In 1985 the world Snooker final captured the imagination of the nation. For those of you unfamiliar with Snooker, think of Pool and add much more complexity and skill. The world championships in snooker lasts for 17 days (after weeks of qualifying) and thousands of balls are potted and even more thousands of points are scored. It is a never ending battle of patience, skill and tenacity which is enthralling to those of us who grew up with this annual event. For me it is something that takes me back to childhood and that Monday at school in 1985 when everyone was talking about what had happened the night before. After 17 days, the final was poised at 17:17 with one deciding frame remaining and only the black left on the table. After 17 days and thousands of balls, it all came down to the potting of one single ball which seemed to take forever. It was magical and the tension flowed through the TV screen into the hearts and minds of everyone watching.

26 years later the world final was played out again, but this time the almost legendary John Higgins was taking on the curiously named Judd Trump who has broken through and played a brand of snooker not seen before. He is incredibly aggressive and talented and sports a haircut that would not look out of place in a Vidal Sassoon advert. He also uses Twitter.

In 1985 and every year beyond we have watched the snooker and seen the players scamper off to tiny rooms during the breaks and could only presume what was going through their minds. As we awaiting the resumption of the matches we were treated to chats by important snooker people of the past and just waited.

This year we were treated to the tweets of Judd Trump as he let the world into his thoughts. What amazed me was that he was tweeting during the matches. During each session break he would add a comment or two about his thoughts on how the match was going and for those, like me, who have followed snooker for many years this was a revelation. To get a glimpse of how someone was dealing with the stress in real-time was fascinating and I only wish I could have done the same in 1985. For all of the criticism of Twitter, this was reason alone for me to continue using the service.

A T9 version of the BlackBerry Pearl 9100 has been spotted next to a Nexus. It looks like a well built unit, but the idea is frankly quite odd to me. Why would anyone want this kind of keyboard on a BlackBerry?

The 2010 Nokia Development Summit has been pushed back 3 months and will now merge with Nokia World. This seems like a smart move because Nokia is much more likely to get everyone in the same place at the same time. I wonder if this is also because new software changes are planned to go live in the meantime. More at The Nokia Blog.

Palm has published the agenda for the Developer Day on April 23rd and 24th. It looks like a packed line-up, not that I understand much of what is included…

I am a bit late with this one, but Astraware has given the Windows Mobile version of Zuma a major update to include support for many more phones- “Just wanted to let you know that a completely new version of Zuma has been released for Windows Mobile devices, including the first release for non-touchscreen smartphones. This version of Zuma has been completely rebuilt to support a wide range of newer Windows Mobile phones and multiple resolutions. For the first time the game now includes the popular Gauntlet mode found in the original PC game from PopCap Games Inc.”

Just 10% of Twitter users generate more than 90% of the content, a Harvard study of 300,000 users found.

Estimates suggest it now has more than 10 million users and is growing faster than any other social network.

However, the Harvard team found that more than half of all people using Twitter updated their page less than once every 74 days.

And most people only ever “tweet” once during their lifetime, the researchers found.

“Based on the numbers, Twitter is certainly not a service where everyone who has seen it has instantly loved it,” said Bill Heil, a graduate from Harvard Business School who carried out the work.

On a typical online social network, he said, the top 10% of users accounted for 30% of all production…”