Omniblog

Rule #1: No pooftahs.

Question #1: Should one’s Facebook status and Twitter updates be the same?

Rule #2: No pooftahs.

Question #2: If so, why, or if not, why?

Rule #3: I don’t want to catch anybody not drinking….

Question #3: Which do you prefer, or do you consider them separate entities and treat them both the same? (so to speak)

Me? I keep them as separate as possible. They do overlap every once in a while. For example, I will see something of interest from someone I follow on Twitter. That link will find its way to my Facebook.

I do not use a site to update every possible status on Facebook, Twitter, etc at the same time as my audiences between Twitter and Facebook are different.

I post a lot more stuff about MMOs (WoW especially) on Twitter. I post more geeky stuff on Twitter, period.

I do have one thing that is a semi-cross between the two. I made a Facebook page blog, but it’s not gaining ground on followers, yet. So, blog stuff does mix between the two, but you can easily ignore the update, or not become a fan of the page I have for my blog. (Shameless plug!: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Omniblog/145487225283 – if you are already on Facebook, search for Omniblog, you should find it with all of its 2 fans) I have 1 fan, besides me, and all blog posts get posted as updates to that page.

So, if you want to update both statuses, that’s up to you. But, I will not be enabling cross updates between Twitter and Facebook (thanks but no thanks Tweetdeck).

I do not prefer one over the other. As I stated earlier, I consider them separate entities with separate audiences. Twitter serves its purpose, and Facebook serves its purpose.

I’ve had a few people ask me, paraphrasing of course, “WTF is Twitter?”

I like to sum it up this way:

Twitter is Facebook status in 140 characters without Facebook.

Now, that might be oversimplifying it a bit, but for now, that will suffice, especially when you look at the Twitter page.

What’s a Tweet?

A tweet is an individual update on Twitter. Much like your status message on Facebook.

What do I need to get into Twitter?

You really need one thing: A Twitter Account. Go to The Twitter Website and sign up for an account.

Some pointers:

1. When you fill in the information, you can give it as much, or as little, information as you want. I did put in my first and last name so people could find me. I don’t mind one bit.
2. Pick a user name. The site will automatically check to see if it is available.
3. Pick an email address you check regularly. Your email is used to notify you when:
• Someone follows you.
• Someone sends you a direct message (more on this later).
4. Skip all the stuff asking you to check your address book, who to automatically follow, etc. There’s a link below the big button that says “Skip this step.”

Voila, you now have a Twitter account. Now, the next step: Follow people!

Just as you add friends in Facebook, you follow people in Twitter. Just click on “Find People” and start searching. You can search on a variety of criteria.

Twitter Account Settings

You can customize all kinds of things for your Twitter account. Everything from your avatar picture, to whether everybody can read your tweets.

There is one setting I should point out that some people do use, and that’s protecting your tweets. If you click on the Account tab under Settings, there’s a checkbox for “Protect my updates.” This only lets people that are following you see your updates.

When I read Tweets, what’s up with these weird looking web addresses?

Those are special addresses and sites that take a really long web address and condense it to be more Twitter friendly.

What if I want to shorten a web address

The easiest site to use is TinyURL.

What do I Tweet about?

Whatever you want to. I, personally, keep my Twitter updates separate from my Facebook status. They will never be the same thing.

What’s this @ stuff I see?

That’s a reply to that user. So, if you see @mdmcaus in an update, it’s someone reply to something I posted. For someone to see your reply, however, they must be following you (I think, someone correct me if I am wrong.)

What are Direct Messages

Direct messages are just that, direct messages to someone. They do not show up in the public feed, they are between you and whomever you messaged. You will get an email notifying you of a direct message. They are also available, along with replies, on your Twitter page when you login.

Questions?

You can follow me on Twitter as mdmcaus and I’ll be glad to help.

There are other ways to update your Twitter status other than using the web page, but since this is a beginner’s guide, I will not cover those, yet. If you want to know more about Twitter clients, especially ones for your cell phone, let me know.

So, I have seen this once, and I think I saw/heard about it again this weekend: Doing semi-game play-by-play through Twitter.

Is there such a thing as too much Twittering, aka too twitteriffic, I mean, with 100 API calls an hour, how much play -by-play with Twitter do you really need to do?

At the start of the college baseball season, someone was really doing a play-by-play of a college game. I was getting so many updates, it was dizzying to try to keep up. Luckily with Tweetdeck, I can remove them from a group, which I did. I then unfollowed them.

Now, let me clarify, Twittering from a game to give updates on players, coaches, injuries, calls, etc is fine and is somewhat limited as shown by Lisa Salters at the Dallas Mavericks vs Phoenix Suns game this past weekend. Her Twittering, despite her connection issues, was fine. Check out what she did: http://twitter.com/saltersl

So, update Twittering, fine, play-by-play with Twitter, not so fine. If you want to know what’s going on, get a radio, get a TV, get ESPN Gamecast (if you can), use ESPN360.com, or just don’t bother trying to keep up with  the game on Twitter. I mean, there’s enough information, and then there’s too much.

