So Apple announced its long awaited tablet this week, and many have commented, analysed, cried in despair and praised the oversized iPod. One thing that I have seen yet though is a deeper look at what it means for the computer world and computer users going forward. I’ll take a stab at it.

What Aunt Edna Needs

It seems that at least half the tech world is disappointed that they won’t be able to code C# or run photoshop on their iPad. I humbly believe that this is due to a very deep misunderstanding of the concept that Apple introduced this past Wednesday. Indeed, more than just a new device, they have created a new kind of machine, that many of their competitors will try to replicate in the coming months and years:

The ”easy computer”. Or “everyday computer”, or “home computer” or “casual computer”. I chose to call it the former, but this is what it essentially boils down to: in the past 10 to 15 years, many people have begun “needing” computers to do very simple things. Email, photos, the web, etc. They never needed computers before, and the computers we know weren’t designed for them, or even to handle these simple tasks. Computers as we know them were designed for intensive, professional, serious uses. Think of your mom, your uncle, your grand parents… They do not need, nor do they really want a complicated machine to do all these tasks. How long has your aunt Edna been using a computer, and how long has she stubbornly refused to learn how to install a program, how the file system works, or the difference between Internet Explorer and Firefox. More importantly, she doesn’t care about all this. She wants to answer her email, go to that cooking website she likes, and look at the soccer practice pictures you sent her. Remember: your aunt Edna is not you. You might care, but to her these are over complicated and useless headaches.

All these “new users” (who didn’t care about computers until 10 years ago) don’t really use a computer to its fullest. They only came to computers with these uses that have been created recently. Let’s take an arbitrary number: most, if not all of the time, they use 20% of the computer’s capabilities, and the other 80% are in the way. Well, an ”easy computer” will provide them with these 20% they need, hassle free.

The Easy Computer

Here’s the best analogy I could find: a PC can do gaming. Some might argue that it’s even the best gaming platform out there. Yet the real gaming industry is on consoles. Why? They are simple. You hook them up to your TV and you start playing. Sure, some games are huge on the PC, but most games will sell more on an Xbox or a PS3. I’m talking about “real” gaming (another argument could be made here about what the Wii is, but it would actually only support the point of this article). This comes to the great despair of the same purists who will belittle the iPad for not being able to achieve the same thing as a “real” computer: “a console isn’t as cool as a PC!” they’d say. That’s not the point. It’s not supposed to be. I’d encourage you to think of the iPad as the equivalent of game consoles, but for “casual computing”.

Don’t get me wrong: it is fair to criticize the iPad itself. No webcam is a disappointment, no Flash support is annoying, no multitask is downright painful. But make no mistake: your aunt Edna won’t care. She’ll see a nice, cute, easy to use tool that will enable her to do all these things she does on her big, clunky computer. And without the fear of messing something up. And guess what: you’ll be happy too, because she won’t have to call you every other week to fix something she did because she refuses to learn how to use that big computer (most of which she doesn’t need anayway).

The Netbook argument

Many people say they wanted something more akin to a netbook. A “real” OS that they can tinker with and use “like a mini computer”. But these netbooks fail: try as they might, they are not a real computer. They are small, they lack power, and their OS isn’t designed for that form factor. Again, I’m certain that some people have a need for them, but they are in the minority.
The point is: netbooks try to do too much, and they do nothing well. An “easy computer” will do less, but it will do it well. And for most people, that “less” is all they need.

The Concept

It might not be obvious, but I’m not really talking about the iPad here. I’m talking about the idea that the iPad introduces. It’s a new idea, that seems obvious once we’ve understood it: computers don’t have to be what we think computers are. They can be more simple, more usable, less capable, and more adapted to the uses that some (most?) people have. Apple isn’t the first company to try and achieve this. In a sense, netbooks were trying this also, and I’m certain many others have tried before. But they have failed, on the large, wide consumer market sense of things. Just like others had failed at MP3 players or smartphones before Apple entered the market. Will the iPad succeed? I think it will (it’s sexy, which is what matters to most), but maybe I’m wrong. What I really don’t think I’m mistaken about though, is this idea that they have  introduced a new concept in the tech world.
Easy Computers are here to stay, and Apple won’t be the only ones to make them…

Yesterday I got an email by a listener of The Phileas Club. I often get emails and answer them privately, but after writing this one I thought that it was summarizing my thoughts on the topic enough that I should make a blog post about it. So here is the original email, and my answer.
Quick note: the topic is sensitive, and in the past we have managed to keep these kinds of debates very civilized on this blog. If you chose to comment, please keep that tradition alive, thanks!

