We don’t tend to post design related content here but as a designer I’m hoping to change that!
I wanted to mention a great monthly feature of one of my favorite design websites Smashing Magazine. The website, which is aimed at web designers and developers, has a monthly wallpaper series that seeks to offer creative wallpapers to spark the imagination and inspire.
If your like me your constantly searching for things in the world around you to inspire your designs and bring fresh perspectives to what your working on. Given how many hours a day your in front of your computer I feel that your desktop wallpaper shouldn’t be something that you overlook.
A good name is very important if you are starting a new project. It helps if you have something cool to refer to and it gets things moving. So one of the first things I do if I start thinking about a new project is the name. And a good name is no good unless you also have a good domainname attached to it.
Often people complain that all the good names are gone online. This is not true. All good names are still available! You just have to know how to find them…
Here is how we come up with names for our projects:
1: Collect a lot of related words
Take a few minutes and just brainstorm and try to come up with a huge list (about 100) of related words. If you get stuck just go to Answers.com and look up some of the words you came up with and read the descriptions. This will immediately lead to more new words.
2: Get a dictionary and a needle
Take a dictionary, close your eyes and use the needle to go to a page and select a random word. Do this 10 times. Don’t forget to write down the words and read their descriptions. This leads to more words too.
3: Don’t use a browser to check for domainnames
Don’t check for availability by typing a name into your browser. Use InstantDomainSearch.com and Nameboy.com to easily check names for availability and more brainstorming. Nameboy will give you lots of suggestions and alternatives. InstantDomainSearch uses an AJAX interface to check for domainnames instantly.
Bustaname.com is a new service and great tool for finding names. You can enter several keywords and it will check for combinations of those words with ‘le’, ’ster’ and other options.
4: Invent your own words
Combine words in original ways. Doing something with email and photography? Try ‘Emailography.com‘ (Still available!)
5: Get inspiration from others
Google and Feedster are good names. So if you want to do something with the name ‘John’ (see tip 6) try ‘Johnster.com’ or ‘johnle.com’. Just add ‘Le’ and ‘Ster’ to each keyword you came up with and see what that leads to. Popular these days is to add ‘get’ before your product name (GetClicky.com and GetSatisfaction.com).
6: Buy a second-hand name
All good names are gone? Well yeah, but they aren’t always in use. A lot of great names can be bought secondhand at Sedo or similar domainname collectors. We bought Fleck.com second-hand for a few thousands dollars and always thought it was a great investment. In fact, searching for names at Sedo is a great of coming up with new names. Just enter one buzzword (like ‘RSS’) and Sedo will give you a list of domainnames which contain those characters.
There are more benefits to buying a name this way: If you have an older domain Google will trust you more than if you registered your domain one week ago. Fleck.com got visitors right from the day we went live. A lot of those came from google and other search engines. We now are the first result that pops up if you search for Fleck.
7: Browse a supermarket, library or fishing supplies store
or any place with lots of strange words to get inspiration from. Just browse the aisles and write down all words that are cool, strange or interesting for your business.
8: Translate to Spanish, Greek and Latin
Get some of the related words and translate them into spanish, italian, danish, latin and greek. Answers.com will do it for any word you look up. Just scroll down on every page.
9: Rmove some or all vwls
Take your related words and remove all vowels (A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y) and see what you get. If that leaves you with a too short word only remove a few vowels and try again. Examples: ‘Exmpls’, ‘Etctra’ and ‘Cmputr’
10: Call your mother
Seriously! When you are thinking about your business you often are blinded by technology and company slang. Explain your business to an outsider and ask them what a good name would be. Try you mother and your crocery clerk and the homeless guy asking you for spare change.
My mother came up with several names for several business including the name for my personal holding Bomega and bomega.com. I asked here if she knew a good name and without thinking twice she said “‘Bo’ for Boris and ‘Mega’ for the amount of money you will make becomes ‘BoMega’”.
