouldn’t be allowed to disrupt the game…you would see an ad on a billboard in a racing game, for example. It sounds a lot like product placement in movies and TV shows, which big sponsors have paid for for decades now. Think of the Coke in a movie on the table, or a brand of cars that dominate a film. Microsoft claims it doesn’t plan to take any revenue from the ads, but they will be used to attract more developers to the platform. No revenue? If you believe that, I have a big orange bridge between San Francisco and Marin County to sell you. Look for the ads by third quarter this year. 

It won’t be on the handsets this Fall, but next year’s iPhone 15 looks certain now to have a ‘periscope’ type telephoto lens, giving it a much higher optical zoom. Optical zoom gives you a much cleaner shot when zoomed in than the electronic zoom done by software. 9to5mac.com says that Apple is planning to use LG Innotek and Jahwa to supply its periscope lenses. The iPhone 13 has a 3X optical zoom, and 10X electronic zoom in. A folded periscope lens might give it 10X optical zoom, which as noted above, is much cleaner than the electronic zoom. If you use the telephoto lens as much as I do, this is welcome news. Looking forward to the iPhone 15 in 2023.

According to a new survey of 600 CIOs and IT decision makers by SalesForce’s MuleSoft, 93% of them are saying it is harder to hire skilled developers now due to the Great Resignation. Venturebeat.com notes that the survey also found 90% of organizations say empowering more individuals across the business to integrate apps and data for themselves would significantly reduce pressure on developers and accelerate transformation. As demand for faster innovation continues to rise, today’s skill shortage is piling pressure on already-stretched teams, creating the risk of developers tapping out — and leaving businesses’ infrastructure at heightened risk.