#oneaday, Day 240: Making your Mark

It's odd (and not a little morbid) to think about the things that you leave behind that people might remember you by. Those little marks you make on the world, whether they're physical marks scrawled on a toilet door with permanent marker pen, mental marks left in the mind of people or now, technological marks, too.

There'll always be a little trace of me left in Southampton thanks to largely-pointless but fun geotagging app Gowalla. When I first downloaded said app, there weren't many people using it but I liked the idea of it. Go out, walk around, "collect" places. If nothing else, it was a nice way of building yourself your own custom tourist map of a place.

So on more than one occasion, I went out for a walk with the specific intention of creating a bunch of Spots around Southampton. This became something of an obsession, with the vast majority of Spots around the city centre being created by me. General way of telling: if it has a lengthy and slightly sarcastic description, or is the kind of thing you wouldn't find on a typical tourist map (such as "The Pedestrian Crossing That Makes The Funny Noise"), it was probably created by me.

Now, as pointless as Gowalla is in many respects, there are many reasons why it'll always hold a fond place in my heart. Firstly, as I say, it's been my way to leave my mark on Southampton. I "found" these places and tagged them the way I wanted them to be tagged. This means that Greggs on East Street will forever be remembered as "fine dining for chavs". At least until they realise and ask politely for the description to be changed. Which, let's face it, they probably won't.

But the second reason is that my wandering around, creating these spots, marking my territory (as it were… albeit with less piss than is usually implied by that phrase) caused me to meet one of my dearest friends from that city. She happened to use Gowalla, stumbled across some of my sarcastically-described Spots and decided that the person who tagged Greggs as such was someone she'd like to get to know better. So we progressed from stalking each other via Gowalla, to tracking each other down on Twitter, to chatting on Twitter, to finally meeting face to face. It was one of those random instances of chaos theory at work, where one little choice made slightly differently would have meant we'd never have met. And, given what was going on in my life at the time we met, and how much she helped me through that difficult time, that would have made things go very differently for me.

So I'm certainly glad that I've left a "mark" on a few places over time, be it physically, emotionally or technologically. Because you never know when those marks might lead to something great, even after you're gone.

#oneaday, Day 238: Nerd Rage

As a new acquaintance from Twitter would say, nerd rage is one of the most formidable forces known to Man. It is a dreadful and terrible force, both specific and unfocused at the same time, often showing itself via the personification of inanimate objects who really don't know any better and are just attempting to do their job and failing. Raging at said inanimate objects or poorly-constructed pieces of software rarely does any good, but it is commonly assumed that it makes one "feel better".

As the years have passed, though, everyone's bullshit-tolerance threshold has lowered significantly to the stage we're at now, where if something doesn't work immediately and instantly and then remain working 100% of the time, people blow their top and spew their vitriol to whoever will listen, which is usually the Internet. Assuming the Internet connection isn't the thing which is causing the nerd rage, in which case alternative outlets have to be explored.

This is why issues such as the Xbox 360's infamous "red ring of death" smart so much. Not only is it a shoddy flaw in the system which should never happen in the first place, but people's tolerance for such shoddiness is far lower now than it would have been, say, twenty or thirty years ago. Hell, in the days of the NES, everyone was quite happy to accept the fact that if a game didn't boot up first time, it clearly and obviously meant that you had to blow in it to "get the dust out" despite no actual evidence that it was actually dust causing the game not to work correctly. And no evidence that those tiny flecks of gob that probably got into the cartridge circuitry while you were blowing in it actually helped matters, either.

It's also why we get such whingers in places such as Apple's App Store. "OMG 1 STAR COZ IT DIDNT WORK ONCE THIS IS A DIGSRACE REFUND PLZ". "Is it working now?" "Yes, but…" (etc.)

