Microsoft: Just don’t call them podcasts

Want to change the terms of an argument? Then just change the actual terms being used. If you want to, say, get the estate tax repealed, just start calling it the death tax instead. And if you want to remind people that there are other audio players besides the iPod, get them to drop the brand-specific term podcast, and replace it with the brand-neutral blogcast instead. That seems to be the philosophy at Microsoft, according to a number of recent news items. The software giant, which was earlier rumored to have banned iPods from its corporate campus, has now been accused of banning the word podcast as well. While Microsofties have denied that there’s a ban in effect, there’s no denying that blogcast has caught on in Redmond — though it looks like it’s mostly being used to describe video streams. That would put it at odds with another brand-neutral term that’s caught on: vlogs. Not sure which I like better, though Googlefight gives vlog a huge lead, so it looks like blogcast may not have a whole lot of staying power — no matter what it means.