How 16 Great Companies Picked Their Unique Names

Anyone who's ever had to form a company can sympathize with how difficult it can be to create a company name that is descriptive yet unique.

However, some companies have gone a less-traditional route and used some pretty unique naming conventions.

Here are some examples of interesting company names and the backstories behind them.

1. 

The name started as a joke about the amount of information the search engine could search, or a "Googol" of information. (A googol is the number 1 followed by 100 zeros.) When founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin gave a presentation to an angel investor, they received a check made out to "Google."

2. 

Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith had the idea of checking their email via a web interface, and tried to find a name that ended in "mail." They finally settled on hotmail because it had the letters "html," referencing the HTML programming language used to help create the product.

3.

Volkswagen literally means "people's car." Adolf Hitler initially came up with the idea for "cars for the masses," which would be a state-sponsored "Volkswagen" program. Hitler wanted to create a more affordable car that was able to transport two adults and three children at speeds of 62 mph. He choose the car manufacturer Porsche to carry out the project, and the rest, as they say, is history.

4.

The word "yahoo" was coined by Jonathan Swift in the the book Gulliver's Travels. The term represented a repulsive, filthy creatures that resembled humans (think: Neanderthal). Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang and David Filo considered themselves yahoos, and thought the term would be appropriate for their joint venture.

5.

The consumer electronic company is named after Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology. The founders dropped the first three letters for the high position in alphabetical listings. In 1998 Asus created a spinoff company named Pegatron, using the other unused letters of Pegasus.

6. 

Contrary to popular belief and theories, Cisco is simply short for San Francisco. Their logo resembles the suspension cables found on the Golden Gate bridge.

7.

When Canon was founded in 1933 under the name Precision Optical Instruments Laboratory. Two years later they adopted "Canon" after the company's first camera, the Kwanon. Kwanon is the Japanese name of the Buddhist bodhisattva of mercy.

8.

Coca-Cola's name comes from the the coca leaves and kola nuts used as flavoring in the soft drink. Eventually Coca-Cola creator John S. Pemberton changed the 'K' of kola to 'C' to create a more fluid name.

9.

 The planning product line was named after Benjamin Franklin and Stephen Covey. The company was formed in 1997 from the combining of the two companies FranklinQuest and the Covey Leadership Center.

10.

 IKEA is simply a random collection of letters, based from the first letters of founder Ingvar Kamprad's name in addition to the first letters of the names of the Swedish property and the village in which he grew up: Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd.

11.

 Lego is a combination of the Danish phrase "leg godt," which translates to "play well." Initially the company built wooden toys, and later switched to making plastic bricks. Lego also means "I put together" in Latin, but the Lego Group claims this merely coincidence and the origin of the word is strictly Danish.

12.

Reebok is simply an alternate spelling of "rhebok," an African antelope. The company founders found the word in a South African edition of a dictionary won by the Joe Foster, son of the Reebok founder J.W. Foster.

13.

 The Japanese consumer electronics company is named after its first product, an ever-sharp pencil that was created in 1915.

14.

 Six Apart's name has one of the most interesting origins. The web company's co-founders Ben and Mena Trott were born six days apart.

15.

 The original prototype of the company's flagship product had the name "Sky-Peer-to-Peer," which was shrunk down to Skyper, then finally Skype.

16.

 Verizon is a combination of the words veritas, which is Latin for "truth," and horizon.

Source by: www.openforum.com

Robotic Maids, Caregivers Not Ready to Roll Yet

Major US robotics companies, long obsessed with producing remote-controlled military hardware, are now talking about robotic servants that would one day remind older folks to take their meds, help them up from a fall, and whisk them around the house if they are incapacitated.

But so far, the companies have been mostly just talking. Bedford-based iRobot Corp., of PackBot and Roomba renown, last year unveiled a health care division that will turn out robot helpers. But the company has yet to thrill us with any prototypes or concepts.

Rather, I see the short-term breakthroughs coming from the laboratories of tiny firms like the new Hoaloha Robotics, in Seattle (www.hoaloharobotics.com).

Hoaloha, so small that its chief executive, former Microsoft Corp. exec Tandy Trower, answers the phone himself, last week announced a partnership with the hardware company Robosoft (www.robosoft.com/eng/), of Bidart, France.

