Terms, Concepts, Phrases and Expressions by Dave Smithey
Hippocratic Oath for the Web
First, do no harm.
If that doesn’t work, put ads on your website.
(Note that the phrase “First, do no harm” (“Primum non nocere” in Latin) does not appear in the real Hippocratic Oath which probably was not written by Hippocrates. See Hippocratic Oath – Wikipedia and Primum non nocere – Wikipedia for details.)
If My Music is Too Cloud – Then You’re Too Old
“If My Music is Too Cloud – Then You’re Too Old!!!” is a modernized version of a classic phrase about listening to music as spoken from a younger to an older generation.
Dancing With the Cars
“Dancing With the Cars” refers to pedestrians, cyclists, etc interacting with cars in shared spaces such as roads and parking lots.
There’s a Fine Line Between Scattered and Diverse
“There’s a fine line between scattered and diverse” is a saying that I use to refer to the fact that what appears diverse to one person may seem scattered to someone else. Also, it is difficult to evaluate whether your approach to something has become scattered.
This saying was inspired by the line “It’s such a fine line between stupid, and clever.” said by the character David St. Hubbins in the movie “This is Spinal Tap”. For this and more Tap quotes see “This is Spinal Tap” – Memorable Quotes on IMDB.
Who Am I and What Am I Editing?
“Who am I and what am I editing?” is a saying that I use to describe the disoriented feeling that can occur after spending too much time at the computer working on too many different things. This especially applies when concentration and focus are low due to fatigue and/or lack of sleep.
Also the “what” part really applies when using simultaneous editing (mutiple carets/cursors).
“Is a vanity metric” is a vanity metric
Mostly just a stupid play on words but based on the idea that people are often just as arbitrary and over zealous in dismissing a metric as other people are in overusing it. Sometimes pointing out that people are just jumping on the bandwagon becomes the next bandwagon.
Invisible Dye
“Invisible Dye” refers to dye that is used in products to color something that is not expected to be seen. This came to mind when I was reading the ingredients of a sports gel in a foil pouch. You can’t see the gel in the package and it is intended to be squeezed out directly into your mouth. It has “Red 40” in it. 🙁
Stairmaster Pitch
“Stairmaster Pitch” refers to a longer version of an “Elevator Pitch” (Elevator Speech). Possibly a good but long LinkedIn profile (or other social networking or social media profile). Could also be a rambling not-quick-to-get-to-the-point attempt at explaining what you’re up to verbally in person.
Bus to Move
“Bus to Move” refers to using a bus for transportation, especially local public transportation. It is supposed to sound like the general slang phrase “bust a move” and more specifically like the title of the song “Bust a Move” by Young MC.
I’ve been working on writing public transit (mass transit) parody lyrics to that song for years but haven’t finished yet.
Time Chains
“Time Chains” humorously (yet derisively) refers to things that one is obligated to do to deal with the time change to/from Daylight Savings time.
Blog Like a Thinker
“Think like a blogger. Blog like a thinker.”
This saying is my advice to bloggers (at least it would be if I knew enough about blogging to be giving advice to them 🙂 ).
The second half is the most important and would make a good bumper sticker or t-shirt.
“BLOG LIKE A THINKER.”
Caps Lock
“Caps Lock” describes a person “shouting” a lot with ALL CAPS LIKE THIS. For example, “He went totally caps lock about that on Twitter yesterday”. Might also refer humorously to offline behavior.
Car Raised
“Car Raised” refers to the concept of kids being raised in the car culture and especially to the adults that they become. I thought of this after reading a reference to “car crazed” America by someone who was wondering how much support high speed rail could get.
Carticulates
“Carticulates” refers to particulates in the air that are generated by cars including tire dust.
Crosswalk Pitch
“Crosswalk Pitch” is a horizontal version of “Elevator Pitch” (Elevator Speech). You should be able to get your point/pitch across in the time it takes to cross the street.
I thought of this after someone approached me at a street corner about possibly hiring me. The conversation started while we were waiting for the traffic light to change and I gave him my card as we talked and walked across the street and then he went in a different direction when we got to the other side.
Electrify Responsibly
“Electrify Responsibly” refers to the concept of electrifying vehicles only when we power them with renewable electricity.
This might not be possible to follow strictly in practice, but it seems like a reasonable guiding principle. I’m afraid that people will be more interested in getting an electric car than in creating a system that cleanly generates the electricity that hundreds of millions (maybe eventually billions) of EV’s will need along with all the other electricity that we will need.
Friends of the Worth
“Friends of the Worth” refers to people, companies, organizations, etc that put too high an economic/financial value on natural resources such as fossil fuels.
This phrase popped into my head when I was thinking about the organization Friends of the Earth.
Grounders
“Grounders” refers to people who think that fossil fuels such as petroleum (oil) and/or coal and/or natural gas should be left in the ground.
