20 worst-named tech products
Honda's Asimo may be one of the most advanced robots in the world, but the name sounds a little too monsterlike.
Asimo is actually an acronym and stands for Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility. We're sure the Japanese translation of that rolls off the tongue much better.
Apple has a dud every once in a while, and Ping makes our list.
Casio's line of ultrarugged G'zOne offer a lesson in the hazards of playing around with caps button on the keyboard.
Cisco's business tablet is pronounced see-us. Some might pronounce it more like tschuss, which means goodbye in German.
By George, CNET actually liked the Chestnut Hill Sound George when they reviewed it a few years back. It has a detachable remote that mimicked the iPod's interface and sounded good, too.
We're not quite sure why the "George," but we seem to remember one of the company reps mentioning something about being the first of its kind and a George Washington connection.
The Cool-er stood for cool e-reader. It wasn't so cool, but it did come in a lot of colors.
Cuil was a search engine that forgot to find a good name.
The Gizmondo was a portable gaming device that never quite made it to market but spent a lot of time in trade show booths, which featured models wearing white Gizmondo T-shirts.
Three Es all in a row do not make for a great name.
The iMuffs are a Bluetooth headset.
The mRobe certainly ranks up there as one of the worst-named products of all time. Once again, we think something got lost in the Japanese translation. The word was, an Olympus executive liked the idea of a product that you could come home to and slip on like a robe. (There was some comfort factor involved, if memory serves correct.)
Never a good idea to put a * in a name.
A few people queued up online to preorder the Plastic Logic Que e-reader. But they never got it because it never came to market.
Samsung's Smiley phone actually had the famous smiley-face emoticon in its name. Bad idea all around.
Sony's Slingbox competitor actually worked pretty well, but "Location-Free TV" didn't quite make sense as a name.
Sorry, Sony, for putting so many of your products on the list, but you make a lot of tech products. We're not sure what the Muteki name is supposed to evoke, but it kind of sounds like mutant tech. If that's what you were going for, bravo.
Qriocity did not kill the cat. It is Sony's streaming movie and music service.
Sony's break-dancing Bluetooth speaker, the Rolly, is pretty amusing to watch the first 10 times you see it in action. As a name, the Rolly isn't as bad as some on the list, but it has never been quite clear how to pronounce it. (Is it Roll-y or Rollie, like Rollie Fingers?)
There have been lots of poorly named MP3 players over the years. (Samsung Yepp, anyone?) However, TrekStor's iBeat Blaxx may go down in history as one the most unfortunately named tech products of all time after people accused the product of being racist.
Shortly after it launched, TrekStor CTO Gil Szmigiel, apologized for the misunderstanding and renamed the product the TrekStor Blaxx.
Oy vey, it's the Tivoli iYiYi.