SpeedPlexer Blog

The argument rages on despite the fact that the winner has been declared–The New Oxford American Dictionary announced its Word of the Year this week and the winner was from the world of technology and new media rather than topics like Economy, Politics and Current Affairs, Environment or Novelty. The tech terms considered were:

• hashtag – a # [hash] sign added to a word or phrase that enables Twitter users to search for tweets (postings on the Twitter site) that contain similarly tagged items and view thematic sets

• intexticated – distracted because texting on a cellphone while driving a vehicle

• netbook – a small, very portable laptop computer with limited memory

• paywall – a way of blocking access to a part of a website which is only available to paying subscribers

• sexting – the sending of sexually explicit texts and pictures by cellphone

But the winner was…UNFRIEND.

unfriend – verb – To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.
As in, “I decided to unfriend my roommate on Facebook after we had a fight.”

“It has both currency and potential longevity,” notes Christine Lindberg, Senior Lexicographer for Oxford’s US dictionary program. “In the online social networking context, its meaning is understood, so its adoption as a modern verb form makes this an interesting choice for Word of the Year… “unfriend” is different from the norm. It assumes a verb sense of “friend” that is really not used (at least not since maybe the 17th century!). Unfriend has real lex-appeal.”

But if you read the comments section under the Oxford University Press blog posting, you’ll see plenty of debating, not only about unfriend versus defriend, but also about another controversial term. Check it out and join the discussion to help change the English language with internet speed!

L.A. Times reports that Google is facing court action in Switzerland because it isn’t meeting the country’s demands for tighter privacy protection with its Google Maps’ Street View service, according to a Swiss government official.

Street View is a feature that lets users pick a point on a map and see a panoramic street-level image of the surroundings. By adjusting the location of the point, a user can take a virtual walk down the street. Google constructs the images from panoramic photos taken by cars it has equipped with cameras…and that travel with internet speed, apparently.

Faces had not been sufficiently blurred, and people were concerned about being shown near “sensitive locations, for example outside hospitals, prisons or schools,” Swiss government official Hanspeter Thuer said.

Google argues that it provides measures to protect privacy by making it possible for people to contact Google and ask to have pictures of their property removed from Street View. The company also said it spoke with privacy regulators and gave them an opportunity to raise questions.

“We’re proud of the blurring technology we’ve developed for Street View, and are confident the product is completely legal, but we wanted to go the extra mile to address Herr Thuer’s concerns,” the company said in a blog post.

Google ran into a similar problem in the U.S. this year when a Pennsylvania couple took the company to court, saying the feature was an invasion of privacy. A judge threw out the case, saying “complete privacy does not exist” and arguing that photos and building plans of people’s home were already available to the public.

In the blog post, Google indicated it planned to fight the Swiss case as well: “We will vigorously defend Street View in court and we’re committed to continue bringing the benefits to Swiss users.”

Ars Technica reports that Rodney Bradford, a 19-year-old Brooklyn resident, was arrested for robbing a man at gunpoint, despite his insistence that he was at his father’s Harlem apartment at the time. His defense lawyer discovered that an update was made to Bradford’s Facebook profile at the time of the robbery. When the district attorney verified the claims with Bradford’s father and stepmother and the IP information with Facebook, the charges against Bradford were dropped.

However, the Facebook posting could have been made by someone else, and there would be no way to truly verify who was sitting in front of the computer at the time. Bradford’s attorney brushes this technicality off as a “level of criminal genius that you would not expect from a young boy like this.”

Actually, as Ars Tecnhica’s Jacqui Cheng points out, “it doesn’t take much of a genius to leave yourself logged in on someone else’s machine (in fact, quite the opposite). A report circulated in September about a robber who decided to log into his own Facebook account at the victim’s house during the robbing and forgot to log out—given that level of stupidity, it’s not hard to imagine leaving yourself logged in at your own father’s apartment.”

Criminal Justice law instructor Joseph Pollini says, “Some of the brightest people on the Internet are teenagers. They know the Internet better than a lot of people. Why? Because they use it all the time.”

Law enforcement is facing this issue much more frequently these days. It’s not just about blaming your cat for downloading child porn anymore—anyone who wants to do so can easily create alibis online with the help of friends or family, and it doesn’t take an experienced hacker to figure out how to use internet speed to their advantage.

TechCrunch’s Orli Yakuel did a big favor for anyone who likes their fonts with internet speed–she researched several sites that free-font-fans might like.  Here’s a brief overview of her review:

BetterFonts is an online font database where you can quickly preview and download thousands of fonts. You can instantly download most previewed fonts for free, but for certain quality ones you’ll need to pay. They do have a deal of a 500-font package for $2.77, but without previews.

FFonts has a huge font library and it allows you to navigate easily, and download any font for free. All the fonts on the site are listed on the left side menu for easy access, and clicking on a font gives you information plus a satisfying preview of the font. Overall, the site hosts more than 10,000 fonts!

Fawnt, one of the largest free font archives on the web today, has a pleasant design and an easy-to-use navigator. All the fonts have large and customizable previews, and character maps. Though all of the fonts in Fawnt are free, they might have some restrictions, so be sure to check.

Myfonts, with 62,000 fonts, has the world’s largest font database. Not only can you search and download the fonts to your computer, you can also find fonts based on a picture with their service WhatTheFont! Simply upload a file, or specify a URL, and myFonts will find the font used in the picture you uploaded (or at least, give you some close alternatives to this font).

Abstract Fonts has a very convenient interface, lets you type in text to view font examples, opens a summary of information you need to know about that font. Abstract also gives you the ability to see similar fonts–an absolutely brilliant addition.