If the Keyword is Vital – Put it in a Title
“If the keyword is vital,
put it in a title.”
This is my SEO/SEM catch phrase to emphasize the importance to search engines of text that appears in HTML Title tags (title elements).
Microbe Logging
“Microbe Logging” refers to trying to figure out and document the situation of microbes that might or might not be eating oil spilled by the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico (or elsewhere). The term is meant to sound like “MicroBlogging” as applied to social networking sites like Twitter.
Moving Signs Move Customers
This was the catch phrase that I put on my business cards before I started working as a sign spinner. It refers primarily to getting customers moving toward a store but hopefully to “moving” them psychologically too.
Newtonian Marketing
I use the term “Newtonian Marketing” to refer to human-performed physical activities such as sign spinning that are used in guerrilla marketing to get attention to a store, event, logo, message, product, candidate, cause, concept, keyword, etc. Note that this type of activity can also provide raw material (images or especially video) for use in social media campaigns that have a viral or content marketing component.
Combining the term “marketing” with the physics term “Newtonian” (referring to Newtonian Mechanics) was done to emphasize my view that doing a job such as being a sign spinner is largely about marketing/advertising/promoting and not only about moving plastic. Like my previous business card said:
“Moving Signs Move Customers”
and if they didn’t then companies wouldn’t pay people to move signs all day.
Origin of the “Moving Rocks” Name
“Moving Rocks” was originally a potential name for a drumming concept that I had been working on. I came up with the phrase while working on my grip with drumsticks on a practice pad during the summer of 2009. The technique that I was concentrating on was properly positioning my feet, shoulders, elbows and wrists in order to facilitate symmetric positioning and motion of my fingers and the sticks.
The idea popped into my head (while practicing on the practice pad) that the way that the pattern of these few specific areas largely determines how everything lines up is similar to the way that the pattern of rocks can determine how water flows in a creek. I thought of moving these different areas of the body as being like moving rocks in a creek and decided that “Moving Rocks” might be a good shorthand for the concept.
Within a minute or two I decided that I really liked the phrase Moving Rocks and that it would also be a cool name for a song and/or album and/or band and/or project-of-some-kind. Within a day or two I had decided to use it for a band name and probably other projects as well.
I’ve thought of many alternative interpretations of the phrase. My favorite one from early on is to use “Moving Rocks” to mean “moving is awesome”.
I set up MovingRocks.com in 2009 to facilitate any or all things Moving Rocks that I might come up with.
Pinter Rest
“Pinter Rest” (two words) refers to taking a break from other stuff (e.g. “work”) by using Pinterest.
Slow Expo
I propose the term “Slow Expo” to refer to the early part of an exponential growth curve. I thought of the term in the context of quantities like page views, visitors, friends, fans, followers, etc.
The basic concept is that the early part of an exponential curve appears to be linear with a slight upward slope. Often it is not referred to as (or noticed to be) exponential until the later section where it is obviously rising increasingly fast. This is especially true as something is unfolding and the steep part hasn’t happened yet.
There is excellent coverage of this in the book “The Singularity is Near – When Humans Transcend Biology” by Ray Kurzweil. From page 78 of the print edition:
“The figures below show the overall growth of the Internet based on the number of hosts (Web-server computers). These two charts plot the same data, but one on a logarithmic axis and the other is linear. As has been discussed, while technology progresses exponentially, we experience it in the linear domain. From the perspective of most observers, nothing was happening in this area until the mid-1990s when seemingly out of nowhere the World Wide Web and e-mail exploded into view. But the emergence of the Internet into a world-wide phenomenon was readily predictable by examining exponential trend data in the early 1980s from ARPANET, predecessor to the Internet.”
Another interesting thing that I learned from this book is that the Internet continued to grow by these measures during and after the dot-com bubble burst in 2000. Interestingly, even e-commerce revenue (both business-to-business and business-to-consumer) increased through the dot-com bust.
On page 103 of the print edition Kurzweil points out:
“There is, however, a pace to all revolutions, and the investments and stock market valuations in this area expanded way beyond the early phases of this economic S-curve. The boom-and-bust cycle in these information technologies was strictly a capital-markets (stock-value) phenomenon. Neither boom nor bust is apparent in the actual business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) data (see the figure on the next page). Actual B2C revenues grew smoothly from $1.8 billion in 1997 to $70 billion in 2002. B2B has similarly smooth growth from $56 billion in 1999 to $482 billion in 2002.”
The three figures referred to in the above quotes (and the tables containing number of Internet hosts for each year from 1980 to 2002 and e-commerce revenue from 1997 to 2005) are available on the website for the book at charts page 78 and charts page 79 and charts page 104.
Writing About Writing About Content Marketing is Content Marketing
Also: “Writing about writing a meta description tag about writing about writing about content marketing being content marketing is content marketing”.