America

So, the other night I collated all of the name suggestions I’d had for my mobile application. Spread across Facebook and the comments on the blog post, I had fifty six of them! Anyway, I printed them all out (with no names attached) and showed them to several people:

• Myself
• A friend of mine who works in marketing
• A friend of mine who works in publishing
• My wife (this doesn’t really count, as she said “you didn’t put my suggestion on there” and then refused to look at it)
• A selection of my colleagues at my real job

There were a few popular ones. In the end, these people whittled it down to small batch (some of which got modified in the whittling process). The ones left were:

• Proximity
• Commuter’s Companion
• BuzzStop
• Are We There Yet?
• Whereabouts

These are all pretty good names, but there can be only one winner. And the winner is…

… drum roll…

“Proximity”.

This wasn’t actually suggested by anyone on its own, but it was a part of a number of suggestions from a gentleman named Eamon Holmes, on Facebook. I’m pronouncing Eamon the winner, and will send through his books. Many thanks to all who took part – I expected about three responses so was somewhat surprised by what happened. A lot of the funny ones gave us a lot of entertainment but may possibly not count as very professional. And I am, of course, exceptionally professional at all times.

I’ll be posting here again when the app is available – will probably be in a month or so.

So I’ve been working on this mobile phone application. The primary purpose of the app is to stop people who’d had a few beers and taken the train home from dozing off and missing their train station. My app will use the GPS to track their progress, then wake them up before they sleep past their train station. However, it can also be used for all sorts of other location-based triggers – SMSing your carpool buddy when you’re about to arrive and pick him up; letting your dad know when he should come and meet you from the bus stop, et cetera. You basically pick a location, and a bunch of things you’d like to do there, and it does them (you can also pick multiple locations).

The app is pretty much finished, but it is currently uninspiringly called ”LocAlarm”. I need a way better name, and I am willing to give three signed copies of The Septic’s Companion to the person who thinks of one. How’s about THAT?

Why can’t I think of one myself? Well, it’s kind of complicated. I want it to be immediately apparent that it will stop you sleeping past your train/bus stop (because that’s mostly what it’s for) but I also don’t want to rule out all those other uses. The situation is complicated by the fact that it will be sold through the Windows Mobile Marketplace site, where people will only see the icon, app name and my company name, like so:

Clicking on the app shows a long description. This means that my program name and icon have to alert the casual browser to the fact that that this is to stop him sleeping past his train station, but also does other stuff. I was originally keen to have some sort of catchy Twitter-style name – was thinking about “Jitterbug” (as in “wake me up, before you go-go”) or “Dozer” but I think this is a no-go as you’d actually have to click on the app to see what it did. I then got thinking about some train-specific catchy ones (“WakeMeUp“, “BRT“) but wasn’t too happy that either of them was particularly great. The maximum length of app name is 58 characters, so I am now heading towards something horribly bland and Microsofty (“GPS Alarm“, “Location Alarm“) – I hate myself for doing this but, given the way in which the app is going to appear, I think it might be my only option.

Does anyone have any better ideas? If anyone can come up with some sort of name (and ideally an icon too) that somehow tells the reader all these things, I shall be delighted to send them three books. I will also immortalise them on the credits screen for the app, should they wish!