No, I know it’s a panda falling out of a box. But what is the thing called that’s showing the panda falling out of a box? Right, right. It’s an animated GIF (Graphics Interchange Format).

Wait, did you say “GIF” as in “Good lord that’s a cute panda” or “GIF” as in “Gee whiz, that’s adorable?”

The topic of much debate since the proliferation of the animated GIF has been exactly how to say it. Hard “G” or soft “G?” According to the man who created the GIF – there’s really no debate.

“The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations,” Mr. Wilhite said. “They are wrong. It is a soft ‘G,’ pronounced ‘jif.’ End of story,” Steve Wilhite told the New York Times.

There you have it. If you disagree with the creator, then you’re wrong. So, stop debating an get back to work making cat GIFs, with a soft “G” of course

The new languages are: Bosnian, Cebuano, Hmong, Javanese and Marathi. All of them except for Bosnian are considered to be in alpha status, so they still have a lot of work to do, but the company says it will continue to test and improve them in time.

“If you took a quick snapshot of content available on the web, you might think that everyone around the world spoke English, Chinese, French or Spanish,” says Google Translate program manager Sveta Kelman. “But in fact, millions of people around the world speak an incredible array of languages that currently have a small presence across the web.”

“Google Translate helps bridge the divide between the content available online and people’s ability to access that information,” says Kelman.

According to Google, the five new languages are spoken by a combined 183 million people.

You can access the new languages at translate.google.com or via the Android or iOS apps.

“Last October we expanded our AV Marketplace to include new vendors in order to provide even more choice and protection to the over 1 billion people who use our service. Today, we look forward to opening up the Marketplace to even more of our users,” says Facebook.

“We hope this will help you protect your devices both on and off of Facebook.”

Facebook launched their AV Marketplace back in April of last year. The marketplace offers free versions of popular antivirus software for users, originally launching partnerships with Microsoft, McAfee, TrendMicro, Sophos and Symantec.

Free antivirus is beneficial to Facebook users, obviously. The marketplace offers free trials of the software, upon which they can decide if they want to fork over the cash for full version.

It’s not just about giving users the ability to download free trials of anti-virus software. These partnerships allow Facebook to to incorporate their databases into Facebook’s own URL blacklist database, so that Facebook is better able to identify potential threats on the site before they become major problems.

Facebook beefed up the AV marketplace back in October, adding partnerships with avast!, AVG, Avira, Kaspersky, Panda, Total Defense, and Webroot.

Along the way, Facebook also launched the Malware Checkpoint, which lets users self-enroll in anti-virus protection. They also created a new phish@fb.com email address, where users can send reports on any phishing attacks they come across on the site.

You can check out all the products offered for PC, Mac, and Mobile here.

Starting today, Google Calendar has a new Español (Latinoamérica) option. Spanish is spoken is much of the world, but the Spanish isn’t the same in every location. Google knows this, and has made a Spanish variant that better suits their Latin American users.

Of course, it isn’t easy to find a variation of Spanish that works for someone living in say, South America, but also feels natural to a Spanish speaker in the United States or Caribbean for example. The Spanish spoken in these regions differs greatly from one country to the next due to geography, separate cultures, customs, and histories. To give all of our Latin American Spanish speakers an option that looks, feels, and sounds right, Google Localization constructed a Spanish variant that combines the most common elements from the different dialects. So whether you speak Spanish or any one of Calendar’s 42 languages, it’s now even easier to keep up with your busy schedule!” says Google.

Google has already offered Gmail in Latin American Spanish since last year, and if you’re new to Calendar but have been using this option inside Gmail, you should be ready to go in Español (Latinoamérica) automatically. Otherwise, simply go to your Calendar settings and click the gear icon and change languages.

Starting now, the AP Stylebook no longer supports the use of “illegal immigrant” to describe people living in the country illegally.

In fact, the AP Stylebook no longer allows for the use of the term “illegal” to describe any person. The word “illegal,” according to the AP, should only be used in reference to an illegal action – but not in reference to an actual person.

The AP had been using “illegal immigrant” for some time, after deciding that other popular terminology like “undocumented” failed to provide a credible alternative (they could have plenty of documents – just not the one that grants them citizenship).

Here’s what the Stylebook’s updated entry for “illegal immigration” says:

illegal immigration Entering or residing in a country in violation of civil or criminal law. Except in direct quotes essential to the story, use illegal only to refer to an action, not a person: illegal immigration, but not illegal immigrant. Acceptable variations include living in or entering a country illegally or without legal permission.

Except in direct quotations, do not use the terms illegal alien, an illegal, illegals or undocumented.

Do not describe people as violating immigration laws without attribution.

Specify wherever possible how someone entered the country illegally and from where. Crossed the border? Overstayed a visa? What nationality?

People who were brought into the country as children should not be described as having immigrated illegally. For people granted a temporary right to remain in the U.S. under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, use temporary resident status, with details on the program lower in the story.

So, according to the AP, people can enter the country illegally, but they are no longer to be referred to as illegal immigrants.

The move is already sparking political debate, with conservatives upset. The Media Research Council, who says their job is “exposing and combating the liberal media bias,” called the move “politically correct mumble.” Others claim the move had a purely political motivation.

On the other side, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus called the decision a “great move forward.”

For their part, the AP says that it’s all about “ridding the Stylebook of labels.” For instance, another move nixed the term “schizophrenic” and replaced it with “diagnosed with schizophrenia.”

