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del.icio.us direc.tor: Delivering An AJAX Web Service Broker
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What is it?
del.icio.us direc.tor is a prototype for an alternative web-based rich UI for del.icio.us. It leverages the XML and XSL services of modern browsers to deliver a responsive interface for managing user accounts with a large number of records.
The main features are:
In-browser handling of del.icio.us bookmarks (tested up to 12,000 records)
Find-as-you-type searching of all your bookmarks, with basic search operators
Sort by description, tags, or timestamp
Ad-hoc tag browser
Coverage of this feature around the web:
How do I use it?
Because of the restrictions on the browser, you'll need to load this using a Javascript bookmarklet. Follow these four steps to get started:
Create a bookmarklet by bookmarking the following link: del.icio.us direc.tor Go to api.del.icio.us Launch the bookmark you just created while you are still on the del.icio.us page Login to del.icio.us, if prompted
(Try the static demo if you don't have a del.icio.us account.) Type in a search term or click a tag in the browser; click the column headings to sort
NOTE: This only works on Firefox and Internet Explorer. Safari won't work because it doesn't support XSLT via Javascript.
Supported operators
direc.tor supports the following operators:
t:<search_term> Search only in tag field
Ex: t:humor d:<search_term> Search only in description field
Ex: d:politics -<search_term> Exclude results containing search term
Ex: -microsoft
Combining operators, like -t:nonsense , is currently not supported.
How does it work?
The idea behind a client-side web service broker (or intermediary, as Jon Udell calls it) is simple: assist a client in interpreting or processing information from a service, but letting the client do all the work (just like what "strategic management consultants" do). Unlike other web services like Amazon Light or Googlism that execute all of the program logic on the server side, a client-side broker sends all of the logic over as Javascript and has the browser do the work.
Other brokering services like the Google Maps hack are not entirely self-contained and require the broker host to proxy information between the main server and the client, thus doubling the amount of network traffic and degrading the overall performance. direc.tor eliminates the need for the broker host to proxy requests by instructing the client to directly communicate with the main server. This approach is very similar to the way Greasemonkey scripts are loaded, except that it is largely platform independent and does not require additional client-side extensions like Greasemonkey. However, the major pitfall to this approach is that users are required to manually create the bookmarklet.
In a standard service, the Client Browser makes a request to the Service Broker (1), which in turn makes a request to the Web Service (2). The response from the Web Service is then transformed by the Service Broker, and presented to the Client Browser (3). In a client-side service, the Client Browser gets the entire service logic from the Service Broker (1), and then communicates directly with the Web Service (2).
Loading the service
This project uses the only reliable loophole for executing foreign Javascript code: the bookmarklet bootloader. It works by inserting a <script> element directly into the DOM, which is then immediately executed by the browser. The injected Javascript wipes the existing del.icio.us page and replaces the entire body with the direc.tor UI. At the same time, direc.tor makes an XmlHTTPRequest to http://del.icio.us/api/posts/all to get the XML listing of the user's bookmarks, which is persisted through the lifetime of the direc.tor page. Because del.icio.us uses the standard HTTP basic authentication, the browser will automatically ask for credentials if it has not been established yet. Since the client is communicating directly with del.icio.us, those credentials never pass through this site. For more information about this, and cross-site scripting concerns, see Creating a client-side web service broker.
Filtering and sorting the bookmarks
Performance is the primary concern — and often a severely limiting factor — when developing an in-browser application that handles large amounts of data. Filtering and sorting recordsets over 10,000 records though traditional Javascript objects is so sluggish that it simply is not a viable solution. del.icio.us direc.tor bypasses that limitation by leveraging the speed of the XML and XSL processors accessible via Javascript in modern browsers. Because these components are compiled binaries, their methods are orders of magnitude faster than an equivalent implementation in intepreted Javascript. del.icio.us direc.tor offloads all of the heavy lifting and a majority of the HTML generation to the XSLT processor to provide a responsive user interface. Since this is a rather lengthy discussion in and of itself, I have moved it to its own article: Using XSLT to filter and sort records in the browser.
Implementing the tag browser
Although it seems that the tag browser doesn't display a great deal of information, it too cannot be implemented with efficiency using straight Javascript. The main reason is that the tags and their relationship to the bookmarks can't be indexed in a way that allows fast retrieval. Brute force approaches work fine when the record count is around 1000 or so, but at 10,000 records the processing time becomes prohibitive. Again, I use the compiled XML resources to tackle the heavy lifting and allow direc.tor to handle large record sets. Another structure that is essential is an adjacency list, which allows for the fast, indexed retrieval of a tag and its related tags.
The major hurdle is not doing the initial retrieval of tags, but finding tags that have more than one other tag in common, i.e. "Show me all the tags that appear with the tag 'blog' and 'photo'." The brute force approach would cycle through all of the records, return those that contain the tag 'blog', cycle through that subset in search of 'photo', and then finally list and count all of the remaining tags that aren't 'blog' or 'photo'. Instead, direc.tor uses a single XPath query to pull out the subset of tags:
//posts/post[contains(string(@tag),'blog') and contains(string(@tag),'photo')]
Once that subset of nodes is returned by the XML engine, the tags from each node are inserted into a modified adjacency list, represented as a hashtable of hashtables in Javascript. The subset of nodes returned is almost always signifcantly smaller than the entire record set, making subsequent Javascript operations responsive enough for a decent user experience. The outer hashtable is keyed by tag name, such that every tag that exists in the current node set is represented. The inner hashtables store the related tags and the number of occurences.
Example: This diagram represents a bookmark collection that has a total of 6 unique tags: blog, design, css, photo, cool, politics. The outer hashtable (left) uses each of those tags as its keys, while its values are hashtables that contain the key tag and any tag that is related. The values of those inner hashtables represent the total count of each tag and its occurence with the outer tag.
The hashtable's fast key-based retrieval makes it an ideal indexer for storing the tag counts, and fulfilling the tag requests from the user. Getting a list of tags is accomplished by enumerating over the hashtable keys, and getting the tag counts involves retrieving the values from the inner hashtables.
Highlighting the search terms
The search term highlighting is currently implemented using Javascript, by way of a generic search and replace method that wraps search terms with a <span> tag. The method then assigns one of the 6 CSS colors that are defined in the stylesheet. I'm sure that it could also be done in XSL, but I was unable to create out a template that would highlight multiple query terms that occur in a random order (if you have one, I'd love to see it). Because of Javascript performance limitations, single letter query terms are not highlighted. The highlighting takes place in the pipeline after the XSL transformation, but before the DOM node is actually brought online and painted in the browser (this is good general practice, as editing live DOM objects is horrifically slow.)
What else could this do?
There are probably hundreds of other features that would be cool to implement, so here are some that I would implement if I had more time:
Bulk tag editing: Enable tag addition and removal from multiple bookmarks (which would then give me an excuse to implement the fancy fade anything technique).
Enable tag addition and removal from multiple bookmarks (which would then give me an excuse to implement the fancy fade anything technique). Labeling: Designate a tag as a special UI flag that mimics Gmail's "starred" functionality.
Designate a tag as a special UI flag that mimics Gmail's "starred" functionality. Other operators: Add OR , since: , related: , and inurl: operators.
Add , , , and operators. Media detection: Expose media player controls for registered types, like MPG, MOV, WMV, etc.
Expose media player controls for registered types, like MPG, MOV, WMV, etc. RSS import: Expand the input processor to parse RSS feeds, i.e. other people's tags.
Expand the input processor to parse RSS feeds, i.e. other people's tags. XML export: Allow download of an XML version of a current search, or all bookmarks.
Allow download of an XML version of a current search, or all bookmarks. Link autopreview: Enable an Outlook-style bookmark preview pane.
Enable an Outlook-style bookmark preview pane. OS X Dashboard integration: Port direc.tor to a Dashboard widget.
The ultimate feature, though, would be to integrate some of this project directly into del.icio.us in order to eliminate the bootloading process altogether. I'm sure all you cats on delicious-discuss can come up with a collective feature list. I did this project to research different interface possibilities on other projects, so by all means, let me know if you're interested in helping make this a more mature service.
Thanks go to the DHTML grandmaster, Nick Mealy, and VMWare guru, John Zedlewski, for their help with this project.
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Bnoopy: It’s a great time to be an entrepreneur
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« Personal - Joining the EFF Board | Main
June 29, 2005
It's a great time to be an entrepreneur
There's never been a better time to be an entrepreneur because it's never been cheaper to be one. Here's one example.
Excite.com took $3,000,000 to get from idea to launch. JotSpot took $100,000.
Why on earth is there a 30X difference? There's probably a lot of reasons, but here are my top four. I'm interested in hearing about what other people think are factors as well.
Hardware is 100X cheaper
In the 10 years between Excite and JotSpot, hardware has literally become 100X cheaper. It's two factors – Moore's law and the rise of Linux as an operating system designed to run on generic hardware. Back in the Excite days, we had to buy proprietary Sun hardware and Sun hard drive arrays. Believe me, none of it was cheap.
Today, we buy generic Intel boxes provided by one of a million different suppliers.
Infrastructure software is free
Back in 1993 we had to buy and continue to pay for maintenance on everything we needed just to build our service -- operating systems, compilers, web servers, application servers, databases. You name it. If it was infrastructure, we paid for it. And, not only was it costly, the need to negotiate licenses took time and energy. I remember having a deadline at Excite that required me to buy a Sun compiler through their Japanese office because it was the only office open at the time (probably midnight) and we needed that compiler NOW.
Compare that to today. Free, open source infrastructure is the norm. Get it anytime and anywhere. At JotSpot, and startups everywhere you see Linux, Tomcat, Apache, MySQL, etc. No license cost, no maintenance.
Access to Global Labor Markets
Startups today have unprecedented access to global labor markets. Back in 1993, IBM had access to technical people in India, but little Excite.com did not. Today, with rent-a-coder, elance.com and just plain email, we have access to a world-wide talent pool of experts on a temporary or permanent basis.
SEM changes everything
Ten years ago to reach the market, we had to do expensive distribution deals. We advertised on television and radio and print. We spent a crap-load of money. There's an old adage in television advertising "I know half my money is wasted. Trouble is, I don't know what half". That was us.
It's an obvious statement to say that search engine marketing changes everything. But the real revolution is the ability to affordably reach small markets. You can know what works and what doesn't. And, search not only allows niche marketing, it's global popularity allows mass marketing as well (if you can buy enough keywords).
So What?
It's nice that it's cheaper, but what does it mean to entrepreneuring?
More people can and will be entrepreneurs than ever before
A lot more people can raise $100,000 than raise $3,000,000.
Funding sources explode which enables more entrepreneurs
The sources of funding capable of writing $100,000 checks are a lot more plentiful than those capable of writing $3,000,000 checks. It's a great time to be an angel investor because there are real possibilities of substantial company progress on so little money.
More bootstrapping to profitability
With costs so low, I think you'll see many more companies raise angel money and take it all the way to profitability.
Higher valuations for VCs.
And, for those that do raise venture capital, I think it means better valuations because you can get far more mature on your $100,000 before you go for the bigger round.
All in all, it's a great time to be an entrepreneur.
June 29, 2005 | Permalink
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A great post from Joe Kraus of Jotspot on why this is a great time to be an entrepreneur. Some ... [Read More]
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» Es un buen momento para ser emprendedor (II) from Nada importante sucedió hoy...
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» Great time to be an entrepreneur by Joe Krause from NYBANKER blog about offshore outsourcing, software development and online marketing
A great post from Joe Kraus of Jotspot on why this is a great time to be an entrepreneur. Some ... [Read More]
Tracked on Jul 5, 2005 7:39:39 AM
» Great time to be an entrepreneur by Joe Krause from NYBANKER blog about offshore outsourcing, software development and online marketing
A great post from Joe Kraus of Jotspot on why this is a great time to be an entrepreneur. Some ... [Read More]
Tracked on Jul 5, 2005 7:44:40 AM
» Great time to be an entrepreneur by Joe Krause from NYBANKER blog about offshore outsourcing, software development and online marketing
A great post from Joe Kraus of Jotspot on why this is a great time to be an entrepreneur. Some ... [Read More]
Tracked on Jul 5, 2005 8:07:38 AM
Comments
Ok, I'm really curious about this. How could you possibly have gotten to a launch on $100k? Please give some more details, otherwise this just seems like an exaggeration. I mean, were you paying anyone in the US? Because $100k will only get you 1/2 person-years.
Posted by: Anon | Jun 29, 2005 11:43:29 PM
another set of good reasons:
* down round financing went from >50% in 2002-3004 to <20% in 2004. all the old crap is finally being flushed out.
* first round financing expanded 2 quarters in a row (Q4/04, Q1/05), and seems to be on the way up. now that the old crap is out of the way new crap can get funding! (ok, so hopefully this time it's not crap...)
* Google's IPO created another major portal that can provide acquisition liquidity for new ventures; so now with MSFT, YHOO, GOOG (and also IAC, AOL, EBAY, AMZN et al), there are a LOT of companies out there willing to buy startups with solid technology -- and thus more optimistic entrepreneurs and angel/VC investors.
* in addition to SEM creating instant traffic, AdSense & other online advertising networks can create provide a new form of instant revenue & monetization for startups (albeit limited in most scenarios).
* a multiplicity of publicly available web services / hosted ASPs are making "mashups" a lot more prevalent, and people can now remix some very cool apps without having to build the entire technology stack from the ground up. folks like Paul Rademacher can be a one-man band & create HousingMaps.com.
the technology DJ's time has come.
yep, gotta agree... time to buy shades :)
- dmc
Posted by: Dave McClure | Jun 30, 2005 2:46:32 AM
I am in hole hearted agreement with you but I have also added my own reasons:
* Simpler services are more successful
* Big is no longer cool
* Better frameworks
Which I expand on on my blog post. I and many other people are trying to bootstrap without Angel Investors, which is something you will see a lot more of as well.
Posted by: Pelle | Jun 30, 2005 3:13:05 AM
Let's not forget the proliferation of broadband in the last 2-3 years...lowering the barriers to adoption for any number of startup's service offerings.
Here in the UK, there's a direct correllation between the broadband ISP price war and the adoption of broadband services and content.
Posted by: Imran Ali | Jun 30, 2005 4:50:16 AM
Our experience at Revieworld and Reevoo concurrs with what you are saying. There is a positive attitude amongst UK investors at the moment. There is a realisation that a lot can be done with little - "low cost model" is becoming a philosphy. Everything can now be measured to maximise the benefit.
Technology (software and hardware) is cheaper but marketing (a huge source of cost previously) can be better controlled utilising the best of the old word off-line techniques combined with modern marketing (adwords, viral, word of mouth etc).
Posted by: Richard Anson | Jun 30, 2005 6:02:31 AM
I mean, were you paying anyone in the US? Because $100k will only get you 1/2 person-years.
That's just not true. You'd be surprised how many people out there are working for peanuts on projects. A lot of people balance their regular work with working on more entrepreneurial dreams, and $100K would go a very long way indeed, especially for the young (and most entrepreneurs these days are younger than ever before).
Posted by: Peter Cooper | Jun 30, 2005 9:31:10 AM
it's global popularity
>>
its global popularity
Posted by: Emma | Jun 30, 2005 11:18:49 AM
Joe,
I'd love to have you give a talk on this topic, either for the Harvard Business School High Tech Alumni Association, or for SDForum. I know that your schedule is busy, but is there any chance you might be able to carve out an hour or two?
--Chris
Posted by: Chris Yeh | Jun 30, 2005 2:18:14 PM
Interesting article.
i agree with most of what you said except on advertising , search engines will bring you qualified visitors but it will not give you massive reach , and definitely will not make your service popular like what the traditional media (TV , etc) did to Excite.
Thanks
Faisal
Posted by: Faisal | Jun 30, 2005 2:48:39 PM
Yes it is a good time to be an entrepreneur.
I agree that net startups can be done on the cheap, and they should. But wages still cost, and good talent is expensive. Yes, you can offshore some of it, but you have better have a solid core base built before you go down that path. Software development outsourcing is difficult, from the start you've got cultural, communication and timezone issues. Not to mention usually a misalignment of macro understanding of what the product is and how it should function.
I am just curious, if you really believe you can bootstrap the entire operation from start to exit, then why did you take in $6MM in venture? Why dilute your equity more than you have to?
I dont fault you for taking the cash, I would take as much money as I could raise (you never know when/if your going to need it.)
Posted by: John | Jun 30, 2005 11:17:16 PM
Another great way to save on advertising costs is to concentrate on Internet Adversiting. I just posted on my website all about that area after attending a great marketing course.
Check it out here....
http://componentfactory.blogspot.com
Posted by: Phil Wright | Jul 1, 2005 1:12:55 AM
It appears that the people best positioned to startup a new venture on $100k are the ones that are already rich from their previous venture and thus can work for no salary. I've seen it first hand, a friend is starting (co-founding) a company and wanted me to join, and all his partner can argue back at me is, "See all these people working for me? They're all working for just stock because at the last company they all made a million dollars." Great for them, super. But I didn't (yet), I want a salary. Does that mean no startups for me?
