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Outdated technology products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.