Betty Crocker may be the most famous person "...who never exited:" I think they mean existed, but either way Pulse24 has another interesting article regarding the origin of certain brand names.
Posted by
Michael Davey on Sunday, March 30, 2003 @ 9:43 AM
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This, that and the phat: Phat, 'bling bling', hottie and 'white van man' make it into the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. "Language change is inevitable and to try to stop it is futile." more...
Posted by
Michael Davey on Friday, March 28, 2003 @ 9:29 AM
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See, we fresh with Air Ones, Lexus and big drums:LucJam has a new feature -- Top Billboard Brands -- where each week he lists which brand names are being plugged in pop music songs.
Posted by
Jay on Tuesday, March 25, 2003 @ 3:35 PM
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Wordlab Sells Out! That's right kids, the ugly reality of ONLINE ADVERTISING has finally intruded on this quiet little sanctum for the first time in our four-and-a-half year old existence.
We are experimenting with this sale of our souls to the devil in the hopes that it will help defray the rising costs of keeping this site alive. To that end, you can help by clicking on some of these ads every time you visit Wordlab. On our end, we'll start weeding out really obnoxious animated banner ads, which we hate to see as much as you.
Go ahead and send us your hate mail, especially if you'd like to contribute funds to pay for this site so we can ditch the ads. Thanks in advance for your unparalleled generosity.
UPDATE: I just deleted about fifteen really annoying animated ad banners from the pool that will display on Wordlab, but the change will take an hour or so to take effect. Please bear with us in the meantime as we deal with the realities of this major attitude change, which include getting really drunk and throwing things at our computers....
Posted by
Jay on Friday, March 21, 2003 @ 12:58 PM
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And in other news: According to recent trends on the Wordboard, it must be high school election season again. Thank God for Nosila, eh kids? Not only is she getting everyone elected, I'm actually sleeping at night by staying out of it. I do wish you all well with the sinking school budgets though.
Posted by
Michael Davey on Tuesday, March 18, 2003 @ 9:50 PM
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Back from the Dead: You may have noticed that Wordlab was down for a little over an hour today, but now we're back in business. (And it's only a dollar, step right up, it's only a dollar, step right up...) Our web hosting service claims "99% uptime," so that was pretty cool that we all got to witness a chunk of the other 1%.
Hopefully you all took advantage of that time to read up on the new Estelle Reyna naming trend sweeping through culinary culture.
Wordbursting at the Seams: We first told you about the word burst phenomena in a blog post here a couple weeks ago, which was followed a day later with Wordbursting Redux.
Linguists must be having a field day tracking the current burst of the phrase "word burst" through the media, most recently landing on CNN.com (Software digs up buzzwords old and new) in article about both the linguistic study of past word bursts and the cultural probing of current word burst trends in blogs, all with an eye toward the holy grail of predictive trend analysis.
The study of word bursts is not new. Geoffrey Nunberg, for one, has been studying such patterns in the media for years, and chronicling them in his excellent Fresh Air commentaries and books. And we at Wordlab have been at the forefront of the word burst phenomenon since before we were born, amassing in the process a few word trend scoops of our own. Namely, that the word or name "snark" is in the early stages of a massive worldwide word burst that will soon put it on everybody's lips.
For those of you who are keeping score, this post contains the following word and phrase totals:
Keep an eye out for "snark" as it bolts up the burst meter. Two other exciting word bursts we are tracking aggressively are "Igor" and "Snark Hunting," which appear to be long-term trends.
Remember, you saw it first on Wordlab. And many times after that.
Posted by
Jay on Monday, March 17, 2003 @ 12:20 PM
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What more is in a name?An interview I did recently for ReadMe has just been published online. WARNING: Put on welding goggles before you look at the picture of me, or the shine coming off my exposed pate may blind you.
Posted by
Jay on Saturday, March 15, 2003 @ 11:17 AM
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What's in a name? A team effort has coined the name Pomegarnet for lilypond's new jewelry business. But does it work? lilypond could use your opinion.
Posted by
Michael Davey on Friday, March 14, 2003 @ 7:00 AM
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Posted by
Michael Davey on Tuesday, March 11, 2003 @ 8:14 PM
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Spinning Linguists: James Sullivan has written a good article, Them are Fightin' Words, concerning the propaganda behind different pronunciations in today's geopolitics.
I say Saddam-bam, you say Sadamna-bama!
Posted by
Michael Davey on Saturday, March 08, 2003 @ 10:14 PM
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Wordbursting redux (and then some):Daypop has a page tracking Word Bursts: "Word Bursts are heightened usage of certain words in weblogs within the last couple days. They are indicators of what webloggers are writing about right now....Word Bursts can frequently indicate current events of interest that are not usually accompanied by links."
They also track "newsbursting" on their Top News Bursts page. "News Bursts are heightened usage of certain words on the front page of news sites within the last couple days."
And: "The Daypop Top 40 is a list of links that are currently popular with webloggers from around the world." There are also Top News and Top Weblogs pages, which track the popularity of news stories and of blogs themselves by number of appearances in other blogs.