It's fair enough to want things to "just work". Apple in particular like to pride themselves on the fact that their products "just work" (which they do approximately 95% of the time, which means the remaining 5% incites nerd rage of a degree you've never seen before, particularly amongst recent converts and/or Android users). But it's worth remembering a time not so long ago when we enjoyed tape load errors, boot errors, numerical error codes you had to look up in a book, garbled graphics, tape decks that chewed up tapes and then spat them out, CD players that seemed to deliberately wait for you to insert your favourite disc then sprout internal blades to scratch the crap out of it and dial-up network connections where it was possible to get a "busy" signal for hours at a time. And there was no Internet to spew your vitriol over back then.

Nowadays we have complicated devices and software that no-one except superhumans understand really, and established solutions such as blowing on it, shaking it, hitting it, shouting at it, turning it off and back on again and setting fire to it don't work. So the only thing left to do is get frustrated. And possibly call up one of those superhumans. Because everybody knows at least one. (Note: If you don't know a superhuman nerd or don't want to bother them, you can save yourself a lot of time by referring to this chart.)

In other news, the router here is rubbish and crap and I hate it and it disconnects Xbox LIVE every five minutes when I'm playing Fable II and it doesn't like WordPress and SRSLY who uses AOL nowadays anyway and… (repeat to fade)

#oneaday, Day 225: This Post is Controversial

Want to get your voice heard on the Internet? Then you'd better have something contentious to say, or at the very least something to say about something contentious.

I've seen it myself on this blog. The day I wrote about Kevin Smith's experiences with Southwest Airlines (day 28, if you're keeping score) was one of the highest-traffic days that I've ever seen. Granted, this being a personal blog which not that many people know about, that still wasn't very many people. But it was enough to make a noticeable spike on that handy little pageviews graph that WordPress helpfully provides you with.

And today. I happened to tweet earlier that Xbox LIVE's prices were going up by $10 a year. Thinking nothing of it at the time, I returned about an hour later to discover that this tweet, out of the other 16,740 that there are (I know, I know) was retweeted by something in the region of three billion people. All right, that's an exaggeration. But you get my point.

And then, an article published by a colleague over on Kombo has seen one of our highest ever "temperature" ratings on gaming news aggregator N4G. The subject of the article? "Top Ten Most Overrated Games". Compare this to an article I wrote on the subject of women in the games industry, which attracted ill-informed, stupid comments from people who obviously had read nothing more than the title, and you'll see that at times, the Internet is not the place for reasoned discourse. Incidentally, this isn't a slight against Lucas' great article, which actually makes some fair points.

A friend and colleague described services such as Digg and N4G as "places where lazy people go to yell at each other over stories they didn't read concerning topics they don't understand". It's sad, but it's true. It's also an awesome quote. Thank you, Brad.

So it seems that in order to get people interested and reading what you have to say, it either has to be a contentious opinion, or an opinion on a contentious topic. It's possibly a side-effect of the celebrity culture I discussed the other day, where apparently our own lives aren't interesting enough and therefore we must go look for scandal, opportunities to accuse "the system" of screwing us and chances to argue and flame at every opportunity. Are our own lives really that boring, though? Do people really have that little to say about themselves? Should I turn this into a blog about what the latest celebrity idiots have been getting up to recently?

No. Because if everyone goes about doing that, it just makes the situation worse. I'm writing here for me. I write about what I want to write about, when I want to write about it… so long as it's still one thing a day. The fact that other people read and enjoy it is a happy bonus. And it gives me some faith that the Internet isn't solely populated by dribbling spastics.

Just mostly.

#oneaday, Day 222: I'm Right, You're Wrong

Having an argument is a great way to ruin an otherwise perfectly lovely day. The argument could be over anything. It could be over whether or not you think the latest changes that Facebook have made to their site are good or not. It could be whether or not you think raspberry ripple is the best flavour of ice-cream. It could be over whether or not you think the Pope is a massive douchebag. And, if it's on the Internet, it's probably over something utterly irrelevant and useless.

So here's a few steps on how to do it better.

Step 1: State your hypothesis

"PS3 sucks!"

