Number of Posts: 27
Posts 1 - 10
I can't be trusted with Google's texting app
Newspaper | Telegraph
Date | 19.5.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | Google, language threat, texting, word/writing, youth
Summary | Google's new Allo app is supposed to make you save time while you're texing, but it can sometimes lead to misunderstandings. The author of the article doesn't really like emojis and doesn't know how to use them well. She doesn't follow young people's digital habits. Their generation favors brevity, which can have a negative impact on language.
Image Description | Photograph of two young girls on their smartphones, two smartphones displaying chat conversations, and a man standing in front of a screen displaying "Allo" and "Duo".
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), smartphone, text
Facebook granted patent for post-scanning software that identifies slang before it becomes popular
Newspaper | Mirror
Date | 9.3.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | Facebook, word/writing
Summary | Facebook has been granted a patent for a software that can identify users' new words and slang. Facebook wants to identify those new "cool" words before they become popular and create a glossary of those terms.
Image Description | Hand holding a smartphone displaying the Facebook app, photograph of man's face (nose and mouth), and diagram showing how the new software would work
Image Tags | Facebook, hand(s), male(s), smartphone
Words are getting shorter due to social media as 'Jomo' and 'mic drop' feature on word of the year list
Newspaper | Telegraph
Date | 3.11.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | social media, spelling, texting, word/writing
Summary | With social media and texting, it seems that words are getting shorter. For instance, “jomo” stands for the “joy of missing out”; the acronym has been included on the Collins list of words that have seen a significant rise in usage. Other terms are: mic drop, throw shade, sharenting, uberisation, or dude food.
Image Description | Photograph of a group of people cheering, video of Obama dropping his mic, and photograph of Trump smiling
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)
Microsoft tries new key to unlock artificial intelligence
Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 5.2.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, smartphone, word/writing
Summary | Microsoft has bought SwiftKey for $ 250 mio. It is a technology that includes machine learning with artificial intelligence: huge amounts of dta are analyzed in order to be able to master human language and predict future language use. The smartphone keyboard then each user's specific language habits and suggests words that it predicts should come next in the sentence.
Image Description | N/A
France Plans a New Keyboard to Shift Control to Typists
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 22.1.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | language threat, spelling, word/writing
Summary | The French language is notoriously difficult to write and computer keyboards are not very well suited to facilitate typing for French typists. Important letters and diacritics are oftentimes hidden behind complicated shortcut combinations and discourage people from writing correctly in French. Since keyboards arrived, the false rumor that diacritics can be omitted on capital letters has spread around. Now the French governement is looking into designing a better keyboard standard for French typists.
Image Description | N/A
Microsoft tries new key to unlock artificial intelligence
Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 5.2.2016
Language | English
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, brain, texting, word/writing
Summary | Microsoft has been investing a lot into artificial intelligence in order to understand more about natural language processing. Microsoft just bought SwiftKey, a keyboard app that tries to guess which word you'll want to type in your text. The app tries to work like a human brain; it analyzes your writing style and tries to predict the future.
Image Description | N/A
Apple Opens the iMessage Door, and the Ephemera Rushes In
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 22.9.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | emojis, GIFs, word/writing
Summary | An Apple user of iMessage can now use different "tchotchkees" (e.g. GIFs, stickers, emojis) which dominate text messages whereas words are just "afterthought". Users can also throw confetti and balloons. Apple is trying to mimic what is out there on the internet.
Image Description | Screenshots of iMessage chats with words and stickers/emojis/GIFs/confetti, and screenshot of a tweet
Image Tags | emojis, gifs, text, Twitter
Das ist der wohl obszönste Username im ganzen Netz
(This is probably the most obscene username on the internet)
Newspaper | Welt
Date | 13.6.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | censorship, politeness, privacy, research/study, social media, threat, word/writing
Summary | Many news media sources now tend to quote opinions from social media users rather than do polls out in the street. It is not uncommon to see an opinion of the "common people" in a newspaper article quoting an obscure social media username. The difference to the traditional technique of asking people on the street is that journalists needed to obtain consent of the people to quote them. One woman has now found a way to avoid being quoted without her consent: she chose a very obscene username including four words which are inappropriate enough so that they would have to be censored in a newspaper.
Image Description | N/A
«Les lettres d'amour sont toujours révolutionnaires»
("Love letters are still revolutionary")
Newspaper | La Tribune de Genève
Date | 3.12.2016
Language | French
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | gender, texting, threat, word/writing
Summary | Philippe Brenot has been studying people's ways of sharing love for more than thirty years. He noticed some gender differences; for instance, women like to save love letters close to themselves whereas men save theirs in binders. Moreover, women don't write about their lover's body, whereas descriptions of female bodies are omnipresent in men's letters. However, in text messages, women are more likely to be straightforward. Brenot claims that love letters are not disappearing with new technologies. People still send each other love messages and save them.
Image Description | N/A
Wie Facebook unsere Sprache ausspähen will
(How Facebook wants to spy on our language)
Newspaper | Welt
Date | 11.3.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | emojis, Facebook, research/study, word/writing
Summary | Facebook is planning to systematically keep track of linguistic innovations on their platform. They want to compile a slang dictionary ("social glossary") with the freshest expressions. Linguists are also very interested in this project. American linguist Gretchen McCulloch has already posed the research question what verbs and nouns will enter our speech for the new Facebook emoji reactions. We already speak of likes and liking something but how will we speek of users reacting with sad or angy emojis?
Image Description | Image of an eye reflecting a Facebook like symbol and a tweet by linguist Gretchen McCulloch.
Image Tags | Facebook, Twitter
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