Link tags: buzz

Getting help from your worst enemy

Onboarding. Reaching out. In terms of. Synergy. Bandwidth. Headcount. Forward planning. Multichannel. Going forward. We are constantly bombarded and polluted with nonsense speak. These words and phrases snag and attach themselves to our vocabulary like sticky weeds.

Words become walls.

I love this post from Ben on the value of plain language!

We’re not dumbing things down by using simple terms. We’re being smarter.

Read on for the story of the one exception that Ben makes—it’s a good one.

WTF is Solid?- Solid

The new style guide and pattern library for Buzzfeed.

It all looks pretty reasonable on the surface but if you poke around in the CSS, you’ll find 1157 uses of !important. Yikes!

The whole point of having an agreed-upon codebase in a pattern library is so that developers need never reach for nuclear options like !important, so I’m afraid, for me, this is a demonstration of what not to do (in terms of CSS—the output of the HTML in the styleguide looks perfectly fine).

Solid uses immutable, atomic CSS classes…

CSS is “mutable”. By design. I don’t think we should be working against that.

Avoiding ‘words to avoid’ | Inside GOV.UK

I love the thinking behind this plugin that highlights the weasel words that politicians are so found of.

blech/cloud-to-moon on GitHub

Best. Chrome extension. EVER!

Paul’s Chrome extension replaces every instance of “the cloud” with “the moon” (something I do in my head anyway).

It’s forked from an extension that replaces every instance of “the cloud” with “the clown.”

Oh, and Ben has written a version for Safari …forked from code that converts every instance of “the cloud” to “my butt.”

Citrix Systems » Most Americans Confused By Cloud Computing According to National Survey

See‽ See‽

The cloud is not only a lie, it’s a lie that everyone pretends to understand.

When asked what “the cloud” is, a majority responded it’s either an actual cloud (specifically a “fluffy white thing”), the sky or something related to the weather (29 percent).

Enterprise HTML - Provides proven high performance, enterprise-level and scalable HTML tips and best practices.

It's funny (and painful) because it's true (and painful).

Unsuck It

An excellent resource for deciphering corporate business-speak gibberish (I'm going to need this when I'm eavesdropping on Andy Budd making phone calls).

What The Fuck Is My Social Media Strategy?

Making it up so you don't have to — somewhat like my New Media Company Name generator from a few years back.

Usability Testing: You are not your user. No matter how good you think you are.

A lesson from Google Buzz: a large sampling isn't always a representative sampling.

Making Light: The lily knows not why it blossoms in the spring

Before we point the finger and laugh at the Facebook users leaving confused comments on Read Write Web, we should look to our own experiences with Google Buzz.

Blissbat Loves Books » Blog Archive » Google Buzz Screws Up

Erin explains exactly how badly Google have messed up privacy concerns with Buzz.

Fuck you, Google « Fugitivus

A frightening tale of just how badly Google messed up with the lack of privacy controls on Buzz.

List of Words it is NOT ok to ever say.

Glad to see "webinar" on this list. Shame about "lifestream."

Douchespeak

Ridiculing the empty language of the corporate world one putrid word at a time.

DoodleBuzz:Typographic News Explorer

A crazy way of viewing news stories courtesy of Brendan Dawes.

Business Technology : New Service Helps Tech Startups Choose Terrible Names

I had a very pleasant chat on the phone with Ben Worthen from the Wall Street Journal. He likes my social buzzword generator.

BuzzFeed

A new site for tracking what's hot and what's not.

Buzzword Bingo

This <a href="http://bingo.adactio.com/">looks familiar</a>. Great minds think alike. (For some reason, this page has 76 divs and 50 tables. Yikes!)

Buzzword Hell

Am I buzzword or not?

Incisive.nu: Strong Language

The verb form of “leverage,” like all forms of Cheetos®, is composed mainly of hot air surrounded by a shell of creepily artificial substance.