B.’s email:

I recently started listening to your show and started from the beginning and have been slowly catching up to the recent shows. I was a little disappointed at the sara palen talk because of the anti religious tone it took but let it go because i figured that was going on in the media at the time as well. Then I got to episode 10 and was completely offended at the comment you made that something should be done to people that preach the young earth theory. Evolution is not fact, it might be the majority view but remember that the majority also thought the world was flat at one point. There are scientists that use the same research as evolutionist and show it to back the theory of a young earth. I don’t expect you to change your view on this subject but I think you should know that our comment upset me.

And my answer (I didn’t address the Sarah Palin comments or the other details, as I thought they weren’t really the core of the issue):

Hi B.,

First of all let me thank you for taking the time to write to me; I really appreciate it.

That being said, I’m very sorry but I’m afraid that I cannot subscribe to what you’re saying… The “young earth theory” is not a theory, it’s a belief. The people who support it aren’t scientists, they’re spokespeople for organisations that have other agendas. A theory is supported by verifiable fact, and no fact comes to support the idea that the earth is 6000 years old. No scientist worth their salt, and no one who understands the meaning of the word, will give any credit to it.

This is my whole argument: by treating this “idea” as a theory, we validate it and lead people to believe that there might be some truth to it. There isn’t, and we should stop indulging it altogether. Don’t get me wrong: you are of course free to believe whatever you want, but believing something like that is very simply ignorance and missinformation, not “just another theory”.

It’s very ironic that you would use the “flat earth” example as a comparison, because you are on the very side of the people who defended it for so long, and they did it for the exact same reasons! How saddening is it that hundreds of years later we have to be fighting the same fight against the same people in the same way? Thankfully no one is getting burned today…

Also, I have to say that I don’t understand why some people need to discredit evolution in order to be comfortable with their faith. I think this agenda comes from a very literal reading of the bible that some people need to maintain in order to follow other literal interpretations also. I guess their thinking is: “if you discredit this one, then maybe the other ones aren’t valid either!”. So they will do everything they can to maintain it, no matter how ludicrous or just plain silly. But why couldn’t have God planted, planned and even executed evolution? Why couldn’t he be watching our every move, tweeking and adjusting his creations and their DNA to take them where he wants to take them? He could, and that’s probably what he did.

Evolution is NOT incompatible with faith. It is only incompatible with a very narrow and literal view of the bible, which only the more extreme want to uphold. The bible is a guide and a light to help you grow, not an instruction booklet for mindless drones who should follow it blindly and be forbidden to think about the meaning.

I know that you won’t believe me and I won’t change your mind, and that’s absolutely fine. We can disagree and stay civilized, but I won’t treat that idea as just a theory, because it devalues us and our progress: if we indulge ignorance, we start regressing as a society. And by the way, even the pope says that this concept is ridiculous and acknowledges evolution beyond the shadow of a doubt… Who am I to disagree with the pope?

Anyway, that’s my two cents about the topic. I hope I didn’t offend you (too much) and I’d like to thank you again for writing to me about this. I might sound harsh but I truly appreciate the fact that you would want to let me know how you felt rather than just being angry at me in your corner of our beautiful (round) planet!

[UPDATE 2 - Surprising settlement]

For Immediate release:

A few hours ago, minutes before the official end of the duel, the Parisian Bureau of Ethical Affairs ruled that this e-battle was causing a substantial amount of harm to the online community, and should be resolved peacefully.
I have thus decided to lay  the matter to rest, and as the offended party I will declare the matter a draw as of this moment ( the rules of Internet Dueling clearly state, in section A12 – amendment C: “Dude, the offended party can, like, totally declare the duel a draw”). The world can sleep soundly tonight, and we are all relieved.

On a personal note, I will say that I suspect Mr. Merritt will be especially relieved, as his score was obviously a disappointment: trailing well bellow the 50% mark for most of the duration of the poll, he mostly failed to reach the majority he needed to prove his point, and was (according to expert analysis) set to lose altogether had the process reached its conclusion. No thanks are required, I only do what’s best for the common good.

