www.wherewords.com
where words come from
Two Cents Worth
(Steve Cecil was a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle)
HOW FAST WILL CALTRANS FIX THE MAZE COLLAPSE?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=13&entry_id=16170
I looked it up in the Department of Land Transportation handbook, and the DOLT code is fairly straightforward. To estimate the time in days you divide the length of damaged roadway in yards (55) by the number of adjacent counties (3), multiplied by the governor's hat size (7) = 128 days. They should be done around the end of August.
WHAT EXPLAINS THE APPEAL OF JOURNEY'S "ESCAPE" ALBUM?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=13&entry_id=4539
"Escape" is the classic hook-up / break-up / make-up album, as evidenced by its three Top 10 singles -- "Don't Stop Believin," "Who's Crying Now?" and "Open Arms" (the last of which has closed more deals than Michael Milken and Donald Trump combined).
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As seen in ADWEEK Magazine VOL. XLIV NO.36
http://www.adweek.com/contributor/steve-cecil
All Turned Around
Sometimes the pursuit of brand equity
is a "quaint derby"
By Steve Cecil
Have you seen the Toyota commercial in which the letters of the word Camry are rearranged to spell "my car?" The Camry trademark was first registered in 1983, way back when Terms of Endearment won Best Picture and M*A*S*H went off the air. Which suggests one of two things: Either the folks at Toyota can still learn something new everyday, or they have been sitting on this secret-in-the-sobriquet since Sally Ride soared into space.
I decided they must've known about this brand dimension all along, and it got me thinking about what other hidden messages might be out there. It wasn't long before I deciphered another branagram (as I've come to call them) and can't wait to see the Ford spot urging young men to buy a Mustang and show some "guts, man."
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PR Week (US), March 18, 2002 Shortly after Enron announced on February 21 that it was changing its name, PRWeek put out a call for suggestions about what its new moniker should be. More than one PR pro liked "Endrun," a sentiment echoed by those who came up with "Conmore," "En-Con," "En-rob," "Done-Wrong," "Been-ron," and "Enwrong." Other respondents felt that Enron's new name should be renamed with IR in mind. From PR consultant Steve Cecil, we received the following alternatives: "NoErn" and "E.N.R.O.N," which would now stand for "Everyone Now Retires On Nothing." As for an updated ticker symbol, the company could turn to a proposal made by David Hammer, senior account executive at Pierpont Communications. "Enron's new name," he wrote, "is MUD." Of course, a renaming must come with a new slogan. Birnbach Communications founder Norman Birnbach was inspired by Taco Bell and the US Army, respectively, coming up with "Run for the border!" and "We shred more paper by 8am than most companies do all day." But after an intensive evaluation process, PRWeek decided that the savviest overall advice came from Steve Cecil of WhereWords, who sent in 10 ideas in all. Here's another: "They wouldn't even have to change names if they got into the fastener business. Enron Screw & Bolt just sounds like a natural brand extension." Congratulations, Steve – you have won the grand prize. Our Enron stock certificates should arrive in your mailbox soon. *********************************************************************************************************
Renaming Enron Triggers Readers' Creative Energies
Are you swamped in a sea of slang? Awash in an ocean of gibberish?
Caught in the bubbling vortex of techno-babble? You need:
a jargonauts'
guide to buzzwords
BLOG
A contraction of weB LOG, these (often very) personal journals are (for some reason) publicly accessible on the World Wide Web, where all the blah-blah-blogging leaves many readers blase about blogs and bloggers.
JPEG
A working group within the International Standards Organization (ISO), the JOINT PHOTOGRAPHIC EXPERTS GROUP wrote this "lossy" technique for compressing full-color photographs to about 5% of their original size.
MPEG
Another working group of the ISO is the MOVING PICTURE EXPERTS GROUP which developed this family of digital video compression formats (that store only changes from frame to frame, removing imperceptible data).
MP3
Audio layer 3 of the MPEG file format uses perceptual audio coding and psychoacoustic compression to remove irrelevant sound signals we can't hear, shrinking the file by a factor of 12:1 with no loss of sound quality.
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