Seattle, WA - December 14, 2005 - Did you know that a Puggle is a new breed of dog crossed between a Pug and a Beagle? Or that Vlogs (video blogs) are the latest rage? Language is constantly evolving, with new words becoming part of our culture every day. To help us all better communicate, these and other words have been added to a special T9 predictive text input dictionary for users to tap into when texting on their mobile phones.

In collaboration with Paul McFedries, author of Word Spy: The Word Lover's Guide to Modern Culture and owner of http://www.wordspy.com, a Web site devoted to "lexpionage," the sleuthing of new words and phrases, Tegic has identified the most buzzworthy new words of the year for T9(r) software.

"As a society, we're compelled to create new words to name and describe our new inventions and ideas and institutions," said McFedries. "We use these words in everyday conversation, whether spoken or written, so it only makes sense to make it easier for avid texters to send a quick SMS on the puggle they just saw or the vlog entry they posted this morning."

The top ten "buzz words" to be added to the T9(r) dictionary for 2005 include:

* Lifehack - a tool or technique that makes some aspect of one's life easier or more efficient

* Mashup - new information created by combining data from two different sources

* Placeshift - to redirect a TV signal so the viewer can watch a show on a device other than his or her television

* Playlistism - judging a person based on what songs are on the playlist of his or her digital music player

* Podjack - to plug the cord of one's digital music player into the jack of another person's player to hear what the person is listening to

* Puggle - a dog bred from a pug and a beagle

* Sideload - to transfer music or other content to a cell phone using the cell phone provider's network

* Vlog - a blog that contains mostly video content * Vodcast - a video podcast

* Ubersexual - a heterosexual man who is masculine, confident, compassionate and stylish

By making the language used in everyday conversation available on phones, this special T9 dictionary gives mobile users greater freedom to express themselves via text. T9(r) predictive text software anticipates the word that you are going to use when you press each key just once. For example, keying 'vodcast' requires just 7 keystrokes (8-6-3-2-2-7-8) instead of 16 when tapping out the letters individually. And 'vlog' can be reached in 4 steps instead of 10.

Texting in the U.S. is growing by leaps and bounds, and this hot trend shows no sign of cooling down. In fact, 43 billion text messages were expected in the U.S. in 2005 alone, a number predicted to reach 68 billion by 2010.1 Today, T9 is available on a majority of phones offering speedy predictive texting, and with more than 34,000 words in the English language T9 dictionary users can tap out a text message faster than ever.

"Over the last couple of years, we've really seen text messaging take off here in the U.S.," said Eric Collins, vice president, Tegic Communications, the company behind T9 predictive text input software. "As more of our daily conversations take place via text, we will continue to track evolving language trends to help T9 users to text with ease, adding more words as they enter the vernacular."

T9 predictive text software is available on more than 800 cell phone models worldwide. The latest version of T9 software (v. 7.3), as well as this special language database of buzz words, is now available for handset makers to integrate into their cell phones. For users new to predictive text entry, they can check out the T9(r) Trainer at http://www.textfast.T9.com.


About T9(r) Text Input Software

T9 Text Input, a leading alphabet-based and Chinese, Japanese and Korean character-based text input software, is the flagship product of Tegic Communications, and is available in more than 49 languages. By incorporating T9 Text Input into mobile communications products, companies are solving the fundamental problem of how to quickly and easily type and send SMS text messages. More than 800 mobile phone models available throughout the world today include T9 Text Input and the technology has been licensed to major consumer electronics and communications equipment manufacturers worldwide. For more information about T9 Text Input software, visit http://www.t9.com.

About Tegic Communications

Tegic Communications is a leading provider of enabling software for mobile data services, including T9 Text Input, a market leader in predictive text input. A wholly owned subsidiary of America Online, Inc., Tegic was founded in 1995 to develop and market communication technologies for the telecommunications and computing industries. The company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington (U.S.A.) and has offices in London, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Seoul, Beijing and Bangalore. Tegic is on the Web at http://www.tegic.com.

Source: AOL

Source: Wired News