This is off my beat here at BlogHer, but it's bothering me, so here goes.... There's been much a-Twitter about the alarm surrounding the Swine Flu. People griping that SARS, Ebola, bird flu, [fill in the blank] didn't wind up being much, so why get worked up now? Everybody's over-reacting, they say. I think the cynical response is overly-cynical and perhaps a bit to happy to declare "boy who cried wolf" and laugh or sneer. Reality check: Highly contagious? Check! Fatal to healthy adults? Check! No vaccine in sight before fall? Check!

Yesterday, Twitter turned three. A week before was my two-year Twitterversary. So that pretty much made me a late early adopter. And while I'm really enjoying Twitter now, back then I didn't get it. Not yet. Pretty much not at all.

The online world changed for me this year. I discovered the handheld — or rather what the handheld promises to be. I had a Palm 700p before. It was a good phone. Qwerty keyboard. Great reception. Worked just about anywhere. But after more than 2 years with the Palm, I just had to try the iPhone, the multitouch interface, the motion sensor. But I had no idea what worlds would be opened up over the months since — mostly not by Apple directly, but by the creative minds creating some applications that strike me as almost mind-blowing.

At sixteen I believed the moonlight could change me if it would. I moved my head on the pillow, even moved my bed as the moon slowly crossed the open lattice. —Denise Levertov Change is happening, and though we're weeks from the Inaugural, we're years into the change on the Internet. From web-based political action committees through web-driven campaigns to web-centered efforts at political rebranding, the web has redefined our politics. And it's still changing.

As I convalesced this weekend from Day 9 of a terrible cold that just won't let go, the Thin Air Summit took place in Denver. Thanks to Twitter, I almost feel like I was there. I was tweet-reading in real-time. But you don't need to be there in the moment. A quick search for #tas08 on Twitter and you find a ton of posts. Tweets on sessions, tweets on insights, tweets on new acquaintances....