It seems some people believe that the term/word “Web 2.0″ is the one millionth word to enter the English language.

The Global Language Monitor has used a method of their own devising to monitor the usage of a word.  According to them Web 2.0 has officially, at least by their standards, become the one millionth word in the English language.  However, according to Reuters, Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguistics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, has called the entire thing “nonsense”, and I have to say I agree with him.

The definition that the Global Language Monitor gave to the term is:

The next generation of web products and services, coming soon to a browser near you.

Well, seeing as most people in the tech field feel that Web 2.0 is over and is trying to figure out the next generation already, I would say the “coming soon” part is definitely incorrect.  Web 2.0 was indeed a time period in the development of the Internet, but it has already ended and we are on to things such as “the real-time web”, Web 3.0, the semantic Web and so on.

According to the same Reuters story, other linguists think this was a publicity stunt, and I would have to say I agree again.  This made a nice “hip” headline, but it is disingenuous at best.  So I hope the term enjoyed its day in the spotlight, but it will be forgotten by tomorrow.

Finally, I will no longer be known as http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=502499893

In a move that ultra-popular social network Facebook has needed to do since day one, they will be introducing “vanity URLs” at the end of this week.  If you go to http://www.facebook.com/username/ you will see a countdown clock for your local time as to when you will finally be able to choose to choose a username for the service so the address for your profile will look like http://www.facebook.com/yourname.

Up until now you have had an address that was impossible to tell to someone you met at a meeting, in a bar, a professional event or basically anywhere else.  It also was not exactly the most appealing thing to have printed on your business card.  Why they didn’t go this route originally is a mystery, but at least they are correcting their mistake now.

The only flaw with this entire plan is the land rush mentality it is going to inspire.  People are going to have to race to grab their own names when the timer counts down to zero.  If your name is ‘John Smith’, I wouldn’t hold your breath on getting your own name as your URL, but if your name is something more Englebert Humperdink, I would say your odds are a bit higher…

It’s June, and in the land of Apple fans, that means it’s time for an iPhone update.

Today at the World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC), Apple took the wraps off of a new operating system for the existing phones as well as updating the physical handset itself.

iPhone OS 3.0

The features of OS 3.0 have been known for quite some time due to the iPhone OS 3.0 features announcement that Apple  did back in March of this year.  All of the features we expected were there such as cut, copy & paste, auto-fill for forms, Spotlight search to look through the entire phone for information and a whole lot more.

One of the most exciting new features had to be “Find My Phone”.  If you lose your phone, and you have subscirbed to the service which will be included with MobileMe, you simply go to a web browser and tell it to locate your phone.  It will show you on a map where it is and it will also begin emitting an audible beep in case it is in the cushions of your couch.  This audible feature will work even if you have the phone in silent mode at the time.

Even more exciting about this is if by some chance the phone is in some place you don’t recognize on the map, you can use a remote kill switch to wipe all of your email and contacts.  If you should happen to get the phone back you will simply need to hook the phone up to iTunes to get it running again.  A great piece of mind for everyone.

iPhone 3GS

The new version of the wildly popular phone is finall going to be adding the ability to record videos on its 3 megapixel camera.  The camera for still photography will have an auto-focus lens that will also have a tap-to-focus that will allow you to tap on the part of the photo you want to focus, and it will automatically do so. It will also be adding the ability to automatically handle exposure, white balance and better low-light sensitivity. If you want to get close to a photo subject, say up to 10cm away, the new camera will also have an auto-macro.

Video recording will also have automatic exposure, white balance and so on.  Once you have the videos you will be ale to do corrections on the phone and then email them to a contact, upload them to YouTube or even send them out attached to an MMS.

Other new features will include voice control for all the main functions of the device from making a call to controlling your music, a compass that can help orientate you in the Maps app and a longer battery life.

iPhone Pricing

The new iPhone 3GS will have a 16GB version for $199 and a 32GB version for $299, both of which require a two-year contract with AT&T (prices and carriers vary by country).  The most interesting announcement was that the 8 GB iPhone 3G will still be available for $99, almost guaranteeing Apple even deeper penetration into the mobile phone market.

iPhone OS 3.0 & iPhone 3GS Release Dates

Current iPhone users can expect their phones to be updated to the latest OS on June 18th, iPod Touch users will also get it the same day, but at a cost of $5.

The iPhone 3GS will be available on June 19th.

Video games on a physical disc are so yesterday!

Tired of video games laying all over your family room? Loose discs, empty cases, games for systems long since dead… you know the drill.  Well, starting in August, Microsoft is going to offering you a whole new way to buy games for your Xbox 360.

Xbox 360 games on demand will be available through the marketplace in your system dashboard.  To start off there will be 30 games, but additional titles will be added each week with their prices being comparable to what you would pay in a retail store for them.  There is no word yet if brand new titles will be released this way, but for now it appears it will be older games.

This is quite exciting, but will offer up two potential problems as we see it: not all Xbox systems came with a hard drive, and you could lose all of your data.

The hard drive issue is solved easily, but not cheaply.  You’re also taking about downloading quite large files, so you could eat through your hard drive space in no time flat.  Somehow we don’t see people buying multiple hard drives and swapping them out like in the old days of memory cards.

The second major problem is the potential loss of data.  Say your hard drive gets corrupted somehow… bye-bye games.

There is definitely something to be said for the approaching death of media in physical formats, but we certainly aren’t up to mass adoption yet with some major headaches/hurdles left in our way.  (We’re not even touching on length of time to download full games here)  Even with these problems, this is an exciting time for video games, and it only looks to get even more so.