Posted by: Duane | Jul 1, 2005 5:46:44 AM
I am surprised at the comparison drawn between Excite and Jotspot. No offense, but to me, a search engine is a hell of a lot more algorithmic, tuning and systems work than a customisable wiki is!
Posted by: Ashwin Bharambe | Jul 1, 2005 8:21:25 AM
I agree that it is a great time to be an entrepneur. Aside from the lower cost of equipment there are more avenues to sell products and more ways to market your products. With proven marketplaces like ebay and amazon.com, many people are starting their own small business to supplement their income whereas 10 years ago, a lot of these things were still grey area and were only for the strong willed. Word of mouth marketing has never been better. With the advent of blogs and popdcasting, getting a post on one popular blog can spark a firestorm of sales and increased visibility.
The internet now is not just the latest "new" thing, it's just another outlet, which means that people have become more comfortable with it that has allowed them to embrace starting an online venture.
Posted by: adam | Jul 1, 2005 8:39:50 AM
much of this has been in place for some time. yahoo was bootstrapped with free software...in 1995. cheap hardware too. david filo was way ahead of his time, he was doing "cheap" when it was actually novel and often disputed (you can't do this without sun boxes!). i credit him for the cheap revolution.
also note that these conditions draw many more players into the game and reduce margins. when it costs $0 to start a business, you can likely expect $0 returns.
Posted by: b7j0c | Jul 1, 2005 8:44:52 AM
@Ashwin:
"I am surprised at the comparison drawn between Excite and Jotspot. No offense, but to me, a search engine is a hell of a lot more algorithmic, tuning and systems work than a customisable wiki is!"
That may true for some wiki projects out there, but it's not true in the case of Jot. If you had taken more than a cursory look at what Jot is doing, you would have realized that it is more than a "customizable wiki". It's a large-scale hosted service that is a platform for building applications.
Posted by: Paul | Jul 1, 2005 8:54:21 AM
Hello Duane,
I do not think so. Here in Canada, I can leave with 15k$ CND a year (small accommodation, no car, some food and a monthly subscription for a place to train). Could you? If so, you can easily bring 15k or 20k a year with small consultant contracts that will take only a part of your working time during a year. The other part of your working time could then be use to start that dam startup :)
I do not think that the problem is cash, but much more one of work, hard work and patience.
Take care,
Salutations,
Fred
Posted by: Fred | Jul 1, 2005 9:55:22 AM
I couldn't agree more. Now is a great time to be an entrepreneur. I have been using Rentacoder, adsense, adwords, and SEO to build and market content online.
So much infrastructure is available today that used to be prohibitively expensive and difficult to build. I can accept payments using the new Paypal payments API, and I can promote my sites in a few minutes using adwords and other advertising programs.
It does take some money and know how to get started. If you're a business person with a great idea, it's still fundamentally difficult to translate your vision for the business (a web site, a community, a lead generation system, etc.) into a product specification that engineers on services like elance and rentacoder can implement.
That said, the cost of getting things up and running is fundamentally several orders of magnitude lower than it was just a few years ago.
How do you get running on $100K? You have most of your development done offshore using services like rentacoder and elance. You hire contractors offshore as well as students to help write the content and marketing text for your sites. You buy hosting at low cost from any of the many hosting providers (so you own no hardware). You promote your site or sites via advertising and organic search (SEO).
It truly is a great time to be an entrepreneur.
Posted by: David Feinleib | Jul 1, 2005 10:37:35 AM
"So much infrastructure is available today that used to be prohibitively expensive and difficult to build. I can accept payments using the new Paypal payments API, and I can promote my sites in a few minutes using adwords and other advertising programs."
this is a decent way to build a small business, a second income etc., but thats about it.
"How do you get running on $100K? You have most of your development done offshore using services like rentacoder and elance."
this is just clueless. no 24/7 web service can live without oncall staff who know the code. i don't care if they are in sunnyvale or bangalore, you need someone on payroll who can solve mission critical issues asap. oh yeah you can outsource your colo, but they aren't going to fix your mysql bugs.
all of these comments in any case revolve not around general entrepreneurial activity but setting up small-time websites. duh! this has been cheap for a long time. also 99,999 people are your competitors, once again this approach is great if you want to make $20k a year reselling purses.
tell me how i do advanced materials, alternative energy, biotech etc on the cheap.
Posted by: GrumpY! | Jul 1, 2005 2:07:53 PM
Right on! I've done a variety of podcasts with entrepreneurs and VCs in Silicon Valley and Joe's points are echoed by many. This is the new model and YES it's great for entrepreneurs. My company was funded entirely by myself and customers. We paid nothing for technology to get the business off the ground. Open source is changing everything every day.
John Furrier
Founder of PodTech.net
Joe - "Lets Podcast"
Posted by: John Furrier | Jul 1, 2005 2:09:15 PM
Joe,
I'm with John on this. It'd be great if you could create your own podcast for business development stuff and talk about your trials through excite as well as with jotspot.
After starting my company, I have found that I have loads of info about "what not to do" when starting a business when my friends think about jumping into the foray.
Good luck to everyone that have started or are thinking about your own ventures. Its rough out there but HIGHLY rewarding.
Posted by: adam | Jul 1, 2005 2:32:16 PM
Hey Joe - my apologies, i didn't mean anything negative by my comment on SVN. It was meant to be a metaphor. I love Jot Spot. you guys are doing great work. I don't think there is anyway you could be doing Jot Spot with just 3 people.
Posted by: ed Fladung | Jul 1, 2005 3:00:26 PM
Nice post.
Add to the list:
Employees who've done it before
We take 10s of cycles off of projects these days because we have a core group of people that have built similar technologies before. The hardware/software costs have diminished a lot, but so have the personnel costs. Some of the time savings is because they have better tools. Most of the time savings is because they are walking along well-worn paths.
Cheers,
John
Posted by: John Girard | Jul 1, 2005 3:25:42 PM
See a similar article by Utah entrepreneur Paul Allen at Connect Utah magazine: http://www.connect-utah.com/article.asp?r=1050&iid=34&sid=4
He gives 8 similar reasons why now is the best time in the history of the world to start a company.
Posted by: Richard Miller | Jul 2, 2005 10:26:45 AM
I definitely concur that it's an opportune and excellent time to be an entrepreneur and\or a startup.
In our case, we're defying odds in spite of the fact that we're located in a region of the world most people assume has
1)No innovation
2)Low penetration of technology.
My company, NEO(New Enterprise Objects), is a budding startup specializing in levaraging mobile technology to explode the enterprise and provide an efficient distributed collaboration infrastructure.
Currently, 100% of our staff(5 members) are either consulting or employed full time. All time spent coding ,having meetings or strategising is derived from what I fondly call, "the night shift", where the real hacking begins.
In addition, none of us is being paid any salary but is fueled by
1)The vision
2)The increasing value of the startup and our stake\stock in it.
Who could have thought that a startup in an LDC could be accelerating in the enterprise space with very little capital (even much less than you've indicated above) and no full time employees?
This truly is a wondeful time to be an entrepreneur.
Posted by: Nicholas Ochiel | Jul 5, 2005 9:33:59 AM
The comments to this entry are closed.
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Font guide for webmasters
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Fonts for the Web
Until font downloading technology is perfected, Web designers must normally restrict themselves to fonts that are available on most users' computer systems.
So which fonts are installed on everyone's computers? Your best bets are the ones that come with the Internet Explorer (MSIE) browser and the Windows and Macintosh operating systems. For the last few years, the MSIE fonts have been installed on every new Windows and Macintosh PC, so they are your best "cross-platform" bet.
http://www.microsoft.com/truetype/fontpack/win.htm (Internet Explorer fonts)
Mac fonts for Windows PCs
Font Platform CSS info MSIE [Bold, Italic] Originally named Monotype.com font-family: "Andale Mono", "Monotype.com", monospace Mac Also named Zapf Chancery on older Macs (and some Win PCs). font-family: "Apple Chancery", "Zapf Chancery", cursive MSIE [Bold, Italic] Very similar to Helvetica. font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif MSIE Less common than Arial. Do not use it with a bold font-weight; it's bold enough already! font-family: "Arial Black", sans-serif Mac Not on pre-1999 Macs font-family: Capitals, serif Mac Mac system font (for menus, dialog boxes, etc.) since 1999. It will be very familiar to Mac users at 12 points, but also works well in headlines (without bold). font-family: Charcoal, Chicago, sans-serif Mac [Italic] Former Mac system font, replaced by Charcoal. Still present on every Mac ever made. font-family: Chicago, Charcoal, sans-serif MSIE [Bold, Italic] An informal font designed to be easily legible on screen. Believe it or not, this is the default cursive font for Internet Explorer. font-family: "Comic Sans MS", cursive
Mac
Win [Bold, Italic] Courier is the most common monospace (typewriter-style) font. The Mac version of Courier (top left, shown at 18 points) is scalable; the Windows version (bottom left, 15 points) is not. Therefore the scalable "Courier New" is preferred, as it is usually available on both Mac and Windows. font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace MSIE [Bold, Italic] See discussion under Courier font-family: "Courier New", Courier, monospace Win A non-scalable Windows system font used for DOS screens and other low-level tasks. Available only at 9 points. font-family: fixedsys, monospace Mac A display font; avoid bold and italics. Not on pre-1999 Macs. font-family: Gadget, fantasy Mac [Bold, Italic] A Mac system font since 1984. Its appearance resembles Arial and Helvetica; its function is similar to MS Sans Serif (icon names on the Desktop, etc.). font-family: Geneva, "MS Sans Serif", sans-serif MSIE [Bold, Italic] Designed by Microsoft for WWW use, Georgia is a traditional looking font with "old-style" numerals. font-family: Georgia, serif Mac [Bold, Italic] A Mac system font since 1984. On the Web, Helvetica is usually paired with the nearly identical (and more common) Arial. font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif Mac [Bold, Italic] Not on pre-1999 Macs font-family: "Hoefler Text", serif MSIE Less common than other MSIE fonts such as Arial. A very heavy, black font, good for headlines. Weight and width are sort of like Techno. font-family: Impact, sans-serif Mac Monospace font, present on all Macs. Monaco 9-point is associated with programming, debugging, and other low-level tasks, somewhat like Windows Fixedsys, System, and Terminal. font-family: monaco, sans-serif Win Monospace system font dating back to Windows 95. Best at 12 pixels and under. font-family: "MS Gothic", monospace Win Windows system font, used for dialog boxes, etc. Best at 12 pixels and under. font-family: "MS Sans Serif", Geneva, sans-serif Win Windows system font. Best at 12 pixels and under. font-family: "MS Serif", "New York", serif Mac [Bold, Italic] Mac system font: similar in appearance to Times Roman, similar in function to MS Serif. font-family: "New York", "MS Serif", serif Mac A nice serif font, present on all Macs and fairly common on PCs (with office software suites). font-family: Palatino, serif Mac Not on pre-1999 Macs font-family: Sand, fantasy Mac Not on pre-1999 Macs font-family: Skia, sans-serif Win Non-scalable (available only at 10 points), present on all Windows PCs, used for menus, etc. font-family: System, sans-serif Win Rarely used on the Web, Tahoma does have the advantage of being present even on very old Windows PCs. font-family: Tahoma, serifSansSerifMonospace Mac Not on pre-1999 Macs font-family: Techno, Impact, sans-serif
Win A non-scalable, monospace system font used for the DOS or "command-line" interface. Terminal looks very different at different point sizes. Shown here are 9, 12, and 14 points. font-family: Terminal, monospace Mac Not on pre-1999 Macs font-family: Textile, cursive Mac Because some PCs have non-scalable fonts named Times , it is common to lead with the scalable, nearly ubiquitous MSIE font Times New Roman instead. Times is noticeably more compact than Times New Roman, so it can be too small to read on screen. font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, serif MSIE This is by far the most common serif font on the Web. It is the default serif font in most browsers. font-family: "Times New Roman", serif A sans-serif font designed (like Verdana) for legibility on screen. font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif Possibly the most readable of the sans-serif fonts commissioned by Microsoft for on-screen use. However, Verdana shouldn't be used side-by-side with same-sized serif fonts, because Verdana will appear one or two sizes larger. font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif Mac Functionally similar to Windows Terminal and Fixedsys, VT-100 can be scaled up for a "bitmappy" appearance. font-family: "VT-100", monospace
The CSS font-family property lets you specify more than one font at a time, in order of preference. If the first choice is unavailable, CSS moves on to the second one, and so on. So if you really like Franklin Gothic Demi as a headline font, you can use the following CSS:
h1,h2,h3 { font-family: "Franklin Gothic Demi", Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; }
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Wikimania
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Wikimania is postponed until 2021.
A letter from Katherine Maher to the Wikimedia Community
18 March 2020
Dear everyone,
As a part of the Wikimedia movement's ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are postponing Wikimania Bangkok 2020. This decision was made with the full support of the ESEAP host team and Wikimania Committee. Together, we will hold Wikimania in Bangkok in 2021.
We are filled with sadness to not see you all in Bangkok in August. However, we are confident that this is the best possible decision for the well-being of our global community and public health overall. This decision was proposed by the ESEAP organizers in line with their countries' response to the COVID-19 pandemic and is in line with recommendations from the World Health Organization (WHO).
You are certain to have many questions. We hope to answer some of your questions below. We will continue to answer questions on the Wikimania Meta-Wiki page and on the Wikimania Telegram group chat (more information below).
What does "postponing" Wikimania mean?
We will not host an in-person Wikimania in 2020. We are rescheduling Wikimania Bangkok until 2021. The ESEAP organizing team will continue their work as a regional collaborative between affiliates in the East, South East, and Pacific regions to host us in Thailand next year.
The hotel and venue in Bangkok will remain the same. We have not yet finalized dates for 2021. We will work with the ESEAP team and Wikimania Steering Committee to confirm new dates. We will let you know these dates by the end of 2020.
The good news is that Wikimania 2021 will coincide with Wikipedia's 20th birthday year. We expect this to be a truly memorable Wikimania -- an opportunity to celebrate reconnection after a year apart, along with the remarkable accomplishment of two decades of free knowledge.
Will there be an alternative to the in-person event?
There are no plans by the 2020 Wikimania hosts to organize a virtual, online event. Hosting Wikimania is a lot of work. The ESEAP team is committed to hosting the best possible in-person event in Bangkok in 2021. Therefore, they will not have the capacity to organize a virtual Wikimania this year.
However, the Wikimania committee, the ESEAP host team, and the Wikimedia Foundation all recognize that other members of the community may be interested in organizing a remote, global Wikimedia event for 2020. Although the Wikimedia Foundation does not have the capacity at this time to lead the organizing of a virtual online conference, we recognize others may have the desire to do so.
We welcome discussion about online events. Interested parties are welcome to contact the Wikimania Steering Committee and Wikimania Foundation staff for advice on the Wikimania Meta-Wiki page.
We are also considering proposals for improving the capacity of communities to organize local virtual convenings, and for how we can support communities in organizing impromptu local and regional Wikimedia events once the pandemic passes. As the situation has been changing rapidly we are still working on specifics and will share more information in the coming weeks.
What does this mean for scholarship applications?
We are working on a plan for how to process Wikimania 2020 scholarship applications. We will share more information in the coming weeks.
How was this decision made?
This recommendation was made by the ESEAP organizers based on what we know about the current COVID-19 global health pandemic and current WHO guidelines. The decision was made together with the ESEAP team in consultation with the Wikimania Steering Committee and Wikimedia Foundation. Together we are fully and unanimously aligned around this decision.
Although we are genuinely sad to not have the opportunity to see you all this year, we also are fully supportive of this decision in all of our best interests. It allows our ESEAP community hosts to focus on the immediate needs of their families, local Wikimedia communities, and local communities as a whole. It is in line with global public health guidance and aligns the Wikimedia movement as a responsible actor in support of our common public good.
We want to thank all volunteers and affiliates that have been involved with planning Wikimania. We're especially appreciative of the ESEAP for their leadership, flexibility, and compassion, as we have worked together to make some difficult decisions on this important event.
Where can I learn more about Wikimania 2021?
There are a number of channels where Wikimania is regularly discussed and where plans for 2021 will be posted as they develop. We welcome all interested participants to bring together our collective wisdom and creativity to discuss what happens next with Wikimania. You can find these channels here:
Wikimania wiki: https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania
Wikimania mailing list: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
Freenode IRC channel: #wikimania
Telegram group chat: https://t.me/wikimaniachat
Where can I learn more about COVID-19 and Wikimedia?
We know the Wikimedia community as generous and altruistic. Unsurprisingly, many volunteers have started applying their skills and attention to this current global pandemic. The Foundation created a page on Meta-Wiki where we can share and document the steps the Foundation and movement members are taking and ways to participate. We invite you to join us in documenting more about our collective response: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/COVID-19
Thank you.
Our world, and many of our lives, have changed rapidly over these past few weeks. Yet we can look to history to take comfort that crises are also often moments when people put aside differences, prioritize community and care, and find ways to connect. The sense of community and purpose within the Wikimedia movement is a powerful rejoinder to these uncertain times.
