Preparing a home for sale — in a household with four young children running on an already hectic schedule — has proven to be the toughest month we've ever endured. In one month we've done more than I ever imagined possible. Our workload was made much tougher by our dedication to give the buyer a quality home where no corner was cut or compromise made, and I will be very glad when this whole process is behind us.

I've written a lot about smartphones over the past while. It's a topic that I get more passionate about than I need to. I've tried to pull away from the discussion but it keeps pulling me back in.

It is a discussion that matters. It really, really matters. It is the most important technology shift that has happened in years, and it will have, and is already having, a very strong influence on this industry.

But the primary battle is over. The war is won, with users victorious.

This is true regardless of the smartphone platform you choose to embrace, whether iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone, or other.

There was a brief period where service providers and application makers felt that the market had become uniplatform: If you wanted to watch their movies, listen to their music, do banking, match colours, and so on, they only needed to cater to one closed platform. It's no surprise that many of them were overjoyed with this situation at the outset (before it was turned against them), as it makes life simpler.

It also threatened innovation and competition.

That lock is broken. It is a thing of the past. No longer does one platform reign supreme, and the new reality of a multiplatform world is established and will be going no where anytime soon.

We all win. Even if you prefer the previously dominant platform, you win as you can be sure that the innovation and pace of improvements in their product are heavily motivated by the competition.

It is a fantastic world that we live in. We're in an amazing place.

Where do we go from here?