[Offtopic] Origins of some computer related names

[Roland Gesthuizen]

>From a friend on a QLD list. Enjoy :-)

Regards Roland

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Origins of some of the most popular computer related names today

Adobe - came from name of the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the
house of
founder John Warnock.

Apache - It got its name because its founders began by applying
patches to code
written for NCSA's httpd daemon. The result was 'A PAtCHy ' server --
thus, the
name Apache.

Apple Computers - favourite fruit of founder Steve Jobs. He was three
months late in
filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company
Apple Computers
if the other colleagues didn't suggest a better name by 5 o'clock.

CISCO - its not an acronym but short for San Francisco.

Google - the name started as a jokey-boast about the amount of
information the
search-engine would be able to search. It was originally named
'Googol', a word
for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. After the
founders Sergey
Brin and Larry Page (Stanford grad students) presented their project
to an angel
investor, they received a cheque made out to 'Google'.

Hotmail - Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mails via
the web from a
computer anywhere in the world. When Sameer Bhatia came up with the
business
plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in
'mail' and finally settled
for hotmail as it included the letters "html" - the programming
language used to write
web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective
upper casing.

HP - Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the
company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett.

Intel - Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company
'Moore
Noyce', but that was already trademarked by a hotel chain, so they
had to settle
for an acronym of INTegrated ELectronics.

Lotus (Notes) - Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from 'The
LotusPosition'
or 'Padmasana'. Kapor used to be a teacher of Transcendental
Meditation (by Maharishi
Mahesh Yogi).

Microsoft - coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was
devoted
to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the '-' was
removed later on.

Motorola - Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company
started manufacturing radios for cars. The popular radio company at
the time
was called Victrola.

ORACLE - Larry Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a consulting
project for
the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). The code name for the project was
called Oracle (acronym for: One Real Asshole Called Larry Ellison).

Red Hat - Company founder Marc Ewing was given the Cornell lacrosse
team cap
(with red and white stripes) while at college by his grandfather. He
lost it
and had to search for it desperately. The manual of the beta version
of Red
Hat Linux had an appeal to readers to return his Red Hat if found by
anyone!

SAP - "Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing", formed by 4
ex-IBM employees who used to work in the 'Systems/Applications/
Projects".

SUN - founded by 4 Stanford University buddies, SUN is the acronym for
Stanford University Network.

Xerox - The inventor, Chestor Carlson, named his product trying to
say 'dry'
(as it was dry copying, markedly different from the then prevailing wet
copying). The Greek root 'xer' means dry.

Yahoo! - the word was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book
'Gulliver's Travels'. It represents a person who is repulsive in
appearance
and action and is barely human. Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang and David
Filo
selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos.


-- 
Roland Gesthuizen - ICT Coordinator - Westall Secondary College
http://www.westallsc.vic.edu.au

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change
the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has." --Margaret Mead
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