Web publishing platform builders Six Apart sort of recently released Movable Type 4. This is as good an excuse as The Name Inspector is likely to get to write about the name Six Apart, so… Like Jackson Fish Market or 37signals, Six Apart is an enigmatic name. You have to visit the website or learn [...]

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 [...]

TrenchMice is was a site where people can share inside scoops about the companies where they work. Trenchmouse John has written a great post about how they came up with the name TrenchMice. This is one of the best, most thorough naming stories that The Name Inspector has come across. John wrote the post in [...]

[tags]sonic boom, sonic boom records, records, record stores, capitol hill, seattle[/tags]

Several months ago Mike Buckbee told The Name Inspector about his startup named Fabjectory. It will take a 3D digital representation of your Nintendo Mii or SecondLife avatar, or a 3D model you create yourself with SketchUp, and turn it into an actual physical object. Making the virtual real seems to be a new trend. [...]

In the 10 company name types post, The Name Inspector identified ten ways to put together a name out of meaningful parts. That post was about the nuts and bolts of a name’s structure. This is the first post is a series that will focus on an issue that’s more slippery but also more fundamental: [...]

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]area 51, area51, furniture, home furnishings, capitol hill, seattle[/tags]

Phil Butler over at ReadWriteWeb has written a post about a new online music service called Fairtilizer. Oh dear. The Name Inspector doesn’t even know where to begin. This name is presumably a pun: the first syllable of the word fertilizer has been changed to the similar-sounding word fair. Or maybe the word air has [...]

A couple months back The Name Inspector had lunch with Brian Dorsey. Brian talked about a kooky idea he had for a website: people would specify a date and a geographical area and get matched up with random strangers via email to meet for lunch. Brian really likes to go out for lunch. He works [...]