I’ve been busy starting companies lately, and as a result have had to spend a lot thinking of names for them. The above comic list some obvious things to avoid, but here are some useful tools to help you check the availability of a name, in particular a website name.

1. In Linux the “whois” command: whois [somecompanyname.com]
This tool let’s you check who owns a domain name.

2. Avoid checking the existence of a name on godaddy. If you try to check the name more then 3 times on their service, they will automatically register it.

3. Type the name directly in the address bar. Example. http://www.somename.com, if you get an error page, there’s a very good chance the domain isn’t taken.

4. Try to envision animals or objects that associate with your product. You’ll come up with some pretty cool names, I’m sure you can imagine what anime Twitter was thinking about.

5. Have a brain-storming session. Go around the group and ask them to spit the first word that comes to their mind, write it down on a whiteboard, continue until you have about 20 words. Don’t discourage random stupid words because they will often trigger other words in the minds of your group that will be useful.

6. Finally a name isn’t as important as bringing results. You can have the greatest name in the world, but if you don’t produce anything, the name will be useless. So never spend too much time on a name, just pick one, stick with it, and start building the company and its parts. Once you guys have a product / service model, then a name will come around naturally.

Feel free to post any questions below.

Danny

Um…

What anime was Twitter thinking about? It’s probably not Mahou Shoujo Lovely Twitter or Gundam Twitter Cross X: Galaxy because those shows do not exist.

– Alex

Woops

I meant animal. It’s called proof reading Alex, maybe you should correct those errors not point them out…

Danny

Anyone else going to get an iPad? I must admit, I wasn’t very interested in this device until I saw the keynote. I didn’t really watch the keynote live in video form, instead I huddled in front of the computer endlessly clicking the refresh button on the engadget.com website. It was worth it to see that beautiful device show itself.

I swear the iPhone is a gateway drug.

Danny

The Man Knows How to Dance

I’m not a Mac fan, but I do appreciate Job’s ability to lock down its device and all of its media, yet still generate a frothing demand for shiny objects. Lifehacker had a post recently about delivering presentations like Steve Jobs, linking to some guy who has a raging Powerpoint for Steve Job’s presenting abilities.

Ballmer, however, is famous for throwing chairs, like a Donkey Kong of lawn furniture.

– Alex

The TTC’s now serious business when it comes to PR. What with the fare hike and generally disgruntled commuters. Also, perhaps you’ve heard about ttzzzzzzzgate, where some collector was spotted sleeping. (Apparently, he saved some guy’s life a few years ago.)

Anyways, I’m not all that mad at the TTC, though the 116A route at Kennedy Station really pisses me off sometimes.

Also, Perl has a FN-P90 in her violin case, to match her cosplay.

– Alex

I remember the first time I saw a Touhou game in action.  It was at Waterloo, after classes, when one of my friends was playing Imperishable Night.  There was a dense pattern of bullets on the screen, and the player character was at the bottom weaving around them.  I asked if this was the final boss or something, and I was told it was the first level.

The Touhou series is made by Team Shanghai Alice, which is a one-man team who does the programming, music, art, writing, etc. It’s one of those curtain-fire/bullet hell/wtfomgbbq shooting games where the the screen is filled with enemy bullets and centres around epic end-level boss fights. The games have quirky names like Embodiment of Scarlet Devil and Perfect Cherry Blossom. The characters are all girls based on a mishmash of every fantasy setting (but mostly Japanese).

The Touhou fandom is surprisingly deep given the scarce amount of source material. There’s a brazillion fan pictures of the characters. It’s spawned tons of doujin manga and a couple of doujin anime (one of which has decent production values and professional voice actors). People remix the music and release dozens of albums. There are a few annual Touhou-specific conventions. There’s a write-up on Cracked which I think is pretty accurate: http://www.cracked.com/funny-1750-touhou/

Anyways, I beat the Extra stage for Mountain of Faith this week. It was a good day.

– Alex

Some of the greatest inventions mankind has made trace its roots back to chilling beer.

A new LCBO (the liquor store, for all you non-Ontario peoples) opened up near our workplace downtown. Our company alone made more than five separate field trips to there to stock up for Friday afternoon drinking escapades. We’ve already had one incident with the staff on the morning of its grand opening, related to taking photographs, the legality of taking photographs, calling the cops, and legging it before cops arrived.

Danny didn’t put his beer in the office fridge, so he munged his fantastic contraption seen here (the one that isn’t a quantum hyperfridge). I suggested using the CO2 fire extinguisher, as I watched that Mythbusters episode about chilling beer, but everyone has already conditioned themselves to ignore every suggestion I make.

He might post his thoughts later about it; if you’re reading through RSS, you might want to check the site tomorrow.

– Alex

Cold is the Taste of Champions

I was quite happy that I was able to reuse those unnecessarily large protein jugs. I mean why the hell do you make them that big, and only fill it 75% of the way… it’s like a bag of chips…

Danny