Step 2: Offer convincing evidence for your hypothesis

"Because Xbox 360 rulez!"

Step 3: Offer a source for your evidence

"My mate Joe said so, too."

Step 4: Await response

"PS3 doesn't suck!"

Step 5: Respond to response

"Yes it does!" (Return to Step 4 until both sides have been made abundantly clear. This should take approximately 30 minutes, or five pages of forum posts.)

Step 6: Make up a statistic and quote it

"80% of people who tried both consoles said that PS3 sucks!"

Step 7: Await response

"Well I think Xbox 360 sucks!"

Step 8: Quote Nietzsche

"Admiration for a quality, art or rival games console can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it."

Step 9: Await response

"You're a douche, do you know that?"

Step 10: Respond to response

"Your face is a douche."

Step 11: Await response to response

"Your mom is a douche."

Step 12: Respond with nonsensical, illogical response

"That's not what she said last night."

Step 13: Await confusion

"What?"

Step 14: Take advantage of confusion

"So it's settled then!"

Step 15: Gloat

"I win. Douche."

And so it goes. One of the strange things about this always-connected, everyone-has-a-voice society is that everyone feels the need to have a contentious opinion on something. This happens (albeit not always to the degree described above) on all manner of topics, from the most irrelevant of fanboy conflicts to far-reaching opinions on matters such as racism. And no-one will ever back down, because there's always another website that "proves" their point, always another statistic from some made-up society somewhere.

It baffles me sometimes, because all this time that gets wasted arguing could be far better used enjoying both things that are being argued over. Of course, part of the issue in some cases revolves around people defending the camp they placed their flag in first. In many cases, people can't afford to buy both, say, a PS3 and a 360. So they stake their claim to one or the other and then justify their choice to anyone who will listen, and a bunch of people who won't also. That way, by branding the thing they haven't got "crap", they feel better about not owning it, even if they're secretly bitter that they can't make use of its exclusive features, software or delicious strawberry flavour.

Of course, some people are just asses and feel the need to disagree with everyone and everything. And those people are called assholes.

(If you're wondering about the inexplicable German in the cartoon above, you can blame both me and RothDog. Drawing nonsensical cartoons involving German stickmen arguing was always an excellent way to pass the time in tedious German lessons back at school. This strip is a recreation of the first ever one we drew.)

#oneaday, Day 221: Remember The Fallen Bloggers

It's with some sadness that we've said goodbye to several of my favourite #oneaday bloggers recently. No, they're not dead, thankfully, but various life circumstances have meant that it's no longer practical or desirable for them to fit daily blogging into their schedule. So a moment of silence, if you please, for Rhiarti and Chris Schilling. And after that moment of silence, a big round of applause for their hard, thankless, unpaid, voluntary work on the whole project up until this point. I hope you will continue to write, guys, because I've always enjoyed reading your work, whatever the subject, and whatever you might have thought of the quality of your posts.

Although nowhere near as many people—if any—will make it to the end of 365 days as started, I know that speaking personally I'm very pleased to have made the acquaintance of some amazing people through this whole business. And I'm sorry that there are still more whose work I didn't have a chance to enjoy while they were still involved, too.

I feel particular mention here should go to Andy "Ultrabrilliant" Kelly, who started the whole thing off and Lauren "Atheistium" Wainwright, whose tweet about the whole thing got me interested in the first place. While neither of them are still taking part, they're still active on Twitter and on their own blogs and doing proper worky stuff too, so do pay them a visit.

I've made it 221 days so far. That's quite a lot—over half a year, in fact. I'm pretty pleased with myself, but if anything I'm more determined than ever to make it to the end of this year. I nearly typed "unscathed" there, but those who have followed me from the beginning will know that I am anything but "unscathed" after the events of the last 18 months. Scathing is very much in attendance.