We will now go back to our daily lives, glad that the worst has been avoided.

[UPDATE - STUNNING DEVELOPMENT!]

A few days ago, the podcast “The Movielicious” released its fourth installment where the hosts gave their reviews (kinda) of the movie “The Hangover”.

Not long after that, tech personality Tom Merritt launched a vicious attack on Patrick Beja’s character. Being a man of honor, Patrick responded in the only way he could: with dignity. He requested that this terrible feud be settled in the olden tradition of Internet Duels, in the form of a courageous poll: he knows he is severely handicapped by Mr. Merritt’s inexplicable popularity on “The Twitter”. But Patrick is ready to stand for his ideas and suffer the consequences of his bravery.

This poll will last for roughly five days (until Friday July 10th). Please vote according to your conscience.

It’s been roughly six months since the last expansion came out, so I thought it would be a good time to give my thoughts about how the game has evolved and where it is today.

Short disclaimer: this is, as usual, a very long article that I’m pretty sure a lot of people won’t have the time to read. I’m ok with it; my short little fun blurbs have a much better home on my twitter page, and I aim my blog articles at some slightly more in depth analysis. My aim here isn’t to just state what I like or dislike, but rather to take a longer look at the hows and whys of the choices that were made, and try to understand the philosophy of this type of game design. I would recommend this article to any Wow fan, but also any MMO enthusiast who doesn’t have the time to get to level 80 in Wow and explore the intricacies of Blizzard’s designs.
So anyway, if you have a little bit of time to waste I hope you enjoy it and it brings something to your day!

Ok, here we go:

There are a few very obvious good sides and bad sides to the game today compared to what it was in Burning Crusade, or even Classic Wow. I think most people will agree on these:

The good includes the leveling process from 70 to 80. I think everyone agrees it strike an almost perfect balance between innovative quests and the usual “kill ten rats” ones. To the point that I don’t know how they could make it a lot better without completely changing the MMORPG paradigm. They involve you in interesting story lines, they don’t draw out the leveling as you get closer to 80, and each zone has epic events and characters that you will remember throughout… I really think you’ll be hard pressed finding people who dislike the experience.

The bad includes the horrible horrible lag in some zones (Dalaran at peak hours, Wintergrasp and the whole continent when battles end, some raid instances when they are particularly populated…). Some of those have been / are being addressed, but it’s still a very clear shortcoming of this version of the game.
I could also talk about the fact that group dynamics have been murdered by the revamping of some gameplay mechanics: crowd control is a distant memory, tanking is a semi-mindless AOE fest, mana regeneration has become so overinflated that you basically never hear any healer saying he’s out of mana anymore… The flip side being that when you start an instance, you can be pretty certain that you’re going to be able to complete it, and in a reasonable amount of time at that (painful memories of The Shadow Labyrinth from The Burning Crusade come to mind). There should be a middle ground somewhere, or maybe some optional way to challenge players a bit more. I for one hope they find it at some point.
Lastly, the game has become more “arcady” and “easy” than it ever was. Some people dislike this and I certainly can understand why. I do however think this has more upsides than downsides, but that’s another story.

So all this is true and has been discussed at length in many forums. What I would like to point out here is the incredible mechanics and designs that Blizzard has managed to implement into this expansion and that are going slightly unnoticed, or at least undiscussed.

Fun specs

Not so long ago, a large part of the talent trees were uninteresting and / or inefficient in many situations. Yet you you HAD to spec into them for certain purposes. No more! Every single spec has some awesomeness to them. You might dislike one or the other because it doesn’t fit your play style, but all the specs now include the “concentrated coolness” principle that Blizzard is fond of. I would even go as far as to say that talent builds have become more difficult to create because 90% of the talents are appealing, which is quite an achievement in itself. Note that I’m not talking about optimizing and minmaxing your spec to be the best possible tank or raid DPS or PVP murderer, but just about the innate cool factor of each talent. They almost all seem cool and useful, and you want them all when you’re building your tree. It makes for hard choices when some of them were very clearly fillers previously. If you don’t believe me, just go take a look at the talent trees pre-3.0.

