In its 20th annual words of the year vote, the American Dialect Society voted “tweet” (noun, a short message sent via the Twitter.com service, and verb, the act of sending such a message) as the word of the year and “ google” (a generic form of “Google,” meaning “to search the Internet) as its word of the decade.
Presiding at the Jan. 8 voting session in Baltimore were ADS Executive Secretary Allan Metcalf of MacMurray College, and Barrett, chair of the New Words Committee of the American Dialect Society editorial director of online dictionary Wordnik.com. Barrett is also the editor of the column “Among the New Words” in the society’s quarterly academic journal American Speech.
“Both words are, in the end, products of the Information Age, where every person has the ability to satisfy curiosity and to broadcast to a select following, both via the Internet.” [Grant] Barrett, [chair of the New Words Committee of the American Dialect Society editorial director of online dictionary Wordnik.com] said. “I really thought blog would take the honors in the word of the decade category, but more people google than blog, don’t they? Plus, many people think ‘blog’ just sounds ugly. Maybe Google’s trademark lawyers would have preferred it, anyway.”
-er A suffix used in such words as birther, someone who questions whether Obama was born in the United States; deather, someone who believes the government has death panels in its healthcare reform plan; Tenther, someone who believes the Federal government is mostly illegal because it usurps rights which belong to the States, in violation of the 10th Amendment; and truther, someone who doubts the official account of the 9/11 attacks.
fail A noun or interjection describing something egregiously unsuccessful. Usually used as an interjection: “FAIL!”
H1N1 The virus that causes swine flu.
public option A government-run healthcare insurance program, desired by some to be part of the country’s
healthcare reform.
Dracula sneeze Covering one’s mouth with the crook of one’s elbow when sneezing, seen as similar to popular
portrayals of the vampire Dracula, in which he hides the lower half of his face with a cape.
Other Nominees for Word of the Decade Were:
9/11 The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Pronounced “nine eleven.”
blog A web site for publishing a chronological and ongoing series of related entries, especially when they are all
by the same person(s) or on the same topic. Also a productive combining form: blogosphere, blogerati, milblog, blogola.
green Related to ecological or environmental conservation or protection. Also a productive combining form:
greenwashing, green collar, etc.
text Verb: to send a text message via a mobile phone. Noun: such a message.
war on terror A global effort to prevent terror and terrorists.
Wi-Fi abbreviation. Wireless Fidelity, a group of technical standards enabling the transmission of data over
wireless networks.
A family of resources to help information workers be more effective, raise the value of information in their organisations and contribute to success. Read more »
Recently I have found myself cooing over visualisation maps (and heat maps) of health and well being resources. The content rich data is overlayed with mapping technologies, and some interesting themes and patterns are emerging.
A lot of the talk around social media in the last year has been around information overload. Social media has provided us with new and exciting ways to create content. But it has also meant learning new ways to manage and engage with social media tools. Are we teetering on the edge of an information overload precipice?
Information overload is a figment of your imagination. Or a failure of your filter. Or a symptom of your technological submissiveness. Depends on who you ask.
What if you had to sort through 3.5 million articles and social media posts a day and try to pull out the most relevant items for your organisation? What if you then had to cobble it all together into something readable for your top groups and executives in your organisation?
Alacra Compliance saves time by aggregating information from both free and fee-based sources and enabling users to conduct an accurate federated search across these sources (coined “simultaneous search” by Alacra).
FreePint Family
Quilting big data threads
The fallacy of information overload
Information overload: fact, fantasy or filter failure? 