This is a moment in which not only what we do, but how we do it, will make a meaningful impact on the world. We are so grateful for all that you do as a movement to continue to rise to the challenges of our moment.
Please, stay safe and take care.
Katherine, on behalf of the:
ESEAP Core Organizing Team
Wikimania Steering Committee
Wikimedia Foundation Events Team
P.S. You can help translate and share this message via Meta-Wiki. You can also find additional information about Wikimedia's other actions regarding COVID-19 on Meta-Wiki:
--
Katherine Maher (she/her)
Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation
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View maps from various sources on your mobile phone!
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Mobile GMaps is a FREE application that displays maps from Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps, Windows Live Local (MSN Virtual Earth), Ask.com, Open Street Map and other sources on Java J2ME-enabled mobile phones, PDAs and other devices. MGMaps can connect to a GPS receiver over bluetooth or use internal GPS features on some phones in order to automatically display the map for your current position. You can pre-download maps and store them on your memory card in order to use them on the go without accessing the internet.
Mobile GMaps is distributed under the Attribution - NonCommercial - NoDerivs Creative Commons license. You may download, use and distribute the application free of charge only for personal, non-commercial purposes.
Development Stopped (November 27 th , 2011)
Actually, MGMaps development stopped about two years ago... but never was announced on this new page. So here it is, I am no longer actively working on this project. There is a (tiny) chance the project will be revived and ported, but unless that happens you can consider the MGMaps project closed.
I have thought of porting it to Android and/or iPhone, but the work and time needed for that outweigh possible benefits -- there are many apps that provide offline maps on both platforms (including the official Google Maps on Android).
Cristian Streng
http://www.mobiversal.com
Site map
We're working to redesign this website and make it easier to find the information you need, until then please check the links below.
New pages:
/cache/ — tools for downloading map tiles and caching them in MGMaps for use with the stored maps feature.
feature. /create/ — Shustrik's .map file creation tool for MGMaps. Allows you to select an area and generate a file that you can use with the caching tools (gMapMaker or MapTileFE).
/stored/ — Tutorial for stored maps by David Villeneuve.
/winset/ — instructions to install Mobile GMaps on a Windows-Mobile smartphone or PDA / PocketPC. Please check the MGMaps forum for more up-to-date information.
/kml/ — view maps from Windows Live, Yahoo and other sources in Google Earth.
The rest:
MGMaps News — to-do list and news about the application (check here for new versions)
Download Page — contains instructions for downloading MGMaps to your mobile phone
Forum — discuss any questions related to Mobile GMaps
Help Center — configuration and usage instructions, frequently-asked questions, known problems, list of supported phones and operators and more. The instructions are a bit outdated, they were written for an older version of MGMaps - for new info check the forum.
Feedback — Do you like MGMaps ? Do you hate it? Have you found any bugs? Would you like a feature implemented? Do you have any questions not answered in the FAQ? — send a message and let me know!
This website and the application are under permanent development, come back often to check for new versions.
Mobile GMaps is copyright © 2005-2011 by Cristian Streng. The application uses the floating-point library copyright © 2002-2005 by Nikolay Klimchuk and available for free download here. This application is NOT affiliated with or officially supported by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask.com or any of their partners. All map tiles and satellite imagery displayed by the application are copyright by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and their partners, and all searches are performed using Google Maps search features. Read the Google Maps Terms and Conditions, Yahoo! Maps Terms of Use, Windows Live Local Terms of Use and Ask Maps Terms of Service for more information.
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Jeremy Ruston's absolutely fabulous TiddlyWiki triggered quite a few interventions recently. Here is a list of wikis I stumbled upon that adapt/extend/enhance/build upon it:
ZiddlyWiki [timmorgan.org/ZiddlyWiki/] by Tim Morgan
[ZiddlyWiki] provides server-side storage of the wiki (tiddler) content by combining the power of TiddlyWiki with Zope. ZiddlyWiki is unique from other TW adaptations (I think) since it doesn't modify any of the TiddlyWiki code; it just overrides specific JavaScript functions to achieve the desired result. All the overridden code is provided in a separate JavaScript file, and the original TiddlyWiki empty.html file is uploaded into Zope unmodified. This makes tracking TW enhancements and bug fixes easier, because ZiddlyWiki is less like a project fork and more like a pluggable backend. Kinda.
Zope is an open source content management framework based on Python, so an average dummy webhost might not support it (mine doesn't), but if yours does: ZiddlyWiki has a some more cool features:
OnDemandLoading – Tiddlers are only fetched on demand rather than all-at-once
TiddlerRevisions – the last 15 revisions of the tiddler can be restored
ImportExport – ZiddlyWiki can be exported to and imported from a TiddlyWiki file (hybrid online/offline setup)
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TiddlyWikiRemote by Dan Phiffer
this one adds:
ServerSide saving of Tiddlers (via RSS )
) SaveHistory – previous revisions of the tiddlers can be restored
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Qwiki Web [personal.psu.edu/staff/a/c/ach12/tiddlywiki/] by AlanHecht
The purpose of this adaptation is to improve the look and feel of TiddlyWiki when used as the basis for a public web site.
this one adds:
LanguageOverlay – for setting your own text and language for all buttons and messages
ColorThemes – which make customizing the look QwikiWeb very easy
UserMode – to set the level of difficulty for the display interface
EditMode – e.g. to hide the 'edit' button from the Wiki
ExcludeFromSearch – allows you to block specific tiddlers from showing up in the search results
HidingTiddlers – to hide special tiddlers
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TagglyWiki [informationality.com/tagglywiki/tagglywiki.html] and GTDTagglyWiki [informationality.com/gtdtagglywiki/gtd_tagglywiki.html] by Jody
The modification adds non-hierarchical organisation of Tiddlers through tags.
(tags have been integrated in TiddlyWiki now though)
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TiddlyTagWiki by Jonny LeRoy
The main functional change from the original TiddlyWiki is the introduction of TiddlyTags – allowing you to categorise your Tiddlers in an ad hoc manner.
I've also updated the LookAndFeel and layout to suit my Flickr obsessed taste.
Other small changes include the automatic saving of the current layout to the OptionsCookie rather than using the DefaultTiddlers. Though they are still used if no layout is set in the OptionsCookie.
You can now also select to view the TimeLine filtered to just show Tiddlers that you've modified. This has been commented out for now since it isn't configurable and if you haven't edited anything then nothing will appear in the timeline. If you UseTheSource then you can put this filter back in ;-)
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MyWiki by Henrik Aasted Sorensen
This extension contains a server-side component, which allows for easy saving and deletion of entries.
The Wiki is stored in plain text on the server, so no database is reqired.
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PHPTiddlyWiki [patrickcurry.com/tiddly/] Patrick Curry
PhpTiddlyWiki is a brand new kind of Wiki. It combines the awesome front-end of TiddlyWiki with a new PhP/MySql backend.
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DirtyWaterWiki [dirtywaterdog.com/wiki.html] Roberto DeFeo
Now you can add check boxes to your tiddlers to allow support for a TodoList. Items can be checked and unchecked directly or by editing the tiddler and making the appropriate changes.
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YATWA [rumsby.org/wiki/yatwa.html] by Steve Rumsby
this one adds Folding (collapse the body of a tiddler but still display the title) and a JavaScript calendar
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GTDTiddlyWiki [shared.snapgrid.com/gtd_tiddlywiki.html] by Nathan Bowers
this one adds a GTD structure.
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Mini-TiddlyWiki-hacks:
GTDTWcal creates code fragments for calendars to add to your tiddlers.
Blue Mist Style or Zeldman Orange Style – StyleSheet tiddlers for TiddlyWiki 1.2.22
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UPDATE: 9/18/2005
ServerSideWiki [serversidewiki.com] by Josh Goebel
The ServerSideWiki is a hosted TiddlyWiki service running on Ruby on Rails, so you don't have to worry about saving your tiddlers anymore. There are various pricing plans available, the free one gives you 10 pages or tiddlers, maybe enough to get you hooked. It also has nicely animated ToDo tiddlers, so it's a great way to start playing around with TiddlyWikis, especially if you don't have any webspace of your own.
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TiddlyWiki-SE (Student Edition) [15black.bluedepot.com/twtests/tiddlywikise.htm] by Clint Checketts
this one adds easy note-taking capabilities for students (there is a tab for classes, and a special tagspace for notes associated with each class.)
Clint has some more good hacks exploring and pushing the limits of the TiddlyWiki, like adding Adsense, or giving them a blog-like look and feel.
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Comments:
Really great round-up. Thank you.
What (combination) of these are you using?
posted by Paul Irish : 7/11/2005 04:43:14 PM
Be sure to also check out:
http://www.geetduggal.com/PileTiddly/
Its minimalist style is coollll…
though I wish it had the tick boxes of Dirtywater wiki
posted by MaJoHa : 7/11/2005 06:07:27 PM
GTDTiddlyWiki is pretty cool. Inspired by it, I built this GTD web "database" app that also lets you save to your local system and work offline:
http://trimpath.com/demos/nextaction_static1/nextaction.htm
posted by Steve Yen : 7/11/2005 06:29:15 PM
Many thanks Paul. I actually use most of them. It's actually interesting to see which kind of projects/texts each one supports (the way they implement tags for instance makes quite a difference).
MaJoHa and Steve, thanks a lot for the pointers, minimalism at its best.
posted by saurierduval : 7/12/2005 12:52:17 AM
well i guess that settles that.
http://www.serversidewiki.com/
posted by Paul Irish : 7/19/2005 03:04:41 AM
I wonder now that ServerSideWiki has it's own distinct style (the cool blue theme) what it would take to get it added to this page along with all the others.
It would have been boring when it looked just like GTDTiddlyWiki… but now it can stand on it's own merit (style wise).
posted by Josh Goebel : 9/03/2005 07:08:09 AM
Thanks for the links. Well done on sharing your TiddlyWiki knowledge.
As a note, you'll probably want to point the TiddlyWikiSE link to the actual TWSE.
posted by Clint : 9/28/2005 06:46:40 PM
Thanks, fixed.
posted by saurierduval : 9/28/2005 08:39:35 PM
Also check out my site, MonkeyPirateTiddlyWiki. It has plugins to do tagging in a different way (where any tag is a tiddler and vice versa), plus some other stuff including a style chooser.
posted by simon : 10/06/2005 06:53:35 AM
Wonderful list! I need someone to combine the To-Do List wiki with one of the server-side modifications. ;o)
posted by Darrel : 1/17/2006 04:49:52 PM
Hi,
Thanks for your list…
I'm trying to choose a version to begin my TiddlyWiki…
I wonder if the online version (http://www.serversidewiki.com) could be the good version for me…
In fact, I hope that an online version can evoluate with new fonctions keeping compatibility with my previous versions of TiddlyWiki…
I don't really understand how I can use plugins in my TiddlyWiki…
posted by Kiaitutoi : 1/20/2006 02:28:49 PM
Good article. Do not forget Asciencepad, my preferred one.
It's a wysiwyg TiddlyWiki thought for Scientific work (via MathML), but pretty good even for usual work. You do not need to know the markup. It is based on HTMLArea.
If you try it you need only to know one trick: do not use ctrl-V to paste text inside, use Shift-Ins instead.
posted by Riccardo : 3/21/2006 01:55:19 PM
Good summary, very useful.
For my money ZiddlyWiki is the best of these for the following reasons:
No changes to TiddlyWiki front end
Easy to install
Powerful admin capabilities provided by Zope.
We've been using ZiddlyWiki as an informal collaborative work area quite successfully for several weeks now.
posted by Andy : 6/01/2006 10:34:43 AM
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If MSG is so bad for you, why doesn't everyone in Asia have a headache?
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In the port city of Yokohama, south of Tokyo, there is a museum devoted entirely to noodle soup. It may be Japan's favourite foodie day out: one and a half million ramen fans visit the museum every year, and even on the wintry morning that I went the queue wound 50 yards down the street - young couples, mainly: cold, hungry and excited.
Inside the Yokohama Ramen Museum and Amusement Park they meet exhibitions on the evolution of soup bowls and instant noodle packets - more fascinating than you'd think, but these are not the main event. That's deep in the basement, where there's an entire street, done up to look like a raucous 1950s Yokohama harbour-front. Every shop houses a different noodle restaurant, each a clone of one of the best noodle shops of Japan. It's a culinary Madame Tussauds.
The Japanese are sentimental about their noodle soup - it's the working-class food that nourished the nation in the bleak days after World War Two. Ramen chefs are TV celebs, in a country that devotes more broadcast time to cookery than even we do. I asked the young pilgrims just what they valued above all in ramen. They sniffed the tangy air, Bisto-kid style: 'The basis of the experience is the broth,' was the consensus. In the great Japanese cod-Western Tampopo - the only movie to take noodle soup, sex and death with equal seriousness - a ramen guru announces that the key to Japan's national dish is that 'the soup must animate the noodles'.
What does chiefly animate Japanese soups and broths is an amino acid called glutamate. In the best ramen shops it's made naturally from boiling dried kombu seaweed; it can also come from dried shrimp or bonito flakes, or from fermented soy. More cheaply and easily, you get it from a tin, where it is stabilised with ordinary salt and is thus monosodium glutamate.
This last fact is of little interest to the Japanese - like most Asians, they have no fear of MSG. And there lies one of the world's great food scare conundrums. If MSG is bad for you - as Jeffrey Steingarten, the great American Vogue food writer once put it - why doesn't everyone in China have a headache?
To begin to answer this we must go back to Japan a century ago. Professor Kidunae Ikeda comes home from the physics faculty at the Tokyo Imperial University and sits down to eat a broth of vegetables and tofu prepared by his wife. It is - as usual - delicious. The professor, a mild, bespectacled biochemistry specialist, turns to Mrs Ikeda and asks - as spouses occasionally will - what is the secret of her wonderful soup. Mrs Ikeda points to the strips of dried seaweed she keeps in the store cupboard. This is kombu, a heavy kelp. Soak it in hot water and you get the essence of dashi, the stock base of the tangy broths and consommés the Japanese love.
This is the professor's 'Eureka!' moment. Mrs Ikeda's kombu is to lead him to a discovery that will make his fortune and change the nature of 20th-century food. In time, it would bring about the world's longest-lasting food scare, and as a result, kick-start the age of the rebel consumer. It was an important piece of seaweed.
Professor Ikeda was one of many scientists at the turn of the century working on the biochemical mechanics which inform our perception of the world. By 1901 they had drawn a map of the tongue, showing, crudely, the whereabouts of the different nerve endings that identify the four accepted primary tastes, sweet, sour, bitter and salty.
But Ikeda thought this matrix missed something. 'There is,' he said, 'a taste which is common to asparagus, tomatoes, cheese and meat but which is not one of the four well-known tastes.' He decided to call the fifth taste 'umami' - a common Japanese word that is usually translated as 'savoury' - or, with more magic, as 'deliciousness'. By isolating umami, Ikeda - who had picked up some liberal notions while studying in Germany - hoped he might be able to improve the standard of living of Japan's rural poor. And so he and his researchers began their quest to isolate deliciousness.
By 1909 the work on kombu was complete. Ikeda made his great announcement in the august pages of the Journal of the Chemical Society of Tokyo. He had isolated, he wrote, a chemical with the molecular formula C5H9NO4. This and the substance's other properties were exactly the same as those of glutamic acid, an amino acid produced by the human body and present in many foodstuffs. When the protein containing glutamic acid is broken down - by cooking, fermentation or ripening - it becomes glutamate.
'This study,' concluded Professor Ikeda in triumph, 'has discovered two facts: one is that the broth of seaweed contains glutamate and the other that glutamate causes the taste sensation "umami".'
The next step was to stabilise the chemical. This was easy: mixing it with ordinary salt and water made monosodium glutamate - a white crystal soluble in water and easy to store. By the time he published his paper, the professor had, wisely, already patented MSG. He began to market it as a table condiment called Aji-no-moto ('essence of taste') that same year.
It was an instant success, and when Kidunae Ikeda died in 1936 he was a rich man: he remains, as every Japanese schoolchild knows, one of Japan's 10 greatest inventors. The food chemicals giant Ajinomoto Corp, now owned by General Foods, pumps out a third of the 1.5 million tons of monosodium glutamate we eat every year - from India to Indonesia 'Ajinomoto' means MSG.
Ikeda's original paper muses a little about MSG and why it should excite the taste buds so, without arriving at any convincing conclusion. Much more work has been done since. We now know that glutamate is present in almost every food stuff, and that the protein is so vital to our functioning that our own bodies produce 40 grams of it a day. Probably the most significant discovery in explaining human interest in umami is that human milk contains large amounts of glutamate (at about 10 times the levels present in cow's milk). Babies have very basic taste buds: it's believed that mother's milk offers two taste enhancements - sugar (as lactose) and umami (as glutamate) in the hope that one or other will get the little blighters drinking. Which means mothers' milk and a packet of cheese'n'onion crisps have rather more in common than you'd think.