Gameplay improvement through procs

This mostly applies to DPS classes, which had very regular spell rotations they could repeat ad nauseum in almost every encounter in the game. Some had the fun of crowd controlling to spice things up (which has now disappeared as I said) but apart from that you could pretty much sleep through your raid nights or even leveling sessions.
One of the features that is being used a lot more today is the idea of one of your action or spell effect “allowing” you to use another one.
For example, an arms warrior will sometimes be allowed to use the Overpower ability when his Rend does damage, even if the primary condition for their overpower ability isn’t met. A mage will get an instant Pyroblast if two of his spells critically hit in a row. This is true throughout the classes and talent trees in the game. the benefit for the player is that it forces them to pay attention to what’s happening and gets them out of the incredibly monotonous process that DPS used to be. Great great improvement, makes the DPS role a lot more involved and a lot more fun. Now if we could just get a smidge of crowd control back also, it would be heaven.

Class Balance

I don’t think class balance has ever been as good as it is today, both in PVE and PVP. Some might disagree with me, but you need to understand what I’m saying: I’m not saying class balance is perfect, I’m just saying it’s very acceptable in most cases, and that it’s certainly the best it’s ever been.
In PVE, a tank is now a tank, no matter the class. It wasn’t always like that, and some groups would often misgidedly reject this or that class out of hand because “they’re not good enough for this instance”. I can also remember a time where groups would require a priest as a healer, and there were severe disparities in DPS capabilities. No more! ™ Sure, you can find some classes that will do better than others if you’re picky, but all in all they are mostly equivalent while staying different in play style.
PVP is a touchy subject. I certainly don’t mean to imply that classes are balanced against any other here either, because they are not. But all classes (and even most specs) are viable in PVP. Sure, some classes or specs are hopelessly underpowered in some situations (hunters in 2v2 arenas are at the bottom of the barrel) and some classes are still painfully powerful (no one can withstand the DPS and stun fest that a couple of rogues can instill with a well set up opener, and it’s some healers will survive for hours, even against two opponents). But overall, the situation has become largely acceptable and mostly very satisfactory in all PVP situations. Unless you want to be the absolute best you can be in a specific situation, you can pretty much go with the class or spec you like and have fun in most PVP situations. Again, pre-3.0, it really really really wasn’t the case.

Different avenues to get gear

We’re leaving the realm of gameplay mechanics here and entering “game design land”. Giving you options to get gear is a designer’s way to not force you to do something you don’t want to, which is absolutely brilliant. In Burning Crusade, getting the best pre-raiding gear required you to go through hours and hours of farming, repeating the same instance to either get the piece of armor off this one boss that dropped it, or to get your reputation up with the specific faction that would sell it to you. Here’s a list of how you can get great pre-raiding items in Wrath of the Lich King:
- Running a dungeon in the hopes of getting that one item you want from that one boss you need to kill. It usually won’t take more than three of four tries (keep in mind that an instance is takes only a fraction of the time it did in previous versions of the game, and it has become easy enough that you will complete it 99% of the time). At the same time you will get badges and reputation for the faction of your choice, so it never really feels like you’re wasting your time even if you don’t get the item you wanted. What’s more, you can run a variety of instances while still getting these benefits. This is a well known part of the puzzle, but bare with me.
- Running entry level raids with random people has become very possible, especially at this point in the game where people are geared and know the encounter strategies. It is very easy to keep an eye on the general or LFG channel and spot a “need one last <insert your role here> for Sartharion”, jump in, get your loot and leave. Same goes for Naxxramas, or even Ulduar in some cases.
- Buy from faction vendors. Even at lower reputation levels you’ll get some decent rare items, and getting to the higher levels that will allow you to purchase epics is way easier than it used to be.
- Buy from badge vendors. Again, you get these no matter what, and the equipment you can purchase with the badges is comparable to the epics you would get in entry level raids.
- Buy craftable epics. Each class / role has at least two pieces of armor they can use, plus one or two weapons, a neckless and a ring. With this alone, you’re already well on your way.
- Do your weekly Archavon / Emalon run. A pugable encounter (yes, even Emalon is largely pugable if you have a slight idea of what you’re doing, and it will become increasingly so as people get geared up). This is a simple process that requires no planning and that even the most casual players can benefit from. It will provide you with some of the best gear in the game, both for PVE and for PVP. By the way, I disagree with people who say that giving you good gear through this easy avenue was a mistake on Blizzard’s part: the weekly timer ensures that you won’t get geared to fast, but it still gives everyone the feeling that they are achieving something. And by the time you’ve actually gotten some nice drops, the next level of gear has been introduced in the game anyway.

