Redefining "Podcast": Nice Try But No Cigar, Creative Labs!

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• Personally I think that this new abbreviation is actually a better one. I never liked that they named podcast after the name of a product, despite that I own an iPod myself.

• Very well then! Raise you right hand and recite the following vow, and then we'll be all set.

  I (state your name) promise to never:

  • Refer to hasty, superficial approaches to problems as "Band-aid™ solutions"
  • Call blind obedience to a charismatic leader or movement as "drinking the Kool-Aid™
  • Use the brand name "Photoshop"™ as a verb meaning "to manipulate an image digitally"
  • Forswear the use of "Google"™ as a verb singifying "to make use of an Internet search engine"
  • and finally and most important, to eschew the term "Spam"™ in favour of "Unsolicited commercial email".

  Fight the Power! Smash the State! Accordion Guy is truly great!

  ---

  But seriously...

  It would've been fine if Creative had phrased it as "We prefer to think of 'Podcast' as standing for 'Personal On-Demand BroadCAST'". That would've been honest. Instead, they went with this little white lie, somehow unaware that a good chunk of their customer base are geeks, who are by trade and necessity some of the biggest pedants, nitpickers and sticklers for accuracy around.

• To be fair, I've heard plenty of Apple zealots claim the same definition when confronted with the whole "CORPORATE PRODUCT"cast thing. I mean, there's nothing inherently iPod about rss with mp3 encapsulations.