Robosoft will make the arms, grippers, and mobile platforms for any robots emerging from the partnership.

Hoaloha will contribute its software, which can place emergency calls, access online medical services, and dispense drugs.

Trower said he is thinking pragmatically about the first assistive robots that will cross baby boomers’ thresholds.

Rather than Rosie, the sassy robot maid on “The Jetsons,’’ Trower talked about “PCs on wheels’’ that would handle basic tasks around the home.

His vision reminds me of Serge, the nonhumanoid butler in the Syfy series “Caprica,’’ who rolls around on a Segway-style self-correcting platform, answers his inventor’s door, and delivers messages from visitors.

A conceptual drawing from Hoaloha and Robosoft shows a tablet PC mounted on a mobile platform, a video screen for remote presence use, and foldable arms that suggest the robot might be able to lift and support people and carry objects.

Trower hopes that — perhaps through deals with iRobot, for example — such assistive aids will begin taking the place of walkers and scooters in three to five years.

Source by: www.boston.com

Apple gets highest score ever in satisfaction, holds off PCs

Apple today managed to get its best-ever score on the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) and maintain its lead over Windows PCs. Happiness with Macs climbed from 84 points last year to an all-time high of 86 this year. It has a nine-point lead over the maximum 77 point score for Windows PCs, the largest gap of any category in the ACSI.

Windows brands did improve, but not fast enough to close the gap. Acer, Dell and HP tied for the 77 point score. The aggregate of smaller PC builders like Sony and Toshiba also reached 77, although HP's Compaq label maintained its poor reputation with the last place score of 74.

Most of the improvement on the Windows side was attributed to the switch to Windows 7. Vista had been considered a liability for Microsoft even late into its life through its reputation for incompatibility and poor performance on some systems. Attempts to improve customer support may have also borne fruit.

Apple's lead was credited partly to the introduction of the iPad but also its determination to be creative and diverse. Its use of much stronger, North America-based support also gave it an edge over competitors. Most of its competitors both contend with a more varied product pool and support outsourced to India or the Philippines that continues to draw complaints.

Source by: www.electronista.com

Smartphones get you out of a jam

Stuck in traffic? Maybe your phone can rescue you.

These days plenty of smartphones can get you from A to B, but often with little thought to traffic snarls that might lie ahead. A few sat-nav apps, from the likes of Sygic and Navigon, have started to incorporate live traffic data. Thankfully there are a growing number of other ways to check on traffic conditions straight from your phone.

This week VicRoads released the VicTraffic iPhone app which makes it easy to check on travel times and view traffic camera feeds from around Melbourne. It's not much use for suburban driving, but it could be handy if you're commuting across town every day. You can even save your route as a favourite so, for example, you can quickly see the status of the Eastern Freeway, Alexandra Parade and the Tullamarine Freeway on the one screen.

VicTraffic doesn't superimpose data onto a map, it just displays the same time and colour data that you'd see on the signs if you were driving along the freeway. The data appears to be pulled straight from the VicRoads computer system. The advantage of this is that the data seems to be up-to-date, unlike some of the map-based alternatives. If you're not using an iPhone, take a look at iphone.itransit.com.au - a website which offers similar data and should work on a range of smartphones.

The Google Maps app on the iPhone and Android devices offer a green/yellow/red traffic overlay option, although the few times I've tested it out it hasn't been very accurate.

If you search the iTunes store for Sydney-based traffic apps they generally get horrid user reviews because the data is out of date. I couldn't see anything that is the equivalent of the new VicRoads app. Some Sydney-based apps display travel times on a map while others just offer camera feeds, which obviously isn't as useful as actual travel times.

There are a few other alternatives for monitoring traffic conditions, such as RSS and Twitter feeds. Snarl offers iPhone and Android apps, but you can also subscribe to RSS and Twitter feeds for various parts of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. The RTA offers RSS feeds for parts of Sydney, plus a quick Google search should turn up Twitter and RSS traffic feeds for your area.