So this is a summary of the ways you can get gear for PVE, and the list of improvements to the ways of getting PVP items is almost as long, so I won’t get into it here. The point is that while it is still a reasonably long process to get to where you want to be in terms of performance with your character, the trip has become a far less repetitive and monotonous one.
Some people think that giving casual players the same powerful gear that you give hard core players is a mistake because it devalues their achievements. While I certainly understand the concern, I have to say that after a few months of actually playing the game I find I’m having a lot more fun / motivation / satisfaction in the gearing process (which is a core component in the game) than I ever did. And I suspect that a lot of the large casual player base agrees with me. In the end, making the game more enjoyable for as many players as possible is what really matters. These concerns were very valid ones in theory and they were discussed at length before the game came out, but I would submit that in actuality you would be hard pressed finding people who enjoy Wrath of the Lich King *less*than they did Burning Crusade.

Hard work for little optimization

This might sound like a bad thing, but let me explain: in previous versions of the game, you had a linear path to optimisation with, let’s say 100 “time units” to get the first tier of enchantment. Then you’d need to spend 400 “time units” to get the second tier of enchantment, but it would be so much better than the first tier that you basicaly needed to do it if you wanted to be taken seriously. Today, the time structure is the same, but the benefit from going to tier one to tier two is minimal. This is true for reputation enchantments and regular enchantments alike: a very expensive weapon enchantment or an “exalted” reputation enchantment will only be slightly better than the trivial “cheap” or “honored” variety. The difference is not negligible, so people who want to be the best at what they do will still be motivated to go the extra mile, but it’s not so much better that people who didn’t invest this bigger amount of time aren’t able to compete.

Profession benefits

Last improvement that I was skeptical about but turned out to be very beneficial: the professions philosophy revamp. Before WotLK, professions provided you with pieces of equipment that only you could use, giving players the motivation (and sometimes feeling of obligation) to level up their craft. Today, you can sell almost any piece of equipment you can craft, which helps pretty much everyone gear up. The unique benefit that you will get for leveling your profession will come in the form of very powerful or very easily accessible enchantments: spellthreads, special gems, gem sockets, shoulder enchantments, armor kits, etc.
This is brilliant because, once again, it provides a very clear advantage to the people who invest the time and effort in their craft, yet it doesn’t give anyone the feeling that they need to do it in order to be competitive.

Well, I guess that’s it. If I’m forgetting a couple I’ll update the post, but what I take away from all this is that the designers at Blizzard have made a clear play for the “don’t force anyone into anything” path. Wrath of the Lich King could have been subtitled “do what you like”. Sure it has its problems, there’s no denying that. But in my opinion, the good far makes up for the bad. I can’t wait to see how they will manage to top themselves in the next expansion…

Veronica Belmont, Turster, Felicia Day, Scott Johnson and two other guys you may or may not have heard of are all garthered for one great hour of podcasting!

Listen to the show:

You can also use iTunes, the RSS feed or the the MP3 file. And remember you can find this episode and more at the official How I Wow blog at howiwow.org.

A word from Patrick: I couldn’t have dreamt of a better way to celebrate this amazing year of How I Wow goodness. I think this show embodied everything that I like so much in podcasting: it’s about friends taking the time to come together to share a moment of pure enjoyable fun. I hope we will have many many more.
And for those who were in the chatroom and enjoyed the “director’s cut” version: thank you so much for being with us. The sole fact that we were sharing it with all of you made it what it was.

Hi all, and welcome!

I’ve been talking for a while about the fact that I was having problems managing all the different blogs I set up over the past couple of years. Most of them are podcast blogs that don’t really see much activity outside of the show’s schedule, so it only makes sense that I would put all of that together in one convenient place.
Furthermore, it will allow me to add content much more easily in the future.

Please note that the “individual sites” (or minisites) are still sort of available through the use of categories: if you’re only interested in The Phileas Club and nothing else, you can go to the show’s minisite (available through the navbar on the top menu) and that’s all you’ll get.

