The Weird World of Tech Product Names

If breakfast cereals were named like technology products, there would be no Cocoa Krispies or Cheerios.

Instead, we’d have Kellogg’s C-KR1200 and General Mills’ Third-Generation CheerZero. (The futuristic-sounding Crispix might still exist). People would still devour these products as part of a balanced breakfast, but I doubt they’d understand why they had the names they had. They might not even be able to remember them.

In tech, we tolerate the names of our beloved gadgets no matter how indecipherable or convoluted. We can be happy with our laptops, digital cameras and GPS devices even if we struggle to recall them by name. I’d love to recommend my Sharp HDTV, but I couldn’t help you find the same model without consulting my purchase records. (Okay fine, it’s an LC40E77U.)

How do tech products get such wacky names? What’s the process that leads to an obscure model number or imaginary word? Come along, and we’ll explore the bizarre, confusing, and frustrating christenings of tech products famous and obscure.

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Ballmer at CES: Windows Slates, Windows 8?

The New York Times’s Nick Bilton is reporting that Steve Ballmer’s CES keynote next month will include demos of slate computers running Windows 7. Sounds like deja vu all over again: At this year’s CES, Ballmer did the same thing. The 2010 Windows slates failed to buck the long tradition of Microsoft products unveiled at Comdex or CES failing to change the world. (At least HP finally released its slate PC.)

This year’s slate PCs were basically Windows 7 laptops with touchscreens and the keyboards chopped off. Bilton’s story says that the 2011 versions are a bigger departure from Windows notebooks, and, for the that matter, from the iPad. They involve features like slide-out keyboards and user interfaces that differ depending on whether the device is held in landscape or portrait orientation.

I don’t wanna pre-judge devices that we don’t know much about yet, but if Microsoft figures out a way to make Windows make sense on computers that don’t have physical keyboards-or at least don’t assume you’ll use one at all times–I’ll be impressed. After all, it’s been trying for a decade and had made pretty much zero progress on the whole idea to date.

Meanwhile, the very end of Bilton’s article had a tidbit I’m more excited about: It says that Ballmer may also demo Windows 8 during the keynote.

Last Chance at Cool Prizes

Pssst: I haven’t quite shut down our survey about your favorite products of 2010. Take it now, and you’ll get a shot at some cool prizes. (It’ll close later tonight.)

More Fun (and Headaches) With Google’s Cr-48 Chromebook

At the end of last week, I mentioned that I was heading out of town for a long weekend–mostly involving pleasure, but some work as well–and was going to take Google’s Cr-48 Chrome OS notebook as my only computer. The trip’s almost over. And here’s a report on how it went.

• Like Chrome-the-browser, Chrome OS includes an embedded version of Adobe’s Flash Player. And as with the browser, the fact that Flash is built in doesn’t seem to do much to improve it, at least in my experience. I’ve had repeated instances of Flash crashing, leaving Chrome’s “choking folder” icon where a video should be. In fact, entire tabs have crashed on the Cr-48 several times; I can’t tell whether Flash is the culprit.

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Where You Buy Mortal Kombat Matters

Video game retailers are raising the stakes of their pre-order bonuses for next year’s reboot of Mortal Kombat.

Pre-order through Gamestop, and you’ll get Scorpion’s costume and Fatality from the original (1992) Mortal Kombat. Best Buy offers the same bonus for Sub-Zero, and Target has Reptile’s original Fatality and costume from Mortal Kombat 2.

Mortal Kombat won’t be the first game to tie different pre-order bonuses to different stores. Fallout: New Vegas spread four bonus packages among five retailers, Mass Effect 2 gave a special weapon and armor to Gamestop while giving other retailers a different kind of armor. Batman: Arkham Asylum’s pre-order bonus was either a discount, a gift card, a free map, a T-shirt or in-game armor, depending on where you bought it.

But in this case — and maybe this is just my inner old-school gamer talking — the perks really matter. A Mortal Kombat Fatality isn’t just some stat-boosting piece of virtual gear. It’s an integral part of the game. Without those graphically violent finishing moves, Mortal Kombat is just another fighting game. Asking the series’ biggest fans to bestow special treatment on one character by granting it an extra Fatality seems like a high form of cruelty.

I don’t even see the point, unless each retailer thinks their exclusive Fatality is the best, and can be used to their advantage in marketing. Being quite familiar with the gruesomeness of each finishing move, I doubt it.

Are Two Screens Better Than One?

Last Gadget Standing Nominee: Acer Iconia

Price: TBD

When I first saw this, I thought I was looking at the world’s biggest Nintendo DS. But Acer’s Iconia a true original.

It’s a notebook computer, based on the Intel Core i5 processor.  It has two LCD screens–one on the bottom and one on the top, offering you a ton of options for usage.

At the launch Acer said the Iconia offers the “versatility of a conventional 14” form factor with a unique dual-screen layout and highly intuitive all-point multi-touch functionality, which means you can use all the fingers of your hands.” You can browse the web or watch a video on the top screen while you’re composing a document or creating a spreadsheet on the bottom screen, for example. Or just browse the Web across two screens by laying the notebook flat.  Reading a large Web page is a total treat.

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Android Market Gets a Facelift

One of Android’s weakest links has been the Android Market app store–it’s hard to find stuff, and the whole atmosphere feels a bit like a flea market. So it’s good to hear that Google is rolling out an improved version.

Cydia’s Building a Mac App Store, But Why?

The devil will be in the details if Cydia wants to rival Apple’s upcoming Mac App Store.

