Hat tip to my friend and fellow blogger Maddie Grant for pointing this effort out to me (here and here). I have been keeping close tabs on the emerging disaster brought about by an obscure federal panel that ordered a doubling of the per-song performance royalty that Web radio stations pay to performers and record companies since the beginning, but it’s looking especially grim now. For organizations like Pandora, the price would be crippling and as a result they may be forced out of business simply due to the cost of doing business and providing a very valuable service while absolving traditional radio from the fee.

It’s a bad situation in general and even worse if you are a proponent of freeing information like I am. Take a look at this article: “Giant of Internet Radio Nears Its ‘Last Stand’” to get the background and then do your best to get involved and make some noise about this. And if you want a cool badge or banner to show your support you can find them at I Heart Pandora.

Information wants and needs to be free and it also needs our help to make it/keep it that way!

I just received the Spring 2008 issue of Converge, a magazine covering strategy and leadership in school technology, and I found the cover story entertaining and mildly enlightening. It is titled Technobabble: Demystification of new words in the new world where they define a number of new (and newer) terms that seem to be gaining some traction in the online world. The terms include:

Weblish

Altered English specific to online or digital forms of communication such as “lol“, “brb“, “jk“, “omg“.

Web Rage

Anger stemming from World Wide Web frustrations such as slow download speeds, broken or non-existent links and information that is difficult to find.

Citizen Journalism

News and commentary from the public at large

Google Generation

Those born after 1993 who don’t remember a time when the internet wasn’t readily available.

WYSIWYG

Acronym that stands for “what you see is what you get”. Pronounced wizzy-wig, this term is used in computing to describe a system in which content during editing appears to be similar to the final product.

Dancing Baloney

Web page-baded animated images, Java applets or other bells and whistles that detract from the overall quality of the page itself.

Bake-off

Instead of comparing muffins or chili this term applies to competing technologies.

Google Juice

The presumed quality of a Web page that allows it to appear at or near the top of a Google search.

OpenMoko

A Linux-based operating system designed for a mobile environment.

Webrarian

A person who is an expert at not only finding information on the web, but also at prioritizing, organizing and cataloging that information.

Moblogging

Not mobs of bloggers, but mobile blogging using your cell phone or other mobile device to blog whenever and wherever the urge hits.

Burn

To test a new electronic system by running it for some length of time. Weak components often fail within the first few hours of use.

Wikiality

Reality as defined by a consensus, particularly in a collaborative endeavor such as Wikipedia

Googleverse

Google is everywhere: news, videos, photos, RSS, e-mail, calendar, IMing.

GUI

Acronym that stands for “graphical user interface”, pronounced “gooey” this is a graphical rather than purely textual, user interface to a computer.

Webisode

An episode of a Web-based show or movie.

Blog

Short for web log

Poking

A little online reminder or a simple hello

Last Gen

Outdated technology products

Hot Spot

A location in a building or area – a college campus or coffee shop for instance – that provides access to wireless Internet on a secured network.

Nook Surfer

An Internet user that only frequents a limited number of websites.

Wugging

Web use giving. Similar to online fundraising, wugging is a way of accepting monetary donations online.

Knowbie

A knowledgeable and experienced Internet user

RSS

An acronym that stands for Really Simple Syndication. RSS is a web feed format that frequently updates published content such as blogs, news items or podcasts to a web site for easy reading and review.

GNOME

Pronounced “guh-nome” or “nome”, it is actually an acronym that stands for GNU Network Object Modeling Environment. GNOME is the GUI-based user interface for Linux and other Unix environments.

One of the things that I found most interesting were the number of references to Google (3) and Open Source/Linux (2), their combined total represented 20% of the total list. For me it is fitting considering the role that both play in my life.

There was one error in the article: part of the definition for OpenMoko actually included the acronym explanation for GNOME. As an additional aside, I would have simply linked to the article online but it was one of the only ones that weren’t online. Perhaps it was how it was formatted for print, but regardless, I find it ironic that a list describing web words was not available online. That said, it shouldn’t diminish the value of the article. It’s still a really fun list and that included a number of terms that I hadn’t heard of previously. My favorites: Knowbie and Wugging. And to give credit where credit is due, this list is not my own. I found it in the Spring issue of Converge Magazine and the editors give reference to WordSpy for providing the definitions. There is no way to tell how many of these will stick and how many will fade away, but I am sure we’ll be hearing more of some of these in the future.

