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sesquipedalianism \ses-kwi-PEED-l-iz-uhm\, adjective:

1. Given to using long words.
2. (Of a word) containing many syllables.

Quoting those who insist on engaging in sesquipedalianism (using “large words when smaller ones will do,”) Cavett romps and stomps over his subjects in a veritable malign-fest of the linguistically misguided.
– Susie Berta, Susie’s Year of Words – 2008 (Blog), April 14, 2008

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Today Bit.ly, the default URL shortner expereice some good news and then some bad. [Both pieces below from TechCrunch.com]

The Good:

Amazon has launched it’s own shortened URL, amzn.to, powered by bit.ly’s new Pro service. Twitter’s default (for now) URL shortener has 6,000 corporate clients, including Amazon. The online retailer joins other corporations like nyti.ms (NYTimes), huff.to (Huffington Post), on.cnn.com (CNN) and yes, tcrn.ch (Techcrunch). Last year, the company rolled out it’s…own truncated URL (internally created): amzn.com/ (followed by a product code or a category). While that extension still works, Amazon has emphasized bit.ly’s urls on its Twitter pages, and now its custom amzn.to.

The Bad:

Another hole is about to be filled in Twitter’s product features. CEO Evan Williams just confirmed plans to launch its own link shortener on stage during the final Q&A session at Chirp. HE noted that it would be “stupid” not to add native link-shortening capabilities into Twitter, since most Twitter clients already have that feature. “We want to solve that problem,” he said. “Everyone else has solved that problem. We are probably not going to give people a choice. If they want to use a different shortener, they can use a different app.”

It is not clear how the new feature will affect bit.ly, the third-party link shortener Twitter currently uses as its default, but it sounds like that may change soon. Clues to just such a change have appeared recently. Twitter investor Fred Wilson singled out link shorteners in a post urging Twitter developers to stop filling holes in Twitter’s product.

Twitter already owns its own short URL, twt.tl, which it uses as an anti-spam mechanism in direct messages. But it also owns Twee.tt, which is more in keeping with its brand since it already uses Tweet throughout its product.

Williams did not address bit.ly’s status specifically, so maybe it will continue to have a role. It certainly grew on the back of Twitter. But even if it is no longer used on Twitter.com, Twitter clients may still continue to use bit.ly. If it proves to be a more useful shortener, especially to brands such as Amazon, the New York Times, and others via bit.ly Pro, it may have enough momentum to survive being delisted, as it were, from Twitter.

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Yesterday Apple treated the world to what’s coming in iPhone OS 4.0. So far the reviews are mixed, but what was more interesting was how many iPads are flying off the shelves.

On Monday Apple announced that it had sold 300,000 iPads by end of day Saturday, and now we’re hearing that more than 450,000 have been sold. What’s most interested about that stat, though, is that I heard from a source that there’s a tremendous amount of buyer’s remorse with the iPad, and people are coming in droves to return them.

It’s not surprising for me to hear that people are returning them. I’ve said in the past that I’m still undecided about my own purchase, and if I wasn’t a publisher / developer of Apps myself, I probably would be returning it, too. The main reason at this stage being that I’m just not finding where it totally belongs in… my collection. I have an iPhone and a laptop, and between the two of them, most of my computing needs are met. The iPad sitting in between isn’t really solving a problem for me.

At any rate, we’ll never know for sure how many iPads end up being returned, nor how many Apple products usually get returned days after becoming available. One thing is for certain, though, there’s still no killer app, and I’m not the only one who remains confused as to what problem the iPad is trying to solve for the consumer and professional.

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