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’”.
If you develop iPhone Apps and want to demo them onstage you could simply use the Xcode Preview app (or whatever it is called). But here is an app that will give you that real Steve Jobs magic feeling of showing REAL products in REAL time.
Now all you need is jaibroken iPhone, your finished iPhone App and DemoGod. Using a Wi-Fi connection you will be able to demo your iPhone app on the iPhone while its screen will be duplicated on a larger screen behind you. All you need to do is install ScreenSplitr and Demogod.
This is a Mac only solution and in beta but it will rotate with the iPhone’s accelerometer and works good enough to use in a demo.
Written on 31st March 2009
13 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
note:read the last line of this post before setting any timers! :)
Like many of you I’m sure, I’m constantly distracted by the web. Whether it’s a breaking news story, a friend with a funny YouTube video or an email that seems so important I can’t afford not to reply within the next 5 minutes – I am too easily distracted. I used to use Firefox as my default browser and used the LeechBlock extension to block access to certain sites for periods of the day. Today however I am a devoted Safari user and unfortunately there wasn’t anything available that provided the same functionality – until now.
Steve Lambert, a prolific creator of neat and useful Mac applications, has come up with another gem. The app is called SelfControl and it’s designed to block access to specific websites whilst you get on with what you need to be doing. It’s as simple as they come, launch the app, add any sites you specifically want to block and drag the slider along for how long you’d like to block access to those sites for.
Oh, one more thing…there is no way to stop the timer! Even closing down the app or restarting your computer will have no effect. I literally get to Friendfeed, Twitter.com or Google Reader right now – LOL.
Written on 7th January 2009
8 COMMENTS Srikanth AD, Web Designer, Search Engine Optimizer and Google Devotee
We love Firefox – the innovative browser which aims to maintain choice and innovation on the Internet and here are a few add-ons to boost your browser productivity.
1. URL Fixer
URL Fixercorrects typos in URLs that you enter in the address bar. For instance, if you type thenextweb.con, it will correct it to thenextweb.com.
It will correct common typos of .com, .net, .org, .edu, .gov, .mil as well as the protocol (http:, https:).
You can set it to auto-correct your errors by right-clicking on the address bar or you can have it ask you before making any corrections.
This is a must have add-on for video, audio and picture gallery downloads from popular services like Youtube, MySpace and Google Video etc. When an embedded audio or video file is detected on a website the downloadhelper icon gets animated and you can download the required media.
DownloadHelper also allows you to download files one by one, so that you keep bandwidth to surf for other stuff to download.
You can easily access your most used websites with Speed Dial. To show the Speed Dial tab, use the Speed Dial button (which can be added to the toolbar), or enter “chrome://speeddial/content” in your location bar.
To assign one website to Speed Dial, use the new “Set as Speed Dial” option in the bookmarks menu, or right click on the tab you want to add, and choose “Set as Speed Dial”.
This add-on lets you get rid of flashy banners and advertisements. It blocks all unwanted content like banners, annoying scripts and adverts. Right-click on a banner and choose “Adblock” from the context menu – the banner won’t be downloaded again.
This comes in particularly handy for sites like TechCrunch, which have flashing banners that are distracting you from the content that really matters.
With trailFire you can mark webpages that you find interesting by leaving notes right on the page. These notes are linked together into trails that you organize any way you desire. The trails you make will guide people on the web , the approach is collaborative as other people can leave responses on the trails you made and even add new marked pages. The next time you are looking for something on the Web, use Trailfire to mark the pages you find and they will be automatically shared with everyone else through the search engines. You can also keep your trails private if you wish to.
Following everything must be great. The all-seeing eye, yeah! Never miss anything worthwhile. Be the first to know. I’m signing for it.
Such a beautiful utopia, but oh so dangerous to strive for. Though there are plenty of tools that will help you getting you there. Turn on a sound effect every time you receive an email or tweet. Wear your head set all the time. And…, install an Adobe Air app which keeps you up to date about all the latest articles in your feed selection.
Snackr is such a service. After installing it on the Adobe Air platform, importing your OPML file, and placing it in the preferred corner – your RSS feeds are always available. Right there, in the corner of your eye.
