The Name Inspector’s getting local. He’s decided to take a look at all 409 names in Seattle 2.0’s Seattle Startup Index. In his grand vision, this is the first in a series of posts about company names in different local startup scenes. Do entrepreneurs in Seattle do it differently from the ones in Boston or [...]

Watch out! There’s a new electric motorcycle in town. It’s the Enertia, from Brammo. Yes, like the word inertia, but with an E, which The Name Inspector supposes stands for electric. So, electric + inertia.
Inertia. Kind of an unusual word choice for a motorcycle, don’t you think? Inertia, as we all remember from physics class, [...]

The Name Inspector has recently learned about Lard Butt, a new athletic apparel company based here in Seattle. This is a great example of naming done right.
First, there are the positive associations of lard, a filling and economical ingredient that makes fried foods taste great. The word lard also calls to mind larder, which means [...]

While perusing the New York Times magazine last weekend, The Name Inspector saw a big ad for a new organic vodka called Crop. It’s clear what they were going for with this name. It connects the product to its agricultural origins. It makes the vodka seem like something natural and fresh and wholesome–like food!
Let’s try [...]

Clearly The Name Inspector has not been participating in NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month). He’s been working on a secret project. But now he plans to up the posting rate a bit.
Radar Networks recently introduced their first Semantic Web application: Twine. In a presentation at the Web 2.0 Summit, Radar Networks founder and CEO Nova [...]

Of the name Utterz, with special reference in the final paragraph to movies of the late 1990s.
Sometimes The Name Inspector must respond swiftly to the cries of an innocent web surfer in distress. The listenerd has issued a plea for help with the name Utterz, for a mobile blogging platform. With Utterz you can [...]

Last week John Cook at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer asked:
What is it with the word ‘dango’ and internet companies?.
Of course, there’s the online movie site Fandango. And then there’s Portland’s Jobdango and Seattle’s Zoodango.
Now, a former Microsoft project manager is rolling out a new site called GodDango, which he hopes will become a central gathering spot [...]

We’re really getting a chance to enjoy the graphic possibilities of the letters i and j lately. If you’re a blogger you can put a Lijit Wijit on your blog. And now there’s Kijiji. Actually, there has been Kijiji for a while now in other countries, but eBay has just launched a U.S. version of [...]

Tags: victrola, coffee, cafe, coffeehouse, sign, signs, capitol-hill, capitolhill, seattle

Microsoft recently unveiled Surface, a tabletop computer with an amazing multi-touch interface. There’s no keyboard or mouse–you interact with Surface through its display, which is touch-sensitive and can respond to simultaneous touches from multiple fingers or people. That means you can “grab” objects and move them around, re-size photos by stretching them out with your [...]