Posted by
Jay on Friday, March 07, 2003 @ 2:45 PM
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Wordbursting:Word 'Bursts' as an indicator of social trends. Starts to give you an idea of why Google wanted to buy Blogger. You could learn a lot by analyzing the frequency and acceleration of word usage in personal blogs, as well as bursts of links -- which blogs get linked to again and again, which posts get picked up and circulated the most, etc.
Right now, for instance, you're probably blogging this post. And when you do, Google will be watching, clipboard in hand.
Posted by
Jay on Thursday, March 06, 2003 @ 4:31 PM
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Inflammatory language? Stephen Downs went to a mall near Albany, New York yesterday with his son, where he bought a T-shirt that expressed a scary, radical idea. He then had the audacity to put the shirt on.
While Mr. Downs was dining with his son in the mall's food court, he was approached by two security guards and told to either remove the patently offensive shirt or leave the mall pronto. He refused, the police were called in, and they arrested Mr. Downs for trespassing. If convicted, he could face up to a year in prison.
Fortunately, Mr. Downs just happens to be a lawyer. And not just any lawyer, but the director of the Albany Office of the state Commission on Judicial Conduct.
Oh, and the language on the T-shirt that got Mr. Downs into such hot water to begin with? "Give Peace A Chance." Read all about it.
If he were alive today, John Lennon would probably be in prison. Or as Dylan says,
And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only.
Add that to the list of strong language unacceptable in American malls.
UPDATE: More information, including news of the first group protest at the mall over this incident.
Posted by
Jay on Wednesday, March 05, 2003 @ 11:44 AM
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Posted by
Jay on Tuesday, March 04, 2003 @ 11:58 AM
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Hairs of the dog: Announcing John Paul Pet. Paul Mitchell, famous for his salon products, has a new line of hair care products for your dog. The variety of formulas include a tea tree treatment and an oatmeal conditioning rinse, priced $5.99 to $8.99. The products are featured this week at the 45th annual American Pet Product Manufacturers Association's trade show in Atlanta Georgia through Friday. What were they thinking the other 44 years?
As if it were branded on my mind -- George Eliot: Marketing agency Cunning Stunts is hiring students to turn their foreheads into billboard space. The ForeheADS campaign has been launched in London, Leeds, Glasgow and Cardiff.
Posted by
Michael Davey on Monday, March 03, 2003 @ 12:42 PM
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Spreading the Religion of Snark to an Evil Corporation Near You:Metafilter posted a link this morning to Snark Hunting's Eminem's Brand Namedropping feature (actually, LucJam wrote it, I just stole it and made it look prettier), which means we're getting a few hundred thousand hits today, give or take a handful of digits. On second thought, don't take a handful of digits from me, I need all that I can get, in more ways than one.
There are some funny comments attached to the Metafilter post, including this muckraking gem:
"Snark Hunting," is an Igor Production.
Hmph. The Snark has been co-opted by Igor International, whose clients include Nestle, Gap, Amway, Banana Republic, and more.
It pisses me off to see Lewis Carroll used like that.
posted by Shane at 10:10 AM PST on March 1
My feeling is, if I can infiltrate the Snark into Corporate America, I think it does more good than harm (especially if I get paid), and I don't think Lewis Carroll is tarnished in the slightest. Hell, if I could get DuPont to sponsor Finnegans Wake readings, I'd do it in a heartbeat (give me a call, Pierre Pete, and we'll talk). The alternative is to sit on the sidelines and revel in irrelevance.
Imagine standing around outside the gates of ancient Troy and arguing, "Hey, guys, I can't believe you're going to waste a perfectly good giant hollow wooden horse statue on wheels by giving it to these idiot Trojans. It's disgusting, it diminishes the whole culture of giant wooden horses we've worked so hard to uphold." Well, perhaps those guys had ulterior motives.
NOTE: That's Igor, not Igor International. igorinternational.com is just the domain name for Igor. Because you don't have to be forced into a bad name for your company or product just because you can't get a particular domain name. "International" because we're a huge international megacorp ourselves, running branding sweatshops in over 83 countries.
Posted by
Jay on Saturday, March 01, 2003 @ 2:41 PM
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Note the cool Fine Print: The content found on WordLab
is free to the world. Although we cannot guarantee that any of this
content is not already in use by someone, somewhere, on this planet
who may have seen it on this Web site or created it independently of
our Web site, we have made a reasonable effort to give you what we believe
to be original names and slogans and generally good stuff. Use what
you will of our content since it is here for the taking. However, if
you decide to use one of our names for a commercial activity, and since
we have no assurance that the name may not already be in use by someone
else as a trademark, domain name or otherwise, we strongly suggest that
you take appropriate legal precautions, such as seeing a lawyer. In
short, any necessary due diligence is up to you, but we at least make
no claims on your potential future dream name. We merely ask that if
you do decide to use any of our content, that you please send us an
email ["word at wordlab dot com"] about it for use in our
internal records and eplosive marketing campaigns. Thank you, and enjoy.