When you next grate parmesan cheese onto some dull spaghetti, what you will have done in essence is add a shed-load of glutamate to stimulate your tongue's umami receptors, thus sending a message to the brain which signals (as one neuro-researcher puts it) 'Joy and happiness!' Supper is rescued - and your system has added some protein and fats to a meal that was all carbohydrate.
Ripe cheese is full of glutamate, as are tomatoes. Parmesan, with 1200mg per 100 grams, is the substance with more free glutamate in it than any other natural foodstuff on the planet. Almost all foods have some naturally occurring glutamate in them but the ones with most are obvious: ripe tomatoes, cured meats, dried mushrooms, soy sauce, Bovril and of course Worcester sauce, nam pla (with 950mg per 100g) and the other fermented fish sauces of Asia.
Your mate, Marmite, with 1750mg per 100g, has more glutamate in it than any other manufactured product on the planet - except a jar of Gourmet Powder straight from the Ajinomoto MSG factory. On the label, Marmite calls it 'yeast extract'. Nowhere in all their literature does the word 'glutamate' appear. I asked Unilever why they were so shy about their spread's key ingredient, and their PR told me that it was because it was 'naturally occurring ... the glutamate occurs naturally in the yeast'.
As they put monosodium glutamate into production, Professor Ikeda and his commercial partners found that making stable glutamate from the traditional seaweed and salt was unnecessary. They developed a much simpler and cheaper process using fermented molasses or wheat - eventually manufacturers realised that almost any protein can be broken down to produce it.
The product took off, immediately, and within a few years Ajinomoto (which was now the company's name) was selling MSG across Asia. The breakthrough to America came in the aftermath of World War Two. Like pizza and vermouth, MSG was a taste American soldiers brought home with them. They weren't aware that MSG was what they'd liked in Japan - but the US Army catering staff noticed that their men enjoyed the leftover ration packs of the demobilised Japanese Army much more than they did their own, and began to ask why.
MSG arrived in America at a key moment. Mass production of processed food was booming. But canning, freezing and pre-cooking have a grave technical problem in common - loss of flavour. And MSG was a cheap and simple additive that made everything taste better. It went into tinned soups, salad dressings, processed meats, carbohydrate-based snacks, ice cream, bread, canned tuna, chewing gum, baby food and soft drinks. As the industry progressed, it was used in frozen, chilled and dehydrated ready meals. MSG is crucial in no-fat or low-fat food, where natural flavour is lost with the extraction of oils. It's now found in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and dietary supplements.
Ajinomoto Corp started manufacturing in the States in 1956 and in 1962 allied itself with Kellogg's. MSG sells in the States in supermarkets, under the brand Ac'cent. In Britain you will have to visit a Chinese supermarket for a supply of pure Gourmet Powder, but MSG plays a role - often in secret - in products on almost every shelf of the supermarket.
But MSG's conquest of the planet hit a major bump in April 1968, when, in the New England Journal of Medicine, a Dr Ho Man Kwok wrote a chatty article, not specifically about MSG, whose knock-on effects were to panic the food industry. 'I have experienced a strange syndrome whenever I have eaten out in a Chinese restaurant, especially one that served northern Chinese food. The syndrome, which usually begins 15 to 20 minutes after I have eaten the first dish, lasts for about two hours, without hangover effect. The most prominent symptoms are numbness at the back of the neck, gradually radiating to both arms and the back, general weakness and palpitations...'
And so was born Chinese restaurant syndrome (CRS) and a medico-academic industry dedicated to the researching and publicising of the dangers of MSG - the foreign migrant contaminating American kitchens. Shortly after Dr Ho came Dr John Olney at Washington University, who in 1969 injected and force-fed newborn mice with huge doses of up to four grams/kg bodyweight of MSG. He reported that they suffered brain lesions and claimed that the MSG found in just one bowl of tinned soup would do the same to the brain of a two-year-old.
Other scientists were testing MSG and finding no evidence of harm - in one 1970 study 11 humans ate up to 147 grams of the stuff every day for six weeks without any adverse reactions. At the University of Western Sydney the researchers concluded, tersely: 'Chinese restaurant syndrome is an anecdote applied to a variety of postprandial illnesses; rigorous and realistic scientific evidence linking the syndrome to MSG could not be found.'
Science has still not found a convincing explanation for CRS: indeed, some researchers suggest it may well be to do with the other things diners have imbibed there - peanuts, shellfish, large amounts of lager. Others say that fear of MSG is a form of mass psychosis - you suffer the symptoms you've been told to worry about.
The fact is that, since the eighties, mainstream science has got bored of MSG. Some research continues; in 2002, for example, New Scientist got very excited over a report that MSG might damage your eyesight, after Japanese scientists announced that they had produced retinal thinning in baby rats fed with MSG. It turned out they were putting 20 grams of MSG in every 100g of rat food - an amazing amount, given that, in the UK, we adults consume about four grams of it each a week. (One project took people who were convinced their asthma was caused by MSG and fed them up to six grams of it a day, without ill-effects). However, at no time has any official body, governmental or academic, ever found it necessary to warn humans against consuming MSG.
But popular opinion has travelled - spectacularly - in the opposite direction to science. By the early eighties, fuelled by books like Russell Blaylock's Excitotoxins - The Taste That Kills, MSG's name was utter mud. Google MSG today, and you'll find it blamed for causing asthma attacks, migraines, hypertension and heart disease, dehydration, chest pains, depression, attention deficit disorder, anaphylactic shock, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases and a host of diverse allergies.
Thus since 1968 the processed food industry has had its own nasty headache as a result of MSG. Hundreds of processed products would have to be withdrawn if amino-acid based flavour-enhancers could not be used. They would become, simply, tasteless. By the 1980s a third of all Americans believed it was actively harmful. Crisp-buying teenagers thought MSG made them stupid and spotty. Mothers read that MSG could put holes in their children's brains.
So the food industry employed its usual tactic in the face of consumer criticism: MSG was buried by giving it new names. The industry came up with a fabulous range of euphemisms for monosodium glutamate - the most cheeky of all is 'natural flavourings' (however, the industry did remove MSG from high-end baby foods).
Nowadays the industry's PR beats a big drum. 'Natural, Tasty, Safe' is the slogan. 'Many people believe that monosodium glutamate is made from chemicals. Monosodium glutamate is a chemical in the same way that the water we drink and the oxygen we breathe are chemicals,' explains an MSG website.
MSG manufacturers are now pushing it as actively useful for health - a way to eat less salt - and they have pursued the celebrity route too. Heston Blumenthal, of the Fat Duck in Bray, is among the eminent chefs the industry has enlisted for promotion of the umami principle at conferences across the world - although he uses traditional sources like kombu.
It's not surprising that the MSG-makers are so busy on their product's image, because MSG-phobia still shows no signs of subsiding. This despite the fact that every concerned public body that ever investigated it has given it a clean bill of health, including the EU, the United Nations food agencies (which in 1988 put MSG on the list of 'safest food additives'), and the British, Japanese and Australian governments.
In fact, every government across the world that has a food licensing and testing system gives MSG - 'at normal levels in the diet' - the thumbs-up. The US Food and Drug Administration has three times, in 1958, 1991 and 1998, reviewed the evidence, tested the chemical and pronounced it 'genuinely recognised as safe.
However, there remains a body of respected nutritionists who are sure MSG causes problems - especially in children. And parents listen. Most doctors who offer guides to parents qualify their warnings about MSG - it may cause problems, it has been anecdotally linked with disorders. But public figures like the best-selling nutrition guru Patrick Holford are powerful advocates against MSG. He's sure the science shows that MSG causes migraines and he is convinced of the dangers of the substance to children, particularly in the child-grabber snacks like Monster Munch and Cheesy Wotsits .
'I'm a practitioner and there's no doubt that kids with behavioural problems react to MSG,' he says. 'I've given them the foods, and seen the different reactions. Glutamate is a brain stimulant in the way that it is given, because it enhances sensory perception in the sense that things taste much better - and some kids become very hyperactive.'
Holford admits that he has not measured this hyperactivity, or tested MSG by itself on children - his statements are based on anecdotal comparison of the effects of plain crisps versus flavoured ones. But there is some justice in his complaint that in all the acres of research on MSG, 'most is directed at the possible physiological effects, not the behavioural ones'.
Eric Taylor, professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at King's College in London, is among the leading British experts on food additives and children's behaviour. He was a pioneer of 'elimination tests' that examined food additives and their effect on children - establishing, for one, that the colouring tartrazine did contribute to hyperactivity.
Yet he does not think MSG is a culprit and he has never tested it. Why? 'There are so many substances, and there's not much funding. And, with MSG, there's no reasonable physiological theorem to justify the research.' The only investigation he has seen on children's brains and MSG, conducted in the seventies, suggested that the substance might improve reading ability.
Patrick Holford, like many of MSG's foes, also talks of its possible addictive properties and he cannot explain why 'natural' glutamate, say in cheese or parma ham, should be any less addictive, or harmful, than glutamate that's been industrially produced and stabilised with salt.
The anti-additive movement (check out the excellent and informative www.truthinlabeling.org) admits that 'natural' and 'industrially produced' glutamate are chemically the same, and treated by the body similarly. So why doesn't anyone ever complain of a headache or hyperactivity after a four cheese and tomato pizza (where there's easily as much glutamate as in an MSG-enhanced chicken chow mein)?
Their answer is that the industrial fermentation process introduces contaminants. This is possible, of course, but it ignores the fact that whole swaths of the planet - including East Asia, where I live - do not have any problem with MSG. Here in Thailand, the phong chu rot sits on the table with the fish sauce and the chilli powder where you would have the salt and pepper.
MSG has had one unarguable effect on us - and it is a benign one. It has made consumers look at the small print. In turn this kick-started the organic food movement and other, more militant consumer power groups. 1968 was a good year for rebels, and the dawn of MSG-phobia coincides with the beginning of a great shift in middle-class consumers' thinking - a withdrawal of our faith in the vast corporations that fed and medicated us. After 1968 we began to question them and their motives. Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace came next.
It is now 37 years since Dr Ho Man Kwok named Chinese restaurant syndrome, and it's plain that the case against MSG remains unproven. So either you conclude, as some will, that government, science and the mega-corporates of the food industry really are all in league with each other to poison us for profit. Or, like me, you make a different decision.
Now, I have little faith in the food industry and I'm as suspicious of food additives as the next person - I spend many hours fighting the grim battle to keep them from my children's mouths. But until new evidence emerges I am going to give MSG a conditional discharge. But would I have it in the kitchen? Well, I did. I bought a little bag of Ajinomoto from the corner shop on our Bangkok street and tried it, a gram (the tip of a teaspoon) at a time.
By itself it tasted of almost nothing. So I beat up and fried two eggs, and tried one with MSG, one without. The MSG one had more egg flavour, and didn't need any salting. I tried the crystals on my son's leftover pieces of chicken breast (definitely more chickeny). I tried it in a peanut butter sandwich (nothing). On Weetabix with milk (interesting, sort of malty) and on Weetabix with milk and sugar (thought I was going to be sick).
My friend Nic came round. He told me about a Japanese restaurant he'd been to that gave him headaches and a 'weird tingling in the cheeks' - until he told them to stop with the MSG. Then he was fine, he said. I nodded and I served him two tomato and chive salads; both were made using the very same ingredients but I told him one plate of tomatoes was 'organic', the other 'factory-farmed'. The organic tomatoes were far better, we agreed. These, of course, were the tomatoes doused with mono sodium glutamate.
Then we ate mascarpone, parma ham and tomato pizza. Nic felt fine. So did I. I had ingested, I reckoned, a good six grams of MSG over the day, and probably the same again in free glutamate from the food - the equivalent of eating two 250g jars of Marmite.
I've thrown the Ajinomoto out now. It works, but it was embarrassing - a bit like having a packet of Bisto in the cupboard. There is no need to have MSG in the kitchen. If I want extra glutamate in my food I'll use parmesan, or tomato purée, or soy sauce. Or like Mrs Ikeda, boil up some kelp.
So you think you don't eat MSG? Think again...
Some of the names MSG goes under
monopotassium glutamate
glutavene
glutacyl
glutamic acid
autolyzed yeast extract
calcium caseinate
sodium caseinate
E621 (E620-625 are all glutamates)
Ajinomoto, Ac'cent
Gourmet Powder
The following may also contain MSG natural flavours or seasonings
natural beef or chicken flavouring
hydrolyzed milk or plant protein
textured protein
seasonings
soy sauce
bouillon
broth
spices
Free glutamate content of foods (mg per 100g) roquefort cheese 1280
parmesan cheese 1200
soy sauce 1090
walnuts 658
fresh tomato juice 260
grape juice 258
peas 200
mushrooms 180
broccoli 176
tomatoes 140
mushrooms 140
oysters 137
corn 130
potatoes 102
chicken 44
mackerel 36
beef 33
eggs 23
human milk 22
For more on the MSG debate visit: www.truthinlabeling.org, www.msgmyth.com, www.msgtruth.org or www.food.gov.uk.
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The Puzzling Story of NATO's Secret Armies During the Cold War: Just What Were They Up to?
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Dr. Daniele Ganser is a historian at the Center for Security Studies ETH in Zurich Switzerland.
After the Cold War had ended, then Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti confirmed to the Italian Senate in August 1990 that Italy had had a secret stay-behind army, codenamed Gladio – the sword. A document dated 1 June 1959 from the Italian military secret service, SIFAR, revealed that SIFAR had been running the secret army with the support of NATO and in close collaboration with the US secret service, the CIA. Suggesting that the secret army might have linked up with right-wing organizations such as Ordine Nuovo and Avanguardia Nazionale to engage in domestic terror, the Italian Senate, amid public protests, decided in 1990 that Gladio was beyond democratic control and therefore had to be closed down.During the 1990s, research into stay-behind armies progressed only very slowly, due to very limited access to primary documents. It was revealed, however, that stay-behind armies covered all of Western Europe and operated under different code names, such as Gladio in Italy, Absalon in Denmark, P26 in Switzerland, ROC in Norway, I&O in the Netherlands, and SDRA8 in Belgium. The so-called Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) and the Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC), linked to NATO's Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), coordinated the stay-behind networks on an international level. The last confirmed ACC meeting took place on 24 October 1990 in Brussels, chaired by the Belgian military secret service, the SGR.According to the SIFAR documen of 1959 the secret stay-behind armies served a dual purpose during the Cold War: They were to prepare for a communist Soviet invasion and occupation of Western Europe, and – also in the absence of an invasion – for an "emergency situation." The first purpose was clear: If there had been a Soviet invasion, the secret anti-communist armies would have operated behind enemy lines, strengthening and setting up local resistance movements in enemy held territory, evacuating pilots who had been shot down, and sabotaging supply lines and production centers of the occupation forces.The second purpose, the preparation for an emergency situation, is more difficult to understand and remains the subject of ongoing research. As this second purpose clearly did not relate to a foreign invasion, the emergency situation referred to is likely to have meant all domestic threats, most of which were of a civilian nature. During the Cold War, the national military secret services in the countries of Western Europe differed greatly in what they perceived to be an emergency situation. But there was agreement between the military secret services of the United States and of Western Europe that communist parties, and to some degree also socialist parties, had a real potential to weaken NATO from within and therefore represented a threat to the alliance. If they gained political strength and entered the executive, or, worse still, gained control of defense ministries, an emergency situation would result. The evidence now available suggests that in some countries the secret stay-behind armies linked up with right-wing terrorists and carried out terror attacks that were later wrongly blamed on the political left in order to discredit the communists and prevent them from assuming top executive positions.Evidence suggests that recruitment and operations methods differed greatly from country to country. The research project into NATO's secret armies that is being undertaken by the Center for Security Studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, and is headed by myself, has collected and published the available country-specific evidence in the first English-language book on the topic, entitled NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe (London and New York: Frank Cass [ www.tandf.co.uk/books ], 1 January 2005, 300 pages). In a second step, the project is working on gaining access to declassified primary documents, while encouraging discussion among NATO officials, secret services and military officials, and the international research community in order to clarify the strategy, training, and operations of the stay-behind armies.
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Creating Passionate Users: Does college matter?
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« Every user is new and different... | Main | Avoid cliches like the plague »
Does college matter?
Your son wants to play in a band. You think he should be an engineer. You're majoring in bioinformatics because your parents told you it was a good career choice, but you hate it. You love to write code, but now your parents are telling you "it's a bad move, what with outsourcing and all..." You spent your first two years of college maintaining an inhuman blood alcohol level, when it hits you--you've taken out loans to pay for this drinking.
We've all accepted that a college degree == $. (Ignoring Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, of course.) College means higher lifetime earnings, and there's plenty of research to back that up. On the other hand, we've also learned that there's scientific evidence that money doesn't mean happiness (assuming you're over the baseline level of poverty). So if there's almost no correlation between money and happiness, but college means more money... where's real happiness in all that?
I've watched the wildly conflicting comments on the future of IT/programming as a profession between Dori Smith on "don't do it" and Robert Scoble on how "Microsoft can't find enough programmers".
