Oftentimes, people ask me why I like Twitter. And on the surface, they may have a point. All you can do with Twitter is post 140 character messages. How can that possibly be better than something like Facebook? There are so many more things you can post to Facebook. And there’s no silly 140 character limit.

What first attracted me to Twitter was that, because it had that limit, it prevents you from writing long tomes. If you have a thought that you think others might find interesting, you tweet it, and it’s done. You know you can’t expand on it, so you don’t worry about it. This is why Twitter is called “microblogging”.

But there’s another nice thing about Twitter. It brings you closer to those you admire. If a celebrity you like is on Twitter, you can follow them and be connected in some way to what’s happening in their life. You can also send them an @reply and have a chance (ranging from “slim” to “real”) that they’ll see it, or even reply. Now, major celebrities (who may have more than a million followers), may get hundreds of replies to every tweet. So they’ll probably not see it (but everyone uses Twitter differently; see @BrentSpiner, who uses Twitter mostly to engage his fans in (often funny) dialog). But lesser known ones quite possibly may see it and even @reply to you. And that is way cool.

As an example, take Robert Lee, (@voicework on Twitter). He’s the narrator for Mythbusters (and to date, the only person to ever say, “Ahh, fresh underwear for Mr. Savage” on national television). I like everything about Mythbusters, so follow on Twitter everyone connected to the show. And knowing that voice work is lonely work (insofar as they typically just get their lines and record them and don’t necessary interact with the others on the show), I was curious if Robert had ever been to M5 Industries (where Mythbusters is filmed). So last night I asked

http://twitter.com/mlv/status/9127163372

him, and this morning saw a reply from him.

http://twitter.com/voicework/status/9128476923

That interaction took probably less than a minute for both of us and didn’t involve anyone else.

Now, let’s look at how that interaction would have worked in the BT (Before Twitter) era. I would first have had to find out how to contact him. I would probably have had to send him mail (either snail or e) care of Discovery channel. Let’s say it was via snail mail. I write a letter, find the address of Discovery Channel (DC), address and stamp it, and take it to my nearest mailbox (few blocks from my house). Some fan mail handler at DC gets it, opens it, and first thinks “who’s Robert Lee?”. Let’s say he figures it out so then looks up the address of Robert Lee’s agent and forwards it to him. Robert Lee’s agent then gets the letter and maybe calls Robert Lee, reading it to him, and maybe Robert Lee answers, so maybe the agent writes a response and puts it in the self addressed stamped envelope I provided). So in the BT world, it would involve at least two more people and more likely than not would not have happened.

Does this work for all celebrities? Certainly not. Robert Lee only has a couple thousand followers and rarely more than 1-2 @replies a day. But if you look at Adam Savage (@donttrythis) you’ll see he replies to his fans, too. That just never happened BT.

As you may have guessed from the previous post, I have an iPhone. I got a 3GS last summer and liked it so much I got a refurbished 3G for my wife (whose technological extent is a few poorly-spelled Facebook updates). The simplicity of the interface coupled with the ginormous number of apps makes it awesome for me. I’ve heard some say that it’s great as an Internet device but not so good as a phone. Fine with me; I don’t talk on the phone much anyway.

Recently, I jailbroke my iPhone.

There, I said it.

I fully expect black shirted, blue jeaned goons with an Apple logo on their lapel to break down my door. If you don’t hear from me after this, send lawyers, guns, and money to Cupertino. Or at the very least, my Apple ID to be revoked or something nasty like that.

That’s probably the worst thing about jailbreaking, the paranoia. That and the resistance to asking for support for apps. I’m afraid they’ll say, “you jailbroke your phone? Well of course our app won’t work then!”

For the record, I didn’t jailbreak my phone to unlock it. I’m perfectly happy with AT&T. I also didn’t jailbreak my phone so I could pirate software. Everything on my phone I got from the official App store, or one of the JB app stores (Rock, Cedia). I jailbroke it so I could have better access to it. I’m a UNIX geek, going back almost to the 70s, and while I knew the iPhone is running OSX (a variant of BSD UNIX), I don’t REALLY know that until I see a command prompt.

But the fact is, it’s been a wonderful experience. I like having far more control over my (yes, Apple, I said, “MY”) iPhone than Apple thinks I should. Before, I would have to go into preferences, then Wifi, to toggle wifi mode. Here, I just swipe the status bar, tap, tap, done.

And multitasking. Don’t get me started there. I’ve been doing multitasking on BSD UNIX computers since the Carter administration. And I haven’t checked, but I’m fairly sure the iPhone is a more powerful computer than the ones I used back then (okay, okay, I just checked. DEC VAX 11/750: 3.125 MHz, iPhone 3GS: 600 MHz (and yes, don’t complain to me about comparing apples and onions)). The iPhone already supports multitasking, it just doesn’t support 3rd party apps doing it. And it lacks any indication in the Springboard (iPhone’s app launcher) that an app is already running.

And having been around UNIX machines for so long, I know the dangers of multitasking. So, in the words of Brian Tong from CNET, I “use it wisely”. And in a way, I’d rather I didn’t have to. I only have one brain, and can only use one app at a time (and what separation I support can already be handled by the multitasking already in the iPhone (right brain enjoying the music on the iPod, while the left brain is doing other stuff)). But until all apps preserve your state perfectly, and are quick to launch, I do it, so I can go back and forth between apps without having 10 extra steps.

So why doesn’t Apple allow it?

I don’t think it would be that hard. One of the multitask managers I played with shows you a graphical screen, with each window being a separate app. It’s analogous to Safari and websites. And just like how Safari limits websites opened to 8 (if you open another one, it closes one of the others), there’s no reason why the multitask manager can’t limit you to, say, 8 apps. It’s not quite that simple (there are many apps that I wouldn’t want 8, or even 4 or 2 copies of running on my phone). But from a user interface point of view, it’s certainly not impossible.

So this now brings me to the iPad. As many have noted, it also doesn’t support multitasking (insofar as it has the same limitation on 3rd party apps that the iPhone has). That’s a more glaring deficiency, what with iWork and the prospect of it being a more useful device.

So, will I get an iPad? As it is now, no. Assuming I can afford it, I’ll get one if and when (a) it supports 3rd party multitasking apps, or (b) it can be jailbroken to do so. And even then, it’s a stretch. It’s much bigger than the iPhone, and doesn’t do much more. It’d be a nice sofa laptop (something you can surf the web with while you’re watching TV), but I couldn’t see leaving my laptop at home and bringing that instead.

Of course, having said that, if someone were to give me one, I wouldn’t say no. :)