Nick, Pick a Laptop Name & Stick With It!
Posted on October 24, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Prototypes: 2B1, Prototypes: CM1, Prototypes: OLPC, Prototypes: XO
Nick, it's your favorite website here, One Laptop Per Child News, with a bit of advice. While you like to change the name of your $100 $208 dollar laptop every month or so, and each change brings us a few thousand new readers, would you pick one name and stick with it?
First they were just unnamed $100 laptops, but once the price started to rise, like we all knew it would, we broke the news that Walter Bender was calling it CM1: The Children's Machine 1.
While that event was still reverberating around the blogshpere, you switched the name again, to the 2B1 Children's Machine, in honor of Dimitri's 2B1 Foundation. And 2B1 is a cool name, evoking the power of Internet-based communication to unite children into a global community.
But now we just noticed that your CNN Money/Forbes article has yet another new name for the little green laptops:
Now called XO, the device has evolved into something both practical and sleek. Gone is the second prototype's hand-cranked generator, meant to free students from the need for an electric plug. (One broke off in Kofi Annan's hands when he demonstrated it at a UN tech conference last year.) Instead, the XO comes with a separate fist-sized generator. You pull a cord to make juice, like starting an old lawn mower.
Or did you mean this XO?
Have you done a Google Search on XO? Did you check out the Wikipedia XO entry? Do you realize that besides a hug and kiss, what our Mom's think an "XO" means, others are gonna wonder if you're in bed with XO Communications, an American telco, or maybe the XO Project, a photometric search for Jovian planets, or even worse, a military executive officer.
Mr. Negroponte, do us all a favor, go with XO - XO Publicity, that is, a self-described "damn fine publicity company," and get yourself one name for the One Laptop Per Child computer product. And get the name fast. You don't have much time before Quanta starts stamping labels on laptop cases.
PS: Oh and you might wanna give the OLPC team a heads-up next time. XO isn't even mentioned on the OLPC Wiki.
