Dan Chiappini28 May 2006, 11:30 PM
First we had XP editions. Then we had Titanium. Now we have RAZR. SLVR. Flickr. Wii. VIIV. They're all such FKNG stupid names. Are we the only people who wish we could return to the English language?
Language fascinates me; I guess it comes with the job territory. While I'm by no means a completely anally-retentive conjurer of conjugation or dervish of declension, I do take pride in knowing where the apostrophe goes most of the time. That said, as a mobile user, I send and receive a lot of SMS messages and am constantly dumbfounded by the way people attempt to communicate.
It's not a case of elitism, I simply find it takes me more brain power and thumb dexterity (not to mention the multiple messages asking what the hell they're talking about) to knock out a garbled shorthand version of my thought than take the extra few seconds and add a comma or look for a number to replace a word. T9 is a godsend, if you're sending me messages, then please, for the love of all that is holy - take the five minutes to learn how to use it.
We've all heard of at least one case, either through friends or somewhere on the web of kids submitting work in SMS speak not surprisingly, to cash on its street cred, all the big manufacturing players in the consumer space are releasing stuff using the trend, either completely removing the vowels from their product names (Motorola's ROKR, SLVR, PEBL and RAZR) or adding more than should possibly be there as is the case with Intel's Viiv and Nintendo's Wii (formally Revolution).
The rumour mill is kicking into gear about the Motorola RAZR's successor, said to be called the SCPL (Scalpel)
Surely there's a limit to this madness, but we're more than a little concerned it may not run out soon enough. With that in mind, we kicked around a few four letter names of our own for new products, but unfortunately, the majority of them can't be repeated in good conscience; and there's absolutely no chance anyone would brand them our way if they wanted to keep selling gear.
Yeah sure, it's trivial, it's only a name and communication is the winner at the end of the day if the message gets through... but feel free to leave a comment with some of your favourite (or most hated) product names.