While I’m sure this is not a significant find, it seems to me like I’m finding something cool about Google everyday. Kudos to you Google!

After entering Google in the address bar I was taken to a simple minimalist page

However when I rolled the mouse into the screen, a top bar rolls down and reveals the usual albeit previously permanent top navigation pane. Pretty nifty if you ask me

unfriend – verb – To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.

I find it very cheesy to see Facebook, a commercial app, to be part of the definition of a word let alone the Word Of the Year. All reservations aside this led me to question what the winners of previous years were. With a little help from Google, the winners of the Word Of The Year are:

2009 – Unfriend

2008 – Hypermiling

“Hypermiling” or “to hypermile” is to attempt to maximize gas mileage by making fuel-conserving adjustments to one’s car and one’s driving techniques.

2007 – Locavore

The “locavore” movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or even to grow or pick their own food, arguing that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better. Locavores also shun supermarket offerings as an environmentally friendly measure, since shipping food over long distances often requires more fuel for transportation.

2006 – Carbon Neutral

Being carbon neutral involves calculating your total climate-damaging carbon emissions, reducing them where possible, and then balancing your remaining emissions, often by purchasing a carbon offset: paying to plant new trees or investing in “green” technologies such as solar and wind power.

2005 – Podcast

a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player

2004 – Blog

A lot of technology related words have been inducted into the dictionary and have even won the coveted Word Of The Year Awards. But by god, I would’ve though Twitter/Tweet had a fair shot at the title. Oh well, maybe next year!

And my whole-hearted support to the cause and use of Olive Oil!

Instant This

That’s probably an apt tag line for the way our lives progress as days pass by. Everything has to be super shortened or condensed so it can be consumed with speed and ease. Our attention spans have constantly depreciated like the current housing industry (2009). As this gene took effect at some point in the 15th century a super smart wise guy lauded himself for figuring out he could communicate words even by shortening them by making use of one or two alphabets usually from the words he was trying to communicate in the first place. This was all completely ingenious and evolved to a point where it was used to spawn an entirely new lingo – The Internet Lingo.

What surprises and partially irritates me ,however, is the relatively new fad of pretending to abbreviate complete words – emphasis on the word pretending. For instance someone recently signed off an email with F.R.I.E.N.D. Three things I found wrong with this:

1. The practice of signing off with the word ‘Friend’. Did you think I would forget what our relationship was since the last time I spoke with you about 7 hours ago? Did my recent track record of forgetfulness lead you to believe this would be of some use?
2. CAPITALIZING IS REALLY NOT COOL – EVEN IF ITS USED  TO SIGN OFF AN EMAIL. IT REALLY FEELS LIKE YOU ARE YELLING AT ME!
3. As if your presumption that I was deaf wasn’t insulting enough, you introduce the period after every letter. Pray tell me, just what is this supposed to mean? Was capitalizing as a form of emphasis not good enough? Does your keyboard insist on inserting the period after every letter? Now that you have abbreviated it, for no particular reason,what does it stand for?

Now don’t get me wrong here. Besides the obvious rant angle to this post, I really do find this practice nothing short of hilarious and pointless.

In Facebook recently I was reading through a series of comments where F.R.I.E.N.D.S friends were giving props for a certain something accomplished by someone. One of the comments read

R.E.S.P.E.C.T

I stopped for a second to actually search for what the acronym stands for (maybe I missed the memo) and found these

Refugee Education Sponsorship Program Enhancing Communities Together
Re-Empowerment of Skilled and Professional Employees and Construction Tradeworkers Act
Respect Equality Socialism Peace Environment Community Trade Unions
Responsibility, Etiquette, Sensitivity, Pace, Educate, Conditions and Tradition (Junior Golfer’s Creed)
Risk Evaluation and Stroke Prevention in the Elderly Cerivastatin Trial
Rotorcraft Efficient and Safe Procedures for Critical Trajectories
Residents Encouraging Study Peaceful Environment and Community Thinking
Responsible, Efficient, Skilled, Professionally Educated & Caring Team
Requirements Specifications improvement for federation of Co-operatives in Trento

Perhaps its just me, but I just can’t see how abbreviating the word in this context helps one bit. Now I’m no literature connoisseur, but all I’m saying is that I would think words when spoken or written should make sense in the context.If not, then it probably shouldn’t be used there.

P.E.A.C.E - Positive Energy Always Corrects Errors

While in the process of roaming around for more info I did manage to find something pretty interesting and funny. This ad featured in 1895 might certainly not get any serious air-time in our current society.

An advertisement showing a young woman with a package of Loring’s Fat-Ten-U food tablets and package of Loring’s Corpula, a fat-producting food.

1. ShoveBox
2. Twitterrific
3. TinyGrab

The other applications ,useful to many others no doubt, doesn’t excite me one bit (yet) since I either don’t see my needing them and/or have applications that serve the intended purposes pretty effectively.

For those of you who are new to the Mac scene and/or are an avid user already, there might be one or two applications that you just might like and continue using. Without boring you with details you can find elsewhere, let me just say something like this doesn’t last forever. With only 2 days left (as of penning this post) for the promotion to end, it might be wise to get in line right now and snag your own copy.