BusinessWeek Article Fail

I was reading 12 Words You Can Never Say in the Office at Businessweek. They seem to have some expert panel (sarcasm) come up with terms they think are outdated in technology. Obviously, these people don’t work with Technology.

1. Intranet - Um still used, and based on the description used in the article, they don’t know what an Intranet is. An Intranet is not a VPN.

2. Extranet - See above.

3. Web Surfing - Ultra geek, Chris Pirillo uses it all the time, as do I.

4. Push Technology - Still used a lot, especially in smartphone devices.

5. Application Service Provider (ASP) - I hear this every day when talking about any application that is web-based.

6. Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) - One that is right.

7. Internet Telephony - Another one that is probably right.

8. Weblog - Eh. Sure we use the word Blog, but I still see this used all the time when talking to people that aren’t Internet savvy.

9. Thin Client - Companies come out with new Thin Client products daily.

10. Rboc - Never heard of this, which makes me believe the author was really reaching for some defunct terms. This one probably was never used to begin with. I’ve heard people say ‘Baby Bells’. Please find me a person that ever used this word in their lifetime.

11. Long-Distance Call - Still used at times, especially in work environments. Maybe this can be considered #3.

12. World Wide Web - It amazes me how the media still doesn’t see that there is a difference between the World Wide Web and the Internet. It may not be used as much anymore simply because it’s not as new as it was in 1996, but you can’t replace the term ‘World Wide Web’ with ‘Internet’.

This was probably the most poorly written tech article I’ve seen. Many of these terms are still used, at least in my techie world. None of these words would I classify as words you can’t say at the office. Maybe the author needs talk more with their IT department.