[tags]victrola, coffee, cafe, coffeehouse, sign, signs, capitol-hill, capitolhill, seattle[/tags]

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 [...]

Most company names consist of just one or two meaningful parts. That makes sense, because brevity is important in a name for several reasons: memorability, simplicity of pronunciation, ease of writing and typing, and graphic compactness in a logo. So crowded is the space of names, however, that people have been forced into three-meaningful-part territory. [...]

[tags]watering kissmint, wateringkissmint, gum, chewing gum, chewinggum, uwajimaya, seattle[/tags]

Have you noticed that your local Kinko’s has become FedEx Kinko’s? Kinko’s is known for having a laid-back corporate culture. Maybe a little too laid back. The Name Inspector once went to a 24-hour Kinko’s in Manhattan, and there was no one there. Not only were there no other customers, but there were no employees, [...]

Shelly Farnham and Peter Brown are the co-founders of Waggle Labs, a Seattle software and consulting company that specializes in social technology. Their new product, Pathable, lets participants in social events tag themselves with their interests and personal connections to find other similar participants. Shelly and Peter were kind enough to share a story about [...]

[tags]liberty, liberty bar, libertybar, the name liberty, bars, signs, Seattle[/tags]

The name Twitter is not itself a pun, but it’s a set-up for a pun. It pretends to be a simple metaphorical name that casts the textual cacophony of its special kind of web exhibitionism as bird noise. But then there’s the connection to the expression all atwitter, used to describe someone filled with emotional [...]

[tags]signs, naturalstructures, natural structures, slide, playground, volunteerpark, volunteer park, seattle[/tags]

If you’ve bought an artsy-crafty item on the web lately, or if you read Fred Wilson’s blog A VC, then you’ve probably run into Etsy. Since launching in June 2005, this Brooklyn-based company has managed to build an extremely enthusiastic fan base and become the eBay of handmade goods. Etsy is all about community. There’s [...]