I appeal to all technology companies and services in the cloud: stop with the crazy naming. Why must we insist on giving services misspelled names? You are not doing your services or your brand much of a service by dropping the vowels in your name (flickr) or using tricky spelling (delicio.us).  I have no problem with phonetically spelled names like Yahoo or Google. But Cuul or Cuol (what is it again?) is embarrassing. I have also had issues in the past with long names like rememberthemilk.com, but at least if you say it to someone they can type it in correctly. That is the true litmus test for a web domain name or service. Can you say it to someone out loud and expect them to be able to remember and spell it themselves later when they get home.

Another area where I think we limit the spread of technology is by using geeky words for the tool or service (i.e. blog, wiki, RSS, podcast). I understand people want to be original and not tread on others’ trademarks, but often times, these terms limit the exposure and adoption of services. Blogs have existed for over ten years, and the terms has only recently started to gain popularity and acceptance. Few people can explain the definition of a podcast or a wiki today. Using the term RSS for subscriptions also prevents its widespread adoption (I’m sure newspapers would like to keep it like that). It would help technology to catch on if we would start to use common terms to describe what we are doing: audio or video shows (podcasts), online resource (wikis), and news subscriptions (RSS). Our naming conventions are one way we prevent the spread of new technologies and set us apart from others in terms of understanding what we are doing online.