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Yesterday, I Went to the American Idol for Startups. It Made Me Want to Die.
81–90 of 93 posts
Re: Yesterday, I Went to the American Idol for Startups. It Made Me Want to Die.
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
For those of you who are too young to have lived through the original dot-com boom, I can't recommend this 1999 article on company naming from Salon highly enough: http://www.salon.com/1999/11/30/naming/ Read the whole thing, it's hilarious. As soon as I saw the parade of names in the OP I was reminded of one of the names the naming consultants in the the Salon piece devised -- "Jamcracker": When Altman and Manning p…
Amusingly, there is a business called Jamcracker: http://www.jamcracker.com/ and, what's more, the copyright at the bottom of their website says 1999-2012. I wonder if the naming firm still sold the name after this article!
As the saying goes, there's a sucker born every minute :D
This got me wondering if the naming firm described as the minds behind "Jamcracker" still exists. Sure enough, it does:
http://www.ahundredmonkeys.com/
And they have a useful page listing all the names they've ever sold:
http://www.ahundredmonkeys.com/category/all-names/
Scroll down to "J", and... boom. "Jamcracker: Unified platform for IT management." Right between "Jacks" and "Jamoka."
Re: Yesterday, I Went to the American Idol for Startups. It Made Me Want to Die.
#83"When the language you employ to communicate your ideas is small and boring, your ideas are going to be small and boring." That's how I felt reading this blog post. A long, pedantic, raging post that does nothing but demonstrate that the author has an inflated sense of his writing prowess. His post is basically one type of Hipster raging against the Hipsterisms of a different type of Hipster.
That line made me think of the Hemingway quote:
“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.”
Re: Yesterday, I Went to the American Idol for Startups. It Made Me Want to Die.
#84"The women have it tougher. Their business casual is neither business-minded nor all that casual, a confusing melange of sundresses and sensible slacks, gossamer sweaters tossed over spaghetti straps." That seems weirdly sexist to me. I guess I really like working in tech because I can wear generally what I want, and often in the summer, that means sundresses, instead of a stifling business suit. And I guess I always…
I think you have it backwards. The sundress is overly-dressy. The shoes are designed to be looked at and to impress, rather than for comfort. I think that sort of misrepresentation (not you specifically, the event) is what the author resenting. Read me out. Brute utility defines romance of 'startup culture'. Humans understanding their world, and interacting with it in a straight-forward way. I'm modifying the code to…
I suspect neither you nor the original author have worn many women's clothing or shoes. Sometimes things look uncomfortable that are not. And why does it matter anyway if my clothing accurately reflects some abstract startup ethos? Startups talk about attracting women, but what happens when women get criticized for doing things a lot of us legitimately enjoy like wearing pretty clothes?
Either way, nothing is less business-like than judging a tech event by the attire of the participants. In tech, it's a lose-lose situation. Dress in a baggy Defcon t-shirt and don't brush your hair...you are too ugly and you must not be a "people person." Dress nicely...oh you must have just chosen those clothes to impress people, so you must be superficial.
Re: Yesterday, I Went to the American Idol for Startups. It Made Me Want to Die.
#85"These women and men have come together to do brutal violence to the English language, to leave the spoken and written word bloodied and victimized on a cold cement floor, wishing for the sweet relief of death." I will read anything this author writes. Thanks for spotlighting this blog. Tip: if you want your blog READ instead of skimmed for buzzwords and facts, make sweet love to the English language. Then worry abou…
I'm sorry but I completely disagree with that. I got a distinct feeling that the author of this blog is in deep passionate love with himself and his writing, and the topic he is writing about is remote secondary to the flourish of his expression. I personally don't care too much about this flourish, when I get craving for it, I can read classic authors that tell real stories about fascinating things in great language and not a bit of snobbery about some geeks naming their companies wrong. When I read technical or around-technical article, I expect a decent command of English, but I expect the author to worry about delivering his point and not about loving his own voice so much that he can't stop embellishing and loses he sight of why he's doing it. Reporting and opera aria are different genres.
