Fri 2008-11-07 23:05 (BaggageHandlingAtHeathrow)
(Thanks to UPi for contributing to this article.)
Software developers these days are really having trouble naming their products. They come up with these short, meaningless and cryptic names which sound cool and original (and the .com domain for them was still available), but I have bad news for you: pulling a random sequence of characters out of your ass is not original.
Imagine seeing the following names for the first time, knowing that they are names of software products. Could you guess the purpose of those software? Go ahead and try to pair the entries in the two columns, some of these must be new.
| Names | Purposes |
| Gimp | Screen reader and magnifier |
| Trillian | User-edited directory website |
| Kate | Internet telephony |
| Fring | Photo sharing website |
| Tomboy | Blog website |
| Skype | Sticky desktop notes |
| Orca | Instant messaging client |
| Audacity | Web browser |
| Firefox | Image manipulation program |
| Flickr | Document scanner |
| Opera | Instant messaging client |
| Text editor | |
| Sane | Audio editor |
| Yelp | Web browser |
| iWiW | Social networking website |
Now one might say, well, what are they supposed to do, name them after persons, organizations and events of historical importance, like people do with streets and other public places?
Yes.
For example:
That’d make much more sense.