The Artist Formerly Known As...

This project needs a name.

You might have noticed in the last post that I made some reference to "the project," "the website," "the business." No names in there. We've been through a few ideas, own a few URLs, but no slam dunks yet.

In August, when we committed to building this thing and put together an About Us Site and our first shot at some Demo Interfaces, we needed to call the project something, so we came up with a working title: Productipedia.

It's not easy to say or spell. It doesn't tell the whole story. It's a little uncomfortable in it's lack of originality. But .com, .net, and .org were all available, so we went with it.

Here we are now, however, hopefully about 10 days away from having a prototype website that'll look spiffy enough to demonstrate, and we're still Productipedia.

We're a website that makes it easy for people to consume more responsibly. We're a website that collects expert opinions on corporations and consumer products. We're a website that compares products, brand to brand.

We ask users to ask questions. We ask users to recommend non-main-stream alternatives. We ask users to contribute to wiki pages about companies and production processes.

We ask a user: "What do you want to buy?" She tells us she's looking for running shoes. We present to her both main-stream and non-main-stream options. We show her the opinions and information we've collected. And we help her buy her running shoes from a business whose practices she wants to support.

So what do we call ourselves?

Maybe the name should involve transparency? Window. Lens. See. Light.

Maybe choices and wisdom? Sage. Mindful. True.

Maybe we get natural and metaphorical? Bee. Ripple. Mint. Spring.

Or, maybe, we listen to Mom and call the thing www.goosemother.com. Hmmm...