Taskbar Lint The annoying little icons that show up in the system tray of the Windows taskbar after installing software. "I have all this taskbar lint from programs I never even use!"
Ostrich Years What Newsweek writer Jonathan Alter calls the current historical period, where celebrity murder trials, royal car wrecks, and the president's DNA have distracted the world's attention from serious problems such as growing poverty and post-Cold War instability.
Whack-a-Mole The "game" one has to play to quickly close the interstitial ads and other windows that pop up on some commercial Web pages (especially porn sites). These pages will sometimes generate new windows every time you close a previous one, creating a situation similar to the action in the popular arcade game Whack-a-Mole.
Butt-Brush Factor Aka le facteur bousculade. The theory set forth by retail anthropologist Paco Underhill that women shoppers are far less likely to make a purchase if they are brushed from behind - by a person, a display table, or a piece of merchandise - while examining goods. Underhill's finding, backed up by extensive video research, carries a corollary: Retailers should avoid jamming narrow aisles full of merchandise.
Tip o' the touring cap to Sean Carton and Bruce Sterling.
- Gareth Branwyn (jargon@wiredmag.com)
MUST READ
Ode to Risk
iMac Attack
Clean Slate?
Jargon Watch
The Life of the Party
Burn Rate Olympics: 1998's IPOs
Who Will Rock 1999
Home Depot Sleeps In
Boffo Box Office
Joysticking It to the Academy
Sneaking Past Windows
Hype List
Girls! Girls! Links!
Face Value
Inside the First "Internet War"
Built for Speed
People
Been There, Done That
The Bugs in Your Future
Are You on the Leper List?
Pandora's Boom Box
Tomorrow Today
Dead-Talent Agency
Future Projections
The California Spammer Hammer
Tired/Wired
Tips From an Ex-Spam King
Raw Data
