WordLo

The buzz has a solution to help Baby Boomer or Generation X mangers who "just don't understand the 20-something workers these days with their constant need for praise and their fascination with posting snippets of their lives on YouTube."
Maybe you're using the wrong language to get their attention.
Advertising agency Cramer-Krasselt has compiled a 2008 Cultural Dictionary of new words and phrases culled from magazines, Web sites, blogs and conversations.

Next time you encounter a member of the Millennial Generation, try incorporating these:

Bacn: impersonal e-mails (as annoying as spam) that you have chosen to receive, such as alerts and newsletters.

Bershon: that angry/bored/too-cool-to-care look that 12- to 18-year-olds sport in every family photo.

Compunicate: to chat with a co-worker when you are in the same room using Instant Messenger instead of speaking to them in person.

Defriend: to remove somebody from your established list of contacts, considered the ultimate sn…

published on: NYTimes


JOHN CUSACK tweets with his iPhone and, much like the characters he plays, his style is fast and loose. “I’m pretty new to it, and if there’s a spell check on an iPhone, I can’t find it,” he said by telephone. “So I basically get in the general ballpark and tweet it.” Consequently, Mr. Cusack has birthed strange words like “breakfasy” and “hippocrite” and has given a more literary title to his new movie: “Hot Tub Tome Machine.” Most of his followers ignore the gaffes. But a vocal minority abuse him about it nonstop, telling the star that as much as they liked “The Sure Thing,” his grammar and spelling sure stink. “If you’re going to be political, maybe learn how to spell Pakistan, and all words in general,” wrote one supposed fan. “The vitriol was so intense that at first I didn’t think they were serious,” Mr. Cusack said. “Because, like, who would care?” They do. A small but vocal subculture has emerged on Twitter of grammar and taste vigilantes who spend their t…

tratto da: Il Sole 24 Ore

Spesso rispecchiano in modo semplice ed efficace una loro peculiarità come nel caso di «Information silos» o «Sistem-on-a-chip»; altre volte nascono dalla fusione di più termini o concetti (E-book, Cyberwar e Micro web tv), ma non ci si deve sorprendere più di tanto se Avatar affonda le sue radici nella religione induista e «Tragedy of the Commons» risale alla tradizione giuridica anglosassone. E forse non tutti si rendono conto che quell'irrinunciabile voglia di consultare la posta elettronica, partecipare ai social network, navigare sul web sempre e in ogni occasione può nascondere un disturbo nervoso dal nome quasi impronunciabile: Discomgoogolation, ovvero sindrome da astinenza da internet, che si contrappone ad «always on», la possibilità di essere sempre connessi al web.
Invece sono tutti ancora da scoprire l'accoglienza e l'impatto che avrà il futuribile attuatore a impulsi neurali, (Neural impulse actuator), la nuova frontiera del "dial…

Ten years ago, no one had heard of “H1N1″, “Web 2.0″, “n00b”, or talked about “de-friending” someone on “Twitter” or “Facebook”.

Now these are part of people’s everyday vocabulary.The world is changing. Inevitably, so are our words.The English language is going through an explosion of word creation. New words are coined – some, like “n00b”, may not even look like words; old words take on new meanings – “twitter” today bears little relation to the Middle English twiteren. According to the Global Language Monitor (GLM), in 2009 the English language tipped the scales with a vocabulary of one million words. Not good news for the 250 million people acquiring English in China.

GLM, the San Diego-based language watcher, publishes annual lists of top words and phrases by tracking words in the global print and electronic media, the Internet, blogs, and social media such as Twitter and YouTube.

Each year’s list reflects major concerns and changes taking place that year. For instance, from the 2…

published on: Global Language Monitor

In conjunction with the SXSW Interactive conference held in its hometown, The Global Language Monitor has released the most confusing high tech buzzwords of the decade (2000-2009). Topping the list are HTTP, Flash, God Particle, Cloud Computing, and Plasma (as in plasma TV). Rounding out the Top Ten were IPOD/IPAD, Megapixel, Nano, Resonate and Virtualization.The most confusing Acronym for the decade was SOA (Service Oriented Architecture).“SXSW has long been a harbinger for future directions in popular culture and now the gathering has taken on the added dimension of technological innovation,” said Paul JJ Payack, president of the Global Language Monitor, “The words we use in high technology continue to become even more obtuse even as they move out of the realm of jargon and into the language at large.”The Global Language Monitor uses a proprietary algorithm, the Predictive Quantities Indicator (PQI) to track the frequency of words and phrases in …

Dwelling: Dwelling is what happens when you move your mouse or touch on a portion of a screen, hold for a while, and a pop-up appears. For example, on Netflix.com, when you dwell your mouse over a thumbnail of a movie, a pop-up shows you the movie’s description.”
Ideation: “An ideation is an idea that germinates over time, like a new business start-up idea or some concept that a group discusses in a meeting and creates together.”
Mi-Fi “A new version of ‘Wi-Fi’ (or a wireless network), Mi-Fi is a variation that means ‘my wireless’ and is a small credit-card shaped device that connects to a cell phone network. Multiple people can use that same device to connect to the Internet over the cell phone signal. Both Verizon and Sprint offer the products. The big advantage: one person can sign up for data service, but several can use it.”

Bokode “A bokode, originally developed at MIT, is a new type of barcode that contains more detailed information. Based on the Japanese term bokeh, which is a bl…