I’m running the RSS reader while I’m typing this post, and man, it drives me crazy! It keeps asking for my attention. Like a TV screen in a bar. The design, features, and usability: it’s all very well-executed. – but using the nifty little program will mean the end of productivity for me.
But hey, maybe you’re the kind of guy/ gal who needs a little bit of distraction. If that’s the case, don’t hesitate and click here.
Written on 22nd October 2008
6 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Being an outliner fan, I am constantly looking for new & better online options to compete with the beloved Omni Outliner for the Mac (who have just released a newer version by the way). Why I love outliners so much & find them so useful – i’ll explain in another post. For this post however, I’d like to give a good overview of what’s out there at the moment & what, I believe, you should be using.
If you’re not familiar with outliners, they are typically used for collecting and/or organising notes, todo lists, codes and/or ideas – and are called Outliners because they are organised in outline fashion or as a tree-like structure. Still unsure? Read on – you’ll soon get the idea!
Sproutliner
Potentially a great but currently out of date, unsecure to use on their site (which really is just for demo purposes) – the downloadable currently open source version needs a major update before I would recommend usage in any sort of work environment.
No import or export or strong collaborative sharing functionality. Fast & great use of shortcuts but all in all best to give this one a miss until someone decides to give it an update.
Todoist What I currently use as my todo list – although I may be moving. It’s undoubtedly a great tool, superb use of keyboard shortcuts, fast, gmail integration, quicksilver & launchy integration, igoogle/netvibes gadget & mac/yahoo widgets. Drag & drop works brilliantly. Great search facility, however only available on premium subscription which is only $3 a month. This also brings a cool tagging feature & reminders.
No easy way to import or export. I can’t embed images or video into it which is frustrating. Mass changing of tasks / lists is difficult. No mobile/iphone version & no sharing/collaborative features. My major qualm is the little new added features recently & are a bunch of requests- no surprise considering the developer needs to spend most of his time developing at Plurk.
Checkvist
New to the game is checkvist & it looks very promising – potentially a bigger & better todoist. Ability to create multiple outlines very easily. Clean & simple to use. Ability to share outlines & strong commenting feature which makes it ultra special in my book. You can embed images or video into it which is very cool. Currently no due dates or other add-ons (email/calendar integrations) – but it’s early days.
Web Worker Daily is a great blog for tips about productivity and tools. Some are so good that I can’t risk you missing them. Like the one from Scott Blitstein that I’m going to discuss now.
He advises to use the iPhone optimized versions of your favorite web apps with a site-specific browser. That’s a dedicated web browser designed to show a specific web site in its own screen, rather than mixing it with the other stuff in your browser. Fluid for example, allows Mac users to create “applications” of a site. Adam Darowski explains how this tool can bring the Google Reader iPhone version to your desktop. Blitstein uses Bubbles (for Windows) to bring his favorite GTD app to his desktop.
So how will this improve your productivity? Well, the answer is quite simple. iPhone optimized sites don’t have all the fancy graphics, advertisements, and the 1000 extra features in store – so the distraction factor is low. Moreover, the UI of most iPhone tools is very plain and to-the-point. That will save you some time. For more complicated tasks, you can always switch to the normal view. But all in all, those iPhone apps can form a handy dashboard on your computer.
Written on 30th April 2009
2 COMMENTS 
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.
Written on 31st March 2009
Written on 7th January 2009
This is a must have add-on for video, audio and picture gallery downloads from popular services like Youtube, MySpace and Google Video etc. When an embedded audio or video file is detected on a website the downloadhelper icon gets animated and you can download the required media. 
You can easily access your most used websites with Speed Dial. To show the Speed Dial tab, use the Speed Dial button (which can be added to the toolbar), or enter “chrome://speeddial/content” in your location bar.
Written on 18th December 2008
What I currently use as my todo list – although I may be moving. It’s undoubtedly a great tool, superb use of keyboard shortcuts, fast, gmail integration, quicksilver & launchy integration, igoogle/netvibes gadget & mac/yahoo widgets. Drag & drop works brilliantly. Great search facility, however only available on premium subscription which is only $3 a month. This also brings a cool tagging feature & reminders.
He 
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 
