Posted on Tuesday 17th of October 2006 at 13:49 in Software

Some applications let down by naming

It has recently come to my attention that some excellent applications/projects are possibly held back by absurd naming conventions, which clearly doesn't matter to the home user but it becomes an increasingly big problem within organisations.

Let me explain myself. Businesses are always going to favour feature heavy free applications over weighty commercial licensing because of the financial god we all pray to. This is obviously more relevant to the companies that actually abide by licensing laws which I'm sure most companies don't. Anyway, I constantly find amazing new technologies and applications that have the perfect place within some businesses and projects but are unlikely to be used because of daft naming conventions.

I don't mind naming conventions like "Breezy Badger", but I do fear that non-IT management would laugh at the notion of using GIMP as a semi-replacement for Photoshop (for the majority of users). Photoshop CS2 costs something like $600, GIMP is free. Photoshop is a sensible name; GIMP would make me sound like I?m suggesting something slightly perverse. It's a great application but I don't think I could realistically suggest it formally.

I can't see a situation where I'd be comfortable suggesting to my management to use an application named GIMP, or even a word processor called "Prozzie"

GIMP aside, I recently was directed towards a fantastic service that used Ajax to dynamically spell-check the information entered in web forms. This is a great service to ensure a higher quality of entered content into a website - whether from submitting articles online, use within a CMS or just increasing the quality of forum posts. Unfortunately it was called SpellingCow (website here). Again, I visualise myself struggling to suggest it to management with a straight face. I find it harder to visualise them taking it seriously, however good a product. An almost free product at that.

How many products are being let down by comical naming conventions that add to the identity but manage to hinder their possible professional application. Yet another case of their strength being their biggest weakness. OpenOffice for example is a sensible yet descriptive name and I would have no quibbles suggesting it to a management team to avoid the weighty Microsoft licensing costs. It just seems that some projects are let down by silly naming conventions and personally, as a developer, I wouldn't pitch them as an alternative application purely because non-IT users would laugh at the name and not take it seriously.

You wouldn't want a Database management System called "DateRape" would you?

Does your business use GIMP? I'd be interested to hear from you.

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