And that got me thinking -- complete with a J.D.-style voiceover -- about some of the companies and brands I've named over the years:
- Weblogs, Inc.
- Blogsmith
- An Event Apart, the conference series for A List Apart
- TV Squad and the squads it spawned (Card Squad, Download Squad)
- Meet The Makers, my 2002 event series
- Blogstakes, a 2003 blog marketing contest site
- The Brian Alvey Weblog
- Blog Jovi, our hard rocking private dev blog
- That's Fit, as in "All the news that's fit"
- StyleDash
- Frankensite, my web design resource for mad scientists -- conceived in 1996, it was going to be a WebMonkey-killer, but Lycos took that honor instead
- Tech Engine
- Blog Maverick
- Autoblog, someone else owned that and Jason bought it for $400
- Gadling, Jason and his old English dictionary
- Cinematical and Luxist, also Jason -- two of his best
- Divester, Droxy, BBHub, PVR Wire and many of our other retired blogs, Jason
- Engadget, Peter Rojas -- I came up with "Gear Eye", but he and Jason shot it down. Go figure!
- Joystiq, also Peter -- Joystiq is Joystick+I.Q., but we don't mention that anywhere
- Netscape, that name existed long before we got to AOL, many of you kids might not know that
I have at least one more name I came up with that I really love, but I'll have to tell you about it later. I have to catch my flight to SxSW and I'd hate for my Blogsmith team to have another CodeJam without me.

Comments (4)
Inappropriate or promotional comments may be removed.
Eliot (2:57 PM on Thu Mar 8, 2007)
Wait. The devs are here in this Austin place I just arrived in? I'm at the Embassy Suites downtown. I hope to see you soon.
Peter Rojas (11:50 PM on Thu Mar 8, 2007)
Hey, I always thought that "GearEye" would have been a really good name for Autoblog!
victor Agreda Jr (10:03 AM on Sat Mar 17, 2007)
I seem to remember having a small hand in naming StyleDash... Yeah, just checked gmail archives-- I suggested Stylash, which you logically morphed into StyleDash.
However, I always marvel at your creativity with names. This from a guy who used to revel in making names for film/tv/book projects. Shakespeare was wrong-- names are very important. At least on the web!
Brian Alvey (12:53 PM on Sat Mar 17, 2007)
On many of the names like StyleDash, that was definitely the case. Jason would have a name that was near the end zone and I'd take it in for the score. ;-)
Slashfood was another one where I couldn't remember who came up with the name. Judith checked her archives and it was one of our lead bloggers. I could have sworn it was me.
Then I was thinking that at least I did the logo, but that was Mike. My contribution was finding the stock art sliced apple photo.
Fun fun fun.