Renaming IT Mill Toolkit? (please participate and win an iPod Touch)

As you know, IT Mill Toolkit is an open source framework for developing rich web applications in server-side Java. Unfortunately the name, IT Mill, has been a bit hard to remember and to associate with the value proposition. Thus we have been discussing about the possibility of calling the upcoming release of IT Mill Toolkit 6.0 with a new name… The big question is what.

Please tell us your opinion by selecting one of the names from the poll above. The product would be “officially” called something like “Name Toolkit”. As a thanks for your time, we’ll select one of the voters randomly on January 7, 2009 and send him an iPod Touch. To vote, you must be registered to this forum (but don’t worry it takes less than one minute - just select register from the top of this page). Changes to win are really good as there aren’t too many voters :slight_smile:

PS. If you happen to come up with a good idea for a name and it has name.com and name.org free, do not hesitate to propose it below!

As some of you have noticed, the number of votes have exceeded the number of users on forums. The reason is that I added an external voting page that allows voting without registering to forums (to get more voters).

Just noticed that January 7 passed and there has been no update here so:


Who was the lucky winner?

Congratulations whoever you are! :smiley:

Actually - the drawing has not been done yet - please accept my apologies for the delay. I’ll do the drawing and write a summary of the voting results here shortly. Good side - you still have possibility to be the lucky winner ! :slight_smile:

Thanks everyone for voting!

Finally, the random process finished and the winner of iPod Touch was selected. The winner is…


bobbykongara
(at) gmail.com

Congratulations! Bobby voted for keeping the current name.

And thanks everyone for voting. I’ll post more info about the voting results shortly.

The poll results above is not completely accurate - it contains some double-posts (outside page for voting did not prevent double posting). After analyzing the poll logs, I deleted some votes. The corrected results are here:

It is interesting to note that the voters that participated though the forums voted for different names than the voters that participated through external voting page (advertised though Google AdWords using keywords thought to be relevant). These pie-charts illustrate the differences quite clearly:


Any opinions on the results?

To me it seems that there is no clear winner.

Simple. Biggest number. Floom. Winner. Yeeei! :wink:

Unfortunately floom.com is reserved (and the owners were not too eager to sell it).

Interesting name “floom”, in English [American]
it’s possible it has negative connotations? It is very close “sounding” to a negative term called “floosy” or “floozy”. People will wonder what a “floom” is, hmm, is it related to “floozy”? or “flue” as in getting sick? … just some comments on name vs language “understandings”.

Just saw this contest, looks like name is a done-deal? ie, it’s been definitely decided?

Perhaps leverage Google Web Toolkit, GWT, as a prefix or suffix to a name?

See the various names of projects at these two sites:
GWTProjects
http://www.screaming-penguin.com/GWTProjects

Google Toolkit [url]
http://google.wikia.com/wiki/Google_Web_Toolkit

[/url]

Certainly ask this question:

What are the foreign language implications of the name?

Actually the name is not decided yet. We weren’t completely satisfied with any of the names and are now starting a new “brainstorming” round - this time with “professional marketing people” in the team.

I think that a good name is fundamental and if we change the name, it must be done right. All ideas for the name are (more than) welcome!

Joonas,

You have a tough task, the “name”. I had suggested using a relationship with the Google Web Toolkit [GWT]
because it’s [IT Mill toolkit]
based on GWT, and it’s highly unlikely that Google is going to go away anytime soon. Plus there are other strengths related to a Google relationship.

The IT Mill toolkit [the toolkit]
is really an enabler for GWT, it enables easy use of the technology. It is tempting to use the technology transport or communication method such as “Ajax” in the name, however this could date it [ looked how DAO came and went, now its JPA, next?]
.

Perhaps just give it a Finnish name? Base it on a Finnish landmark, terrain, geography, or similar object. I am in Boulder, Colorado, we have many companies here that adopt Boulder in their name, or a local geography, Left Hand Networks, Left Hand Brewery, and so forth. I am sure you have the equivalent in or around Turku. Just not Turku, in English it is too close sounding to the bird turkey. [I suspect that observation will cost me some beer if I visit Finland :-)]

What is a famous sea feature there? Or a particular area, say one with lot’s of oak or maple trees? Or a favorite park? Mountain? Street?

You don’t have to choose a name on technology, but you can tie it indirectly to technology. Or not at all. A succcessful name in the next country-over, Ikea, does not imply what it does. Of course Nokia there too :slight_smile: [see my beer tab increasing …]
.

You have a nice challenge ahead.

Andy

Hi Andy,

Thanks for good ideas. A Finnish name could be a good option. Did you know that Nokia is a small city in central Finland near Tampere? They had Nokian Jalkinetehdas Oy - meaning “Shoe factory at Nokia Inc.”. And then they ended up with the Nokia we all know…

In any case - if we’ll end up with a Finnish originated name, I’ll be buying the beers :slight_smile:

Just call it Turku then :wink:

Actually - we think we have finally found the new name! It has origins in finland, but should be easy to pronounce and seems to be unique.

But, please don’t ask yet - we try to prepare logo and some graphics before telling what is it. Just wait a bit :wink:

Ok, you can ask now… (see the announcements!)