Happy Holidays and the OLPC XO Laptop

First, we here at Acronym Finder send our best wishes to everyone -- have a Happy Holiday season, and a wonderful 2008!

We very much appreciate your contributions, suggestions, feedback, and visits to Acronym Finder during 2007. We thank you for helping us be the best, most complete database of abbreviations and acronyms on the planet!

Not too long ago, we added a new abbreviation to our database, OLPC, which stands for One Laptop per Child. The OLPC initiative is a non-profit foundation by Nicholas Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab. The laptop, designed with children and education in mind is called the "XO". The OLPC foundation's goal is to:

"provide children around the world with opportunities to explore, experiment, and express themselves. To that end, OLPC is designing a laptop, educational software, manufacturing base, and distribution system to provide children outside of the first-world with otherwise unavailable technological learning opportunities."

Recently, OLPC started its Give One Get One (G1G1) program. You pay $400 for two laptops, one of which will be sent to benefit a child in one of the OLPC target areas in the world, and the other XO is sent you. In the US, you can take a charity deduction for about half this amount, plus, T-Mobile is offering a one year subscription to its T-Mobile Hotspots.

We ordered an XO laptop at the beginning of the G1G1 program and just got it last week. We're very impressed with it! It may look and feel a little like a toy, but it's a fully functional laptop with wireless connectivity and a surprising amount of power for the size and price. And we feel good about contributing a laptop to a child who can benefit from it.

If you're interested in the G1G1 program, hurry, as the program ends on December 31, 2007!

Yahoo! Tech mentions Acronym Finder

Yahoo! Tech's Robin Raskin mentioned Acronym Finder in her Aug 22, 2007 blog entry "Top-Notch Reference Sites for Students".

We're listed with some very nice company: RefDesk, Wikipedia, eHow, The Library of Congress, and more.

Thanks, Robin!

The World of Home Theater abbreviations

After years of wanting a large-screen high-definition television (HDTV), we recently purchased an HDTV, a receiver/DVD/speaker system, and a media center computer. As I did the product and technology research, I was amazed at how many acronyms and abbreviations I encountered.

Here's a tour of some of the most common ones I ran across, from electronics, the TV/HDTV world, and the Sony-specific ones related to the equipment I got.

Television, computers, and general: CATV, DVD, DVI, DVR, FCC, JPEG, LCD, MP3, NTSC, OSD, PAL, PC, PCM, QAM, RGB, SAP, VESA

HDTV, Home Theater, and audio: BD, DBFB, DRC, DTS, HD-DVD, HDCP, HDMI, HDTV, HTIB, HTPC, PBC

Sony specific: ACE, DCAC

Although I work with acronyms and abbreviations all day, I wasn't familiar with many of these! Fortunately, Acronym Finder knew what they meant!

The Times Online mentions Acronym Finder

Ben Macintyre, a columnist for The Times Online UK Edition, mentions Acronym Finder in an article about acronyms and abbreviations.

With just the right touch of both seriousness and humor, he asks,

"Why do we shorten world wide web to double-you double-you double-you, which has three times as many syllables?"

Good question! :-)

We used to list the extremely long Soviet acronym he mentions at the end of the article, but we were told by a Russian translator we trust that it's almost certainly made-up, so we "delisted it" (even though it's apparently in the Guinness Book of World Records).

Thanks, Ben.

Acronym Finder chosen as Refdesk.com SOTD

On May 17, 2007 Acronym Finder was the Site of the Day (SOTD) at Refdesk.com, one of the mostly highly regarded news and reference portal websites.

Bob Drudge has done an outstanding job with organizing and indexing the very best resources on the web. We're honored not only as a SOTD selection, but also as a Refdesk.com recommendation for acronym and abbreviation reference. Thanks, and keep up the good work, Bob!