Rewind & Capture

How Tech Brands Got Their Names

Why is Jelly Called Jelly?

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From the end user’s experience, using a search engine like Google is amazingly intuitive. So much so, at least one person was even caught saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ every time she entered a query. Type in a question, phrase, or a combo of keywords and based on a complex, secretive algorithm, Google will display relevant results before you can blink. That’s their mission: speed and relevancy. It’s how they’ve been able to exceed 3.5 billion queries per day. Usage aside, what happens if you stumble upon something that you are unfamiliar with and can’t really describe the characteristics of it? All of a sudden, searching becomes rather complicated. Wouldn’t it be easier to snap a photo of that something and request an answer?

Without further ado, I introduce you to Jelly, the time-delayed Google with a human being on the other end.

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Why is Apple Called Apple?

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The process of growing ideas into profitable startups is not unlike that of agriculture. It starts with a seed, a small ovule with the power to become something bigger, something that will yield the fruit of your labor and produce yet more seeds as long as you plant it, fertilize it and water it. With business, the seed is an idea, the soil may be an incubator, the fertilizer seed(!) money, and the water good marketing. It’s no wonder then that the comparisons run rampant.

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Why is Napster called Napster?

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In the early 90s, and to some extent even now, the internet was a lot like outer space. Its reach was vast, uncharted and widely unknown. The parts that we could grasp were mesmerizing, but they were still only a small fraction of what was to come. Meanwhile, though music formats had changed, the foundation of the industry itself remained largely the same. It was run mostly by the same record labels that saw the rise and fall of cassette tapes, compact discs and mini discs.

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Why is Imgur called Imgur?

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If you were asked to consider the best thing you’d ever spent seven dollars on, you would probably land on something trivial. An artisan sandwich or a carefully crafted cup of coffee. Maybe a cheap ticket to see a band you’d never heard. Whatever it may be, chances are you wouldn’t lead with something like, “Oh, that’s easy: the domain for one of the greatest websites in the history of the internet.”

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