Phil Belanger drops a branding bomb: David Haskin reports that Belanger, a founding member of the Wi-Fi Alliance said that FlankSpeed was one of the names suggested for what was ultimately dubbed Wi-Fi. I have to stop and put my head between my knees. Deep breaths. Okay.
Many moons ago, the company that invented Visio--bought by Microsoft for $1.6b in 2000--was searching for names for its product (and ultimately what it renamed the company). The naming consultants looked at the fact that the program could graph and draw, and came up with...Graw. Thank you! Next! The founders of Visio later formed a startup named The Graw Group as a kind of a joke until they left stealth mode as Trumba.
FlankSpeed - ha! Still, "Wi-Fi" lovers can't crow too much, what with lazy typists giving us WiFi, Wifi, wi-fi and wifi. The brand is still in flux and many reporters still bite on the "wireless-fidelity" definition. Others think "mesh," "metro" and WiMAX are interchangeable. Just goes to show how important branding can be to really help a technology gain traction.