Playbytwitter(tm) is too much. That’s what I am calling it, Playbytwitter, or Twitterplay(tm). Although, the latter sounds kind of naughty…hm…

Yes, I did it, I cheated on World of Warcraft, again. But not with just any MMO, no sir. I cheated on WoW with the graddaddy of them all – EQ 2.

Yes, an abbreviation that I never thought I would type, EQ. For the love of gaming, why on Earth would I cheat on WoW for the game that was once, and probably still is, dubbed EverCrack? I’ll tell you why, goddammit I was curious! (How many times have you said that, whether it’s related to gaming or not? Hello college!)

With it’s plethora of races and classes to play, what’s not to be curious about. It has its share of classes that are good and evil, and it even has races that are neutral that you can choose to be good or evil with based on what city you start from, plus there are some classes that are not available if you are good, and vice versa for evil. Interesting, but not a new, concept. WoW had this, until it let Horde be Paladins, and Alliance be Shamans. If they had kept it that way, I’d have a priest or druid healer instead of a shaman, but I digress..

The skinny – once I got the graphics setup right for my widescreen monitor and my nVidia 9800 GT, it looks very pretty. The controls are good. I’ve only tried 2-3 classes, and I’m not sure what I will play, if I continue playing. The sounds and soundtrack are top notch too. The playstyle is pretty cool. I mainly play casters as I suck at melee pew pew. I did tinker with a paladin for 10 minutes, and it looks interesting.

EQ 2 vs Age of Conan – EQ 2 hands down because the end game is there, and a new expansion which introduces new content for players 50-80, and the controls are a bit better.

Everything vs WoW – To me this is not a fair comparison to make yet. I have played WoW for over 3-4 years (however long it’s been out minus 6 months as I started late.) I have played others for a weekend.

Stay tuned. I will probably cancel my Conan account soon, but keep my EQ 2 active even after the free month. I am pretty much over Conan. I don’t see why I should continue with it knowing what I do about the end game.

I went to lunch with my manager today. While at the establishment, I got up to go get more beverage and some dessert. As I walked by the drink area, this man said “Hey”, and immediately, without even thinking I said “Hey Coach Brown, how’s it going?”

Wait…what did I just say? The man who said hi to me was indeed University of Texas football coach Mack Brown. In my 11 years of being here, his 10 years, I’ve never run into him.

It was just a normal, yet kinda neat, experience, and it was very cool in how Austin is quite good at just leaving people alone like that, or Sandra Bullock, or Matthew M. (Not going to attempt to spell his last name this late in the day.) He was eating lunch with his wife. No one bothered him for a picture, autograph, etc.

Way to go Austin. Keep up the semi-normal part of us.

With the things I have heard about the new iPhone software release sometime in June – copy/paste, tilty keyboard when you go landscape! – I’m wondering, dare I try it, again?

It sounds like they will fix my one major annoyance with it: the keyboard will go landscape regardless of when you go landscape. That’s what I’ve heard, I have not confirmed nor denied this portion of the new software. I have confirmed, I think, that there is an app for making the keyboard do this, if they don’t fix it.

Now that I have a new computer, I decided to give an MMO a shot that I’ve been curious about: Age of Conan.

I decided to buy it online for $20 and download it, I even get a free mammoth mount. I would advise if you do this, do it at night and let the download go overnight. It’s a 15GB download which with a 15MB/sec download connection will take 5-7 hours if the download server maintains the proper speed. Since this is not a perfect world, I varied bewteen 300K and 1.4 MB a second.

Then, upon installation, I had to upgrade to a patched version of DirectX 9 and new video drivers. No problems there and this would be expected.

Then I ran the game and it downloaded about 3 (or was it 5) GB of patches. There’s another 1.5 hours. Back to bed I went. Oh, I should mention when you buy the game online it sends you a verfication code through text message. It was really cool and a very neat idea. That worked without issue.

After all was said and done I watched all the opening stuff, as I do with any new game, and the graphics were amazing, definitely on par with World of Warcraft. Then, character creation….

12 classes to choose from, each from one of 4 archetypes (mage, warrior, priest and rogue). I picked a Demonologist at first (similar to a warlock in WoW). Fun to play but I died a lot.

I then tried a Necromancer. Oh yes, lots of pew pew and minions, and the number of minons you can have, and type, grows with level. I’m now a level 20 and I can summon 8 minions. Mmm. By far, this is a fun caster class. They even have mixed classes. Check out the Age of Conan website for more details.

As I am not wanting to get into a lot of detail, I will just start summing stuff up:

- Graphics: Awesome!
- Gameplay: Pretty good once you get the hang of it.
- Quests: Plenty to start. I’ve read they dwindle around 35-40. We shall see.
- Soundtrack: Awesome

Pretty good so far. A more detailed review at a much later date once I’ve had time to play more. Probably not until I’m 30-40.