But I'm far less interested in whether majoring in a high-tech field is a good idea today than I am in whether the question even matters. The average education in computer science, engineering, and even medicine is partly obsolete within 18 months. Some weird variant of Moore's law I guess. The conventional wisdom says that the specifics of what you learn are much less important than the fact that you're learning the fundamentals, and you're learning to learn--things you'll need to maintain your skills and knowledge in a quickly changing world.
The problem is, you virtually never hear a student say that. It's always the parents or someone speaking on behalf of the educational system. When was the last time you honestly heard (and believed) an actual current college student claim that the true benefit of their formal college education is in learning to be a lifelong learner? That's just bulls***.
With very few exceptions, college in the US is more about drinking than it is about deep learning.
Others claim that the benefit of a college degree is really more about socialization and independence. I've heard reasonably smart adults say, with all sincerity, that spending $80,000 so little Suzy could learn to live on her own was worth it. I think there are a thousand different, and often better, ways to achieve that. Suzy could join the peace corp, for example, or go on one of those "learning vacations" where you do an archealogical dig. Hell, just a three-month long trip through Europe with a couple friends and a rail pass (or, as a friend of mine did, a bike trip across Turkey) is certainly going to do more for socialization and independence than a traditional college environment, and at a tiny fraction of the cost.
The real curiosity, for me and others, is why we spend so much time railing against the decline in public schools for K-12 in the US, while higher education practically gets a free pass. The only major complaints you hear are about the rising costs, when to me--that may be the least of it.
In Declining by Degrees, a PBS documentary and book, one of the central questions is about why we aren't looking more closely at what really happens between admission and graduation. Or I should say, looking at what doesn't happen. From the intro:
"The decline in the quality of American undergraduate education has not yet become a major public issue. Americans may be cynical about their public institutions and leaders, but their skepticisim does not extend to the nature and content of a college education."
"... the result of this mentality (we are resisting the temptation to label it "mental illness") is graduates who are narrowly educated--and often are "trained" for work in fields that will have changed before the ink on their diplomas is dry. Those graduates have scant understanding of civic responsibilities or of the possibilities of life beyond work. Accumulating a sufficient number of courses and credit hours to earn a college degree is, in the public mind, synomous with being educated. But having a diploma bears little resemblance to being educated. "Higher" education has been lowered."
So here we have a pile of issues:
* Does it still make sense to major in a high-tech field? (and the offshoots I didn't mention about whether gender makes a difference)
* Does it really matter what you major in, or is the benefit of college something beyond the actual field of study?
* If college = money, but money != happiness, what does that mean with respect to a college degree?
* Does it still make sense to go to college... at all?
But I think the biggest question of all is something entirely different:
Where does passion fit into this equation?
Everything I hear about is whether a kid -- male or female -- should pursue this field or that field, what the long-term career prospects are, etc. I almost never hear much discussion about whether it matters if they have a passion for. It's true that sometimes college is the best way for them to discover their passion, but I've seen way too many young people traumatized by the thought of telling their parents that after three years of pre-med, they're switching to something like... ornamental horticulture (a big area of study at my alma mater, Cal Poly SLO).
The reason this matters to me now is because I'm right in the middle of it. I've been watching Dori with some envy... going on visits with her son to check out prospective colleges, talking about application forms, entrance exams, all that stuff I naturally assumed I'd be doing when my daughter Skyler turned 16 or 17. The older she got, the better she did in school, and the brighter her teachers found her to be... the more certain I was that she'd follow "the natural path" of the countdown to college that starts somewhere around 10th grade.
But it didn't work out that way. Skyler, it seems, could not care less for conventional wisdom, what her friends do, what the numbers say, and most especially--what her mom might think. Skyler believes that life's too short to spend that many years on something you don't love.
So she decided to just work for a while until she figures something out. And then a few weeks ago, she announced the discovery that Boulder is home to a world-class vegetarian cooking school that in addition to cooking classes, includes courses in professional development ranging from creating a business plan for a restaurant, to starting a personal chef business.
Vegetarian cooking is her passion. She believes in it, she loves it, she takes great pleasure in it. She evangelizes it to others. What horrifies me is that even though I knew she felt this way, it never occurred to me that this was something she might consider instead of college. But she got me with this one:
"Mom, your degree was exercise physiology. You spent your first five years out of college as a glorified aerobic instructor. Then you taught yourself programming, took a few night classes at UCLA, and made a huge career switch into computers, and found you loved it. You have your own computer book series. Yet you told me you had just a single computer class in college, and you hated it. So... tell me again why college was so great for you?"
And then the kicker:
"I have no idea if I'll ever open a restaurant or develop this into a professional career, but whatever investment I make in this will serve me and make me happy for the rest of my life. I'll be using what I learn here in my personal life, almost every day, regardless of my career. How many people can say that about 90% of what they learned in college?"
The part I still have to get over is that feeling of a missed opportunity. Of unfulfilled potential (too many Microsoft ads?). This was a straight-A kid. One far brighter at 12 than I'll ever be. One of those about whom people say, "She could succeed at anything she wants." yet what we all secretly meant was, "She could succeed at anything we think she should want."
Lucky for her, she learned at a much earlier age that passion matters. That money is far less important than joy (and that money doesn't buy joy). And that whatever decision she makes now, does not determine the rest of her life. She understands that the chances of anyone having a single career for life -- or even a decade -- are asymptotically approaching zero. And that nothing -- not finances (or lack of) or gender or age -- will stand in her way if she decides to learn something. And if what she wants to learn at some point in the future is best studied in a formal higher education environment, there's nothing to stop her from going to college then.
Still, I look longingly at the cute Target dorm furniture and think, "maybe one day..." Then I hear what my friends are paying in college tuition, and snap out of it.
I'm no longer convinced that we should assume a traditional four-year college should be the automatic default for all high school grads, esepcially given the state of these institutions today. And I seriously wish people would stop looking at me with pity and concern, shaking their head when they realize Skyler ("but she always seemed so bright...") isn't going to a "real" college. Wake up and smell the 21st century...
Posted by Kathy on July 14, 2005 | Permalink
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Comments
For some, college is an opportunity to connect with a group of people and some of the connections last a lifetime. Not to many for me, but for me college was four years of experimenting and learning about state of the art technology (which would have been inaccessible to me otherwise).
Maybe Skyler will be able to pull the same thing off with her professional school(s), and maybe she'll make lifetime connections with others along this path; but I'm wondering if she's missing out on something (besides the beer).
Posted by: Woolstar | Jul 14, 2005 4:18:16 PM
Very interesting post. I've done a fair amount of school (double majored in english and math, with an MS in engineering), and I feel that I got a lot out of it. But I have been blown away with what an interested, focused person can accomplish in software development with no degree (or even no coursework) in computer science.
At first, I thought the "self-taught" pheonomenon was a quirk of the software world - that the rapid rate of change in programming was somehow differentiated it from more mature fields (like medicine or law). But lately, I've come around to the notion that the presence of experts without degrees in software represents the norm, not the exception, for learning. People can become truly expert in fields without a "formal" education as long as they have access to information, tools for experimentation, and a passion for learning.
Anyway, this is just a longwinded way of saying: "I agree". If you've spent years reading, writing, experimenting, and so forth, you're educated in the field - regardless of degree.
If this were the case in other fields, I suspect you'd fine a lot of self-taught experts over there as well.
Posted by: Geoff B | Jul 14, 2005 5:38:04 PM
Good for Skyler. It's a brave new world, and she sounds like she's jumping into it with courage and the knowledge of what it means.
College is fine if you have a clear and passionate goal that fits into that methodology. But few careers do anymore. Hell, even the word "career" is obsolete.
"But she always seemed so bright"...
Reply: "That's why she stayed away from college".
There's a reason the phrase "college education" is two words - it's a special case of the much broader concept of "education".
Good luck, Skyler.
Posted by: Kyle Bennett | Jul 14, 2005 5:57:20 PM
you make some good points and things that i always wondered about when i was in college. i used to hear our president at school and the school board back in new orleans always talking about what was best for us. amazing how they never asked for our opinions or input. how is the average student expected to connexxt?
i'm 24, so I've just been out almost 2 years. i tried to focus on the internships and the business leaders that would take me under their wing. it was rare that i was pumped for classes. not because it was class, but i knew that the useful knowledge, the knowledge that would help me move ahead was outside the 'box.' i learned much in the box, but i loved to hear the stories of other people who'd been places. the lunches and business meetings and random emails to professionals i admired...those were and are my passions.
i always felt the degree was a formality. i worked hard, did well and graduated, but i never felt as if it would define me. i just knew i needed it to get into that interview. i always thought that once i got some place, i'd make some noise. so far i was right. i can't wait to see who i learn from next and what i can do. i'm just one of many.
Posted by: christien | Jul 14, 2005 7:49:17 PM
I went to college for a couple of years because it was automatically assumed if you were smart and could do well in high school that you would go there next. This was in the late 80s. I didn't finish because there was not enough there that I wanted to learn. Most of what I'm really interested in, I learn on my own.
In some ways, I think a degree is an insult to the passion for actual learning and the love of it, like religion is an insult to the passion for genuine spirituality and a solid sense of ethics.
On the other hand, my pay scale over the past 15 years has been relatively slim and slow. Lots of jobs have been taken outside of my interests to keep me afloat and just barely pay the bills. The student loan had been put off for a long time and I'm just in the past few years beginning to knock the principal down after letting all that extra interest accumulate (stupid, stupid, stupid).
If I hadn't been so passionate about my interests, it would have been much easier to just play the game. In the end, it's a gift and a curse to be so devoted to something. It has a price.
Posted by: Keith Handy | Jul 14, 2005 8:12:48 PM
After doing something similar to Skyler, "working for a while" before doing the college thing, I'm finding there is one very good reason to pay the $40,000 pricetag on a college education: the piece of paper you get at the end. As I move up, I've found this piece of paper becomes more and more important to the PHBs while my self-taught experience becomes worth less (and worthless).
A college grad who can't understand how to do a fraction of my old job now has my old job - and is paid more to boot. If I'm lucky, I'll score a new job paying almost what I used to make in the higher paying economy I now call home. And all for the want of a paper.
Posted by: Cori G | Jul 14, 2005 8:25:20 PM
"I've been watching Dori with some envy... going on visits with her son to check out prospective colleges, talking about application forms, entrance exams, all that stuff I naturally assumed I'd be doing when my daughter Skyler turned 16 or 17."
You want to borrow Sean for a couple of weeks? We'd be happy to send him out to visit you, and you could beat your head against that particular wall.
If Sean announced tomorrow that he didn't want to go to college, and instead wanted to sign up for a training program because he had a passion for [fill in the blank], I'd be the first to break out the champagne. But first I'd have to be revived, because I'd have fallen down into a dead faint.
The impression I get of Skyler (not having met her) is that she's a passionate, creative kid wiith lots of ideas. Sean? Not so much. He doesn't have a strong desire to go to college, but then, he doesn't have a strong desire to not go to college. He doesn't have a strong desire to major in a particular field, but then, he doesn't have a strong desire to not major in a particular field. He has no strong desire to go to a particular school, and no strong desire not to go to a particular school. And so on.
He's well aware of the life-long learning issue -- anyone who lives in our house would have to be. He's seen that what I was doing 8 years ago is vastly different from what I'm doing now, and that what I was doing 8 years before that was even more different. And we've made it clear that whatever he does end up doing, he should expect that he'll have to work to keep current, because the 21st century is only going to move faster and faster.
One of the main reasons we're encouraging bioinformatics for him is because it lets him keep his hand in so many fields -- if it turns out that (for instance) pure mathematics is his love, yay. If it's something else, that's good too. My thought is that he should be exposed to as many different fields and areas as possible, and then he can see which (if any) make him sing. And if none of them do, well, at least he'll have lots of options because he's learned so many things.
We make jokes about him going to UCSC and double-majoring in Bioinformatics and Astrophysics (two of their top-rated departments). He'd end up knowing a great deal about a great deal, but there ain't a job on earth that will use all of it. And that's okay. OTOH, he'll be taking Physics for the first time in the fall, and maybe that'll be The One.
If you're someone reading this who doesn't read our blog and has gotten the idea from the above that he's a general Math/Science geek: you're right.
Another school we're encouraging him to look at closely is Harvey Mudd. One of the things I like best about HMC is that they don't let you declare a major until your Sophomore year. Every Freshman enrolled takes the same "Common Core" courses so they get a broad education.
Side thought 1: as I tell Sean, if you're going to use Gates as an example of someone who didn't finish his degree, you have to compare/contrast Ballmer. What would he be today if he hadn't gone to college when/where he did?
Side thought 2: some of the heaviest drinkers I've ever known were the 18-25 year olds who didn't go to college. I think that it's more the age and not where you happen to be at that age.
Side thought 3: if you've ever considered writing a post on bringing out passion in the dispassionate, I'd love to read it!
Posted by: Dori | Jul 14, 2005 9:38:36 PM
I have to say that going to college and getting a degree in computer science would probably be a complete waste. My degree is Latin American Studies and I went to a solid liberal arts school. While I have never used that knowledge directly in my jobs, learning to write and communicate ideas and organize thoughts have all been critical to every job I have had, and are critical now that I run my own business. I don't regret for a minute getting my degree, although I didn't spend all that much time getting drunk, so maybe my experience was different.
I don't think college is necessary for everybody, but I do think that if you do go to college, you should study broadly instead or narrowly. Skyler sounds like she will be fine because she sounds like she will study broadly outside the confines of a college. Some people can do that, and some cannot, but I am glad she was able to see her way to doing what is right for her. Best of luck to her... and to you.
(Having a daughter in college now myself, I assure you that the joys of picking out dorm furniture are easily outweighed by the horrors of watching the way many college students do squander their opportunities)
Posted by: Ben Langhinrichs | Jul 14, 2005 9:58:36 PM
Hiya Kathy and Skyler...
I dropped out halfway through an engineering degree. And I can say, 20 years later, that I'm realllllly glad I did half an engineering degree.
Here's what I got out of it:
o I became a dj on the campus radio station, allowing me to get my first job at a commercial radio station as a sound engineer, just 4 days after I dropped out.
o I was a journalist and humourist on the student newspaper, which allowed me to flex my skills as a writer. I'm now a professional writer and artist, thanks to the exposure I gave myself back then.
o The problem-solving skills I picked up in engineering are things I use daily. They fit with my mode of analytical thinking, which I wouldn't easily have uncovered due to my being hyper creative as well.
o I learned about sex at varsity too. Hehehehehehe. Very useful.
o I learned about politics too, and was a student left-winger, albeit a misanthropic, cynical one. I'm still a lefty, and I really love the exposure I got to diversity and debate.
o I learned about film and art. I sat in on history of art lectures, and learned that I have the ability to understand art. I went to our film library and watched rare classics that I could never have seen anywhere else. (Well, it's now possible to buy the dvd of the original NOSFERATU THE VAMPIRE. But until three or so years ago, nogo.) I'm now a filmmaker amongst other things.
o I was a member of the War Games Society, and played hundreds of hours of Dungeons & Dragons (and similar). This allowed me to flex my imagination, and work out all sortsa things for myself.
Most of the things I learned at varsity were extra-mural. But those extra mural activities were supported by the structure imposed by being in a learning environment.
I would argue that a classical education is one of the most valuable things a person can get. (When I dropped out, I started another degree, majoring in philosophy, theory of literature, and English. Didn't complete it, but got far enough (8/10ths of the way) to know that I'm pretty darn clever.
Blue skies
love
Roy
Posted by: Roy Blumenthal | Jul 15, 2005 1:17:28 AM
Good for Skyler!
Personally I'd agree with Robert Pirsig's take on things - that education for the sake of having a piece of paper is frankly not worth the paper it's written on, but that the more worthwhile education comes from interest in the subject. He gives an excellent story of a guy who dropped out of high school because frankly the whole thing bored him. He became a car mechanic, as shop was about the only thing he'd been any good at, but as he repairs cars, he comes across all kinds of engineering problems, so he decides he needs to read up on metallurgy, on maths, on chemistry, and so forth, till in the end he puts himself through college, driven by passion for the subjects which he has a real love for.
I kind of did this myself - I went to university as a mature student at age 27, to study French. I'm now working for a French company, though that's as far as my use of the subject goes. That said, I wouldn't have swapped that time for anything. I got to study Japanese there, got my yellow belt in jiu-jitsu there, went and lived in France for a year in a school as part of my studies, came back and cycled the length of the UK for charity, met my wife and fell in love there (we're still together nearly 10 years on, and expecting our second child), and the company that I work for wouldn't have looked twice at me without my degree even though I work in IT and I have an arts degree. I got to study all sorts of interesting things too - like the French resistance, the holocaust in France, the Algerian war, French philosophy, linguistics. It took me till last year to pay off the loans, but it was worth every penny.
So, my message to Skyler is, don't write it off, but do what you love. If you find you need a degree for what you want to do, or if it'd be useful to you, then go study it. Whatever you do, do it with arete. In with both feet.
Posted by: Matt Moran | Jul 15, 2005 1:39:17 AM
I have no doubt that time in higher education can benefit anyone - sometimes it shows them that they are suited to academic study and sometimes it shows them that this is not the path for them right now. I think the problem is the assumption that the "best time" (read "only time for anyone in their right freakin' minds") is at the end of your teens - a hangover imho from a time when careers generally were more formally structured to suit the needs of businesses that were....well, more formally structured.
