Ten Common Phrases That Could Soon Be History

Earlier this week Oxford University Press declared "unfriend" its word of the year. This got me thinking... now that we are entering an era of media reforestation what common phrases could soon be history? Here's 10 that I came up with. You may disagree but I believe all of these have faded or will be gone soon. (All images are from Flickr via Creative Commons and are credited.)

Google Fast Flip Nearing Launch?

Google Fast Flip appears to be nearing a full integration into Google News. I wasn't able to replicate this in other browsers so right now this appears to just be a cookie test. Stories from Google Fast Flip started appearing at the bottom of my page - even when I logged out of my account.

In addition, Google News searches now show links to Fast Flip results at the bottom of the page. This is visible to all users.

Update 11/16/2009 - Chris from Google News notes in a comment below that this is indeed a test.

Reviews Stripped from Google Search Options

I make heavy use of Google Search options in refining my queries. I was surprised this morning to see that the "reviews" option is now gone. This was one of the more handy features. Anyone have any insight here?

Search Options before (image via Search Engine Land). Note under that "Reviews" is the last link under "All Results."

And now today...

The Next Big Trend? It's All About Curation

Fact: Information sources are exploding. More information will be created in 2009 than all prior years.

Fact: Attention is finite. We're becoming media agnostic, but when we're interested in something we dig down into our interests.

This is why I and others like Robert Scoble are really excited about digital curation. Facebook and Twitter lists are one level of curation. However, there are others. Posterous and Tumblr are fantastic platforms for soliciting contributions from groups of people around a shared interest. And they're platforms that will enable all of us to curate together.

Here are a handful of places where you can see curation at work (more in the gallery below as well) ...

• My Parents Were Awesome is a group-contributed tumbelog that honors our elders. It has received national recognition.


• PopURLs Brown by UPS curates information all around business news (UPS is an Edelman client but we didn't build this site)


• Microsoft and Nissan have built entire brandstreaming sites that showcase conversations around their brand (Edelman built the Nissan site)


• Sawhorse Media is creating a next generation media company by curating tweets in different topics like pets and now lists too


• IBM is using Tumblr to curate ideas for a smarter planet

Do you agree that curation - both automated and human-powered - is the next big thing? This isn't just aggregation. As I wrote in my initial post on the subject it's about separating art from junk online.

See the full gallery on posterous

Simple Security in Just Two Steps

It never ceases to amaze me just how careless some people are with their passwords. These days we all need to be smart and vigilant. Farhad Manjoo put together a simple way to secure your online accounts. It has only two steps.

"Start with an original but memorable phrase. For this exercise, let's use these two sentences: I like to eat bagels at the airport and My first Cadillac was a real lemon so I bought a Toyota. The phrase can have something to do with your life or it can be a random collection of words—just make sure it's something you can remember."

and then...

"Turn your phrase into an acronym. Be sure to use some numbers and symbols and capital letters, too."