Here is a video demo of how the system will work.

Windows 7 is one step closer to release with the appearance of the new operating system in the official Microsoft Store.

While it has been pretty much a forgone conclusion that Microsoft was aiming to release Windows 7 this fall, the sudden addition of the operating system to the Microsoft Store pretty much cinches it.  They do not have prices listed yet, nor are they taking order, but putting up the box art for the various versions with “Coming soon” is not something one typically does with a product unless you are fairly clost to releasing it.

In an attempt to get consumers excited about the new operating system, they have listed some bullet points to help convince them that they need to upgrade to the latest version.

No firm release date has been announced yet, but definitely expect it sometime this fall so it can be in those new computers under the Christmas tree.

Google has finally updated the Street View feature in Google Maps so that your finger won’t get sore clicking the mouse!

Street View, the feature that allows you to see addresses in Google Maps from street level, has always been useful, but a bit cumbersome to use.  When you wanted to move down the street you had to click arrow after arrow until your finger was sore.  Well, now thanks to new navigation items they are referring to as “pancakes”, you can zoom all over the map in a fraction of the time it used to take you.

All you need to do is point your cursor further down the map and you will see a circle, or “pancake” as Google is calling it.  Double-click on that circle and the map automatically will zoom you to that location. If you want to look at something on a building, look for the square cursor and again double-click to go there.

So far this only works on the Web version of Google Maps, and not in Google Earth. It’s a definite first step to improving the product, though! You can watch the full explanation video below to quickly pick up on how it works.

I have work to do, and I #blamedrewscancer.

That make no sense to you? That’s okay, we’ll clear it up for you.

On May 20th, 2009, Drew Olanoff, a well known name in the social media scene, was diagnosed with stage 3 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.  While most people would view this as a horror, Mr. Olanoff decided to blame everything in his life on his cancer: Losing his keys, misplacing his wallet, Twitter being slow, the Phillies losing, etc

Well, after a while, he got the idea that everyone should blame his cancer for everything.  Being a savvy social media guy, he launched a site called BlameDrewsCancer.com.  The site takes every Tweet posted on Twitter with the hashtag #blamedrewscancer and posts it for all to see.  In case you don’t know how hashtags work, your message would appear like this:

I #BlameDrewsCancer for losing my keys this morning

The hopes are that Mr. Olanoff will be able to get corporate sponsers to make donations based on the number of Tweets that show up with this hashtag, but even if that doesn’t happen, what does it hurt to use it?  It costs you nothing, it makes Mr. Olanoff laugh in the process and you get to blame something for all of your woes in life.

All of us at StarterTech wish him the best of luck in his battle with cancer, and we are sure he will be able to beat it, and until he does, we #blamedrewscancer for EVERYTHING.

You know Twitter is reaching critical mass when even The Tonight Show is poking fun at it.

In his second night as host of The Tonight Show, Conan O’Brien featured a sketch called “Twitter Tracker” which purported to keep you up to date on all of the hottest Tweets from the celebrities using Twitter.  All of the Tweets were of course fake, but it was still amusing to watch.  You can see the video below, and some more commentary after it.  (Sorry, video appears to be USA only)

What seems a bit off about this is that The Tonight Show demographic famously skews to an older crowd.  While true that Conan O’Brien fans are sure to have followed him from his old show, it still seems a bit risky of a joke to make for an audience that wouldn’t understand it.  However, when Mr. O’Brien asks his audience who uses Twitter, it sure sounded like the majority of them responded in the positive.  Is Twitter truly becoming this mainstream?

Only time will be able to appropriately answer that question, but it sure looks like this service is going to be around for quite a while at this point.

It seems some people just can’t wait for Chrome to get their extension system up and running.

One thing that has stopped many people from switching to Google’s Chrome browser is the lack of support for extensions. Those handy little pieces of code that allow you to get your browser to do things it wasn’t built to do originally have been one of the staples for Firefox and its popularity.  Amongst the most popular of the Firefox extensions is one named AdBlock Plus that allows you to browse Web sites without seeing their ads, so once the Chrome extension engine released, it was just assumed that an ad blocker would be one of the first extensions out there door.

Why wait?

AdSweep has come up with a way for you to run their extension in Chrome right now, athough it takes several steps and some work on your part.  Even with all of that in consideration, it is an interesting commentary on how much some people really hate online ads that they would go through this much work to block them.  Personally they’ve never bothered me, but it seems those that are bothered by them are REALLY bothered by them.

If you’ve got the guts, you can give AdSweep a try, but expect to put in some work.

May is already over?!? Where is this year going? All that aside, it’s time for another list of the top posts on StarterTech for the month.

Microsoft Tells Companies To Skip Vista – I’m not horribly surprised this was the top post as it is about time Microsoft finally said something, anything, about Vista being a mistake.  Sure it wasn’t a full admission, but at least it was something.

Technology And Tornadoes – It never hurts to find out how technology can help you in a natural disaster, just wish we hadn’t figured out some of this first hand.

Windows 7 Release Candidate Now Available – Interest in Windows 7 is reaching a fever pitch, and the fact you can use it now, for free?  Of course people are excited.

Static Electricity And Your Computer – A follow-up to the Kirksille tornado that I wrote about earlier.  It was interesting to see what static electricity could do to a computer and how to fix it.

Google Wave May Be A Game Changer – Google Eave is going to be an exciting product any way you slice it, the only burning question now is, “when?”