Obviously you shouldn't be fiddling with your phone while you're driving, but you could always leave a Twitter or RSS app running in the background with notification enabled. A pop-up message on your phone could help you avoid a traffic jam on the way home. Do yourself a favour and keep your phone in a car mount - otherwise you could be up for a hefty fine and also lose a few demerit points.

Have you come across a decent mobile app or service for monitoring traffic conditions in your city?

Source by: digihub.brisbanetimes.com.au

Early Wii Party in Melbourne this Friday

Melbourne party-pantaloon enthusiasts can have a crack at Wii Party this Friday, September 24. The event is fairly brief, held between 11:30am - 2:30pm at The Nintendo Experience, EB Games 67 Swanston St.

"Nah" you say. But wait, there'll be competitions during that time! Play Wii Party mini-games, possibly win prizes! It'll be fun for the whole family, until the final deathmatch to decide upon a winner. Don't forget, there's also an Australia-wide (mostly) Wii Party Westfield tour currently going on. Don't ever forget.

Wii Party launches October 7.

Source by: www.aussie-nintendo.com

Twitter: The new stage for hacker hijinks

Among the many Twitter pages found to be spreading a worm this morning was the Whitehouse.

(Credit: Websense Labs)
 
Generating a news frenzy usually reserved for Apple product launches, pranksters turned Twitter into wormville this morning. The fast-spreading exploits proved two things: Twitter is undoubtedly now a mainstream service, and it's joined the ranks of big-time tech companies as a target for hackers.

Security experts interviewed by CNET say the messaging service has done a fair job of protecting itself so far, but will have to be more careful with its coding if it wants to be trusted for news aggregation, integration on corporate sites, and as a useful international communication tool.

"They're just as much in the crosshairs as Microsoft, Adobe, and Facebook," said Beth Jones, a senior threat researcher at Sophos.

Twitter doesn't necessarily have more holes than other sites, but the ones it has seem to be targeted at a high frequency by hackers interested in experimenting with new attacks and testing how far and fast dubious software can spread over the popular social network.

For instance, Norwegian programmer Magnus Holm created a worm that exploited the latest cross-site scripting hole in Twitter and watched with amazement as it spread. Initially, he was disappointed with the impact of his worm. He tweeted, "Meh, this worm doesn't really scale. The users can just delete the tweet." An hour later, things had changed. He posted, "Holy s**t. I think this is exponential: 3381 more results since you started searching" followed by "This is scary."

"This keeps happening to Twitter because that's where the (prankster) mentality exists," said Sean Sullivan, security advisor for F-Secure's North American labs. "Twitter is a perfect outlet for that type of guy trying to show his chops."

The latest attacks seem to have started rather quietly, in the complex underworld of hacker forums and back-and-forth coder chatter. The earliest evidence that someone had come across the possibility of a mouseover exploit comes from a Japanese hacker, Masato Kinugawa, who tweeted this morning that he had discovered the problem on August 14 and alerted Twitter to it. Also last month, two Twitter employees referred to the mouseover code in a discussion on coding community site GitHub.

Kinugawa, under the impression that nothing had been done at Twitter to solve the problem he'd flagged, noticed that it was still an issue in the newly redesigned Twitter interface. Early this morning--the afternoon in Japan--he created a test account called "Rainbow Twtr" in which the same code flaw was used to create blocks of color in lieu of text tweets. That's when others began to notice, including Holm and @matsta, who also created a worm and has since had his account on Twitter suspended.

A blog post from Twitter security chief Bob Lord late this morning acknowledged the attacks and attempted to calm down hysterical users who weren't sure why their accounts were bizarrely tweeting long strings of HTML and JavaScript. "The vast majority of exploits related to this incident fell under the prank or promotional categories...we are not aware of any issues related to it that would cause harm to computers or their accounts. And, there is no need to change passwords because user account information was not compromised through this exploit," he wrote.

Twitter had discovered and patched the hole last month but a recent site update unrelated to new Twitter inadvertently resurfaced it," Lord said.

It couldn't have come at a worse time for Twitter, which last week overhauled its Web interface to offer more features, better access to multimedia content, and a slant toward news consumption rather than a single timeline of short messages.