This is about living today. I believe that we're never finished creating ourselves and we do our best work when we help others to create themselves. Just as soon as your daughter ever finds that she's more passionate about going to college than making great food, she will do so. I say "Go Skyler! You feed the world."
Posted by: Lloyd Davis | Jul 15, 2005 1:41:34 AM
BTW, just to add, I was listening to a dharma talk by the Buddhist Society of Western Australia recently, and the speaker, Ajahn Brahm, quoted a study into happiness by the London School of Economics. Apparently the country that came top in the LSE's league table of happiness was Bangladesh, one of the most desperately poor countries in the world. Apparently poverty is no bar to happiness!
http://www.inspirationalstories.com/cgi-bin/printer.pl?302
Posted by: Matt Moran | Jul 15, 2005 1:58:19 AM
PS: Kathy... looks like my previous emails to you didn't make it through your spam traps. Darn.
Posted by: Roy Blumenthal | Jul 15, 2005 3:48:12 AM
All the way through elementary & secondary school, I was told I was "bright." And I was, though I didn't know it. The problem was, I hated school -- it was boring, and we never got to study stuff that I was interested in. I almost never did homework, but picked up enough in class to ace the tests. That made for a lot of B's and C's, with a predictable result on my self-image.
I'm a 3-time college dropout, that being the number of times I was convinced, either by parents or friends, that I needed a degree to get anywhere at all. After doing blue-collar work for a few years, I wangled my way into a word-processing job at a mid-sized manufacturing company. I discovered some graphic software on my computer (a Mac -- woohoo!), and started playing around. I started enhancing some of the documents and Powerpoint presentations I was assigned, and within a few weeks, I was asked if I knew enough to work on some print advertising. I lied and said "yes." In truth I knew next to nothing, but I learned, and quickly -- all from reference books and trial&error (this was shortly before the rise of the 'net).
Long story short: I became a professional graphic designer, working freelance, doing (mostly) what I love for the past 10 years. Looking back, it's safe to say most of my formal education served only to discourage me from learning. I learned to read before starting school, and got my love of reading from my parents, not from Lit class, where we were never assigned reading that was interesting to me. I learned from my father that if I don't know something, I can learn -- read a book, ask someone, or just try something and see what happens. That is the foundation of my true education. And at this point in time, I am certain that nothing is beyond my capability.
For some, college may be a necessity -- some fields require the piece of paper just to get in the door, for instance -- but this is true far less often than it used to be. Instead of the presumption, it should be the exception, IMHO.
Posted by: Splashman | Jul 15, 2005 4:15:51 AM
At age 3, my daughter announced, "Art is my life, Mommy!" This fall, she is leaving home for the art department of a small Christian school (Gordon College) where the personal standards are high, the students are pretty much self-policing, and the academics look like a real classical education. Some people's take on this? "What a shame...she always seemed so bright." Answer~ She is. She's a chart topper on every test given, and a straight A+ student. "How is she going to learn about the 'real world' without a college experience full of drinking and dating (a euphemism for casual sex)?" Answer~ She'll see the 'real world' all around her in the surrounding communities, especially Boston, but she'll emerge without as much baggage, heartbreak, and STDs.
Follow your passion, baby! I did, with a "useless" non-traditional college degree in Classical Greek, a further non-traditional masters in Folklore, and plenty of job offers at every stage of my life because I am unique in my background, training, outlook, and my ability to think and learn!
Posted by: Cyndi L | Jul 15, 2005 6:13:48 AM
I think the bachelors degree is good for one thing. It gets you in the door for most companies. While it doesn't mean you know how to work, how to learn, or how to solve problems, it's still the minimum entry level requirement for most jobs.
Posted by: Steve Betts | Jul 15, 2005 8:17:11 AM
Talkiog about passion in what you do and what you do with it:
Passion is where your heart lies. I did physics and it sucked big time. I never liked it. I'd have happily wanted to have followed AstroPhysics but anyways back then(13-14 odd yrs back) it didn't matter. Computers back then were all green screens and it was not really that appealing.
I went sailing and I was in love with the seas. I've loved everybit of it , I met people from all parts of the world. It was an exilirating experience. I can literally feel like a little kid with a baloon in hands if I can just smell the diesel smoke from the funnels when I drive past the harbors.
I found the love of my life when I met my girl friend(now wife) here and I quit saling.
I picked up the trails that I left when I left college. IT Sector was on the downside(1999/2000) still I was in love. So I carried on. I started afresh and got into databases(Oracle) and suddennly I was aroused. Since then I have done consultancy,DBA related jobs. It all was possible because I was hooked not because I was calculated or planned it all out. No way.
Today I'm a Sr.DBA/Architect , I teach english in local school, will be Giving lessons to univ under-grads at my current Univ job, picking up the strands and trying to tie up my own band andv will pick up just about everything that i fall in love with.
The world is changing but it's not the regular joes and janes( they could be even be thunderbird,stanford,yale, harvard grads/masters--there are however exception), it's the drop-outs who're dropping out of the herd.
The world today with so much of text, graphic will change so drastically(actually it will be all replaced)that you'd laugh your a** out looking back at this transitional indulgence of typing(vlogging will change this very soon). HI(human intelligence) is truly the potential that will be exploited and will lead to massive breakthroughs.
Deal is simple.You just have to fall in love :-).
Posted by: Tarry | Jul 15, 2005 9:47:14 AM
Four years at $20k/year for an American (first) degree sounds poor value. Is that a typical state college or Yale/Harvard/UCBerkley standard? Why not look at a cheaper European option, with a better degree at the end of it (and perhaps three years instead of four)?
Of course some really bright kids adopt a strategy early on of pretending to be one of the crowd and dumber than they are. Unfortunately it's hard to shake that off later on.
The real benfits of University are:
1. Living away from home.
2. Learning how to work on problems, and how to absorb new information;
3. Meeting *much* cleverer people than you would meet at home.
4. Stretching your mental faculties.
5. Learning not to give up when things seem hard.
6. Learning to check facts!
Employers value many of these traits, en therefore prefer new hires to have a degree.
W.
Posted by: Wally | Jul 15, 2005 10:29:47 AM
Well, these days I'm in the "get the degree anyway" camp. In fact, at almost 42 years old, I am planning to start a degree this year. My story:
I too am a software developer/architect, trainer, presenter, and the author of a few tech books (listed at my blog) . Readers and colleagues are surprised to find out that I don't have a college degree. Instead, I traveled the world for five years, visiting 60+ countries, and worked in England, Australia, and Portugal. I took certification courses and taught myself software development along the way because I enjoyed it and it paid well enough to continue my travels for extended periods. In between jobs I saw the world and made some great friends. I highly recommend this to any young person, usually much to the consternation of their protective parents. It was a great experience that I would not trade for anything else.
However, I regret not taking time to get a degree since I returned from my travels to Canada (then moved to the USA). In the high-tech business, you work in and with many large companies. These companies have HR departments. They do this by scanning candidate resumes for keywords. If a job requisition has a keyword like "degree" and your resume does not match that keyword, then you are not a match for the job. Simple as that. It doesn't have to be a pertinent degree, I know many colleagues that have music or philosophy degrees. But they do match the keyword, so they are a match. And let's imagine that I did get that degree in computer science back in 1983. In those days the curriculum covered important topics like Fortran, CPM, VAX, punch-card management and top-down programming. What possible use would that knowledge be in today's IT world? Apparently, that doesn't matter. There are thankfully ways around HR for enterprising individuals, which is why I have a job. But the HR hurdle is a tough one to overcome.
So based on my attitude, why do I want to get a degree now? Because I'm getting old and there IS a societal glass ceiling for non-college graduates that cannot be ignored. In small business, it's hard to get a loan without a degree, even with a good track record. In the corporate world, having a degree does not become an issue right away. You don't need a degree for an entry-level job, but you do need one for other jobs with more responsibility and higher pay. The result is that if you don't have a degree, you end up working with and for younger, less experienced people for less money than other people in your age bracket. As you said, money isn't everything, but getting stuck in jobs later in life that you are under-qualified for can affect much more than your bank account. So now I'm getting the degree and looking forward to more keyword matches in the future...
Posted by: Brian Benz | Jul 15, 2005 11:09:01 AM
I know what you mean by that feeling of "unfulfilled potential". I always felt this unspoken obligation to do the hardest thing I was capable of doing, even if I didn't like it. To do something difficult and intellectually demanding. To leave the easier (and sometimes more fun) jobs to those who couldn't handle the harder stuff. I don't know where this feeling came from, but it's hard to shake. Especially when the hard stuff pays so well...
Posted by: Jennifer Grucza | Jul 15, 2005 11:45:04 AM
I'd like to say thank you for this entry. It's really great to know that someone outside my age group understands that college simply isn't for everyone.
You see, two semesters ago, I left school to pursue a basic interest in web development and to work part-time in computer repair until I could figure out something a bit more stable. My mother, professors, friends, and just about everyone else in my life (save two or three people) thought of that decision as being the biggest mistake I've ever made.
For the first time since I started looking at colleges, I'm happy. I'm finally able to do something that I love and am not forced to wake up each day knowing I'm going to waste away in three more classes like Intro to Rock & Roll and African Studies in order to fulfill my General Education requirements and come closer to getting a degree in Marketing.
Yes, I'm making less money than I would be right out of college. Yes, I'm living paycheck to paycheck. And yes, I'm struggling to find clients in this tiny town. But I'm happy and I'm passionate in what I do. I couldn't ask for more.
Posted by: Brian Rose | Jul 15, 2005 11:53:02 AM
Here´s what I do: I am living in Germany where we have, additionally to the classic colleges, a dual system where you apply at a company which will send you study. This is for 3 years in terms of 3 months of studying and 3 months of working. You still almost get the same contents as in a classic german college, just very comprimized. And aside from having a view into actual work life, which regular college kids are miles and miles and miles away from, you get paid for studying, now who can claim that?
This means: you get a college degree, which is a little less, than the regular one but get to start 2 years earlier two work.
I couldn´t allow to be drunk all the time, hell, I can´t even allow myself to get sick more than three days in a row if I want to keep track of my classes. Sounds ugly and it is a bit, but I guess it holds a lot of experiences you sooner or later have to make, which will add to your personal growth more than partying on your parents money.
If anyone is interested any further, feel free to inquiry by emailing me or visiting my home page.
http://www.allralph.de
Posted by: Ralph | Jul 15, 2005 12:10:04 PM
One quick note on the financial side of things:
It is far easier for the passionate entrepreneur to turn joy into money then it is for the rich person to turn money into joy.
In other words it is much easier to find money via passion then it is to find passion via money.
Wrote a little more about it at the blog:
http://entreprexplorer.blogspot.com
Posted by: Jared | Jul 15, 2005 12:19:38 PM
"Four years at $20k/year for an American (first) degree sounds poor value. Is that a typical state college or Yale/Harvard/UCBerkley standard? Why not look at a cheaper European option, with a better degree at the end of it (and perhaps three years instead of four)?"
Four years @ $20K/year is for a typical state college. A private college such as Yale or Harvard is 2-3 x that. UC Berkley is, for us Californians, a state college (and so on the lower end of things), but anyone enrolling from out of state has to pay higher rates.
Got any resources you can recommend to learn more about the European options? When Caltech or MIT has a bill of $160K for a 4-year degree, alternatives sound great.
Posted by: Dori | Jul 15, 2005 1:09:18 PM
My take on the college thing is if you are not going for a hard science or engineering degree, something that requires access to Big, Expensive Equipment, you are better off just staying home and getting an online degree.
For many companies the sheepskin is important, it's a right of passage, a subway token that gets you in, but it doesn't need to be in a related field for them to hire you.
I have noticed a trend in some companies requiring master's degrees for certain positions since a Bachelors isn't worth very much to them.
I have a little girl and I want her to be passionate about something. I am going to try and expose her to as many different learning experiences as I can to help her find her talents and preferences, but I am sure she will end up changing her work several times in her life.
I want her to set up her own business so she can be in control rather then be someone else's drone.
For a take on the New World of Work from the other end look at:
http://www.mutualofamerica.com/articles/Fortune/May2005/Fortune.asp
and
http://ripples.typepad.com/ripples/2005/07/how_do_you_know.html
Ripples has two sequel posts on the subject too.
Posted by: Stephan F | Jul 15, 2005 3:09:19 PM
The comments to this entry are closed.
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Translations that are Marketing Mistakes
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Body Bags 2006-03-05 Almost as good as the confusion among English speakers over the term Fanny Pack, is the humor raised by the German equivalent for knapsack. Companies often use or "borrow" words from other languages to give their product names a certain cachet. Sometimes their choices are a bit odd. German makers of knapsacks refer to them as "Body Bags".
Vielen Danke to Marc Tobias for this item.
CBS 60 Minutes New! 2006-02-25 I use an interpreter from time to time, so I know how difficult the job is. The following Translator Mistake is reported on October 6, 2000 on the CBS News Web Site among other places. Look for the side bar on "Lost In Translation". (Which has not got to be one of the most overused, unclever, cliche headings in the past few years. Strike it from the language along with "without further ado".) 60 Minutes' Mike Wallace, known for his tough interviewing style, drew a sharp rebute from Boris Yeltsin - thanks to a translator's error. The confusion arose when Wallace asked Yeltsin if he had a "thin skin" when it came to public criticism, but the translation had Wallace describing Yeltsin as a "thick-skinned hippopotamus." Yeltsin was not amused. "An experienced journalist like yourself," Yeltsin said, "should express himself in a more civilized fashion. But this may be the translator's fault, and if so, he is the hippopotamus!"
Thanks to KKWolf
Orange New! 2006-02-16 During its 1994 launch campaign, the telecom company Orange had to change its ads in Northern Ireland. " The future's bright … the future's Orange. " That campaign is an advertising legend. However, in the North the term Orange suggests the Orange Order . The implied message that the future is bright, the future is Protestant, loyalist... didn't sit well with the Catholic Irish population.
Thanks to Janet O'Sullivan
GPT New! 2006-02-18 In 1988, the General Electric Company (GEC) and Plessey combined to create a new telecommunications giant. A brand name was desired that evoked technology and innovation. The winning proposal was GPT for GEC-Plessey Telecommunications. A not very innovative name and not suggestive of technology and a total disaster for European branding. GPT is pronounced in French as "J'ai pété" or "I've farted".
Thanks to Jem Shaw!
Life Fitness New! 2006-01-24 Life Fitness is a maker of exercise equipment, bikes, ski machines etc. Their logo made me laugh. I was walking around the exercise room to stretch my legs after some strenuous biking when I first noticed it. At first I thought it said "4F". Now, for those of you that don't know, the American military, when there was a draft, had a rating for recruits. If you were "1A", you were healthy and fit for duty. "4F" is the code for those that are physically unfit and unacceptable to the army. So "4F" was a rather inappropriate logo for a health fitness machine. It took me about a minute to realize it wasn't "4F", but "LF" the initials for LifeFitness.
Waterpik 2004-12-24 Waterpik uses another name in Denmark. "Pik" is the common Danish word for male genitals. Most Danes can easily translate "water" to the danish word "vand". And "vandpik" is a term for the morning erection.
"And you put that thing in your mouth?!?!"
Thanks to Jørgen Lykkebo!
PepsiCo India 2004-10-06 I was visiting Bangalore, India when the local news (for example, rediff india) was widely reporting the legal consequences of a marketing mistake by Pepsi. Pepsi is being sued in a Hyderabad, India city court in a public interest litigation for glorifying child labor in a television ad. In the ad, the Indian cricket team is in a celebratory huddle when a young boy serves them Pepsi.
Binney & Smith Crayola 2004-11-06 Crayola has changed color names over time due to the civil rights movement and other social pressures. In 1962, Binney & Smith replaced flesh with peach, in recognition of the wide variety of skin tones. More recently, in 1999, they changed indian red to chestnut. The color was not named after Native Americans, it was actually named for a special pigment that came from India. But school children often assumed the incorrect origin of the name. There are many sites listing the history of Crayola colors, including Crayola's own history page.
Panasonic 2004-05-13 According to the EE Times, October 8, 1996 (and numerous web sites), Matsushita Electric was promoting a Japanese PC for internet users. It came with a Japanese Web browser courtesy of Panasonic. Panasonic had licensed the cartoon character "Woody Woodpecker" as the "Internet guide."
The day before a huge marketing campaign was to begin, Panasonic stopped the product launch. The reason: the ads featured the slogan "Touch Woody - The Internet Pecker." An American at the internal product launch explained to the stunned and embarrassed Japanese what "touch woody" and "pecker" meant in American slang.
Thanks to A. Vine for pointing me at this!
Port Wallhamn 2004-05-08 Port Wallhamn is a Swedish port. The companies that surround it used to give their employees ties with the logo "W" and an anchor. The combination forms a very nice rebus for Wanker, much to the chagrin of the British workers who had to wear it.
Thanks to Hendrik Demol!
If someone has a tie and could send me a photo of it, that would be much appreciated!
