Last week, Oxford University Press published a blog post listing some of the new words that will be included in the next revision of their renowned dictionary. As always, there are some good additions, such as "cloud computing", which I've seen used in quotation marks in mainstream press, as if it's a foreign or pedantic concept. "Parkour", "vuvuzela", and "waterboarding" are also important concepts that have entered mainstream consciousness and warrant documenting, while "straightedge" is finally being recognized for the non-geometric meaning it has for decades conveyed.

A few words seem redundant and unnecessary. For example, why do we need eggcorn — "a word or phrase that results from a mishearing or misinterpretation of another, an element of the original being substituted for one that sounds very similar or identical" — when we already have mondegreen — "a word or phrase resulting from a misinterpretation of a word or phrase that has been heard"? And why are so many acronyms, like BFF (best friends forever), LMAO (laughing my ass off), and TTYL (talk to you later), becoming words in their own right, when their definitions are the very words they represent?

But more disturbing is the recognition of made-up words that are closely associated with specific online services. You're unlikely to find "tweet" and "hashtag" outside Twitter, or "unfriend", "defriend", and "poke" (meaning "to attract the attention of (another member of the site) by using its 'poke' facility") elsewhere but Facebook — well, these places and the next Oxford English Dictionary, apparently.

I'm worried that these additions represent current trends and fads that have not stood the test of time. Internet memes are not words. Words have lasting power; memes do not. In a decade, will we still be tweeting and unfriending? If these concepts are words, then why not "lolcat", "fail", "pwn", or "teabag"? Perhaps as a historical document, the dictionary serves a valuable purpose of decrypting today's communications for future generations, but these terms have not yet made it into general usage.

I respect that the Interweb (it's a word — look it up!) is a powerful and practical aspect of daily life. But words that have application within a specific and proprietary context should not yet have earned their way into our lexicon.

What do you think? Am I too draconian in my desired growth of the English language? Or should the vocabulary of social media become our own?

Daylight saving time is a controversial practice. Whether it's a valued way to extend the hours of sunlight, or an archaic, agrarian artifact, it's here to stay. But there should be one aspect of DST that we can agree upon: its grammar.

Two common mistakes occur around DST, with the first not being unique to it. An extra 's' likes to appear at the end of certain words: going forwards, leaping backwards, moving towards. In all these instances, the last letter is extraneous and can be dropped without sacrificing meaning. The same goes for Daylight Savings Time. In this context, "saving" is an adjective describing "time", not a noun unto itself.

The second error is far more egregious as, unlike a superfluous 's', it can actually obfuscate meaning. When specifying an hour, standard time is sometimes used where daylight saving time would be correct. Since 2007 in the United States, daylight saving time starts on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November. DST is therefore in effect the majority of the year. During these months, the correct way to indicate 6:00 PM on the East Coast, for example, is 6:00 PM EDT, or Eastern Daylight Time — not EST. 6:00 PM EST is in fact 7:00 PM EDT, and your audience may do this mental gymnastic only to find themselves an hour late for to presentation.

An academic difference? Hardly. In May 2000, Sega invited me to a teleconference that they said would be held at 1:00 PM EST, even though at that point in the year, daylight saving time was clearly in effect. I assumed their acronym to be in error and so dialed into the conference at 1:00 PM EDT. Sure enough, their public relations reps were on the line and ready to break their news.

I got off the phone a half-hour later and called a fellow journalist to share what I'd learned. He was baffled: "What teleconference? The call isn't until 2:00 PM. Maybe you're just confused and are mistaking some rumors you read online for the conference?" He and several others had taken the EST timestamp to heart, and the Sega reps had to play a recording of their conference an hour after it was held for all the latecomers.

Rarely are my efforts to point out this error understood. When a director told me that his movie will be on television at 6:00 PM EST, I asked him, "EST or EDT?" He failed to clarify the matter when he wrote back, "Eastern." Others, not understanding what EDT means, stubbornly insist EST.

If you can't be correct, then be vague. Can't remember what the acronyms mean, or which one goes with what time of year? Use neither. Just say "Eastern", and your readers will understand you to mean whatever the hour currently is in that time zone.

We know how to prevent the heartache of DST; follow these simple tips to avoid the headache as well.

Awhile back, New York Times columnist Jeffrey Seglin posed a question that looks at a particular aspect of copyright law: is it morally (if not legally) acceptable to pirate an e-book if you own the original hardcopy edition? Although most pirates offer specious justification for their actions, this particular question warrants more thoughtful consideration.

