Ekiga 2.0 Released

Some Anonymous Coward writes "After about one year of development the former GnomeMeeting team has released Ekiga. Ekiga is the successor of the popular GnomeMeeting. Ekiga calls itself the very "first Open Source application to support both H.323 and SIP". Ekiga is based on the h323/sip codebase, provided by the openh323 project. Also introduced with this release is ekiga.net, a platform to provide the community with free sip addresses."

Ekiga? What the hell is an Ekiga?

[foxtrot]

I might have been able to guess what GnomeMeeting did. I would have guessed that it was perhaps a collaborative whiteboard tool, perhaps with a dose of voice-chat built in. I'd bet it worked in Gnome.

I would have no bloody clue what an Ekiga is if the article hadn't mentioned it was the successor to GnomeMeeting. I'm sure it means something really appropriate in Sanskrit or something. How very clever.

And so, another project winds up with a useless name and they get to wonder why nobody uses their product, because folks see "Ekiga" and have no idea that it does exactly what they need, where GnomeMeeting might've hinted that at least.

-F

Name Change

[Slack3r78]

Since I have the karma to burn:

GnomeMeeting to Ekiga is quite probably the single worst name change I've ever seen in a piece of software, commercial or free aside. They went from a name that clearly communicated the software's purpose to something cryptic that isn't even easily pronounceable. (Yes, I am aware of the new name's origin, that doesn't make it any less terrible a name for a software project).

So the new name fails on pretty much every front. It fails to communicate the purpose of the program. It fails to be something the average person will actually remember. It fails to be something that's not going to scare off a neophyte. As a program that's bandied about for inclusion in Gnome proper, this pretty significant IMO.

Re:ANYTHING has to be better...

[Aspirator]

At least with a name like Netmeeting I had some idea what
the software did.

Now with names like Ekiga in my menus I won't have a clue.

Re:Name Change

[caseih]

Skype anyone?

Re:Ekiga? What the hell is an Ekiga?

[tpgp]

Of course, everyone can immediately tell what skype does.

Seriously, is anyone else getting a little sick of the plethora of "me too" comments about the appropriateness of a software product's name on slashdot?

Re:ANYTHING has to be better...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now with names like Ekiga in my menus I won't have a clue.

Yeah, it's like calling a spreadsheet "Excel". How will anyone know what it does with a name like that. Or calling a retailer "Amazon". In the business world you'd be dead in the water if you used names like that.

Re:Ekiga? What the hell is an Ekiga?

[briqui]

No skype isn't immediatelyobvious - and perhaps on that basis skype was a poor choice of name.

But in addition to this there is one other major difference - the advertising budget.

Skype has thrown a huge amount of money and resources into turning itself into a 'name' brand and as such it makes sense that they should go with something original and snappy.

Unless we want to put together a community project to fund an advert in New York Times for every open source project it probably makes more sense to pick obvious names.

Re:Ekiga? What the hell is an Ekiga?

[carlmenezes]

I agree here. All of a sudden, the thing to do is to mud sling about package names. Come on. If the guy named it after his girlfriend, that's great. If he named it after his favorite cartoon, that's great. The POINT is, if it gets used widely enough, it won't matter what it's called. How about Trillian? EMule? EDonkey? Acrobat?

Get the point? If it's a good app, help expand its user base. If you really want to help, do that. Anyone can sit around and bitch.

Re:Depends

[fak3r]

Yep, and that's why I like them so much. If you call and have a question the person who answers (and that usually takes 2-3 rings) will know what's up. Linux question? Go for it. Server question? Same thing...they know their stuff and are a joy to deal with, that's why I'm happy I'm going to get to move voice alongside data to Speakeasy.

Re:Ekiga? What the hell is an Ekiga?

[bigtrike]

It's better than GIMP

Re:Ekiga? What the hell is an Ekiga?

[pomo monster]

Jesus Christ. The eye stumbles on the acronym soup in the very first line of that description. Nobody's going to notice the phrase "audio and video calls," buried as it is among four references in only three fucking sentences to "SIP and H.323." Try this instead:

Ekiga: Bring your friends and colleagues onto your desktop with Ekiga's standards-compliant videoconferencing and audio calls. Supports all modern VoIP features of SIP and H.323.

There you go. Direct, clear, helpful. Maybe even stuff the last sentence with all the other technical descriptions in the fine print. What's not to like?

Re:Name Change

[be-fan]

You're only making the association because you've heard of the product before. "Safari" doesn't imply "exploring the web" any more than it implies "exploring your photo album". When I hear "Dreamweaver", I'm much more apt to think "video editor" or "animation package" than "HTML editor". Same thing for PowerPoint --- the connection makes sense if you know what it is "oh, you point during a presentation", but before that?

You're basically saying that certain names can be vaguely tied to their purposes after you know what they do. But at that point, it really doesn't matter, does it? It's not like these names are are useful descriptions to someone who doesn't already know what the software does (like iPhoto or iTunes). The fact that they still work pretty well shows that software names are just that --- names. Names aren't meant to be descriptive, they're meant to be short and easy to remember. I'm sure your name isn't "annoy guy who hangs out on Slashdot" is it? It's probably something completely undescriptive --- like "John" or "Ted".