Kind of like how the internet has become the "cloud", all things related to the browser are now "HTML 5".

While I agree with you, semantically, the author did already address that.

"Technically, HTML5 is a specification from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) (Footnote 2). Many pedants will claim this is the only correct usage. For the rest of us, HTML5 is a useful term to describe the rapid changes that are currently happening to the Web platform."

I don't know anyone who describes the rapid changes that are happening as 'HTML5'.

Even the W3C is not pedantic about "HTML5". A lot of what is advertised on their logo page at http://www.w3.org/html/logo/ (File APIs, IndexedDB, WebSockets, SVG, WebGL, CSS 3D, etc, etc) are not technically part of the HTML5 standard specification (http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/).

As another example, look through the presentations on "HTML5" given at Google I/O. All the interesting stuff is not in the W3C HTML5 specification.

There are numerous other examples.

Try reading through the whole W3C HTML5 specification (http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/) and you'll realize how little of what people refer to as HTML5 is actually contained in that document.

Then pay attention, I guess?

Nearly everyone is now using HTML5 in that sense.

Nearly everyone who? I've only seen it used to mean things that are now possible directly because of HTML5 features. Faster JavaScript engines do not fall under that.

I've never seen it used that way except from our marketing staff. Any technologist should know better.

'Web 2.5' or (a la Chrome) 'Web 3' would make better buzz terms.