World Cup ’06 – FINAL: Ghana 2 – USA 1
Go Ghana! You rock! Africa is in the final 16!
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Author: michael
So there I was, casually glancing through a list of some hip’n’tasty neologisms breaking into the charts on Ask Oxford when I came across something absolutely and utterly ridiculous. Tell me if you spot anything wrong with this sentence:
Bluesnarfing: the illicit accessing of data from an electronic device such as a mobile phone, PDA, or computer using a Bluetooth® short-range wireless interconnection. The word made headlines when Bluesnarfers targeted the actress Paris Hilton and embarassingly made the electronic contacts list on her mobile available on the Net.
Uh. Excuse me? What? Paris Hilton’s T-Mobile Sidekick did NOT even have Bluetooth. Unlike most devices, the Sidekick handily backs up itself to a server-side repository – which the “Bluesnarfers” managed to “hack” into (in reality, they just guessed her password). I really wish that Catherine Soanes had bothered to read Peter Rojas’ lucid debunking of this incident in Engadget a few short months earlier. Oxford English Dictionary, you need a solid dose of fact-checking.
Giant 2005/6 conference recap coming soon. In the meantime – I’m speaking at O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 Conference in San Francisco next week. I’m really excited about this conference – I was so bummed I had to miss it last year due to visa issue. I’m also speaking right at the tail-end of a trifecta of mobile locative social people including Walt Doyle from uLocate and Shawn Conahan from Intercasting.
Check out the schedule and give me a shout if you want to meet up.
I’m also hanging out at the Hyperlinked Society conference organized by Joseph Turow in Philadelphia later this week which promises to be tons of hypertextual fun. UPDATE: Couldn’t make this one – Dan is currently enjoying this conference at his alma mater.
Conferences-a-go-go!
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Learn to speak a language
This one landed in my inbox and caused me to convulse with laughter. I managed to control myself enough to cut’n’paste it. Enjoy.
A soft, cotton cloud landing and worry falls away. You’re in a foreign country now, but things don’t seem so foreign. You’ve planned well. Confidence is on your side when you speak the language. “Take me to the hotel, please… keep the change.” A concierge later and you’re in bed watching their local news, humming “It’s a Small World After All.”
A bit of free time, then that important meeting. Shopping. Definitely! You take in the sights and bites, flash camera lights, and wander through a market’s door. Chocolate, cheese, and bread. So many favorites to bring back, but the setting sun lets you know this satisfying day is almost done. You take a quick detour in search of nightlife and spark enjoyable conversations with the locals. You talk and laugh – a variety of subjects – but when jetlag catches up with you, you know it’s time to call it a night.
Today’s your big day. You warmly greet everyone in their native tongue and engage them with the most tasteful anecdotes from your evening escapade. Everyone’s laughing before you signal that you’re ready to begin. Your proposal resonates with all. You could’ve translated it, but what’s the point? They learn those business terms in English, any way. But you never would have broken the ice in English or caught new sayings if all you did was memorize. It’s your new ability to speak, listen, learn and improvise in another language that built your confidence and rapport. Your [xxxxx] audio course was definitely worth it!
Oh my god. Excuse me while I clean my keyboard, there’s cheese dripping all over it. Ack ack.
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Hello Summer.
Bring on the humidity. Bring on as many blisteringly hot, rivulets-of-sweat-streaming-off-my-body days as I can get. Make my airconditioner work for it’s electric fix.
Living in New York during summertime is one of my favourite things in the world. Most people scurry away to the Hamptons or the Jersey Shore to avoid the triple threat of intense heat, waves of tourists and insane queues, but not me. I stay for the concerts, the crazies, the madcap nights roaming the streets when anything and everything seems possible. Yay summer!