Some Bings Before Bing

Bing has zing!

Microsoft has finally chosen the bid bada Bing as the name for its search engine. This is infinitely better than the zombiesque Live Search. My gutfeel is the success of Zune would have prompted the switch to 4-letter names. To know more about this intuitive search engine, go here.

Cyclone Aila

Aila! Now that's what you call a funny name. Jokes apart, cyclone naming conventions are based on arbitrary lists of names submitted by various countries around the world. Maybe someday there will be a cyclone named 'Avinash'. That said, considering what 'Avinash' means, maybe not.

Addendum: Some dope on cyclone naming conventions that found in an aftersearch.

Rechristening of Mr. You Know Who

Mr. You Know Who, famed for gifting positions of power to his two sons, daughter, grand nephew and scores of distant relatives, is hereby rechristened as Kalaignar Kudumba Nidhi. Etymology: Kalaignar (tamil for artiste) + Kudumba (tamil for family) + Nidhi (tamil for fund).

Mister This & Mister That

A women's magazine called XX

www.doublex.com.

Where to check your domain names

If you've thought up a name, and want to check if some one's taken it or not, don't go anywhere near GoDaddy.com, Networksolutions.com or Instandomainsearch.com. I have a reason for it. What these sites do is, they block the dotcom the moment you key in the name. They do it quietly, without your knowledge, using some goddamn bot. So initially, the result will show 'dot com available'. After an hour or so, when you search, you might just discover, it's been taken. Now these sites claim that they are blocking the names for your own good. But I don't see it that way. I think it's very unethical to block some one else's domain names without an explicit declaration. It's akin to intellectual property theft. That's why you must be smart whenever you wanna check names. Visit Net4domains or Domain299. These guys are not evil. They don't book the name behind your back. They book it, only when you place the order. That's why they have my vote.