In this article, what is the point of it? That all startup ideas suck because they think too small? And the author instead thinks they should be doing... well, he doesn't. He just thinks they are named wrong, think wrong, dress wrong, speak wrong, live wrong and their future is wrong. Everything is wrong except for the one shining light that is the author of the article and his perfect whimsical metaphor-filled style. Bleh.
Re: Yesterday, I Went to the American Idol for Startups. It Made Me Want to Die.
#86So those names were indeed terrible. But how the hell do you name things well? It's really hard. The second you write some code you have to call it something , and I imagine that's the point where people think up janky cute names, and then it's in the codebase and that's that. I know for me I think up something stupid and then roll with that, presuming that if it ever makes it out of localhost it will be renamed to s…
Names don't matter. Google is a terrible name. Yahoo is a terrible name. Do you think Facebook became what it is because of their name? Do you think MicroSoft got where it is because of the name? Do you think Linux and Apache took sizable chunk of their market afterward because their names were better?
Names are insignificant. You can pay millions for most awesome name on the planet and flop, and you can choose name like "git" and create awesome software that everybody uses. People would use anything under any name if they like it.
Re: Yesterday, I Went to the American Idol for Startups. It Made Me Want to Die.
#87"These women and men have come together to do brutal violence to the English language, to leave the spoken and written word bloodied and victimized on a cold cement floor, wishing for the sweet relief of death." I will read anything this author writes. Thanks for spotlighting this blog. Tip: if you want your blog READ instead of skimmed for buzzwords and facts, make sweet love to the English language. Then worry abou…
I'm sorry but I completely disagree with that. I got a distinct feeling that the author of this blog is in deep passionate love with himself and his writing, and the topic he is writing about is remote secondary to the flourish of his expression. I personally don't care too much about this flourish, when I get craving for it, I can read classic authors that tell real stories about fascinating things in great language…
I get both of those impressions (your's and one up). Just because someone is an egocentric narcissist doesn't mean that they aren't on to something. In fact, as they say, it takes one to know one.
Re: Yesterday, I Went to the American Idol for Startups. It Made Me Want to Die.
#88Investors are so desperate to find the next homerun that they'll cater to the ridiculous that is speed dating for startup ideas.
I think that is a point missed by this article and many others. People are going after what they think they can get funded in large part. In the comments on the post there is a nice Peter Thiel quote about innovation in the physical world basically getting outlawed (his libertarian bent shows strongly here) driving innovation to software. And while I don't really agree with all of it, I really think that to a certain extent, be it through patents, super dominant companies, government prohibition, or even just cultural forces, it is really hard to go big.
Re: Yesterday, I Went to the American Idol for Startups. It Made Me Want to Die.
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Jamcracker Services Delivery Network (JSDN) enables Service Providers to unify the delivery of disparate cloud services to their direct customers and through their channels. Key features include: http://www.jamcracker.com/ Oh goodness
Most of their Web site seems to consist of jargon and puffery--"across the enterprise," "enables" and "ecosystems."
Many, many years ago, I worked for a company called "Inter-Touch". It's now owned by NTT Docomo. What can I say that has not already been said?
Re: Yesterday, I Went to the American Idol for Startups. It Made Me Want to Die.
#90So those names were indeed terrible. But how the hell do you name things well? It's really hard. The second you write some code you have to call it something , and I imagine that's the point where people think up janky cute names, and then it's in the codebase and that's that. I know for me I think up something stupid and then roll with that, presuming that if it ever makes it out of localhost it will be renamed to s…
Names don't matter. Google is a terrible name. Yahoo is a terrible name. Do you think Facebook became what it is because of their name? Do you think MicroSoft got where it is because of the name? Do you think Linux and Apache took sizable chunk of their market afterward because their names were better? Names are insignificant. You can pay millions for most awesome name on the planet and flop, and you can choose name…
Possibly the worst names for the most popular software are git and gimp. Nobody cares. They use them, because they are awesome!