On Saturday night, as supporters camped outside his headquarters in Lahore's Model Town area, Mr. Sharif sat on a couch in a room packed with close advisers, a remote control in his hand, as he flicked between TV channels broadcasting the vote count.
My first big splash on the internet came in 2004 when I was one of the first 30 podcasters in the world, hand-coding my RSS feed and speaking timidly into a microphone, broadcasting intimate thoughts to a global audience.