Any lover of words invariably goes through a phase of trying to learn all of the group names for various animals. You know the obvious ones:

a school of fish
a flock of birds
an army of caterpillars
a pride of lions

And the not so obvious ones:

a troubling of goldfish
a trip of goats
a wake of buzzards
a battery of barracudas
a parliament of owls

Perhaps it’s a bastardization of the English language to take this concept and apply it to something other than animals, but I was trying to come up with a name that describes a group of links. And then…of course… I couldn’t leave it at just that. Imagine the possibilities. (more…)

Anyone else notice the makeover gone wrong over at Blingo?

For the un-initiated, Blingo is a search engine where you are eligible to win a prize for up to 25 searches a day. I have been using it for about the past four months, and not too long ago won a $5.00 Amazon gift certificate. The regular search results were — until very recently — powered by Google.

Well, Spring has sprung and change comes with it, but in this case not for the better. Blingo’s reconstructive surgery has left it one hot mess. Now with intermixed results from Yahoo, LiveSearch, and Ask, inquiries on Blingo return mostly useless results. Nice work, Publisher’s Clearing House.

Boo. Hiss.

One of my favorite days of the year. Endless possibilities for marketers, and so much fun.

Highlights in the ‘net-o-sphere today:

• If you’ve got a Google Docs account, sign in and open a new document. Under the file menu you should see an option for New Airplane. As Nick says, “Be careful. It’s in beta, so it may crash.”


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On February 16th, 6 ArcStonians raced in the Minneapolis Valentine’s Day 5k around Lake Harriet. We survived, and I have the pic to prove it:

From left to right: Me, Ryan, Bart, Jess, Jess (friend of Tim), Tim, Nik. Don’t ask me what kind of face Tim is making.

Go ArcStone!!!

In addition to self-diagnosing your ailments online with tools such as Web MD and Healthline.com‘s symptom search, now you can track the spread of sickness.

I don’t know about you, but the colors in those symptom pies are making me feel a little nauseous.

There’s a new book by Susan Shapiro Barash asserting that women are better liars than men. (I haven’t read it.)

True enough, any woman with a wee bit of guile knows how to tell a proper lie. But basing your thesis on the data collected from a test pool of women who responded to Craigslist ads? Please. That’s begging for skewed results.

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Who knew auto-fill could be so dangerous?

You start entering a name or email address in the “to” field, and auto-fill completes the rest for you. But in your haste, before you even check if the correct “Spock” is chosen from the auto-fill list, you’ve tabbed down to the subject line and are on your way to sending the email.

Shortly thereafter, Dr. Spock the child-rearing guru is calling to ask why you sent him blueprints for a starship, and you sheepishly have to explain that those files were meant for a Vulcan’s eyes only.

Thankfully, I am not in the habit of sending love letters or lewd jokes via email, or I might be hiding in the server room pretending I didn’t exist. Still, auto-fill is a hazard for those who must regularly send potentially sensitive materials. It behooves us all to make sure we are actually sending our email to the intended recipient.

On the other hand, predictive text software on mobile phones now rewards those who leave an incorrect word unchanged. Presumably out of laziness, texters intentionally don’t correct mis-predicted words. Yes, suddenly it’s cool to get your mords wixed up.

Predictive Text Gives Birth to “Textonyms”

Here’s an example: You mean to write “home,” so you punch the corresponding numbers “4663″ on your cell. The predictive text feature thinks you meant “good,” but you leave it as is and continue your message. According to some sources, avid texters will still know exactly what you mean. They’re called textonyms.

I’m not sure I quite believe the apparent popularity of these textonyms. This article cites the use of the word “carnage” when the word “barmaid” was intended. I mean, really — who uses the term “barmaid” while texting? But who knows, maybe there are merely some very poetic texters out there.

Technology has really spoiled us.

A fellow word-lover of mine tipped me off to Scrabulous, the Scrabble-esque app for Facebook. You can play casual games with your friends over any span of time. (Name of opponent removed to protect the innocent.)

You know I’m already addicted.

This year for Thanksgiving, I brought home a Wii, including the never-opened, much buzzed-about Guitar Hero III.

My family, particularly my mom (who is decidedly not a gamer), took to it immediately. Mom’s unexpected enthusiasm and enjoyment of the Wii prompted my Dad to make seven trips to Target in a quest to bring back the holy grail of gaming consoles for the holidays. Lo and behold, Christmas morning, Santa had placed a Wii under the trii, and fun was had by all.

Why — when no other gaming system has come close to tempting her — does my mom like rockin’ out on the fake guitar till her fingers are sore and smashing my dad to pieces with her speed-of-light serves in Wii Sports tennis?

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According to a recent published study, libraries are apparently cool again, and the biggest user demographic is the Y Generation. The credit goes to technology — visitors prefer to get their information via computers rather than old-fashioned books, and libraries today provide easy access to ample digital resources.

That reminded me of this funny video, How to Open A Book…