with millions of people worldwide working from home this month, zoom, an online video conferencing tool, has gone from mostly unknown to widespread (everywhere) popularity.
why? an article on cnbc.com by jordan novel explains
zoom is known for its reliability, avoiding long outages that discourage repeated use, and it doesn’t have the latency that makes some services painful for extended conversations.
is known is an excellent example of passive voice. is is an auxiliary, known is the irregular past participle of know. it’s not mentioned who knows that zoom is reliable. reliability means zoom’s performance is consistent, dependable. avoid means stay away from. outages are interruptions to service. discourage refers to losing interest or enthusiasm. latency is delays. painful means there is extreme discomfort.
fun elt practice 😃 richyrocks english on youtube
u can take classes with richyrocks on zoom! info here
another feature that makes zoom attractive is that…
people can start video calls for free, as long as they’re kept under 40 minutes and below 100 participants.
as long as means calls must meet that criteria to be free
sarcastic, feline example of as long as
zoom has been recognized for supporting schools during the global quarantine.
founder and ceo eric yuan has been lauded for the company’s efforts to help out schools and other organizations during the crisis.
laud means applaud, praise. help out is a synonym of help. it is used in the chorus of avicii‘s global hit hey brother
what if i’m far from home? oh brother, i will hear your call
what if i lose it all? oh sister, i will help u out
zoom’s cfo kelly steckelberg echoed some of the same sentiments (had similar thoughts) when she commented on the platform’s sudden (quick, unexpected) popularity
the usability and the reliability of zoom is what has led to this incredible adoption, combined with, honestly, the generosity of eric and his willingness to open it up especially to the schools,
lead to means cause, provoke. willingness is disposition, inclination. open up means make available.
zoom ceo eric yuan and cfo kelly steckelberg
novel explains that yuan and steckelberg …
previously worked together at webex, a video-calling software company that cisco acquired in 2007. people have also flocked to webex in record numbers in the past few weeks. but zoom is getting all the buzz, even against large competitors like gotomeeting and skype as well as google hangouts and microsoft teams.
acquire and the spanish verb adquirir are very similar, but notice that acquire DOES NOT have a d. flock means large numbers of people have started using webex. buzz means people are talking about it. as well as means also.
birds fly in flocks
and even ida aalen, a co-founder of the norwegian start-up confrere, also a video conferencing company, said this about zoom
they’ve done some clever things with their video engineering to make sure sound and video work well even when people have very unstable connections
clever means smart. even is used to emphasize that user’s unstable connections don’t impact zoom’s performance. the phrase even when appears in two other musical examples on richyrocks.com: circles by post malone and scared to be lonely by martin garrix and dua lipa. in the bridge of the song u can hear dua sing this lyric twice, starting at 2:34
even when we know it’s wrong, been somebody better for us all along
tell me, how can we keep holding on?, holding on tonight ’cause we’re scared to be lonely
all along means the whole time. hold on means continue. lonely means alone and sad.
have u started using zoom during the quarantine? share your experience under leave a reply