The fact that Twitter is an open network, searchable on Google and other search engines, and accounts can be created by anyone, even aliases, makes it an easier platform to exploit than Facebook, Sullivan said. But its simplicity also makes it easier for Twitter to spot attacks, he said.

It will be interesting to see how Twitter's new redesign will affect its ability to spot and squash spam and malware attacks. For example, Twitter won't easily be able to track and police malicious links that are included in YouTube videos and Flickr images accessible via a new viewing pane, according to Sullivan.

The growth in users has been both a boon and a burden for the start-up. "I think they did a good job of responding to this swiftly, but they've had such explosive growth that they're perpetually playing catch up," said Jones of Sophos. "Catching up with infrastructure and catching up with security."

Twitter makes some basic policy mistakes too. For instance, Twitter should not allow Javascript in tweets, a technique used in the attacks earlier in the day, Jones said. "They need more quality assurance testing...This one was such an easy thing to avoid."

Twitter spokeswoman Carolyn Penner had this response: "We don't allow executable Javascript in tweets. The fact that someone found a loophole today contributed to the issue."


Twitter is designed for people to broadcast short bits of information to a large number of people, who then rebroadcast it, and so on, and so on--a perfect environment for spreading malware and spam. "Facebook and Google have cross-site scripting vulnerabilities, but the Twitter ones are more visible because they've been used virally," said Jeremiah Grossman, chief technology officer at WhiteHat Security.

The need to refresh its features and respond to competition is likely behind some of the problems. Like many Web 2.0 companies that are constantly updating their sites, Twitter does agile development where software is developed and modified in small iterations at a fast pace. It's easy to make mistakes when writing code that fast, Grossman said.

Security problems are exacerbated when they ripple off Twitter's site and onto sites of corporations, organizations, and others who integrate Twitter feeds directly onto their Web sites. Automated Twitter feeds have also hastened the spread of attacks. Web sites can have tweet streams, banners, and images from third parties, or Web widgets that store code from other companies. This is an increasing source of malware on Web sites that otherwise would be safe.

Grossman suggested that Twitter offer money to people who find and report holes to them, like bounty programs at Mozilla and Google. Asked to comment on the suggestion, Twitter spokeswoman Penner said: "We work closely with the security community and, with their help we're able to get to other flaws before they are exploited." She declined to comment further.

Meanwhile, help may be on the horizon from browser makers. Mozilla is adding a new content security policy feature to Firefox 4.0 that will help thwart cross-site scripting and other attacks. But Twitter and other sites have to implement software to work with the technology, according to Grossman. Basically, the browser won't execute code that has not been defined as acceptable by the Web site.

Grossman praised Twitter for fixing the cross-site scripting hole and shutting down the attacks quickly, but said that because of its high-profile status, it needs to do more. "They're doing their best," he said, "but their best is not quite good enough."

Source by: news.cnet.com

More users accessing the Internet through mobile phones

Not long ago, mobile phones were used mainly for calling and texting. Now, however, research suggests that handsets are replacing computers as the preferred method for accessing the Internet.

A man using his mobile phone accesses a broadband wireless internet connection on his laptop in central Sydney.

 

The study showed that half of users in their 30s log on to the Internet with a mobile device while at work or at home in spite of a computer readily available. The trend may be attributed to strong smartphone sales spearheaded by the popularity of iPhone, which was first released more than two years ago.

Sensis e-Business Report author Christena Singh said that mobile Internet usage has become common across a number of different age groups.

"While younger Australians are more likely to use mobile internet, half of Australians in their 30s are using mobile web, while more than four in 10 log on when they are in their 40s," Singh said. Respondents said that they access the Internet on mobile devices to look for information such as maps and directions (67 per cent), the weather (64 per cent), news sites (59 per cent), social networking sites (56 per cent) and sports results (46 per cent).

Technology analyst Gartner says that the number of connected computers worldwide, which is about 1.78 billion, is expected to be eclipsed by mobile devices, which could hit 1.82 billion by 2013.

The Sensis e-Business Report interviewed 1000 consumers. The study also claims that children are logging on to the Internet at a very young age. About 26 per cent of children aged five-years old and younger are said to be using the Internet, with the figure rising to 46 per cent for children aged six to 10.

Source by: au.ibtimes.com