X-SciTech

Lousy names for tech products

By David Carnoy

November 1, 2011 / 12:00 PM EDT / CBS News

Apple has a dud every once in a while, and Ping makes our list.

Casio G'zOne

Casio's line of ultrarugged G'zOne offer a lesson in the hazards of playing around with Caps key on the keyboard.

Cisco Cius

Cisco's business tablet is pronounced see-us. Some might pronounce it more like tschuss, which means goodbye in German.

Chestnut Hill Sound George

By George, we actually liked the Chestnut Hill Sound George when we 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 it was called 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

The Cool-er stood for cool e-reader. It wasn't so cool, but it did come in a lot of colors.

Cuil

Cuil was a search engine that forgot to find a good name.

Gizmondo

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.

Eee PC

Three Es all in a row do not make for a great name.

iMuffs

The iMuffs are a Bluetooth headset.

Olympus mRobe MP3 player

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.)

Pentax *ist series

Never a good idea to put a * in a name.

Plastic Logic Que

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 :)

Samsung's Smiley phone actually had the famous smiley-face emoticon in its name. Bad idea all around.

Sony Location-Free TV

Sony's Slingbox competitor actually worked pretty well, but "Location-Free TV" didn't quite make sense as a name.

Sony Muteki

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.

Sony Qriocity

Qriocity did not kill the cat. It is Sony's streaming-movie and -music service.

Qwikster

Netflix's sudden plan to split the company in two and change the name of its DVD delivery service to Qwikster didn't go over so well, and the company quickly nixed the name and put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

While it may be a little hard to separate the name from the ill-conceived launch, any way you slice it, Qwikster just feels off--and not in a good way.

Sony Rolly

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?)

TrekStor iBeat Blaxx

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.

Tivoli iYiYi

Oy vey, it's the Tivoli iYiYi.

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David Carnoy

Executive Editor David Carnoy has been a leading member of CNET's Reviews team since 2000. He covers the gamut of gadgets and is a notable e-reader and e-publishing expert. He's also the author of the novels Knife Music and The Big Exit. Both titles are available as Kindle, iBooks, and Nook e-books.

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