Gerber 2004-05-08 Gerber, the name of the famous baby food maker, is also the French word for vomiting. It becomes a bit limiting when you go global... Gerber is therefore not in France, and although Gerber has a French Canadian web page, it says " Les aliments pour bébés Gerber ne sont disponibles pour l'instant qu'aux États-Unis " (French for: The baby food ain't here, try the U.S.)
Thanks to Hendrik Demol!
Latte Anyone? 2004-03-16 Latte means milk in Italy. In English, Latte is a coffee-drink. Many folks like to head to Starbucks or other coffee shops to take early morning latte breaks... In Germany, Latte is a well known word for an erection. So, "morning latte" is when you wake up in the morning with an erection! The word "break" means "destroy", so taking that "morning latte break" is destroying that erection. I'll leave the details to your imagination, as well as all the puns on how you take your steaming hot drink. This item is thanks to Jochen Gumpert, a standup guy! Apparently, Germans are amused at American morning television shows called "Morning Latte" and book's like the popular Amanda Hesser's book "Cooking for Mr. Latte"!
Yellow Transportation 2004-3-8 Some will think it a mistake. I think it's brilliant. The logo for Yellow Transportation says the name "Yellow" in bold black letters on hey, wait-a-second... that's not yellow! Right it is orange. And orange is all over their trucks, collateral, etc. It's good marketing that stops and makes you take a second look or makes you wonder. Apparently they named the company Yellow, and later sought out the safest color for their trucks. Collaborating with Dupont they came up with " Swamp Holly Orange ". OK, it doesn't take an Einstein to figure out you don't want to rename the company Swamp anything. Nevertheless, I like their commitment to safety while maintaining their identity and having a cool marketing strategy, which goes back to the 1930's.
Oh, you wanted mistakes. See the next item.
IKEA FARTFULL 2004-3-8 IKEA sells this workbench as the FARTFULL. Although IKEA's web page says FARTFULL is not for sale on the web, I still enjoy recommending it as the perfect gift suggestion for various people.
Swedish is a Germanic language, and "Fährt" is German for travel, so I am sure "fartfull" is being used here to suggest mobility, given the desk's wheels and design. Swedish has several words for fart, but one of them is "Fjärt" , which strikes me as close enough that their marketing department knew what it was doing. If even bad press is good public relations, then this is a case of allowing an ill wind to blow some good.
Ford Pinto, Ford Corcel Updated! 2004-1-12 Everyone, get out your web erasers! This popular story is debunked.
Marcelo de Castro Bastos informs us (and confirmed elsewhere):
Ford Pinto (under any name) wasn't ever sold in Brazil, except maybe as a low-volume import. The Ford Corcel was a totally unrelated product, the result of a joint project by the Brazilian subsidiary of Willys Overland and French automaker Renault (Willys used to make Renault cars, like the Dauphine and Gordini, under license in Brazil.) When Ford acquired Willys's Brazilian operation, they inherited the almost-finished project and decided to launch it under their own brand. They MAY have considered to use the "Pinto" brand on it, but saner heads prevailed and decided on the "Corcel" name in order to keep to the "horse" theme Ford seemed to like at the time. The "Pinto" name was never used in Brazil.
"Corcel" was a huge success, and remained in production for more than a decade, spawning a station wagon version called "Belina", a second-generation "Corcel II", a luxury version called "Del Rey" and a light pick-up version called "Pampa". In the early eighties, almost the entire production of Ford Brazil's automobile division was comprised of Corcel-related vehicles. DEBUNKED! Ford's Pinto didn't do well in Brazil. Pinto is Brazilian slang for "male genitals". Ford renamed the car the Corcel, which means horse or steed.
Note 1: If it were my translation marketing department I would have renamed the car " Dear God, I hope my gas tank doesn't explode! "
Note 2: "Pinto" is reported all over the web, along with this story, as meaning "tiny male genitals" or a "man with small genitals". According to Luiz Pryzant, it just refers to "male genitals".
SEPR Ersol 2004-1-11 Bill Leahy sends this gem: Saint-Gobain is a large French glass and ceramics company. Their subsidiary, SEPR, invented a material used in the bottom of furnaces that melt glass. The product was named "Ersol" which comes from "Electro Refractaire Sol".
Sol is the French word for bottom (of the furnace). Electro Refractaire refers to it being refractory (resists softening at high temperature) and so is made by electrically melting it. A sensible name, until they introduced the product into the United Kingdom.
Ersol sounds too close to arsehole! However, when alerted to the language problem the company decided not to change it.
Combine the name with the product's bottom position, and you can see why some product descriptions might read inappropriate to the British:
"contraction which occur during the solidification process must be carefully controlled, as it affects the homogeneity of the piece, the volume and location of the shrinkage cavity, and the residual stress."
That said, I noted several companies named Ersol on the web.
Aussie Nads 2004-1-10 Boxes labeled Aussie Nads caught my attention in the local Walgreens. In my limited vocabulary "Aussie" means Australian and "Nads" is colloquial for gonads, in particular testicles. So my first thought was that the box contained the international version of "Rocky Mountain Oysters" or "Prairie Oysters". (Here are some testicle recipes.) But I wasn't in the food aisle.
My second thought was that these were replacement parts... After all, I get an e-mail every 15 minutes offering me either viagara or organ extensions, so it's not such an unreasonable conclusion. But the idea that some very macho Australians, no doubt from the Outback, decided they were man enough to sell one of their parts and still have enough left over to make out ok (pun intended) was implausible. Closer inspection of the box reveals that Aussie Nads is a hair removal product.
Another well-named product is "Nad's for Men" and don't forget to order "Nad's Wand" the "facial applicator wand". Seems like they are penetrating many new markets and so very soon they will be in a store barely a stone's throw away from you.
Glen Thomas points out that there is a well-known greyhound named "nads" in Australia, frequently spurred on by the crowd yelling "Go Nads".
Intimidate Dating Service 2004-1-10 Israeli radio and press ran ads for the Intimidate Dating Service. Now you might think that Intimidate tries to match up sadists with masochists. However, Hagit Rozanes informs us that "Intimi" is the Hebrew word for intimate. (Hmmm. Better hope your date speaks Hebrew or you are in for a rough night...)
Liebfraumilch Wine 2004-1-10 Several people wrote me about Germany's most exported wine: Liebfraumilch. "Lieb" means "dear" or "beloved" sometimes a reference to "God" or "holy". "Frau" is "woman", and "Milch" is "milk". Hence "beloved woman's milk", also translated as "Milk of the Virgin" or "Milk of Our Lady". E-mails also offered translations of "women love milk", and "loves woman milk".
The name comes from its origins in about the 16th century in the vineyards of the Liebfrauenkirche ("Church of Our Lady") in Worms, Germany. (Worms Wine would also have been a Marketing Mistake!) (Read more in the Food Dictionary.)
It would probably be a Marketing Mistake for Liebfraumilch to produce a variation of the Got Milk? ads with paintings of a woman's breast and the milk mustache on it, next to their wine bottle. (Maybe pencil in a mustache in this El Greco...)
Götzen 2004-1-10 The european hardware store chain "Götzen" opened a mall in Istanbul. "Göt" means "ass" in Turkish. They changed the name to "Tekzen".
Thanks to Hakan Turan!
Wang Cares 2004-1-10 In the late '70s, the American computer company Wang was puzzled why its British branch refused to use its latest motto "Wang Cares". However, to British ears the motto sounds too close to "wankers". (masturbaters)
Thanks to Malcolm Howlett!
Opel Ascona 2004-1-10 General motors made a car named "Opel Ascona". This model sold poorly in Galicia, the northwestern region of Spain. In the galician and also portuguese languages, the term is similar to the term for female genitalia.
Thanks to Anjo.
Inferno Undertaker 2004-1-4 The 1990's saw the emergence of private-owned companies and the re-introduction of cremation in Estonia.
Kai Redone reports that during that period an undertaker in Tallinn, Estonia named itself Inferno, causing several raised eyebrows. I didn't see the problem right away. I thought inferno's meaning is "a very intense and uncontrolled fire" or conflagration. However, although that is one sense for the word, inferno's major usage is "hell", "purgatory" or "perdition". I can imagine the advertisement for Inferno:
"I am sorry about the loss of your loved one. Where is the funeral, so I can say goodbye to him?"
"He's going to burn in the Inferno!"
Mitsubishi Starion 2003-12-30 Andrew Harris of Australia writes: "Mitsubishi had a very successful small car called the Colt. They brought out a slightly larger model, but right up to the last minute, couldn't decide on a name for it. The people here were in a last minute conference call to the Japanese execs trying to make a decision when the final word came through that 'Stallion' would be a suitable 'horsey' name to follow Colt. Trouble was, the name wasn't written, but spoken with a thick Japanese accent and the Aussie end were mystified, but duly wrote down 'Starion'. By the time the mistake was realised the badging and ads had been started and it was too late to stop it." It's a great story and Snopes categorizes it as a definite maybe. With so many car names on this page, you have to wonder if these marketing mistakes aren't intentional, owing to the theory that even bad press is allegedly good marketing... I like that Andrew's version attributes the choice of the name to Mitsubishi's "Aussie" management. Many of the reports I receive have a local or localized coloring. The car is of course sold internationally and othe reports (such as in Snopes) attribute the problem due to American (mis-)management. There is probably a U.K. version as well...
Nintendo Donkey Kong 2003-12-30 Snopes (and Nintendo) refutes the notion that Nintendo Donkey Kong was originally to be known as Monkey Kong, or that either a smudged fax or a typographic error resulted in the product's actual name.
Yamaha Electric Grand Keyboard 2003-12-27 Yamaha had a mistranslation in their assembly instructions for their Electric Grand Keyboard, circa 1993. They should have written "screw" and ended up instead with instructions for the over-21 crowd. (And for consistency, it should have been called a Grand Organ...)
Irish Mist Liqueur 2003-12-27 Bad translations using the word "Mist" in Germany keep coming my way. (See Mist Stick and Silver Mist.)
D. Fleming reported that Irish Mist didn't do well in Germany either. Other sources claimed it was marketed with the semi-Germanized Irischer Mist, which would translate back to English as Irish dung. (Babelfish translated it kindly as "Irish muck".) (German Customs should just turn "Mist" products back at the border!)
Toaplan Zero Wing "All your base are belong to us" 2003-12-24 Toaplan was a video game maker that had a terrible, Japanese-to-English translation of the intro to their Zero Wing game, with great lines like: " Somebody set up us the bomb. " Although the company went out of business, the translation and in particular the line " All your base are belong to us " became a phenomenon crossing from the net into popular culture. Hey, if you are gonna blow it, blow it big! A web search will find plenty of hilarious web pages featuring the line. Here is a history page and an informative news item.
Traficante Mineral Water 2003-12-23 Traficante is an Italian brand of mineral water. In Spanish, it means drug dealer.
Volkswagen Jetta 2003-12-20 Volkswagen named the sedan version of Golf the Jetta. However, the letter "J" doesn't exist in the Italian alphabet, so Jetta is pronounced "Ietta", which means Misfortune...
Thanks to Alberto Malin. Omanko writes: It's true... the letter J don't exist in the Italian alphabet but it is in use a long time. (e.g. There is also an old city called Jesi and Italian names like Jacopo...). The word ietta don't exist in Italian but Jella exists (yes, you write it with the letter J!) and there are two or three words derived from this one, e.g. jettatore/iettatore (evil-eyed man) or jettatura/iettatura (bad luck). In neapolitan dialect Jetta means throw, throw away!!!
Jetta has good sales in Italy. 2003-12-23 OK, I received a few confusing if not conflicting mails on this, so I spoke with New England's Italian language translation expert, Laura Bergamini: 'The answer from Omanko is correct. Jetta by itself does not mean anything, nor is it associated with "bad luck" as "jella" is. It is part of words like "jettatore".
'Additionally, ever since it was introduced, the car was marketed with the English pronunciation of "J" so it IS called "jay-tta" by the Italian audience.'
OK The word Jetta is meaningless in Italian, and sales are good. Score one for VW Marketing. I would like to say case closed, but in fairness to Alberto and the others that wrote me that "Jettas were bad luck", translationally speaking, there can be regional or dialectical differences, and so it may be more true in some Italian-speaking areas. Also, as with all the entries here, I check for other sources before posting, and did find some other mentions of it. So perhaps it is an urban legend or a case of "You say Jetta, I say Ietta".
OK, More mail from Italy. Francesco V. of Calabria writes that Jetta does mean "throw away", not only in Neapolitan dialect, but in southern Italy. Grazie Molto!
Hoover Zyklon, Umbro Zyklon, Siemens Zyklon 2003-12-20 Hoover, maker of vacuum cleaners, sells a model on the European market, including Germany, called the Zyklon. Zyklon is the German word for Cyclone, so it is a seemingly sensible choice for a powerful vacuum. However, Zyklon B is the lethal gas used by Nazis in concentration camps. I would think that the name would draw protests, but I see German web sites currently selling the vacuums for less than 200 euro. Perhaps, if readers are aware of either protests or reasons that it is not considered offensive, they will e-mail me. Meanwhile, CNN.com reported on August 28, 2002, that British shoe maker Umbro received many protests for its running shoe the Zyklon. Umbro apologized and renamed it. Apparently, the shoe had been named the Zyklon since 1999, but they had not written the name on the shoe until recently. A week later, BBC News reported that Bosch Siemens Hausgeraete (BSH) was withdrawing its trademark application for the name Zyklon. BSH had filed two applications with the US Patent & Trademark Office for "Zyklon" across a range of home products, including gas ovens.
Reed Business News 2003-12-20 A few years back Reed Business News relaunched itself with the branding: " If it's news to you, it's news to us. ".
It was replaced after a couple of days...
Thanks to Adam Rutherford.
Hong Kong Tourist Board 2003-12-20 According to TravelBiz.com.au in April, 2003 the Hong Kong Tourist Board tried to either pull their ads or have their slogan changed. But it was too late to change the campaign that was on billboards throughout Hong Kong and in British versions of Cosmopolitan and Conde Nast Traveller. The slogan that was running "Hong Kong: It will take your breath away." unfortunately coincided with the SARS epidemic that resulted in numerous deaths. Shortness of breath is one of the main symptoms of SARS.
(OK, I know it is not a translation mistake, just bad timing, but it caught my attention anyway.)
Sharwoods 2003-11-18 MediaGuardian.co.uk reports: Sharwoods £6m campaign to launch its new Bundh sauces received calls immediately from numerous Punjabi speakers. "bundh" sounds like the Punjai word for "arse". Sharwoods has no intention of changing it. "We hope that once they understand the derivation of the Bundh sauce range and taste the delicious meals they can produce, they will agree that it is miles apart from the Punjabi word that is similar but spelled and pronounced differently (with a long "u")." Thanks to Paul Kerins for this.
Peanut Chocolate Bars Anyone know the name of the peanut-packed chocolate bar that lost out in the Japanese market because many Asians believe peanuts and chocolate cause nosebleeds?
Both peanuts and chocolate (actually caffeine) cause allergic reactions. I didn't find reports on the web of their causing nosebleeds specifically, but I did find pages where individuals are avoiding them to prevent nosebleeds. Also, asian diets are very different from western diets and so tolerances differ.
General Motors Buick LaCrosse 2003-10-22 Reuters reports: General Motors Corp. will rename its Buick LaCrosse in Canada because the name for the car is slang for masturbation in Quebec, embarrassed officials with the U.S. automaker said on Thursday. GM officials, who declined to be named, said it had been unaware that LaCrosse was a term for self-gratification among teenagers in French-speaking Quebec.
GM officials in Canada are working on a new name for the car...
Pizza Hut P'Zone 2003-06-23 Pizza Hut is advertising their new dish, a calzone they named the P'Zone. It is pronounced like " pezón ", the Spanish word for "nipple". Susana says the Pizza Hut PR dept. in Texas told her they knew about this before launching the campaign.
Maybe we shouldn't file this under mistakes then, and instead put it under interesting marketing strategies!
Muchas gracias to Susana C. Schultz of Strictly Spanish for this report!
Honda Fitta/Jazz/Fit 2003-04-06 Car maker Honda introduced their new car "Fitta" in the Nordic countries during 2001, only to find out that "fitta" is an old word, currently used in vulgar language to refer to a woman's genitals in Swedish, Norwegian and Danish. It was renamed to "Honda Jazz" for the Nordic market.
According to newspaper articles, Japanese ads said that "[Fitta] is small on the outside, but large on the inside". It's now called the Honda Fit in Japanese markets.
My thanks to Peter Karlsson for this report!
SEGA 2003-04-05 In Italy "sega" is the unofficial but most popular name for the act of male masturbation. So, the popular videogame makers SEGA Enterprises, attempting to disassociate SEGA from sega, changed the pronunciation to "see-ga" in their ads, as if to educate Italians about proper English (or Japanese?) pronunciation.
Many Italians are surprised to learn that SEGA is not pronounced see-ga, but say-ga, outside of Italy.
