Scoble, fire the MS naming guy. Seriously. You said any marketing exec who did not have feeds on a marketing website should be fired. Your naming guy should be fired too. He’d easily get a job in another bureaucracy anyway with that backwards thinking. I watched the interview with MS Legal Army guy Don McGowan and yes I understand the ironic position MS is in. Since they try and utterly destroy anyone that uses one of their trademarks MS now has to keep going and find trademarkable names. Stop letting the lawyers run the company Scoble. Them fucking up the entertainment industry is testament enough that they shouldn’t be let off the leash. The more blood they get, the more rabid they become.
Apple can come out and call an operating system Jaguar or Tiger. They can call versions of their iPod Mini, Video and Nano. They have applications called Garageband and Aperture and OH MY GOD a mail program called Mail! All very common names for applications and versions of products. Creative have a music player called the Zen. Generic enough to be found in a LOT of Google searches. Sorry to be sarcastic but guess what? People are learning to use more than one word when searching. A p p l e Garageband. A p p l e Aperture. But here’s an intriguing idea and yes more sarcasm: The more people link to your page the higher up in rankings it’ll go so your product will appear first over time.
If this naming guy was around a few years back then hmmm, would there be Windows? Would there be Office? Would there be Word? Maybe the same reason that Apple can design a beautiful product and Microsoft can’t is the same for naming products. Creativity and freedom. Stop letting the bureacrats control how you breathe. I’m in total disbelief that you want to promote a “No Fun” rule when naming codenames. Lord almighty. If you are now getting all thought police on the codenames you are in no way going to be able to get down and have cluetrain moments with the general public. The only search test that should matter is “Microsoft products better than Apple products”. Will MS applications be found in that search reult?
Just tried Google for the search. Fun result!
Strange – ‘cos both Vista and Longhorn (Vista’s codename) are both proper names which would have had entries in Google before they were used by Microsoft.
They’re also odd words which don’t mean anything much, though, and certainly nothing to do with the product involved. I agree with Damien; Apple and others have done very well out of the keep it simple approach.
Unfortunately we live in a litigious society and Microsoft’s execs don’t want to get into more court cases, so it’s getting tougher to name things that aren’t absolutely defendable.
I agree with you, though, and so does the naming guy, to tell you the truth. I’ll do an interview with him soon.
As you note the trademark was “Windows Vista” and no, that did not exist in Google/MSN before it was used by Microsoft. The trademark is also “Microsoft Windows” and I doubt anyone was using that before either.
The “searchability” thing is mostly my idea to make it easy to search for things and not have search engines confused and also to make sure that a search term doesn’t have any results yet, which makes it more likely a trademark doesn’t exist on the existing term.
How would you explain how Apple got to have Aperture and Garageband and Microsoft couldn’t use Sparkle or even Origami?
In 1994, Apple Computer began developing the Power Macintosh 7100. They chose the internal code name “Carl Sagan,” in honor of the astronomer[9]. Though the project name was strictly internal and never used in public marketing, when Sagan learned of this internal usage, he sued Apple Computer to use a different project name — other projects had names like “Cold fusion” and “Piltdown Man”, and he was displeased at being associated with what he considered pseudoscience. Though Sagan lost the suit, Apple engineers complied with his demands anyway, renaming the project “BHA” (Butthead Astronomer). Sagan sued Apple for libel over the new name, claiming that it subjected him to contempt and ridicule. Sagan lost this lawsuit as well; still, the 7100 saw another name change: it was lastly called “LAW” (Lawyers Are Wimps).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan
Why do you want to band Christmas?
Not all MULLEY’SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS are in on this bullshit!!!
You mess with me you mess with Trone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hope you get that puppy doggggggggg!!!
Peace and Hate
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