The case of an English woman sacked for blogging about her life in France presented a chance for lovers of web neologisms to dust off the word “dooced” last week. It means to be sacked for blogging, apparently. The term arises from the sorry tale of Heather Armstrong, who was fired from a plum design job in 2002 for comments posted on her blog, dooce.com. Wisely, Armstrong later called her actions “STUPID”, but ex-pat Catherine Sanderson, centre of the current case, seems less inclined to admit any fault and is seeking compensation. Personally, Sneak wants to be compensated for mental anguish caused by reading her blog, Petite Anglaise. There’s a whiff of self-aggrandisement about all blogs (except Sneak’s, obviously) but Petite Anglaise stands out even among the tripe that fills the blog-o-trough. Henceforth, when Sneak stumbles across a weblog that is truly, toe-curlingly self-indulgent, Sneak will say, “Hmm, it’s a bit PA, isn’t it?”

July 28, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak has been sent a clever fabric keyboard by peripherals maker Eleksen. This cloth-based item opens up the possibility that your keyboard - normally a haven for unspeakable filth - might be as clean as your clothes.

Given that it links to your PDA or phone using Bluetooth, and is battery powered, it should also work in the bath - providing you steer clear of bath salts. People do tell Sneak that wearing your clothes in the bath is not the best way to get them, or yourself, clean, but what do they know about efficiency? Sneak is a busy person, and now fully intends to kill three birds with one sponge.

July 24, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apologies for sounding like a metronome, but Sneak has been drawn back to the divisive issue of how to say “www”. Dom Latter wrote to endorse Alistair Birnie’s view that it should be pronounced “wibble”, arguing that this has “only two syllables and is pleasingly descriptive of so much web content”. Rob Gray, meanwhile, points out that in Spanish, the letter W is called uve doble (pronounced, with apologies to all Spaniards, as “oovay-dooblay”). “So ‘www’ is a real 12-syllable mouthful,” notes Gray, “Maybe that’s why the web was slow to catch on in Spain?” He adds that the name InterWeb is catching on, so “maybe IW is the way to go?”
Finally Keith Hurford wrote to say, “Here in Wales, Welsh speakers say it as ‘ooh, ooh, ooh’ - which has the benefit of making even the most mundane domain name sound exciting.” Sneak would add that this last method really ought to be adopted worldwide, particularly as it future-proofs the web for the inevitable day when apes take over the world.

July 18, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sneak is dismayed to learn that the term “vishing” is gaining currency to describe phishing by voice - particularly via VoIP calls. The word phishing itself is apparently a contraction of “password harvesting”, and no doubt caught on due to its resonant allusion to a fish being caught hook, line and sinker. Vishing, however, sounds a bit wet, too much like “wishing”. It’s too flibbertigibbet a word to describe the crime of identity theft. Sneak prefers “Phocking” (a mishmash of vocal and phishing). What sounds better: “I suspect I have been vished by a visher” or “I’ve been phocked by a right bleedin phocker”?

July 13, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

So Google has finally gone the way of xerox and hoover and become a verb. According to the latest edition of the Merriam-Webster dictionary (it's big in the US, apparently), you can now google, with a small g, meaning "to use the Google search engine to obtain information". Good for Google - although possibly bad for its trademark rights - Sneak says. However, it is clear that Merriam-Webster has missed some of the other, increasingly common uses of the word. For starters, it’s a verb meaning “to smugly assert that your workplace is better than anyone else's”. As in: “Well, we've got a juice bar in the lobby,” googled Larry, shallowly. And google surely also means “to engage in an act of craven political expediency, especially advocating freedom of information to Western audiences, while censoring what Chinese users can look at to appease the authorities”. Are there any other definitions Sneak has missed? Purely in the interests of the English language, obviously, do tell...

July 10, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak’s innocuous post last month about the best way to pronounce “www” stirred up an unexpected ferment. Someone called “PM” (presumably not the PM) suggested that if the nine syllables of double-U-double-U-double-U seem like too much bother, “why not say ‘six-U’? It has only two syllables”. Alistair Birnie, meanwhile, says, “Don't you know it should be pronounced ‘wibble’?” - a pronunciation used by Birnie, Edmund Blackadder and nobody else, Sneak suspects. Ex-pat Mick Symonds notes that the Dutch say “way-way-way”, which is “much quicker and simpler” and that Britons should be a bit more willing to learn from the cloggies. As if. Symonds also picks up on the Nintendo Wii console and suggests that we could all start saying “wii-wii-wii”. This would be iffy anyway, but doubly so following Chris Daws’ observation that all the wee-wee-related Nintendo gags are misguided: “As anyone from England's picturesque North-East will tell you, Wii is quite obviously pronounced ‘why-aye’”.

July 3, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)