But those who have been following me for this period will also know that this whole process has provided an excellent sense of release. There have been times when I've wanted to say things that were stuck in my head, and this was as good a place as any to say them. And there have been other times when I've been able to channel that energy into something creative or "funny". Whether or not you've found my attempts at being humorous to be, well, humorous is beside the point, really. (No offence. Though obviously I appreciate it a great deal if you do enjoy things I've done.) It's given me the opportunity to try out all sorts of things and to find different ways to express myself.

You only have to look at the way the presentation of my blog has changed to see that. From pure text, to text with a quickly-located and vaguely relevant stock image, to clumsily-drawn cartoons that are shamelessly inspired by Allie Brosh's work on Hyperbole and a Half, to daily forays into Comic Life; I feel that the opportunity to experiment with and develop my craft has been a particularly valuable one.

And the self-discipline required in order to keep this going has been immense. As I wrote about yesterday, I feel this is a skill that I've partly learned from the things I enjoy. As "Don Woods" (*cough*) pointed out in the comments, though, perhaps it's an innate skill, also. I couldn't say. I know that this whole process has helped a lot, though.

So a huge thanks to everyone who's ever been involved with #oneaday, whether I've had the chance to speak with you directly or not. Thanks to those who inspired me to write something—anything—every day. Thanks to those who have read every single one of these entries (I know there's a couple of you at least). Thanks to those who comment. Thanks to those who lurk. Thanks to those who have clicked onto just a couple of these entries out of curiosity. Thanks to those who have helped me through the toughest time I've ever gone through in my whole life. Thanks to those who enjoy my stupid drawings. And you, reading this right now, too? Thanks to you, too.

Ah, that was disgustingly profound, wasn't it? Whatever. I mean it.

While you're on, pay the fellow Survivors a visit and support them. And if I've missed anyone out, please feel free to harangue me in the comments or on Twitter.

#oneaday, Day 218: I Love You, You Twat

Those of you who've been following me for a while will know that I have been known to make occasional forays into the virtual world of Second Life. For all its flaws and glaring technical errors and furry porn and flourishing sex industry, I always find it a genuinely fascinating experience from both social and creative angles.

I have one particular friend in that "other" world that I want to talk about today. We both started at around the same time, which means our avatars are both around the four year old mark right now. I've been rather more sporadic in my attendance than she has, but ever since we met we've shared a very close friendship which is pretty much unlike any of the other relationships I've cultivated in that particular world. She's one of those "constants" that you know you can always rely on. She's always been there, and has always offered a sympathetic ear when I've needed one.

We've also always shared a mutual love of insulting the crap out of each other. She admonishes me for my long absences and the fact I can type without mistakes at 85 words per minute. In response, I take great delight in drawing attention to her own typos, which have resulted in us inventing a number of our own words that anyone coming into our group is utterly bewildered by. I'm not even convinced we know what "furple" and "plinge" mean. But from the context, they are generally inclined to sound dirty.

Then we'll find something to argue about like children. Last night saw a particularly epic "am not, are too" battle that managed to impress everyone around us with our sheer tenacity. One of us will, at some point, accuse the other of being a pervert. The other will, in turn, bring up something from the past which lends incontrovertible evidence that no, they are in fact the pervert here. And so it goes on. For hours at a time, usually.

This is something that has always baffled me about friendship. At what stage do you make that mutual decision that it's okay to be incredibly rude to one another, especially in front of other people? It's one of those peculiar contradictions that seems to make perfect sense while you're engaged in it, yet is utter nonsense when you think about it. The common theory is that it's a sign you're so comfortable with one another you're happy to say absolutely anything to one another, because you know that you do genuinely care about each other. In the case of my friend and I, there's generally a bit of playing up for the crowd, too—they've come to expect it of us. When we're alone together, we'll generally talk normally and candidly.

I have a number of "real life" friends who are like this, too, so it's not just a case of the John Gabriel Internet Fuckwad Theory coming to life. Board game nights generally degenerate into smack talk and aspersions cast on pretty much everything it's possible to cast aspersions on. And yet somehow without disrupting the gameplay. (Much. Usually.)

