Disqus
My fave tech-talk site, NetLingo, is back once again with another classic term:
gremlins
The mysterious characters that sometimes appear on your computer screen, often in text documents and sometimes in code or e-mail messages.
For instance, if you copy the contents of a file from one program to another by highlighting the text with your cursor and then cutting-and-pasting, strange boxes or symbols may appear in the white space. At that point, you have to figure out another way to transfer the information or you have to go through and delete the bad characters, all the while muttering, “Darn gremlins.”
I remember back to the bad old days of Mobile devices, when their limited character-set support often meant you could get a random set of gibberish-speak on screen! Working for a handset vendor at the time, we spent hours trying to work round poor support on certain devices and between services.
Fast forward five years and now it seems that an increasing amount of spam email doesn’t even consist of intelligible characters – quite apart from what they are suggesting I do with myself (!), many emails just don’t make any sense.
Combine the two trends and you have the scourge of my life currently – spam email on my mobile. Well at least I know who to blame now – the gremlins in my machines!
[Via: NetLingo]
About The Author
Ben Robinson
Ben is a 10+ year veteran of the Mobile industry – starting his career when SMS was a still a relatively new concept for most people (!), he has now consulted on everything from bleeding-edge Mobile content, to the next-gen accessories you might view it on. As a result he has a broad and deep knowledge in numerous areas of Mobile – from network operators to device vendors, to infrastructure and middleware vendors (not to mention content delivery) – and has worked for companies in all of these areas! He is based in the UK, a hotbed of activity for mobile, and recently became a father for the second time – as oppose to in his younger years when he was happy spend time tweaking all manner of mobile devices to 'nth' degree, he now looks for services and hardware that provide the most efficient, compact, and reliable improvements to his already manic life! It’s his opinion that Mobile solutions should be there to help to make your life better – if a particular solution (be it service or device) isn’t doing this, he believes you need to ask the very important question of why you continue to use it... His focus at IntoMobile is mainly on Mobile content, services, and infrastructure, particularly as regards the UK market – and with the occasional look at devices. Additionally, using his extensive experience in the industry, he will provide commentary on the industry at large, with regular (and hopefully thought-provoking) articles.