Written on 23rd April 2009
4 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
If there’s one web design trend which continues to leave visitors in envy, it’s minimalism.
Whilst there are plenty of ‘web design inspiration‘ sites out there with categories devoted to it, MinimalSites is the first (that I know of) to devote an entire website to minimalist design inspiration.
With currently 264 sites ready for you to peruse, you’re bound to find something that catches your eye. Enjoy.
At The Next Web, Chris Sacca came up with a brilliant metaphor that you should keep in mind whenever you’re tweeting and blogging.
There are 700 people in this room. If you were standing on stage, you would be quite nervous: shaking a bit, maybe with a dry throat. When having such a large audience, you will sure try to entertain or inspire them. We tend to forget that we have a large audience on Twitter too. So before you tweet ask yourself: am I providing value? Will it put a smile on someones face? Am I expanding someones horizon? Otherwise, don’t write it.
There are lots of ‘how to twitter’ posts on the web but I guess this is the one everyone should read first…
Chris Sacca at The Next Web Conference. Photo Flickr / Anne Helmond
About the author: Ernst-Jan used to be the editor in chief of The Next Web. He’s currently blogging for Dutch quality newspaper nrc.next.
That is it! Party time is over!
No more champagne and stuffed turkey.
Back to the drawing board!
It is now January 5th and there are no excuses left to NOT work on that beautiful start-up you vowed to start in the new year.
We here at The Next Web Blog and Conference are eager to start the year and work on some exciting projects for you. We will keep reporting on anything that is of any interest for the International Internet Professionals reading this blog and we have already started preparing for the fourth edition of The Next Web Conference
This years edition of our conference which will take place on April 15, 16 and 17 in 2009 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. We will launch the official site and start selling tickets in only a few weeks.
We hope you will enjoy our blog even more in 2009 than you did in previous years and keep commenting and sending in news and tips.
During my vacation in Italy last July, I was addicted to the Evernote app on my iPhone. Fourteen days of wandering in the beautiful North Italian cities without being connected to the web gave me an incredible inspiration boost. I cherished all the new ideas in Evernote, a tool exactly developed for that purpose, and synced it with my Mac when I came home.
The last couple of months I haven’t used Evernote that much. Because of the 3G availability, I store my to-do’s in Things and post snap shots directly to Twitter. So much for Evernote?
Not quite, because the guys at Evernote HQ really know how to create an experience around their project. They send enthusiastic news letters with lots of tips and recently launched a project that might get me back to using Evernote.
Andrew asked all Evernote-fans to share the way they use Evernote:
They launched the project a few weeks ago (yes, I’m a bit late, I know) and received several video responses. Here’s one from Zoe:
Not only will these videos create an even better brand experience, it’s also really useful for users like me to get some more ideas on how to use the app.
Generatus is so great I actually considered keeping it to myself. Instead of coming up with boring stuff like “Drinking coffee” you go to Generatus, enter your name and click the big Generate button. Generatus will come up with hilarious, smart, sensitive and funny oneliners you can copy paste and use on Twitter, Facebook or any of the other millions of social networking site that demand you to tell them what the hell you are doing right now.
Here is my test:
I liked the line so I tweeted it:
Now all it needs is a way to search their database so you can cross check that with the people you are following. Maybe one day it will turn out that your best, and funny, friend is actually an uninteligent bore who just happens to use Generatus a lot. Lets see if you can find out which Tweets I actually wrote myself and which ones I generated on Generatus. You will never know for sure…
Written on 2nd July 2009
2 COMMENTS 
Written on 14th May 2009
Written on 30th April 2009
A good name is very important if you are starting a new project. It helps if you have something cool to refer to and it gets things moving. So one of the first things I do if I start thinking about a new project is the name. And a 
If there’s one web design trend which continues to leave visitors in envy, it’s minimalism.
Written on 20th April 2009
Written on 17th November 2008
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