If you were creating the list, are there any others that you would definitely include or exclude from the list above? Let me know in the comments.

Photo by SheldonSchwartz

Just as I was thinking that the changes were slowing down and things in our digital world may have been stabilizing a bit, a new report surfaced on the use of camera phones. It’s not that I want things to stop changing, quite the contrary, I enjoy seeing the changes literally right before my eyes, I just didn’t want to have to keep my eyes out for yet another trend. It looks like I have one more to add to my list.

Much to the chagrin of the U.S. Postal Service post cards may be losing their position as the preferred way to say “we wish you were here”. According to a report released on July 8, 2008 by comScore M:Metrics:

photo messaging from mobile phones has grown 60 percent in the United States over the past year and 16 percent in Europe, where photo messaging got an earlier start. As the mercury climbs in the summer months, so does the usage of photo messaging in the United States, where for the past three years, photo messaging rates have been higher than average in July and August.

In a statement released with the report, Mark Donovan, senior vice president at comScore stated:

Summer vacations provide the perfect context for photo messaging, as the utility of instantly sharing a holiday moment with loved ones is undeniably compelling. The cameraphone could replace the postcard as the preferred mode to say ‘wish you were here,’ as even parents and grandparents are snapping and sending photos from their mobile devices.

Screenshot by Dave S.

Interestingly enough, the M:Metrics Benchmark Study seems to indicate that the photo messaging growth in the U.S. is coming from all age demographic segments, with the fastest growth coming from teens and those older than 35. I guess camera phones are no longer solely the province of kids and geeks. Is this a harbinger of things to come? Are we slowly becoming a digital society where much of our correspondence, transactions and interactions happen digitally? If I were a betting man, I would say that the answer is a definitive yes. Technology has simply become the mechanism that replaces the need for a third party to intervene. This seems to be consistent with a similar idea held by Deb Westphal, Managing Partner of Toffler Associates, that was posted on the Internet Evolution blog. Deb thinks that in the future we will have at least three jobs: the one we get paid for, taking care of our families, and the one that entails taking care of the activities that used to be done by others.

Today we see a glimmer of our future third jobs when we book our own travel plans, do our own banking online, or step up to a kiosk to pay for our groceries at a store that no longer employs checkers. In the future “prosumer” economy, where consumer and producer merge, we will become our own travel agents, bank tellers, store clerks, etc. — and our own consumers of these services. We must prepare ourselves for a future where our third job workload continues to accelerate and grow. We will not only book our own travel, but cater our own flights and do our own security checks. We will not only do our banking online, but we will also manage our “financial network” to maintain high credit ratings and customize flexible loans through individuals as well as institutions. We will manage our own health records and conduct many of our own medical procedures. We will plan and create our own entertainment experiences before ever entering into an amusement park to enjoy them. We will teach new skills to others in response to them teaching us.

It’s an interesting concept, except I’d say that it’s more than a concept. I see at play, in a growing fashion, in my own personal life. Technology is playing more and more of a role in everything I do. I don’t have a physical bank but rather do business via direct deposit, atm and online banking. I rarely, if ever, send anything letter sized via the USPS, UPS or other carrier, preferring email, text messages, tweets, etc. I don’t go to the movies and those movies that I do see are rented “on demand”. I don’t shop in a brick-and-mortar store unless it’s for groceries or I need something right away preferring to do my research and bargain shopping online. I don’t book travel or hotels via an agent, I book it online. I guess most of my life has already gone digital by choice. The only types of consumer related behavior that I conduct in the physical world are automobile related (gas, oil changes, repairs, etc.) and going to the doctor/taking my dog to the vet.

Perhaps some things will (and should) never be virtual, but if you were to have asked me ten or fifteen years ago, I would have told you that it was possible but not likely and that it sounded more like a dream. Well it appears that I am living that dream. I’m not advocating isolating myself from others, not by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I am probably more connected today than I have ever been in my entire life. With that said, eliminating the need to rely on others to get things done that I can more efficiently/effectively do myself allows me to…well spend more time doing things myself.

If you are interested in the ComScore M:Metrics report check it out the Press Release. For more on Deb’s thoughts on the rise of the prosumer, check out her Internet Evolution blog post: Online Activity Will Lead to a Third Job for Most