An Old-Word Tour: Just What Is a Blog? Phishing? An iPod?
What better way for a technology column to look back on the events of 2005 than to let technology automatically do the looking back for it. Equipped with a five-year old version of Microsoft Office, that is exactly what we are about to do.
Microsoft's word-processing program has a spell checker that tells you about any word it doesn't recognize -- not just misspellings, but also, for instance, unfamiliar proper names. The company does a good job of keeping the spell checker up to date, adding thousands of new entries, many of them topical, with each new release.
I, though, am still using Office 2000, meaning my spelling checker doesn't know anything about the world of the last five years. (I know I can add new words to it, but I rarely bother.) Thus, loading all of this past year's Portals columns into Word, and seeing what words were flagged as misspelled, is a handy way of finding out about what was new this year.
It's like a software version of Rip Van Winkle.
There is, for instance, the word "blogs," which gets a wavy red underline each time it occurs. Blogs were virtually unknown five years ago; now they are unavoidable. In both politics and technology, bloggers have become crucial part of the conversation, which in itself is something of a blogosphere term.
"Blogosphere," of course, is another neologism whose acquaintance my Word has yet to make.
The biggest question about blogs has become not whether they will die out, but whether, on account of their proliferation, people have the time to read as many as they might want to. This is especially the case since people began spending so much of their time with their iPod, something else people weren't doing in 2000.
Apple's music player continues to be the biggest thing in the music industry, mostly because Steve Jobs gets so much attention with everything he does that there is no oxygen left for anyone else. This year, the iPod also became a video player, and began what will likely be a land rush of media companies selling movies and television shows on an "on-demand" basis. To the extent that consumers clamor for portable video on demand, the iPod will have some stiff competition from cellphones. If you insist on watching "Dial M for Murder" on a small screen, why not use one that will also let you dial?
No one, of course, dials any more; we push buttons on a keypad. Even that is in the process of changing because of the Word-unaware word "Skype," along with its technology cousins. Skype is a brand of software that lets you use the Internet to make free telephone calls. The company was bought by eBay during the year for roughly $2.5 billion, a sum that a lot of people, this columnist included, found to be on the high side.
No one, though, doubts the manner in which "Internet telephony" programs, of which Skype is one of the best known, are changing the world of telecommunications. John Chambers, the chief executive of Cisco Systems, has been saying for years that one day soon, because of the Internet, telephone service will essentially be free. For millions of people on personal computers, that day is at hand.
Now, if they could only get to work on making things sound better. In the decidedly still un-free world of cellphones, voice quality seems to be only getting worse.
Most of the new things in tech are good; as a reminder of the exceptions, consider "phishing," something that Word users in 2000 didn't have to know about, much less contend with. Phishing is the dismal science of getting people to divulge personal financial information on fake Web sites, most commonly, those masquerading as belonging to eBay.
One hesitates to declare victory prematurely, but one senses that with phishing, spyware and all other varieties of sleazy Web lawlessness, a corner may have been turned this past year. For example, one hears fewer tales of email viruses rampaging around the world, choking computers and shutting down email systems. One reason is that Microsoft has made security a priority: Angry customers gave it no choice. Another reason is that Web users, even newbies, have become increasingly scam-savvy.
Granted, there is still odious porn spam, along with those ridiculous come-ons for fake Rolexes. But with a little bit of luck, and a lot of clever programming, even these might become a thing of the past in the next year or three.
When it comes to these Word new-tech words, it's possible to make a game out of stringing them together. Such as, "I read on MySpace that Grokster is shut down and BitTorrent is going legal, too. Well, there's always Netflix."
Another amusing pastime is figuring out what next year's list might look like. That's something that software can't yet help with; either a real crystal ball or a real Rip Van Winkle volunteer is necessary.
Anyone feel like taking a long nap?
新词搜索：Blog是什么意思?
