Number of Posts: 53
Posts 41 - 50
Punkt: Am Ende
(Period: the end)
Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 31.3.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | diversity, emojis, language threat, punctuation, research/study, texting
Summary | The neutral punctuation mark "." is disappearing from our written language. The most likely reason is that with text messages we no longer need a period to tell us when a sentence is finished. Linguists are not worried about the extinction of the period. Language is ever-changing, they say. It is quite sad though, that the period is being omitted more and more and hardly anyone cares. All debates now center around emojis: can Apple just replace the gun emoji with a water pistol one? Is it racist to use a black emoji as a White person?
Image Description | The sunset over the ocean.
Von Rubinbergs Super-Duden
(Von Rubinger super dictionary)
Newspaper | die Weltwoche
Date | 13.4.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | privacy, texting, translation, WhatsApp
Summary | An entrepreneur in Switzerland wants to release a new messaging app called Drotr. It is comparable to WhatsApp in its basic functions but it can translate all messages into over 100 languages. Also the messages are better protected against privacy breaches and the servers are located in Switzerland.
Image Description | N/A
«Jemandem zu sagen, er solle sich ficken, ist ziemlich schlimm»
(«Telling soeone to go fuck himself is pretty bad»)
Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 5.4.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | anglicisms, language threat, research/study, texting, word/writing
Summary | Linguist Elisabeth Stark is research texting communication with a corpus of 18000 text messages and even more WhatsApp messages. She says that about 2-3% of the words are anglicisms and that their amount does not seem to be rising rapidly - the word "fuck" for instance is still too strong for most German speakers. In German, sex is too taboo for taboo language. Her data also shows that Swiss people choose the local dialect rather than the standard variety when texting. Most people's langugage competencies are not compromised by this informal communication, most can adhere to conventions when a formal register is appropriate.
Image Description | Portrait of the interviewee and a Keystone image of a protest with a sign reading "fuck".
Image Tags | female(s), text
Google gibt der Smartwatch eine zweite Chance
(Google gives the smartwatch a second chance)
Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 15.2.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, smartphone, texting
Summary | Google has been lagging behind in the smartwatch field. They are now bringing out a new model. It will enable users to pick and choose which apps they have on their smartwatch, it used to just download all the apps from the connected smartphone. It will now also become possible to respond to texts from the smartwatch by typing.
Image Description | N/A
Teen job hopeful rejected with a smiley face text
Newspaper | Daily Mail (UK)
Date | 10.2.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | emojis, texting
Summary | A teenage girl received a text with a crying with laughter emoji after a job interview. The text said "It's a no", followed by the emoji. The girl said that the use of the laughing face emoji was rude and unprofessional.
Image Description | N/A
My friend messages me on every platform. How do I politely say 'back off'?
Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 19.4.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | email, politeness, social media, texting
Summary | How does one deal with a pushy friends that is trying to reach one through all possible media channels? This discrepancy in how both people define the friendship and how often they feel the need to communicate can be quite tricky to maneuver. One can either be passive-aggressive about it (preferred in British culture) and train the friend by always taking your time to respond and choosing the media channel with the least likeliness of a quick response turning into a digital conversation: email. The alternative is to politely but explicitly mark your boundaries by telling the friend that you cannot respond to this many messages.
Image Description | Illustration with text message bubbles colliding and exploding.
Facebook has 60 people working on how to read your mind
Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 16.4.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, brain, Facebook, texting
Summary | Facebook's long term development plans include reading your mind by means of external devices that measure brainwaves and translate them into text. This would emable users to type five times as fast and without having to take their phones out. This way one would no longer have to pause a face-to-face conversation to write a text.
Image Description | Reuters images of Regina Dugan, head of Facebook’s hardware innovation division.
Image Tags | Facebook, female(s)
How to Listen to Donald Trump Every Day for Years
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 21.1.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | grammar, language threat, politics, texting, Twitter
Summary | President Trump is widely criticized for his poor speaking abilities. His speaking style is more akin to regular talking whereas presidential speaking traditionally resembles the written language. This explains why Trump's medium of choice is Twitter or 'speeches' (too linguistically informal to be called an actual speech). Twitter, with its limitation on message length resembles texting, which as linguists have confirmed mimicks spoken language rather than formal writing.
Image Description | Donald Trump on a stage being photographed.
Image Tags | camera, male(s)
Das ist an Messenger-Verschwörungstheorien dran
(This is the deal with messenger conspiracy theories)
Newspaper | Welt
Date | 5.11.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, privacy, Snapchat, texting, threat, WhatsApp
Summary | A list of popular messengers is analyzed in terms of how well they protect their users' privacy. The safest one is Signal and many others have end-to-end encryption, for instance WhatsApp. They still collect the metadata though (interlocutors, time of interaction, location). Some even save the content that is sent around - most shockingly Snapchat which is popular becuase it supposedly leaves no trace. Some messengers supposedly have ties with national security ministries, like Telegram in Russia and Viber in Israel. Apple recently refused to work with the FBI in giving away a customer's personal information.
Image Description | Photograph of a smartphone screen with messengers and a video about messengers.
Image Tags | hand(s), logo, smartphone, WhatsApp
Dumbphones haben jetzt durchaus wieder ihren Reiz
(Dumbphones seem quite appealing again)
Newspaper | Welt
Date | 9.3.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | texting
Summary | Some companies are redesigning and selling so-called 'dumbphones' again: cell phones that can only be used to do phone calls and send SMS text messages. Even though that technology seems archaic now, the first iPhone was released only ten years ago. Many people are overwhelmed by the constant distraction of smartphones and might opt to simpler devices.
Image Description | Video presenting dumphones.
Image Tags | cell phone
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