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How 10 Iconic Tech Products Got Their Names
lgmac writes "Think Windows Azure is a stupid name? Ever wonder how iPod, BlackBerry and Twitter got their names? Author Tom Wailgum goes inside the process of creating tech product names that are cool but not exclusionary, marketable, and most of all, free of copyright and trademark gotchas. Here's the scoop on ten iconic tech products and how they got their monikers, plus a chat with
the man responsible for naming Azure, BlackBerry, and more. (What's the one he wishes he'd named but didn't? Google.)"
...it involved a lot of pot.
Name it what you want, but the RESULT is what gives products their reputations, not the names of said products. The only saving grace of XP is how terrible Vista was received by the public, so in comparison, XP looked much better. And how interesting this is to me because I remember how terrible XP was in the beginning. Vista is like Windows ME -- everyone will be happier when it goes away, and we'll all love Windows 7, as long as it's different than Vista. Unbind our hands, and open up the possibilities and you'll win us over. Stop fixing things that we like just because some restrictive group wants you to (RIAA, MPAA, FBI, CIA, DOJ...etc), and start fixing things we hate -- like how restrictive everything is in Vista.
Security has little to do with forcing us to click OK every ten seconds, because eventually that repetitive task will just happen without any consideration -- much like how EULA's are click-passed, and how nobody EVAR reads em. If you want to keep us secure, take a page from Linux and open up your OS to public scrutiny so that people can perfect it. What are you afraid of? Seriously. Who cares if we find out that you people at Microsoft haven't done any real work since 1990... we ALREADY KNOW THAT. You just keep repainting the same product and sending it out with a bunch of problems so we will all feel your pain and we will all buy into your anti-virus and special editions... your drive for future product updates. We know that you only borked Vista so that people would love XP... and it worked. We loved you again, but we loved the past MS. People aren't stupid... well at least not THAT stupid.
Although it looks like you think we are, especially because of those insane advertisements you have with Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld. Are you nuts???
We also don't want to lose our life savings from lawsuits. Oh and while you're at it... take a close look at the stock market and remember that WE EMPLOY YOU, so you'd better do what we say MSFT or we'll employ someone else... it's only a matter of time, now that the incentive for free OS use is higher than ever!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
He says before Google, all the search engines were engineering names like WebCrawler, Webfinder, Websearcher, etc.
Apparently he never heard of search engines like AltaVista, Yahoo!, Lycos, etc. Seriously? Names are his business and he doesn't remember any of those?
... to the GIMP devs.
If the developers hail from a UNIX background there is no mystery. biff, awk, grep, sed. google and twitter seem tame by comparison.
> ...free of copyright ... gotchas.
A name cannot have any "copyright gotchas" . Names cannot be protected by copyright.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I figured that they were tired of hearing about the BSOD, and "Azure screen of death" would at least sound nicer.
RTFFAQ.
http://slashdot.org/faq/slashmeta.shtml#sm150
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Firefox was actually the third name. Its original name was Phoenix (it rose from the ashes of Netscape), but Phoenix Technologies raised a fuss. Then it became Firebird, and the Firebird database team raised a fuss. Then it became Firefox, and Debian didn't like that and called it IceWeasel. Anyone remember the FireSomething plugin that would randomly change the name.
I believe it's based on the official major releases of Windows NT, since the 9x kernel was abandoned.
1. Windows NT 3.1
2. Windows NT 3.5
3. Windows NT 4.0
4. Windows 2000
5. Windows XP
6. Windows Vista
7. Windows 7
> Then it became Firefox, and Debian didn't like that and called it IceWeasel.
Debian had no objection whatever to calling it Firefox. Mozilla objected to Debian doing so.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
A couple decades back there was a German man with his own branding/naming company. A Japanese company, not satisfied with their experience for English speaking markets, called him up and asked him to help out with a new car. Naturally, he inquired as to the project timeline, due dates etc.
Nervously, the Japanese marketer replied that they needed something for the following Monday.
After a few moments pause, the German replied "Dat Soon? eh?"
Later that same year he took a trip to London on business. While eating at a local steakhouse, he asked "what's dis here sauce?"
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
I'm still trying to find funding for my Tamper Indicative Toggle Switch. I even offered to change the name to Authenticated Smart Switch. For some reason, my boss objected to both names.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
WTF? No way I'm clicking through that. Not even a fig leaf "print this article"-link there. And for what? A huge picture and three lines of text? Abominable.
