Five years ago I waved goodbye to Canada for the last time, my sights set firmly on the golden shores of the far eastern nation of the rising sun. It's hard to believe so much time has passed since then. I lived in Vancouver for five years to the day, and have lived in Japan for longer. In this time I've grown a great deal, learning as I go, and have come to the conclusion many times that I will be happier living in Japan than Canada. Language barriers be damned, there really is not much for me in the nation I once called my home. I still like Canada as a nation, and would gladly visit from time to time. But Canada is no longer my home. It's here, where I have had the desire to live since I was 12 years old and largely ignorant of the country, its history, its people, and its culture.

This was me six months ago, forever running out of space weeks before the monthly limit cycled. Considering how much stuff I send to the time capsule in the sky, this sort of limitation just isn't tenable. So, knowing the money would go to good use, I dropped the cash on a premium account and haven't looked back.

Over the last few years an odd realization has been festering in the back of my mind. One that inspires fits of rage and disgust almost every time I read something related to consumer technology: tech enthusiasts are planet killers with no remorse. This can be seen with the number of pundits, reviewers, and commentators who decry with glee that their junk drawers are overflowing with garbage tech less than a year old.

Getting feedback is one of the few pleasures I have with hosting a public-facing web site and it's all the more valuable when people ask really good questions. One such question was delivered this morning in the form of a very long-winded inquiry as to the future direction of Noteworthy and the potential of the software behind it. The essence of the question is this: "If the Noteworthy API is so malleable that it can be extended to work with other web services and store data on its own, why use Evernote to write blog posts? Wouldn't it make more sense to make Noteworthy a privately-hosted competitor? Why use Evernote at all?"

A few years can make a world of difference in the world of technology. If you had said that a full 25% of visitors to my personal site would be using an Apple device back in 2001, I would have laughed. If you had said the same in 2006 I would have scoffed. Yet, here we are in 2012 and I'm surprised to see that darn near 25% of visitors to this site in the last 7 days have come with an Apple device.