Historically, I have engaged in similar activities: if I owned a video game, I considered it reasonable for me to acquire the soundtrack to said game, regardless of the means. Sometimes this meant connecting my PlayStation's audio output to my computer's input and making my own recording; other times, it was copying the album that had been released as a separate product. Video games have since adapted to such exploitation with copyrights that individually name the art, design, programming, and music, which would seem to deny any legal basis for my youthful actions.

Moreover, a game's soundtrack provides a unique experience within and without the context of the game, just as a book is different from an e-book. In a game, music is used to complement the on-screen action, whereas separately, it may be used without requiring gameplay to invoke its own imagery. Similarly, a book has a look, touch, and feel all its own, while an e-book is portable, markable, and potentially more transportable. To argue that buying one grants a license to a union of these benefits is dubious.

My response to Mr. Seglin's question was quoted in his follow-up:

I think it's fair to create your own translation of a product you own for personal use — such as scanning a book to put on your Kindle, or digitizing a CD to load onto your iPod.

To enjoy the fruits of someone else's translation efforts means making the investment in their version of that product. To do otherwise is still piracy.

I may not find it ethical for a consumer to steal something they already own in a different format — but to end the discussion there ignores the other party in the transaction. Is it ethical for the corporation to expect consumers to pay twice for the same content? If it were possible to provide proof of purchase, surely a discount for existing customers would be both respectful of their patronage as well as an incentive toward future business, as software developers do when offering upgrades to new versions. When dealing with more physical products, such a policy could more easily be implemented in small contexts, such as when the developer and distributor of said product are one in the same. As an example, Jason Scott's GET LAMP documentary comes with an upgrade guarantee:

What drives me absolutely nuts is buying the same film multiple times.

What I'm talking about is you buy a DVD of something, and you enjoy it. Then they come out with a special edition of the same thing and you buy it again. Then there's a downloadable version, and you buy that. And so on. And so on. It makes some people very rich, but it's just a completely disrespectful thing to do to the people who brought you success in the first place. It sucks.

So here's what I am doing.

I GUARANTEE THAT IF YOU BUY THE GET LAMP DVD ONLINE THROUGH THIS SITE, ANY FUTURE EDITIONS OF GET LAMP WILL BE AVAILABLE TO YOU AT COST OR CLOSE TO COST.

It is the right of Mr. Scott as the copyright holder of GET LAMP to determine the availability and value of his product (which is why he chooses to release it under Creative Commons). As Mr. Scott told me in an interview for Computerworld, "You've already paid me, I've already made a profit off you — I don't want to make another profit off you!" It is a generous (and perhaps expensive) approach he has chosen that could be considered the opposite extreme of corporations that charge the full amount for content that is improved but not new. A balance between the two could prove lucrative for all parties.

Like me, Mr. Seglin is not a lawyer, and his column looks at issues from an ethical, not legal or political, perspective. It's a useful prompt for us to look beyond the law and more rigorously examine how our own philosophies concur or disagree with society's external guidelines.

The Associated Press is reporting that Brian Linebach is facing five years in prison for second-degree theft by failing to return 40 books and DVDs to the Kirkendall Public Library of Ankeny, Iowa. I can empathize — with the library.

Fifteen years ago, when I worked for Blockbuster Video, movies were released exclusively to rental outlets on VHS for $100/copy. It was only months later that these tapes became available to consumers at a more reasonable rate. Before DVDs turned that market upside-down, losing a copy of a movie was an expensive proposition, which is why BBV required credit card numbers on record for each of its customers: should a product disappear, its value could be reimbursed.

Libraries show their patrons much more faith: expensive books and videos can be borrowed with no more credential than a driver's license. That information is no guarantee against theft, and though DVDs are cheaper to replace now than VHS tapes once were, libraries lack the financial backing of multimedia conglomerates with which to do so. I tried to find some statistics about library material return rates, but the ALA's exhaustive Web site, which was instrumental in researching my recent column for Worcester Magazine, doesn't have any obvious reports on this data. Nonetheless, anyone who uses the public library to donate to his own collection has things backward, to the detriment of his community.

Why Mr. Linebach didn't return the products once confronted, or how long they were overdue, I don't know. But it could've been worse — imagine the penalties George Washington would pay for books 221 years overdue!

Sticklers for the rules of the English language are sometimes referred to as "grammar nazis" — an exaggeration if ever there were one, given the difference in scale of enormity between a crime against humanity and one against language. Still, it is an amusing mental picture, and one that humor Web site College Humor recently decided to bring to life. (Note: some violence follows.)

I can only imagine the apoplectic rage to which this Nazi would've been driven had he instead encountered the characters of The Onion's recent news report, "Pickup Truck Stoled":

LOGANSPORT, IN—Right out there, right in plain damn sight, a pickup truck got stoled last night out by the Murphy place, sources done reported Thursday.