You should stop try to find funding, and just do it. Like liboobs.
Yes, what you said is funny, but seriously now I had to pitch using a free image suite to a customer who was kinda penny-pinching, and when I suggested that we "bring out the GIMP" the customer started laughing at me, and they became somewhat violent. I ducked the coffee she threw at me, but only after I explained (while dodging numerous other desk utensils) that GIMP stood for "GNU Image Manipulation Program" did the abuse dwindle.
And then she said, "What the hell does a GNU have to do with anything? You people are all fucking crazy!! ARRRRRGHHHHH!!!!" And she had a coronary and passed out from too much bacon and eggs... cholesterol rich, fatty foods, apparently add up over the years.
Why couldn't they call it something like "Expensive Looking Free Graphics Suite" so like people could present it and be cheered for mentioning the product? The customer might have invited me to join her for a cup of coffee instead of hurl the damn thing at me. Although that tends to be reduced to "ELFGS" which sounds equally as annoying.
Let's have a name-fork of the project! I vote for the name "Rez". That way, I could say, "MRS. Customer, we have just what you need in the Rez project, a free graphics utility. I'm not sure what this GIMP project is you keep balking at, but the last guy who brought up that project is a fool. Go with our project instead and we'll use Rez. It sounds cooler."
Of course I'm joking around a little but apart from my exaggeration, this was the level of irritation expressed by said customer in regards to the GIMP moniker.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Who cares if we find out that you people at Microsoft haven't done any real work since 1990... we ALREADY KNOW THAT.
Nah, their consumer OSes have seen the addition of memory protection. Beore then, Microsoft did some real doesn't-work.
Hint: it'll probably be spelt strangely.
What do you know? http://www.speltstrangely.com/ is available!
Finally a name for my OSS speech recognition project!
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
even considering the subject matter. It covers that wikipedia is wiki + encyclopedia, but offers nothing on how wikis got their name (a hawaiian bus system), it just says that android was made by a company named Android, and says that OSX is the 10th mac os, without even bothering to look into the cat names at all. The only one with an actual interesting answer was Red Hat.
Yes, by all means someone should start selling a Skami Computer, hopefully via infomercial! I'd recommend filling out the product line with a "Do!Be!Us!" smartphone, a "Krapee" monitor line, the "De-Funk(t)" music player, the "Borkt" series of printers, and the "InnerFierce" wireless networking gear.
But please, if you do this, make sure you set up your "world headquarters" in a semi-abandoned strip mall, and move it every time the landlord kicks you out for non-payment. (And no, you can't ever pay rent when running a scam. A penny stolen is a penny earned.)
The good news is you'll be able to sell Vista on this stuff without increasing your complaint load. Heck, given the target audience, you could probably charge them for two copies and call it Double Vista.
get online news websites to understand how the scrollbars work in a web browser, instead of breaking one 'page' into a dozen small ones that, instead of the whole article loading at once, and then being able to scroll smoothly, instead of having to click next, next, next, and have frustrating pauses while trying to read.
After I read the first 'bit' and realized Id have to click, wait, click, wait to read the rest, I just closed the tab instead of bothering.
Occasionally on sites like that there is a 'printable version' that gives the whole article as one, but lately it seems to just give a 'printable version' of that one bit of the story. /. editors - lets not encourage these sites by linking to them and giving them the ad traffic.
The article says that Firefox was the browser's second name, but during development Firebird was known as Phoenix. I forget what the reason for the first change was, but they're definitely on their third name.
Panasonic (Originally Matsushita) actually got the name of their company from a review of one of their speaker systems. The article said that they had great "all around sound." All around translates to pana and sound translates to sound.
Epson (Originally Seiko) made a small printer named the EP-101 which was the worlds first compact, lightweight digital printer. My grandfather found large demand in it in the U.S. so they needed to create a new name to use(Seiko is a watch corp in the US). He told them the story about how Panasonic came about the name and left on a flight back stateside.
When he got back, he had a message waiting already and they told him that they were naming it Epson. He told them that is a horrible idea because people would confuse it with epsom salt. They told him it was his fault because it was his idea and explained that they were naming it based on their first product sale like panasonic did. So the name comes from "son of EP" to the more consumer friendly Epson.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.