I guess it's one of those social anomalies that we'll never truly understand. Still, it always keeps things entertaining.

With that in mind, thanks for reading, you complete bellend.

#oneaday, Day 213: Intensity

There's an old saying, isn't there, that claims if you lose the use of one of your senses, the others become much more acute. Having never been blinded, deafened or whatever the equivalent words for losing your senses of taste, smell or touch are, I can't speak for the truth of this. Although I did have a nasty cold one time that stopped me from being able to smell very much, though a good curry sorted that right out, just in time for me to be able to smell the musty flatulence caused by the not-inconsiderable amount of spices therein.

But there is one sphere where pretty much anyone can get a taste of what this is like. The Internet. When you're talking to someone on the Internet, you might not be able to see or hear them. You're certainly not touching them, smelling them or tasting them, unless there's some exciting new Skype-compatible technology you're all using that I haven't heard of yet. But regardless, friendships and relationships form, grow, break, explode, spread, all the things that real relationships and friendships do, in fact.

Except for the fact that the lack of "something"—be it sight, sound, smell, touch or taste—makes everything that much more intense. For many people, cultivating a friendship in "real life" is a drawn-out process that takes some time of getting to know each other, getting a feel for one another, understanding what makes each other tick and so on. This process still happens between people who have met online, but at a vastly accelerated rate. The very nature of communication on the Internet means that responses can be considered more carefully and, assuming you're an honest person, made more honest than you might feel able to be if you're sitting in front of someone, their piercing eyes gazing into your soul.

Of course, the opposite's also true. It's much, much easier to be a bastard and a liar thanks to the wonder of the Internet. And, in many cases, without consequences. Some people find this fun. But the emotion and the hurt it can cause is just as real as the feelings of friendship, affection, even love that can also be felt in these relationships between people who have never seen each other, in some cases.

On the whole, though, the opportunity to meet and talk to people from all over the world is something which should never be taken for granted, whatever form it comes in. Whether it's posting on a message board, writing an email, using Twitter, checking out someone's avatar in Second Life, raiding with guildies in WoW; without the Internet, there's no way that a whole bunch of these people would be in our lives. Old friendships would be lost and forgotten. New friendships might never be made. Soulmates might never find each other. And you wouldn't be able to read the deranged, 1:30am ramblings of someone such as myself.

Some might say the world would be a better place for that. But, y'know, I kinda like it this way.

#oneaday, Day 209: Coming Soon

Tomorrow night, The Squadron of Shame are back in action after something of a hiatus.

For those of you unfamiliar with our unique brand of discussion and podcastery, let me explain what it's all about, and when the new podcast hits, you'll be able to come and join the fun.

The Squadron of Shame started as a result of a feature on 1up Yours dubbed "The Pile of Shame". The term has since spread around the Internet somewhat, and it refers to all of the things that you've bought and never got around to reading, listening to or playing. In the case of the original 1up feature, it referred to that pile of games you have on your shelf that are begging to be played, but somehow inevitably get left behind whenever the latest triple-A hotness makes an appearance. The first game they took on was the excellent Psychonauts.

As it happened, the feature was somewhat short-lived on the 1up podcast. But a number of community members ran with the concept on the companion forums for the 1up "radio" output. We formed a club page on 1up which is still there, though largely inactive these days. We'd pick a game which was supposed to be good (or at least interesting), play it through as a group and discuss it all together. Some fascinating discussions resulted, and it also allowed many people to expose themselves to a variety of games which they might not have done otherwise. Games like Star Control II, Freespace 2, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth and Psi-Ops.

As time moved on, the group wanted more. The merging of all the 1up boards into one mangled mess meant that the reasoned debate of the old threads was much more difficult. Topics would get derailed and it was clear that a new approach was needed.

