Friday, February 29

An Interview with Buzz Saw

An Interview with Buzz Saw:

In 2000, jargon-garbage was at its peak, and buzzkiller.net rejoiced in its endless battle with weak-minded PR entities. Susan Mac Tavish Best interviewed me, The Red Worm, after a particularly creative haircut:
1). How often do you go red from using a buzz word?

Very rarely. When I do use a buzzword, I try to make sure the sardonic quotation marks are audible. When I was at Forbes, there were a few agonizing instances in which buzzwords were edited into my stories. See http://buzzkiller.net/hypocrite.html

...

10). I heard that the hyphen key on the computer keyboard was going to be swapped with the single quotation mark for ease-of-use. All buzz, all true, or just a load of crap?

The ultimate PR hack attack would be a trojan horse program that turned the hyphen key into a delete key. PR Newswire, Business Wire and M2 Presswire would be out of commission. With a shortage of mushy buzzwords to grease its progress, the Web industry would screech to a halt.

Tuesday, February 12

Business Technology : Oracle's Hot New Offering: Gobbledygook

Props to WSJ business technology blogger Ben Worthen. Being on the biz tech beat, he and his colleagues have to sift through steaming piles of buzzword-laden press releases daily, but a recent "offering" from Oracle crossed the line, and Worthen pounced:

Are you looking for a “market offering designed to simplify the lifecycle management of complex IP-based services?” Have we got the product for you!

That description is straight from an Oracle press release that touts…well, we’re still not sure what it touts. The release is string of bewildering tech terms and vague verbiage. It refers to whatever it is the company is selling as an “offering” in each of the first three sentences. Is that software, hardware or something you sacrifice to Quetzalcoatl?

The release explains that this offering is an “integrated solution” that “enables communications service providers to manage growing IP service complexity, scale operations efficiently and facilitate ongoing network change.”
There's more, so check out the link above for a proper thrashing of Oracle's PR department.

Thanks to David Resnic of CA for alerting us to it.