As many tech-savvy folks know (most of you, I’m sure), Apple recently released an iPod with video capabilities. The practicality of video on the go notwithstanding, I think the most interesting part of that announcement was that they’d be offering television shows up for download, ala cart, along with full seasons, if you wanted to download them. This is very cool, and I hope it continues to mature. However, this has angered some network affiliates, who are worried that will people will download the shows they want to see, and no longer turn on local television.

One affiliate, however, has taken some forward-thinking steps to combat this:

ABC Affiliates Start ‘Vidcasting’ News Broadcasts

So, am I angry at the affiliate, for some reason? No.

I’m angry at the word “vidcast,” which I find profoundly stupid, and indicative of a larger trend with which I’m sure you’ll all be familiar. There is currently this need, which I see primarily in the web industry, but is probably manifested elsewhere, to reinvent that which doesn’t need reinvention, and to use new language to do it. I know that one of the best parts of English is its malleability (woohoo!), and the fact that it can be refined and honed to properly express new ideas as they materialize. This is fine in certain cases. Hypertext becomes the web, a web page becomes a web site, etc… And you know what? I’m even okay with the word “blog” representing any kind of a website with either an article/link focus, typically published in reverse chronological order, with comments enabled (although it could certainly be argued that that definition is starting to lose its utility).

However, there are some things that I’m just not ok with, and this story was the one that broke the camel’s back.

AJAX – Asynchronous JavaScript and XML.: Cute, but misses the point that it’s really not about XML at all, beyond the fact that XML (along with plain text, if desired) can be returned, and that the name of the object used in JavaScript to facilitate this transfer is the XMLHttpRequest (which should, really, be simply called HTMLRequest). This should really be termed “remoting with JavaScript”, or JavaScript remoting. I guess “JeMo” isn’t as sexy as AJAX (although it’d probably make a kickass musical genre). Of course, flash has had this for awhile now, but I guess Flax isn’t as cool as AJAX, either.

Podcasting – Points for coining this word at the exact right time. It still seems to me mostly like a solution in need of a problem. Oh, and I liked it better when it was just referred to as timeshifting.

Screencasting – Yeah, this is a movie of your computer screen. It isn’t cool.

Vidcasting – Huh? VIDCASTING?! You mean, like displaying VIDEO to USERS on the WEB? Maybe if I download these videos with broadband, I can refer to the whole movement as BROADCASTING, and we can step away from the brink.

Mashup – Ok, this isn’t about the web, but I still hate the term.

Web 2.0 – Look. I’ve been making websites for about nine years. I’ve been making interactive web apps for five. I’ve been using techniques like hidden iframes, and advanced JavaScript for four. So don’t tell me that we’re just now being ushered into some sort of glorious panacea with draggable DIVs, opacity and remoting. Some of us have already been here. (However, mad props to Scriptaculous, which is indeed a very cool JavaScript library, the prototype library, and to Ruby on Rails, for grouping web zealots into one easily ignorable set, in a way that hasn’t been done since GNU/Linux started picking up steam.)

So is this just sour grapes? Am I just another web developer who, having used all these technologies for years in quiet obscurity finds it irritating to have my skillset renamed by a bunch of posers?

Yes. That’s pretty much what it is. It is a rant, after all.

Oh, and incidentally, I’ve submitted this as a news story to digg.com – I have subdigged it, you might say – and will later record myself reading this blog entry, in preparation for a first-ever blogcast/podcast, a term to which I will refer as a podblogcast. If this takes off, all websites dealing with blogs recorded exactly as written will no longer be referred to as websites, or even blogs or audioblogs – they will be podblogs, or pooblogs for short (in spite of the fact that this does not shorten the word at all.)

Ok, now that that’s over – does anyone has any terminology to add?