Thus began the SquadCast, the Squadron of Shame's official podcast. Starting with independent rabbinical adventure game The Shivah, select members of the group banded together to do what they did best: play through a game together, then put their heads together and have a discussion about it. Ably hosted by the fine Mr Chris Whittington and edited/produced in a sort-of OKish manner by my good self, the show is now 29 episodes strong and has covered subjects as diverse as the Commodore 64, Russian FPS-adventure depress 'em up Pathologic and charming indie puzzler Machinarium.

Following circumstances beyond their control (mostly beyond my control, I admit) there's been something of a gap since our last episode. So we've thought that now is the time to take a break, consider how to make the show better and come back stronger than ever with some brand new output in a whole new format.

So, tomorrow we're recording. And next week we'll be proudly presenting The Squadron of Shame SquadCast, Season Two. Taking some of the advice we got from Jeff Green, Shawn Elliott, Ken Levine and some others who I've forgotten speaking on the Podcasting for PR panel at PAX East, we've made some changes.

The show's going to be bi-weekly. This means that rather than have variable gaps as everyone clamours to complete a "mission" before we talk about it, some regularity will allow us to build up a more, well, regular listenership.

Next up, it's going to have a static cast of host Chris Whittington, Mark Whiting, Jeff Parsons and myself with occasional guest spots available where appropriate. Jeff is in the process of composing us a brand new theme tune, too, so it's going to be a complete sonic reboot.

Most importantly, though, each episode is no longer going to be focused on a specific game. Instead, the focus will be on particular "topics", with occasional traditional "mission" podcasts interspersed as appropriate. This means that people will hopefully be more inclined to tune in regularly and hear what we have to say, rather than skipping episodes about games they have no interest in. As part of this, the official Squawkbox of the Squad will be playing a more prominent role, with community questions and discussions a regular occurrence. If you already have a WordPress account, you can head right over and start chatting with us. If not, it's simple to sign up. Everyone who's interested in discussing video games and who isn't afraid of the odd (all right, frequent) wall of text is very welcome to pay us a visit.

Besides the changes, it'll be our same wordy, intellectual, chin-stroking discussion about video games, representing one of the most unique podcasts on the Internet. We'd love it if you could join us for our relaunch. Visit the Squawkbox, follow us on Twitter, become a Fan… sorry, Like us on Facebook and find our past episodes and those of our sister podcast The Exploding Barrel Podcast here.

2010 is going to be a great year for the Squad. We hope you'll come along for the ride.

#oneaday, Day 206: Hello.

First up, please excuse me for just one moment.

AAAARRRRGHH!!
AAAAAGGGHHHH!!!
GRRRAAAARRR!!!
RAWWWRRR!!!

Thanks for bearing with that for a moment. It was deeply and completely necessary. Also, I had to reformat it so it didn't mess up the formatting of the page. Rawr.

Right. So, this post then. I thought I'd introduce myself. Why? Because my first ever post on this blog was a long time ago, and many things have changed since then. Also, due to various things that I'm not going to go into and rant about right now, I am still looking for work.

Particularly writing work.

I am a writer. That's what I do. First and foremost. More than anything. It is what I spend the vast majority of my days doing. I write this blog every day. I write news for the very awesome Kombo, staffed by some of the finest people I've ever had the good fortune to work with but not meet in many cases. I've written two articles for IGN. I've scribed a number of articles for utterly wonderful DRM-free digital-distribution site Good Old Games. I've submitted a bunch of stuff to BitMob, most of which was promoted to the front page as a "featured article". I've covered a variety of things for parental gaming advice site WhatTheyPlay. And I edit and produce the podcast for the Squadron of Shame, which will shortly be relaunching in a triumphant new format. I also set up the Squad's community site, the Squadron of Shame Squawkbox, which you're welcome to join. In fact, there's a big-ass list of most of the things I've done right here.

I have been semi-to-moderately prolific. And I love it. There's more stuff in the pipeline, too. Find out more as it happens.

So, using the power of Web 2.0, I'd like to ask a favour of anyone reading this.