I hope you enjoy the new organisation and the new homepage! As usual, all the comments and feedback are very welcome.

“Again with Twitter?!”
Yeah I know… Twitter is here, get used to it.

Alright, so what does Twitter need? First one who says “a business model” gets a cookie. Yes, they do need that, but let me take a detour through the user side of things for a moment and I’ll get back to that in a minute.

As I have said before, Twitter’s simplicity is its strength. I don’t think they should give it up for anything. Others have tried to “enhance” the user experience by adding threading and things like that. An interesting idea on paper, but it does take away some of the product’s usability. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a hater; let’s just say it’s different and the crowds seem to be gravitating towards more simplicity.
So Twitter has to stay simple, but there is still room to expand. And I think topical conversations is indeed something that could enhance the user experience tremendously. If done right, and in the spirit of the product.
In comes the #hashtag. We all know that you can use these to specify what topic you are talking about. This is incredibly useful and I strongly believe Twitter should make it its next big push. So to put things clearly:

@notpatrick thinks @twitter should embrace #hashtags and make them the second arm of the community.

Here’s how it would work: you follow @people the way you always have, and you can also follow #conversations. These would work pretty much the same way: if you follow #grammys, anytime anyone says something in that topic (with a #grammy in the message), you see it in your feed. Thus following the global conversation that you’re interested in.
Of course, this has a huge potential for overflowing / making your feed unreadable. Just separate the two: add a tab on the front page for your conversations feed, and make it an option to merge the two.
It also has a potential for spamming: the one internet vice that Twitter is spared from because you choose who you follow. If anyone can add a #something and be on 20.000 people’s feeds, it will happen fast. But there are ways to control it (you need to sign up to be on twitter) and a clever use of crowdsourcing (a “signal user as spammer” feature) would pretty much smash the issue on the spot.

And just think of how much we would get out of it though: the Twitter dynamic mixed with information you care about and opinions from around the world. Discover interesting people, learn new things… A new world of possibilities opens. Now that the Fail Whale is nothing but a distant memory and that Twitter is a reliable tool, I think the team should concentrate their efforts and get this integrated into the service and API.

So what’s the upside for them you ask? Well, not only would that be a great for the users, but I think it would also hold the key (ok, a key) to the long awaited business model for the service. Sure, they could make the general API a pay-for acess as other have suggested, but I think this could also be an avenue worth exploring.
We have been promised no advertising in our regular feeds, not now, not ever. And I agree that it would be both an inconvenience and a sort of invasion of privacy. Not so in the #conversation feeds. These are general conversations that no one really has ownership over, hence no sence of privacy. As long as your regular @people feed is protected, I think most people wouldn’t mind seeing an ad an hour in their #conversation feed.
Now if we agree on this, think about how insanely tailored those ads would be! Not only do they already know all about you (your tweets, the people you follow), but now they would also know precisely what you’re interested in (the conversations you subscribe to). This would be Google Adsense on steroïds and would sell like virtual hotcakes.

There you go Twtter, problem sovled. Get on it.

And baring that, third party clients like the wonderful Twhirl from the Seesmic team should integrate that functionality. Like, right now.

[Edit: People are noting that this is already possible in some third party apps, which is great. But this is only a stopgap; having it integrated in the stardard site and API is the only way to make it truely universal and push the feature's use. And the only way to allow for monetization of course...]

[Edit 2: Another possible monetization: I would actually pay a buck or two a month for an added service like that, and I'm sure a lot of other people would too.]

Alright, so everyone has heard about it. Some of you probably use it. But most people have a very hard time explaining what the heck Twitter even is…
So I’ll try my hand at this. The aim is to write a short description of why so many people love Twitter so much, and explain why it is a major new form of communication, just like email and instant messaging were in their time.

If I do things right, next time your friends ask you about Twitter and you go insane trying to explain it, you can just send them to this article and they should have a vague idea of why it’s such a great tool.

Ok here we go.

What twitter is

First let me do a brief description of how it works:

1) You create an account and send short “status updates”. This creates a page where all your status updates are displayed chronologically (twitter.com/yourname).

2) You chose other people to “follow”. The updates from all these people will appear on your twitter home page when you log in (twitter.com/home).