除了依赖科技的自动功能外，科技专栏还能有什么更好的办法来对2005年的大事做一番回顾呢？我们正打算凭藉手头已有5年历史的Microsoft Office来进行回顾。
微软的文字处理软件具有拼写检查功能，运行后能显示出所有无法辨认的词，不仅仅是错误拼写的词，也可能是不常见的词。微软在更新拼写检查功能方面做得很好，每次更新都会加入几千个新词，许多都颇具时代特色。
但我现在使用的还是Office 2000，这意味著近5年出现的新词，我的拼写检查功能都认不出。（我知道自己也能添加新词，但我嫌麻烦，很少会这样做。）因此，如果把过去一年本专栏所有的文章都贴到Word里，就会看到那些被标出拼写错误的词，这能让我很容易地找到今年新出现的事物。
这有点像软件版的《瑞普?凡?温克尔》(Rip Van Winkle)（美国作家华盛顿?欧文的一篇短篇小说，其中的主人公一觉睡了20年）。
比如，所有的“博客”(blog)都被红色的波浪下划线标示了出来。五年前很少为人所知的博客，如今已妇孺皆知。无论是在政界还是科技界，博客写手(blogger)都已成为话题中非常重要的部分，围绕博客也慢慢形成了“博客界”(blogsphere)。
当然，博客界这个词对于我的Word来说也很陌生。
博客最大的问题已不是它们是否会慢慢消失，而是随著越来越多的博客出现，人们是否有时间像他们希望的那样去读完这些日志。相比5年前，如今人们有很多时间都用来听iPod了，这就更让人担心他们是否有那么多事件去读博客了。
苹果电脑(Apple)的iPod依然是音乐播放器领域的佼佼者，乔布斯(Steve Jobs)做任何事都能吸引太多的目光，竞争对手几乎没有生存空间。今年，新款的iPod又增加了视频播放功能，可能很快会掀起媒体公司按需出售电影和电视节目的热潮。但在这方面，iPod仍将遇到手机的强有力竞争。如果你坚持在小屏幕上看《电话情杀案》(Dial M for Murder)，为什么不用一个同时也可以拨电话号码的设备呢？
当然，如今没有人会“拨”电话号码，我们都是在键盘上“按”号码。即使是“按”号码也面临转变，这都是因为另一个Word不认识的词Skype。Skype是一款软件，使用该软件你可以在互联网上免费通话。Skype公司今年被eBay以25亿美元收购，对于这个金额，包括笔者在内的许多人都认为偏高。
不过，没有人质疑以Skype为代表的网络电话软件正在颠覆电信世界。思科系统(Cisco Systems)的首席执行长钱伯斯(John Chambers)多年来一直说，由于互联网，在不久的将来，电话服务将免费。对于几百万电脑用户来说，这一天即将到来。
大多数科技新事物都不错；不过也有例外，如“网络钓鱼”(phishing)，这个词Word 2000也不认识。“网络钓鱼”是一种恶意的技术，通过设立假网站骗取个人金融信息，最常见的就是模仿成eBay的样子。
虽然现在宣布胜利似乎还有些为时过早，但我们还是感觉到，虽然网络钓鱼、间谍软件(spyware)等种种网络犯罪行为依然存在，但2005年网络安全局势似乎有所转变。例如，过去一年人们听到的电子邮件病毒冲击全球的事情似乎少了。一个原因是微软已把安全视为头等大事：愤怒的用户让其别无选择。另一个原因是网络用户，即使是新手，对网络欺诈也越来越警惕。
不过，还是有令人讨厌的色情垃圾邮件，以及那些可笑的兜售假劳力士(Rolex)手表的低劣广告。单凭一些运气以及许多出色的程序，两三年内，这些广告和垃圾邮件也将成为过去。
当谈到这些Word不认识的科技新词时，我突发奇想是否有可能把这些词串成一个句子呢？比如，“我在MySpace上读到Grokster已被关闭，而BitTorrent将合法化。哦，Netflix总是老生常谈。”
还有一个有意思的消遣，看看明年将有什么值得期待。这方面软件可是无能为力了；或许需要一个真正的水晶球，或瑞普?凡?温克尔再生。
说到瑞普?凡?温克尔，可能就有人想打一个长长的盹了。