Pimp me out. Share my stuff. Tell people how awesome I am. Point them at this blog, and the #oneaday project. Tell them about my stupid stickmen drawings. Show them my in-depth, opinionated news articles on Kombo which actually provoke discussion when I dare to mention Phantasy Star in anything less than positive terms. Dazzle them with my mad interviewing skills on my IGN articles about Crackdown 2, the first time I'd ever visited a developer.

'Cause I'd very much like this all to work out. Writing is awesome, and through it I've learned a lot about myself, met some fantastic and awesome people and joined a community of people who are as passionate about the things we love as I am. It may not always pay well (or indeed at all in many cases), but it's what I love to do. So if you can help me gain any exposure using your undoubtedly fabulous amounts of influence that you hold on the web—that's a really nice shirt, by the way—then I'd of course be eternally grateful and will buy you a bag of chocolate raisins or something.

In the meantime, a good friend (and Captain #oneaday), Mr Chris Schilling, has convinced me I should be pitching stuff around the place. So if you're a writer or involved in the publishing industry yourself and have any contacts you'd be willing and able to introduce me to, I'd very much appreciate that, too.

Shameless, I know. But whadyagunnado?

#oneaday, Day 199: Waving Goodbye

So, Google Wave is going bye-bye, huh? Can't say I'm particularly surprised. As cool an idea as it was, there just wasn't the buy-in from people that it deserved. Largely because a goodly proportion of the Internet population didn't seem to understand what it was actually for.

It's easy to assume people who didn't "get" Wave are just a bit slow. But the fact is, Google never did a great job of explaining what the technology was for in the first place.

"Yay, collaborative editing!" they'd say.

"Yay, we can do that with Google Docs!" everyone else would say.

"Yay, you can see people typing!" they'd say.

"Yay, who gives a shit?" everyone else would say.

"Yay, it's like a combination of email, Twitter and a word processing document!" they'd say.

"Yay, I've never wanted to combine those three things together!" everyone else would say.

It's a pity, as I've seen some genuinely interesting uses of Wave out there. One particularly cool Wave I was invited to took the form of a moderated "text adventure", where participants could direct the protagonist (played by the moderator in the role of an interactive fiction-style narrator) by inserting commands. Eventually, the non-linear nature of Wave allowed two parallel storylines to develop at once—one happening in the present, another as a flashback. Wave's ability for anyone to edit and insert new content at any point in the "conversation" meant that these two things could continue going on without becoming overly confusing.

Then there were all the possibilities for things like education. But then you have to deal with your average teacher's technophobia.

When I was working in schools, I had a grand idea that Wave could be used for the preparation of interactive resources. The fact that media such as YouTube videos, flash thingies, pictures, text, hyperlinks and even iFrames could be inserted meant that Wave could have been an ideal tool to use on interactive whiteboards during lessons, and also a good means of collaborative planning if teachers in question weren't able to meet and discuss things. As they frequently aren't.

As a result of many of these things, I had a Wave account which largely went unused because no-one else was using it. This is a shame, as I could see the potential in the service. But the fact the service was invite-only for so long, and then by the time it went public people were still scratching their heads and wondering what to do with it—these things meant that it didn't have a particularly "mass market" appeal for the average Internet user.

All is not lost for the moment, anyway. Wave is going to remain open—Google have just said they're stopping development on it. They've also open-sourced a goodly proportion of the code, so enterprising clever people with mathematics in their brains will be able to pull it apart and make it better, faster, stronger, I'm sure.

So it was a swing and a miss for Google on this one. To be honest, though, I think it's good to see them experimenting with different technologies as a company. It would be very easy for Google to just think "Right. We do these things. And we do them well. Let's just stop there and make bundles of money and stick them in our ears." But no; they seem to be on a constant quest to make the lives of the Internet's denizens better. Sometimes these things work. And sometimes they don't.

So raise a glass to Google Wave, the web app that couldn't. And start speculating on what they might be up to next!