3) Consequently, all the people who follow you (friends, family, fans) will see all your updates.

4) If you include “@nameofperson” in your message, that person will see it whether they are following you or not.

5) You use the site and third party software on your computer or phone to read your page and send updates in the easiest way possible. Some will allow you to attach location and picture.

That’s it.
It might seem simple and obvious, but this tool effectively creates a way for thousands and thousands of people to communicate effectively without talking over one another.

“Dude, it’s just like Facebook” – “Hey, I can do that with Messenger!” – “But email works just like that!” – …

First of all, don’t “dude” me when you’re talking about Facebook, it makes you sound like Myspace. And second, I can assure you that whatever you think it’s like, it is not.
Twitter is very unique for a great many reasons. Understanding that is important. So to that effect, now that you know what twitter is, let me tell you what it’s not.

What twitter is not

- It’s not email:
If you want to send information to your friends via email, you will have to manually select each of them. Here, one “tweet” will instantly go out for everyone to see with no effort. It also has an Instant Messaging quality to it, so people don’t need to “check” their email, they will most likely get the update instantly.

- It’s not Instant Messaging:
You are not required or even expected to see and / or respond to anything on Twitter. If you’re there to read it, fine. If you’re not, cool. You can read those later anyway. Sort of like you would on Facebook: you check it whenever you have time to keep up with your friends.

- It’s not Facebook:
Social networks are typically symmetrical, meaning that whoever you are friends with also has to be friends with you. You hear what they say, they hear what you say. So no one person can reasonably claim to understand anything if they’re above a couple hundred friends (oh, and I don’t care what your friend Casey says, she doesn’t actually have 346 friends).
Twitter is asymmetrical, so if you follow someone, they won’t automatically follow you too. This means that one person can be followed by hundreds or thousands of people and not be clogged with all the constant updating they will do. Great for famous people. In a way it’s kind of what happens on a forum: you put something out and lots of people can read it.

- It’s not a forum:
A forum is complex and very segmented. If you want to talk about this, you need to do it here, in that thread, or you will disturb its flow. Twitter has no real categories per se, deep meaningful conversations isn’t what it was designed for. Sure there are ways to categorize your tweets (#topic will classify your tweet as related to that topic), but in essence it’s more “short bursts of conversation” that die out rather fast. It’s like having a constant giant chat room along with you all the time.

- It’s not a chat room:
Chat rooms are impossible to moderate when you go above a certain number of participants. Not so with Twitter, since you yourself chose who you listen to. If someone is bordering on spammy, just drop them and you’re fine.
But at the same time, other people will listen to different people, and the whole network is pervasive. For example, you follow A who says something awesome (Chinese Democracy rocks). You repeat it in your feed, and B and C hear it too, and respond (Chinese Democracy sucks). A might follow C and say something to that response (Eat crap you Celine Dion lover!)
Like I said, a giant room with thousands and thousands of people having conversations at the same time and not talking over one another. And believe it or not, it’s both civil and interesting most of the time. It has to be: when it’s not, you just stop listening. It’s like magic, really.

So as you can see, Twitter is a little bit of everything else but not quite the same as everything else. It borrows from the ways we use to communicate today, blends them together, leaves some things out, adds some things in, and comes out as something completely new.

And it doesn’t replace the old things either! It just adds to the mix. No one stopped using email when ICQ came out and IMs became popular. No one stopped calling people on the phone when email arrived. New tools just make some things easier, very rarely are they supposed to replace the old ones. So I can assure you that Twitter is not supposed to be Facebook or email, nor should you not want to use it because you already have those.
Twitter is another tool that lets us stay in touch and communicate and exchange ideas and knowledge (and essential information about the number of cups of coffee you’ve had today) in a new and wonderful way…

In closing

So I guess I’ll stop there; by now you hopefully have an idea of how and why Twitter is as innovative as it is cool. But to really understand the beauty of twitter you have to try it for yourself. I’m sorry, I know it’s what everyone says, but it’s because it’s true… So please give it a try and see if you like it. You might not, but at least you’ll know what all the fuss is about.

By the way, you can follow me at twitter.com/notpatrick. You won’t be sorry.
Well, you probably will, but it’ll be too late.