[Photo via Thomas Hawk, Flickr]

Today, Twitter has “announced” Twttr, the new no-vowel Twitter service that will now become the default service for all users.

If you want your vowels back, you’re going to have to pay $5 a month.

“We’re doing this because we believe that by eliminating vowels, we’ll encourage a more efficient and “dense” form of communication. We also see an opportunity to diversify our revenue stream,” says Twitter.

Don’t worry – you still get the letter “y.”

“Because our users come first, we believe that ‘Y’ should always be free to everyone — today and forever. You’ll notice in the Twttr example above, the ‘y’ is clearly visible. Also, the vowels in URLs will be also be free for everyone, forever. You can also Tweet in non-Latin characters based languages, like Japanese, Chinese, Arabic or Korean. These languages will remain unaffected by our service change.”

Twyttyr? Why byy vywyls whyn yyy gyt “Y” fyr fryy? Syckyrs! #nvwls

— Joan Rivers (@Joan_Rivers) April 1, 2013

Yikes. Twitter is already a minefield when it comes to navigating grammar – forcing 140 characters makes even the best of us resort to devious tactics. But no vowels? The mere thought is nightmare-inducing.

Alongside the no-vowel prank, Twitter also says that they’ve expanded Promoted Tweets to 141 characters, for an additional fee. One extra character is it, though. Don’t try to buy two.

Good thing this one is only a joke. If you want to get in an the fun, write your no-vowel tweets and include the hashtag #nvwls. Or, if you’ve decided to pay the fee to get your vowels back, you can tweet using the #icanhasvowels hashtag.

“Indian culture is diverse, with more than 100 languages and thousands of alphabets used every day. Depending on where you are, you might hear anything from Gujarati to Bengali and Tamil to Urdu. If you’re a speaker of these languages and use a feature phone, communicating is about to get a little easier,” says Google.

The 6 new languages supported are Bengali,Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu.

All you have to do is go to your settings and pick which language you want. All 6 new languages should be options as of right now.

“Some 500 million new users from around the world will join the Internet between now and 2015. Since most will experience the web for the first time on a mobile device, it’s important that people everywhere can communicate in the language they know best.” says Google Localization product manager Ian Hill.

Making Gmail access easier to an area with a dense, tech-loving population is smart and beneficial – for both the people speaking the Indic languages and for Google themselves.

It’s a testament to Google’s dominance that most people simply say “google it” when they really mean “search it.” Because of this market domination, it’s completely understandable that a word like “ogooglebar” would emerge in the Swedish language. “Ogooglebar” translates to “ungoogleable,” as in “that was so obscure that it was ungoogleable, man.”

The word, which was added to the list of new Swedish words back in December, has officially been removed.

Google exerted pressure, asking the council to amend the definition to mean searches unable to be unearthed by Google only, not just any search engine. But instead of amending the definition, which the council said would go against their values, they decided to ax it altogether.

But just from the official list. It’s not like Swedes will stop using the word “ogooglebar.”

“If we want to have ogooglebar in the language, then we’ll use the word and it’s our use that gives it meaning – not a multinational company exerting pressure. Speech must be free!” said Swedish Language Council head Ann Cederberg.

Of course, the problem for Google is that the term “Google” is constantly toeing the dangerous line of falling into generic territory. Sure, it’s nice to be such a dominant force in your area of expertise that your company’s name becomes synonymous with the product itself.

Think Kleenex, Band-Aid, or Xerox? Those are actually trademarked names that people have gradually turned into the common name for the products they represent – tissue, bandages, and copy machines, respectively.

But it’s not so nice when your trademarks are in jeopardy of being declared generic – which is what can technically happen in situations like this. And it’s not like Google hasn’t had to deal with this before.

“It would go against our principles, and the principles of language. Google has forgotten one thing: language development doesn’t care about brand protection,” said Cederberg.

[The Local via The Verge]

As you may remember, Twitter opened up their archive service to English-speaking users back in December of 2012, after promising the service for a few months. With the Twitter archive, users get to look at every single tweet they ever made – including retweets. It’s a nice trip down memory lane, but beware: it’s pretty painful to see how much of a Twitter-noob you were when you first began.

If you want to obtain your Twitter archive, simply go to your settings (desktop). Scroll all the way to the bottom and you’ll see a link the says request your archive.” Once you click it, Twitter will let you know that it may take a few minutes to prepare. When it’s ready, Twitter will email you a link.

Twitter archive adds Danish, Filipino, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Urdu

— Twitter (@twitter) March 21, 2013

Twitter has been busy adding language support for Twitter archive. Earlier this month, they added support for another 12 languages: Dutch, Farsi, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, & Spanish. That brings the total up to 25 languages supported by Twitter’s archive feature.

Your Twitter Archive is now avail. in: Dutch, Farsi, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, & Spanish.

— Twitter (@twitter) March 11, 2013

After making promises for a few month, Twitter finally began to allow English-speaking users to download browsable tweet archives back in December. These “Twitter Archives” contain all types of outgoing communications including tweets and retweets – from the very beginning. “Tweet Zero,” if you will.

“We know lots of you would like to explore your Twitter past,” said Twitter last year.

In order to obtain your Twitter Archive, just go to your setting, scroll to the bottom, and click the “request your archive” button. Twitter will warn you that it may take a little while to prepare, but when it’s done they will email you a link.