Also alleged, is that when the SEGA-sponsored Arsenal Gunners soccer team was to play the Italian Fiorentina team for the Championship (circa 1999), the Arsenals argued to play the game in the U.K. Apparently, their away flag displays the sponsor prominently and it might inspire, er I mean offend the Italian TV audience.
American or Braniff Airlines When American Airlines wanted to advertise its new leather first class seats in the Mexican market, it translated its "Fly In Leather" campaign literally, which meant "Fly Naked" ("vuela en cuero") in Spanish!
Some reports say it was Braniff not American. About Spanish Language (part 2) says 'The idiom for "buck naked" is "en cueros", not "en cuero". Even a beginning translator would realize that a word play such as "in leather" might not work in a literal translation.'
Interestingly, Castaways Travel of Spring, Texas thought flying naked was a good idea. See these articles: Houston Business Journal: Inaugural flight makes nudes headlines and errtravel.com: Berrly Flying
American Motors Matador The Matador did not do well in Puerto Rico where "matador" has the connotation of "killer". (Bull-fighting was abolished on the island more than 100 years ago, when the U.S. took control of Puerto Rico.)
Bacardi Pavane/Pavian Popular story these days is that Bacardi marketed a drink called either Pavane, which sounds like Pavian, or it marketed a drink called Pavian. The latter sounds plausible, if they wanted to go after the healthy, aristocratic, pure water drinkers, as it sounds like the brand "Evian". Either name would have given the fruity drink a French mystique. The claim is the Bacardi drink doesn't do well in Germany where "Der Pavian" means "the Baboon" auf Deutsch...
Chevy Nova, Vauxhall Nova, Opel Corsa Updated 2004-01-19 When General Motors introduced the Chevrolet (aka Chevy) Nova in South America, it was apparently unaware that "no va" means "it won't go". After the company figured out why it wasn't selling any cars, it renamed the car in its Spanish markets to the Caribe.
This one is untrue. For more background on this, see:
About Spanish Language (part 1),
http://www.urbanlegends.com/products/chevy_nova_mexico.html,
http://www.tafkac.org/products/chevy_nova_mexico.html, and
http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.htm.
Steven Marzuola wrote me: "I grew up in Venezuela, and there were Novas all over the place. I have also learned that it did rather well in Mexico. It was not offered in many other countries, for a variety of reasons, but none of them having to do with the name."
Steve Checkley informs me that in mainland Europe, the GM car known as the Vauxhall Nova in the United Kingdom, is known as the Opel Corsa. This is true as I have confirmed it elsewhere. The European Novas were launched in 1983. However, the American version ran from 1961 (starting with the 1962 model) through to 1979. The pictures that I have seen of the European Novas don't look like the American Novas. There may have been some similarities under the covers of course. But I think the cars were different generations and probably only related by name. Here is a history of the American Nova and a history of the Vauxhall Nova 1983-1993
For related items, see Vauxhall Nova and Noah's Chevy Nova
Clairol Mist Stick Clairol introduced the "Mist Stick", a curling iron, into German only to find out that "mist" is slang for manure. Not too many people had use for the "manure stick". Actually, this is not quite right and confuses the curling iron story with the Rolls Royce Siver Mist example. The German word "Miststück" (pronounced similarly to Mist Stick) is how you might call a woman a bitch or slut.
(And now you know what to get your ex-wife for Christmas!) Thanks to Peter Hofer for correcting this.
Coca-Cola Fresca In Mexico, Fresca is a term for Lesbian. Jokes abound, but sales weren't hurt. (Despite what you read elsewhere on the web.) There are many fruit drinks named Agua Fresca (fresh water).
Coca-Cola, Ke-ke-ken-la, Ko-kou-ko-le The name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered as Ke-ke-ken-la. Unfortunately, the Coke company did not discover until after thousands of signs had been printed that the phrase means "bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with wax" depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 Chinese characters and found a close phonetic equivalent, "ko-kou-ko-le," which can be loosely translated as "happiness in the mouth."
For more background on Coke in China, see: Snopes.com or www.kekoukele.org/kekoukele.htm.
Colgate Cue Colgate introduced a toothpaste in France called Cue, the name of a notorious porno mag.
I have received several mails saying that they don't know of a French magazine named Cue. This story goes back to the early '90s so Cue might have existed and gone out of business since then. Others have written that they do know of a magazine named Cul, which is pronounced like cue (e.g. "kyu").
Personally, I don't give this story much credence. However, from the mails I get, a lot of people are out searching for this magazine. If anyone wants to join me in publishing a French porn magazine named Cue, there is a ready market for it!
Coors Coors put its slogan, "Turn it loose" into Spanish, where it was read as "Suffer from diarrhea".
Electrolux Vacuum The Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux tried to sell its goods in America but didn't help itself with this slogan, "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux."
Ford Comet, Ford Caliente Ford's Comet, was called "Caliente" in Mexico. "Caliente" literally means "hot" (as in temperature), but colloquially it is also used for either "horny" or "prostitute".
Ford Cortina Ford's Cortina is translated as "jalopy".
Ford Fiera Ford's Fiera doesn't do well with Spanish-speaking Latin-Americans, since "fiera" means "ugly old woman".
Gerber Baby Food When Gerber started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as in the US, with the beautiful Caucasian baby on the label. Later they learned that in Africa, companies routinely put pictures on the label of what's inside, since most people can't read. Snopes dismisses the African baby food story as an example of "cultural prejudice". I am a big fan of Snopes, but in this case I am a little disappointed. I don't mind if the story is totally false and completely fabricated, but it would be nice if Snopes offered some evidence such as interviews with someone(s) from Africa, or perhaps a statement from Gerber or other companies selling baby food in Africa, that they continue to market the product with baby pictures on the label. Hmm. OK I'll write to Gerber and see if I can get a statement from them and post the result back here.
Hyundai Pony Richard Seamon reports: Hyundai had problems with the Hyundai Pony. In Cockney rhyming slang, "Pony" is short for "pony and trap", meaning crap. It didn't deter Hyundai, they still marketed it in the UK (circa 1982). (Mentioned in Independent.co.uk.)
Hunt-Wesson Big John, Gros Jos Hunt-Wesson introduced its Big John products in French Canada as Gros Jos before finding out that the phrase, in slang, means "big breasts". In this case, however, the name problem did not have a noticeable effect on sales.
International Wine Glass Symbol Stevadores in an unnamed African port, seeing the international --but evidently not universal!-- symbol for 'fragile' (a wine glass with snapped stem) presumed it meant that some idiot had sent a cargo of broken glass. So they obligingly pitched all the cases overboard into the harbour!
(As reported some years ago in Print, the journal for graphic design, and submitted by Margaret Tarbet.)
Kentucky Fried Chicken, KFC Also in Chinese, the Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan "finger-lickin' good" came out as "eat your fingers off."
Kinki Nippon Tourist Agency Japan's second-largest tourist agency was mystified when it entered English-speaking markets and began receiving requests for unusual sex tours. Upon finding out why, the owners of Kinki Nippon Tourist Company changed its name.
Locum Locum is a Swedish company. In 1991, they sent Christmas cards to all of their customers. They thought they would give their logo a little holiday spirit, by substituting a little heart for the letter "o". For some reason, they also used all lowercase letters. The lowercase "L" can therefore be easily misunderstood to be an "i", and the locum logo looked like one of those "I love ..." bumper stickers, with an unfortunate pornographic sentiment to it.
Thanks to Johan Inganni (Sweden) for this entry. John Severinson writes on 2003-11-16:
"Actually, it was a paper ad in the largest papers. The image you've got there is a scan from DN (www.dn.se), one of them. And, it was in 2001. Locum shortly afterwards claimed 'they had no idea the ad would send such a message but appreciates that the brand Locum is associated with love and caring'."
Mazda Laputa, Laputa: Castle in the Sky, Laputa (1819) Mazda's Laputa seems like an odd name for a minivan. The Mazda Laputa was introduced in Japan in 1991. Spanish speakers immediately think of "puta", the word for prostitute. With that in mind the ads claiming that "Laputa is designed to deliver maximum utility in a minimum space while providing a smooth, comfortable ride" and "a lightweight, impact-absorbing body" are humorous. Distributors in Santiago, Chile asked Mazda to rename the vehicle. Japanese speakers are likely unaware of this meaning and more likely associate "Laputa" with a popular 1986 animated film: "Laputa: Castle in the Sky". However, the film could not be marketed in either Spain or Italy because the word "Laputa" appears onscreen and would offend. These are not the first uses of the word. "Laputa" is referenced in Gulliver's Travels, where author Jonathan Swift wrote that the astronomers of the island Laputa knew about the moons of Mars and European astronomers did not. Meanwhile modern astronomers have named a real asteroid (1819) Laputa. Of course, that leaves the question of who named the asteroid... Was it a fan of Swift's fiction, one of the many that adores Hayao Miyazaki's animated film, a minivan enthusiast, or someone that just had an interesting evening out? Inquiring minds want to know! Thanks to Sokoon for this entry.
Milk The Dairy Association's huge success with the campaign "Got Milk?" prompted them to expand advertising to Mexico. It was soon brought to their attention the Spanish translation read "Are you lactating?"
Mitsubishi Pajero, Montero Mitsubishi had to rename its Pajero automobile because the word is a vulgar term for a masturbating man.
This story is true, although there was no blunder involved because the car was marketed under a different name from the beginning. In Spanish-speaking countries, this model has been sold as the Montero.
Nike Nike has a television commercial for hiking shoes that was shot in Kenya using Samburu tribesmen. The camera closes in on the one tribesman who speaks, in native Maa. As he speaks, the Nike slogan "Just do it" appears on the screen. Lee Cronk, an anthropologist at the University of Cincinnati, says the Kenyan is really saying, "I don't want these. Give me big shoes." Says Nike's Elizabeth Dolan, "We thought nobody in America would know what he said." (From an article in Forbes magazine.)
Nike Air Nike offended Muslims in June, 1997 when the "flaming air" logo for its Nike Air sneakers looked too similar to the Arabic form of God's name, "Allah". Nike pulled more than 38,000 pairs of sneakers from the market.
Nissan/Mitsubishi Pachero For their series of landcruisers, Nissan Company invented an apparently meaningless word borrowed from the Spanish " pajaro " (bird). They named it "Pachero". This means wanker in South America. Thanks to Arne Schäpers for this submission. According to other sources, e.g. About Spanish Language (part 2) it was Mitsubishi, and the company renamed the car to Montero before marketing it in Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America.
Nissan Moco Nissan's minivan Moco doesn't do so well in Spanish-speaking markets. Especially green ones. Distributors in Santiago, Chile asked that the vehicle be renamed since Moco is the Spanish word for mucous. Thanks to Sokoon for this entry.
Orange Juice To boost orange juice sales in predominantly continental breakfast eating England, a campaign extolled the drink's eye-opening, pick-me-up qualities with the slogan, "Orange juice. It gets your pecker up." Nicholas Shearer counters "... it's a perfectly good slogan and statement. 'keep your pecker up' is a traditional positive get-up-and-go statement in Britain. Unlike the U.S. 'pecker', it has no other connotations (other than maybe a birds beak). So the statement is perfect for the English market..."
I concede, since I don't want to start comparing peckers. Call me chicken but I don't want to have a cock fight over it.
Parker Pen, Parker Quink Ink When Parker Pen marketed a ballpoint pen in Mexico, its ads were supposed to say "It won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you." However, the Spanish word " embarazar " was used by mistake to mean embarrass. The ads actually said: "It won't leak in your pocket and make you pregnant."
Recent versions of this story claim it was an ad for Parker's Quink Ink.
Pepsi In Taiwan, the translation of the Pepsi slogan "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation" came out as "Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead."
Pepsodent Teeth-Whitening Toothpaste vs. Betel Nut Chewers and Teeth-Blackening Pepsodent's teeth-whitening toothpaste didn't fare well in Southeast Asia where many cultures value chewing Betel Nuts which darkens the teeth. Chewing Betel Nuts is alleged to strengthen teeth (it may have anti-bacterial qualities) and is associated with various rituals and ceremonies (depending on the particular culture and changing over time) including the coming of age of women. Many cultures historically blacken teeth since only savage beasts and evil demons show their white fangs. (Why am I thinking of some marketing folks right now...) In Japan, in the 12th century, blackening was associated with coming of age. Later in the 18th it was associated with nobility and Samurai. In the 19th century, it was used by married woman. ("I can't tonite honey, I have to blacken my teeth.") See the article on ThingsAsian.com by Barbara Cohen on Healthy Black Smiles. The product slogan was racially offensive to some as well- "You'll wonder where the yellow went..."
Perdue Chicken Chicken-man Frank Perdue's slogan, "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken," got terribly mangled in another Spanish translation. A photo of Perdue with one of his birds appeared on billboards all over Mexico with a caption that explained "It takes a hard man to make a chicken aroused."
Pope T-shirt An American t-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish market which promoted the Pope's visit. Instead of the desired "I saw the Pope" in Spanish, the shirts proclaimed "I saw the Potato." Andrew Sheh explains: Capital P "Papa" means "Pope". "papa" means potato. Finally, "papa" with an accent on the last "a" means father. Beardo writes: el Papa (masculine) is the Pope; la papa (feminine) is the potato. VI EL PAPA. VI LA PAPA.
Powergenitalia, www.powergenitalia.com No, Powergenitalia is not the company responsible for all that spam offering to help you with organ extensions or to invigorate you with Viagara-powered vitality. It is also not the Italian division of energy giant Powergen. When numerous English-speakers on the web took note of the web site www.powergenitalia.com, Powergen felt obligated to announce that they had no connection with the site and in fact had no Italian offices, so that people would not think that it was their Translation Marketing Mistake. No, they left that distinctive honor to the marketing folks at Powergen Italia, an Italian maker of battery chargers. Perhaps they were shocked to learn its a World Wide Web. The website now switches you over to the more aptly named for English-speakers, http://www.batterychargerpowergen.it.
(Reported by many places including Ananova.)
Puffs Tissues Puffs tissues allegedly had trouble in Germany due to their name being a colloquial term for a house of ill-repute (prostitution). I always say "Gesundheit" when someone around me sneezes. I am afraid that now when I hand them a tissue, I will be thinking "Gesundheit" means "Thank you for that blow job". If you go to the Puffs website, their pages are very North American-centric, being in English and French only. The Puffs History page mentions their relatively recent (1999) expansion into Canada. Seems unlikely they tried Germany, but maybe if it was a bust they opted not to refer to it anywhere.
Rolls Royce Silver Mist, Silver Shadow Rolls Royce changed the name of its car the Silver Mist to the Silver Shadow before entering Germany. In German, "Mist" means manure (to put it nicely).
Salem Cigarettes The American slogan for Salem cigarettes, "Salem - Feeling Free," got translated in the Japanese market into "When smoking Salem, you feel so refreshed that your mind seems to be free and empty."
Samarin Lars Bergquist tells us: Samarin is a Swedish over-the-counter remedy for upset stomachs. (Like Alka-Seltzer.) A few years back they used ads that looked like comic strips with no text. There were three pictures. The first was a man looking sick, grasping his tummy. On the second picture he drank a glass of Samarin and on the third picture he was smiling again. The ad campaign was a success in Europe. However, when the company ran the ad in Arabic-speaking newspapers they did not do too well. I guess that they didn't know that in those countries people read from right to left.... (See the I18nGuy page on User Interfaces For Right-To-Left Languages.)
Schweppes Tonic Water In Italy, a campaign for Schweppes Tonic Water translated the name into Schweppes Toilet Water.
Toyota MR2 Marcel Rigadin reports that Toyota makes the MR2, which in France is pronounced "merdé" or spelled 'merdeux', means "crappy". (Mentioned in Dave Taylor's Global Software.)
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in Data Studio
A cleaned version of OpenWebText2 by removing non-English, duplicated, copyrighted, and low-quality (too short, too many special characters, etc) samples.
This dataset has also been decontaminated with respect to the following benchmarks based on n-gram overlap:
- GLUE (dev set of SST-2, CoLA, QQP, WNLI, RTE, QNLI, MNLI; test set of MPRC)
- SIQA, PIQA, QASC, CSQA, HellaSWAG (all dev set)
- CONLL 2003
- BLIMP
- MAIN
- BoolQ (dev set)
- WinoGrande (dev set)
- ANLI (test set)
- ARC easy and challenge (test set)
- RACE middle and high (test set)
- MMLU (dev, val, and test sets)
- MATH, GSM8K (test set)
- HumanEval (test set)
- GPQA (diamond)
4,096 documents are removed in this step.
Dataset Statistics
Total number of samples: 13,071,217.
Size of downloaded parquet files: 34G.
Filtered Version
There is a model-filtered version in the filtered branch, including 12,804,779 samples .
Qwen2.5-32B-Instruct is used to generate language quality annotation (on a scale of 1-5) for 250K C4 samples. A RoBERT-large classifier is trained with regression on these annotations. Any document receiving a score of 1 or 2 from the classifier is removed. The remaining documents are also accompanied by their scores.
You can download this version by specifying the --revision argument:
huggingface-cli download --repo-type dataset Geralt-Targaryen/openwebtext2 --revision filtered --local-dir .
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