Democracy isn’t a perfect system, it’s just the best one we’ve found yet. And as with anything that’s not perfect, you’ve got issues that can become pretty freakin’ annoying after a while. On the Internet, which is probably the most extreme form of democracy we have, everyone can express their opinion equally. And it seems that most of these are: “THIS SUCKS!”

I’m sure you’ve come across this idea yourself: whether it’s on the net or in real life, it sometimes seems like people are never happy. About anything. “People” will bitch and moan all day long, and all you hear about in the news is controversy. And from there it’s easy to go to the conclusion the rest of the world is a bunch of dumb saps that will always be unhappy, no matter what the topic is.

Well, while I agree that most people are probably dumb saps, I still think that this view is a sort of optical illusion. The thing is, there is no idea in the world that will get a unanimous approval. And I mean none, like, ever! Go with me on this: try to think of an idea that would garner universal approval in a modern western society. Even the brightest, shiniest, happiest proposal would get a couple of groups of people who would violently oppose it. As long as it’s something “realistic”, it will make some people unhappy.

- Universal healthcare is a great idea in theory (give medical care to the sick), but you get the obvious and valid question of “who’s gonna pay for it?”
- Stopping the wars and the horrors in the world would be awesome, but who has the right to decide what’s right for other people? Some will say “why the hell aren’t we doing something?!”, and others will aswer “you had no right to go in Iraq”…
- Let’s give condoms to teenagers so they don’t get STDs! “Oh yeah, but they shouldn’t have sex in the first place!” Well, let’s prevent them from having sex then. “Dude, have you ever met a teenager? They will have sex no matter what, seriously.”
- Let’s tax cigarettes and prevent people from smoking indoors, surely noone will opose the idea of not getting sick. “Hey, you’re taking away my freedom to do whatever the hell I want!”
- Give free puppies to every sad little boy and girl in the world. “Yeah, and who’s gonna clean their crap off the floor?”
I guess you get the idea.

So  my premise is this: there will always be some people sincerely opposed to any idea you put out, no matter how great it sounds to you and yours.
Now think of a world where everyone can express their opinion. We don’t actually have a lot of experience with this concept. When democracy was first conceived, it was very loose on the definition of “everyone has a voice”. But in a modern democracy, for every single idea in the world that is expressed in a public forum you will find a group of people that will be very critical about it.
And they will have the rights (democracy) and the means to express themselves (Internet or traditional media).

Is that really a good thing? Is there such a thing as too much democracy? Boy is that a can of worms…

So anyway, from there it’s very easy to think that “people” criticize everything. Of course, in reality you only have one have a fraction of the people actually complaining about each topic, but the result is that every idea and opinion gets shot down and criticized. And this gives the impression that “people” in general are never happy.

Well, I’m probably not saying anything that you don’t know already. I just wanted to formalize this a bit, because I tend to be very cynical and declare that “people always complain”. I should remember: it’s not that everyone complains all the time, it’s that there’s always someone that will complain.

And it’s just… Sometimes I wish they would just shut the fuck up. But they’re entitled to their opinion. And that’s the problem with democracy.

Hi everyone,

Ok, I’m late and I’m sorry, but unfortunately there won’t be any episode for November.

We did record a show, and it was a pretty exceptional one too: Eyal from Tel Aviv joined myself and Turki (whom you all know) for a good 90 minutes conversation. It was a really good, especially since it’s not very often that a Saudi and an Israeli get together for a friendly chat…
Well, when I finally got round to editing I found that the recording of the file didn’t go well and that the audio was completely unusable. “Big giant bummer” would be the official reaction to that. I tried to organize a re-record of course, but unfortunately it didn’t work out and now I feel like it’s a bit too late for a November episode anyway.

I’ll try to do something special for December, maybe earlier than I usually do. But in the meantime I’m really sorry for letting everybody down. Thanks to everyone who keeps supporting this show and for all the nice messages I got via email and twitter about this, it’s really appreciated.

So that’s it for now, and I’ll talk to y’all (*wink*) again in a few weeks!

PS: If you still want to get your november “Patrick’s silly perspective” fix, you might want to swing by Tom Merritt’s and Roger Chang’s excellent show “East Meets West“, where they were nice enough to invite me a couple of weeks ago. We had a great chat that I think you’ll enjoy on episode 141.