Slink Slank Slunk: Product Naming As Seen On TV!
This post originally appeared at Catch This. As my fellow office-mates at Catchword World Headquarters will tell you, I’m always cold. Always. On any given day, I will be wearing …
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La la la la I Can’t Hear You: Banished Words of 2008
This post originally appeared at Catch This. Recently Lake Superior State University announced its 34th annual list of Banished Words for 2008. (The full title is much more snarky, in …
Meth with cream: Fortified coffee naming
I was in a 7-Eleven over the weekend and got some coffee. The store near me has a huge self-service coffee station with all kind of cups, flavors, creamers, sweeteners, …
What Comes After Biggest?: The Naming of Sizes
Increases in storage technology are necessitating names for the ever-expanding amount of space available in computers. In the old days (pre-1990), a hard drive that could hold 40 MB (megabytes; …
Your Name Makes You Intelligent
This post originally appeared at Catch This. I’m a big fan of Richard Wiseman’s Quirkology site – it’s all about psychology and perception and why human beings are so weird. …
Names, gender, and the not-so-subtle message
This post originally appeared at Catch This. There is yet another article on baby naming called “What’s in a Name?“, by Sam Kean, at the NY Times this week (get …
Latin, Italian, whatever
Somehow I missed the news in July that Dell introduced another new brand name for its computers – Vostro. This line of computers is aimed at “the smallest businesses”, which …
Hulu: I don’t think that word means what you think it means
News Corp. and NBC recently announced the name of their new online video joint venture: Hulu. Here’s the rationale behind this brand name, according to Jason Kilar, the CEO: Why …
Buzzword of the Day
spit: First there was spam. Then spim (spam by instant messenger). Now get ready for spit (Spam Over Internet Telephony). It may not be a problem yet, but two companies …
Book Review: Wordcraft
Wordcraft: The Art of Turning Little Words Into Big Business By Alex Frankel Published by Crown Publishing Group 241 pages, $24.00 ISBN 1400051045 Very few books have been written exclusively …