Deals.Woot Launches, Crowdsources Thriftiness

Ryan Whitwam — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:24:54 -0600

The guys and gals at Woot have added another portal to their stable of daily deal sites. The deals.woot site is a bit of a departure for Woot. All their preexisting sites feature a product chosen by Woot employees, but deals.woot is a user driven site akin to a Digg for bargain shopping.

Woot has made waves in the tech/geek community by offering a daily deal, which is sometimes an insanely good value. More recently, Woot has expanded to various specialized portals like shirt.woot, wine.woot, and sellout.woot. The new site uses an algorithm to bring the users’ favorite deals to the surface for all to see. The top of the landing page, however, isn’t user driven. It is populated by sponsored deals.

Woot explained the sponsored links saying, “OK, yes, companies pay a little something to be Sponsored Deals. But we don’t allow just any old crap in this section… If we find the deal compelling enough that our members will appreciate us bringing it to their attention, we’ll feature it here.” If you’re the type that enjoys a good tech bargain (and who doesn’t?) check it out at deals.woot.com.

Malware and Other Geek Terms Infect Merriam-Webster Dictionary. "Fanboy" to Annoy New Neighbors Fanbelt and Fancied

Paul Lilly — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:50:22 -0500

"At one point during the webinar, 'W00ts!' were heard emanating from the conference room as Harry, a renowned Team Fortress 2 fanboy, demonstrated how to properly tea-bag an opponent."

Most English teachers would have a field day with the above sentence, but with the exception of 'tea-bag,' the rest of the terms are now officially recognized. Perhaps Merriam-Webster is undergoing a mid-life crisis, or maybe as geeks we've leveled up our ability to affect the English language. Either way, a bevy of new terms are being added to the latest version of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, and many of them could be pulled straight out of any computer forum. Among the new terms are:

webinar
netroots
pretexting
fanboy
malware

Not all the new words are technology terms, but many of them do reflect societal trends. "As soon as we see the word used without explanation or translation or gloss, we consider it a naturalized citizen of the English language," explained Peter Sokolowoski, an editor-at-large for Merriam Webster.

Also among the entries is mondegreen, "a word or phrase that results from a mishearing of something said or sung." For example, proclaiming 'Donuts make my brown eyes blue' instead of 'Don't it make my brown eyes blue,' as Crystal Gale intended. Have one of your own? Merriam-Webster's soliciting submissions until Friday, July 25, 2008, at which point they'll reveal their favorites starting the week of July 28. And of course don't forget to post it in the comments section.

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Deals.Woot Launches, Crowdsources Thriftiness

Malware and Other Geek Terms Infect Merriam-Webster Dictionary. "Fanboy" to Annoy New Neighbors Fanbelt and Fancied