Mac Cydia will be available “within weeks,” according to Jay Freeman, who developed the Cydia Store for jailbroken iOS devices. Details are light at the moment, but Mac Cydia will likely lack the restrictions Apple will impose on its own store. (The Mac App Store won’t allow in-app purchases, demos, “lite” software or content that Apple deems inappropriate.)

It’s tempting to dismiss Mac Cydia as a solution in search of a problem. The main purpose of Cydia’s iOS store is to give iPhone owners a marketplace with virtually no rules. Mac users are already unrestricted in what they can download and install, so the purpose of a free-wheeling storefront is less obvious. But that doesn’t mean it’s unnecessary.

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Come to the Honeycomb Hideout

Engadget has some fuzzy photos and other details on the Android tablet–running the upcoming Honeycomb OS update–which Android honcho Andy Rubin showed off briefly at last week’s All Things Digital: Dive Into Mobile conference.

Kin Woes, Kintinued

Microsoft’s Studio online service–perhaps the only good thing about its ill-fated Kin phones, but it’s pretty darn cool–is going offline on January 31st. The move effectively turns the Kins from smartphones into dumbphones by disabling much of their functionality. Verizon Wireless is offering Kin owners replacement 3G phones of their choice, but the sudden shutdown, less than nine months after the Kin went on sale, still seems like a shabby way to treat people who bought into Microsoft’s short-lived Kin hoopla.

Figuring Out Google’s CR-48 Chrome OS Notebook

On Tuesday, Google announced its CR-48 notebook–the for-testing-purposes-only Chrome OS machine it’s distributing via a pilot program. Yesterday, I received one for review.

My first impressions are–well, I’m still figuring them out. But here are some initial notes.

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Is Infinity Blade the Ultimate iOS Gamer’s Game? Not Quite

The general consensus on Infinity Blade is that it’s the iPhone and iPad game serious gamers have been waiting for. That would include me, so I forfeited $6 to the App Store last night and gave Infinity Blade a shot.

It’s a great game. I stayed up an hour later than I should have, dueling against knights twice my avatar’s size and obsessing over weapons and armor. I only pulled myself away when game’s final boss wiped me out. (In a unique plot device, after each death you play as the next generation in your character’s bloodline, avenging the death of his father at the hands of a mighty dictator.)

But let’s not kid ourselves. Essentially, Infinity Blade is Fruit Ninja in hardcore clothing. It’s not the ultimate iPad game for gamers.

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iPad Keyboards Get Physical

Last Gadget Standing Nominee: tyPad

Price: $99

“If the iPad only had a keyboard,” I’ve sometimes thought to myself, “I could take it on short trips and leave my laptop at home.” Enter tyPad, a leatherette iPad case that happens to have a built-in Bluetooth keyboard. Open it up and the iPad stands upright like a notebook screen. The keyboard is a one-piece design rather than one with discrete, desktop-style keys, but it has a home button and a shortcut for the iPad’s search function; it charges via USB. And since it replaces the on-screen keyboard, it leaves the entire display available for other purposes–which could be handy for word-processing documents, instant-messaging sessions, and other activities which involving both typing and reading.

Please Don’t Touch the Musical Instrument

Last Gadget Standing Nominee: Beamz C4

Price: $199.95

I gotta tell you that I call this thing the Digital Theremin. Musicologists may recall that the Theremin was one of the early electronic instruments that played music as you passed your hands past radio antennae. Well now the Beamz lets you pass your hands through lasers. As you pass the points you make glorious sound.  Coupled with synthesized background beats, you sound good even if you’ve never played a note before. Beamz connects to a PC via USB and includes Beamz Player, an application that lets you play fifty Beamz songs, including works by Grammy-winning artists and independent musicians.

So how cool is it to pas your hands through laser beams and “play” light?

Games Dominate iPhone App Charts (But Not iPad)

Take a look at the top iPhone and iPad apps of 2010, as listed by Apple:

iPhone:

• Free: Facebook, Angry Birds Lite, Words With Friends Free, Skype, Tap Tap Revenge
• Paid: Angry Birds, Doodle Jump, Skee-Ball, Bejeweled 2 – Blitz, Fruit Ninja
• Grossing: MLB At Bat 2010, Angry Birds, Call of Duty: Zombies, Bejeweled 2 – Blitz, FriendCaller 3 Pro

iPad:

• Free: iBooks, Pandora, Netflix, Google Mobile, Solitaire
• Paid: Pages, Goodreader, Numbers, Angry Birds HD, Keynote
• Grossing: Pages, Numbers, Keynote, LogMeIn Ignition, Scrabble

Video games are clearly the killer apps on the iPhone, but productivity and media consumption rule on the iPad. However, I’m not convinced that the year’s top app charts tell the whole story.

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The Tech That Got People Talking on Twitter in 2010

Topsy is a search engine whose results are determined the pages people are talking about and linking to on Twitter. The more a page gets mentioned–especially by influential Twitter users–the higher it’s likely to show up in Topsy’s results. It’s an interesting approach that works well for stuff that people are chattering about at the moment (strangely enough, the results for “chrome os” are meatier than the ones for “rutherford b. hayes.”) It can also do things like show you a list of Twitter users who are oft-retweeted on a given topic (such as HDTV or cars).

The site is built around a giant database of Tweets that have been analyzed and indexed, so the Topsy folks know a lot about the terms that show up most frequently on Twitter. I asked them to compile a report for me on twenty tech terms and how often they were referenced. It’s not a perfect mirror of the Twitter zeitgeist–Topsy only pays attention to Tweets that contain links and ones which have been retweeted, and it finds keywords even if they’re in a URL rather than the meat of the Tweet–but it’s still a useful reality check.

Here it is…

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