According to eyewitnesses who seen it parked there, the truck, one of them nice Ford F-150 XLTs with the 4×4 and some real professional-type detail work that probably cost a bundle, was black.

"Everyone knows that's my truck. Why'd someone go and take it?" said owner Dale Hest, 35, the stepson of ol' Otto Murphy. "I just don't get it."

While it is important to both write and speak proper grammar, lest one convey an image akin to this victim of theft, one must also be careful to choose one's battles, lest the opposite extreme be attained, as in the above video. What common errors bother you or trip you up, and which do you feel have made it into general discourse?

A few months ago, I was driving through Bolton and stopped to check out their expansion to the public library. It's a beautiful and natural extension of their existing building that is proportionate to the community's needs.

[Show as slideshow]

Fortunately, my social circle includes many librarian and literary people who were willing to engage me on this topic. I spoke with both CMRLS librarian Carolyn Noah and New York Times best-selling author R. A. Salvatore, two people who had previously spoken to each other on the topic of library funding (see time index 2:54 – 3:52 especially). I was also fortunate to speak with Christine Drew for her perspective as an academic librarian at WPI.

The result is "Bad economy checks us out of libraries", an editorial that ran in Worcester Magazine on Apr 22, 2010. It appears almost entirely intact, except for this sentence in Mr. Salvatore's interview: "Would there be some equitable way to consolidate town libraries into regional ones?" Of the entire piece, this is the most provocative proposal and the one with the greatest potential to cure what ails local libraries. As one concerned citizen recently told me, "It isn't good stewardship to duplicate services in towns [so] close … even in a good economy."

Independently, PCWorld.com recently suggested that libraries should take this opportunity to reinvent themselves as not just archivists, but studios and producers of original content by local artists. This approach similarly requires a community-oriented mindset in which content creators collaborate, not compete, with their neighbors. Is it possible?

Whatever fate befalls libraries, we cannot allow such a valuable institution to disappear. From a purely financial perspective, libraries offer an unparalleled return on investment. Cutting their funding to save the economy would be "like cutting West Point from the military pipeline to reduce the defense budget" — it's incredibly short-sighted. These are not easy times to live in, which means making hard decisions. Let's make sure they're the right ones.

Print media are dying while digital media are blooming. The two are not discrete, though, which prompts the question: what's happening at the intersection, where the electronic entertainment industry is covered by print publications?

This question and others will be the subject of a panel at PAX East, a Boston-based video gaming expo with a comprehensive event schedule for all interests. Here's the description for this session:

The Death of Print
Manticore Theatre
Saturday, March 27, 2010, 1:00pm
It's no longer a secret: Print is a dying medium. The past few years have been brutal for print media in the game space, but the plummeting sales and editorial team layoffs came to a head in 2009. It's no surprise many of the key players at those institutions have moved on to Web-based ventures, but has the industry as a whole ultimately lost something or gained something? In this 60-minute panel, Russ Pitts, Editor-in-Chief of The Escapist, speaks to several journalists who were deeply involved with the events of the past year about the run-up to the decline of print, and the effects on game journalism — and games.

Panelists Include: Russ Pitts [Editor-in-Chief, The Escapist], Julian Murdoch [journalist, freelance], Jeff Green [EA], Chris Dahlen [Managing Editor, Kill Screen], John Davison [Editor-in-Chief, GamePro]

Three-day passes to PAX are still sold out, of the one-day passes for the three-day event, Saturday is also sold out. If you're not amenable to enforcing (see the entry for Jan. 4), then you'll have to forgo PAX's take on the future of print media and settle for The Onion's:

A week ago, I rolled out a new look for Wordbits. The old theme, Retro Book, was already old when I installed it three years ago and required significant editing to make it compatible with WordPress 2.2, which introduced support for widgets. Even with that functionality, the theme suffered from a narrow width that limited the multimedia content that could be embedded into posts. The new theme, flashy, is a far more modern design. It also required a good deal of customization, but I'm confident that it will stand the test of time better than Retro Book did.

It also behooves Wordbits to have a look that matches the theme of its content. The site was initially envisioned as a Web 2.0 successor to Prolific Quill, a message board that discussed the composition and consumption of literature. Although those topics will remain as potential sources for Wordbits content, the last four months have seen the site steering more toward coverage of the publishing industry and its evolution from print to digital media. Retro Book had the look of a dusty tome that doesn't fit the field's emerging trends, so it was time to close that book and open a new one.

Thanks to readers Peter, Gene, and Kahm for their advice in the redesign process!