A good question that is to! A talker is a program that enables people to 'chat' with one another in real time over the internet. Chat is perhaps the wrong word, but that is what happens! You send text messages to one another, so in away 'chatting' on a talker is like instantaneous e-mail! Of course there is far more to it then that! Talkers promote co-operation and meeting new people. They have their own mail systems, newsgroups, their own etiquette and many more abbreviations of frequently used phrases. A talker can become a way of life, infact it is not so much as you using a talker regularly, it is more like you 'adopt' a favourite program. Reasons for spodding (chatting) are many and varied. Most often people just stumble into the talkers through friends, or from getting lost while searching websites!

This question is harder to answer. The talker scene was slow to develop. The very first talker was set-up and running around 1992. Here though things get very foggy and jumbled. There were several big talkers that ran together. The only survivor out of these has been Surfers. After the initial first talkers, a new code base was created called EW-Too. This spawned a whole plethora of talkers and also gave rise to the first talker wars. There was, for a time, some bad blood between people who used the talkers. Sometimes malicious damage was done to many talker. Many talkers came, prospered and died out. A few still remain, some have grown even bigger! From this set of talkers, Snowplains came. This was the talker that I first started spodding on.

Snowplains is based on EW-Too code which was originally coded by Simon Marsh. Snowplains was first suggested by Jarel ( one of the admin there ). With the help of some friends ( Berry, Rillaith and Marble ) Snowplains began to form. It was first opened for business in 1996 and since then has grown and changed a fair bit. The original four admin are still there and have been joined by Pling ( Jarel's better?! half! ). To help run the place there are other staff members, of which I am one!

Snowplains is themed around a glacier. This 'room' is where most of the chatting is done. People when they connect to the program 'Slide down the glacier' to this main room. All the people who assist in running the place ( the staff ) are named after... Penguins! The lowest of these staff is a Choccy Penguin. I am one of these. They are there to help with basic queries and to help making people a 'Resident'. Becoming a resident means that your character and any settings that have been changed will be saved when you log off. After the Choccies there are the Royals who have more commands and generally annoy you more! Well one Royal annoys me more... Nick! The final ranks are the King and Emporer penguins. These are the admin ranks.

Well, Snowplains is where I have met some very good, and very dear friends. Some of them have their own little shrine on my friends page! Nick was the first spod that I met. I met him way back in 1997, well the end of 1997... it was the new year after all! The most recent person to meet was Veronika, but then again she does live in Canada! Makes seeing her kinda hard. Snowplains is a really good, solid, friendly talker. I still enjoy going there even today! Then there is Unreal...

Unreal is a new'ish talker based on the PG-Plus code. It has been coded by my good friend Paul. I help to run the talker as one of the Admin there. The other admin is Martyn. Unreal is ( at time of writing ) still finding it's feet in the, now, swamped world of talkers. Still, we now have our set of regulars that are on it FAR too much! And when the Universities and Colleges are back to school things will pick up far more! Unfortunately recently there have been a whole tonne of new talkers springing up. Why unfortunately? Well, most of them it has to be said are complete rubbish, and are badly planned. The other point is that it really dilutes the number of users that will use talkers. Yes people connect to them, but very few become regulars. It also means that a lot of poaching goes on, which is not big or clever and is damn annoying! But never mind!

On Unreal I hold the position of Titan. This is the highest position. The next rank down is Warlord, although this may be removed. After Warlord comes the Skaarj. This is the lower admin position. The remaining staff are Mercenaries, Krall and the Nali. All the staff work together as a team to make the place welcoming. So come along and have a look.

Yes they are! So go and look at the ones that are listed here and try them out!! Go! That's an order!! If you want some help with the commands then have a look here. The most used commands are listed as is a brief tutorial on how to make your own room in cyberspace! Have fun with this, and remember, have fun on the talkers but not at other people's expense!