 |
| |
|
|
DanS
|
 |
Kickball Capital of the World
Jan 1970
time: 00:15
|
|
"Names like Video Velvet and Video Silk evoke images of porno productions."
And the problem with this is...? 
Just ask Ming how many pictures of models he has in his office. Sex sells!  Especially in this demographic. I haven't received an order for a board from a woman yet.
I'm really leaning toward "Digital Silk" or "Visual Silk", unless you guys think that it would be a dreadful mistake. The connotations might be there, but just like the company "Virgin", you make of it what you want to make of it. I want to avoid an overly techie name.
Colon: you convinced me on the "video" versus "visual". I like the verb "Looking" and the noun "Lightning". A future card could have a sound component, so "thunder" is also a good idea. However, the Soundblaster Live has a thunderclap on bootup of your PC, so the sound is already associated with them. Not sure whether that would be a barrier.
Minerva is interesting, but I think that would be a good icon, rather than a name. For the target audience, Minerva won't mean anything. In fact, a good portion of the target audience will be lost at the reference, because they aren't Western. I've already received orders from Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan, for instance.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Colon
|
 |
Antwerp, Colon's Chocolate Canard Country
Jan 1970
time: 06:15
|
|
True, virgin isn’t associated with sex, but they have Richard Branson and you don’t.
Silk has a connotation with sex to me, but I don’t believe it would be a dreadful mistake and I admit that, on it's own, it’s a nice name. Of the two, Visual Silk and Digital Silk, I prefer the latter because “Digital” counterweights the sexual connotation and sounds more powerful to me.
Regarding Minerva, I don’t believe it really matters whether people know what it means or not. I didn’t know what it meant when I thought of it either (it was the name of an Antwerpian car manufacturer decades ago) and most don't know what "Thales" or "Consignia" mean either. It just has advantage that it sounds nice and that it provides you a story to tell when people ask after the origin of the name. (always nice to tell your Japanese customer you named your company after the Roman goddess of arts  )
BTW, how about Eve (Enhanced Visual Engines/Energy),
Eva (Enhanced Visual Applications) or Ave (Advanced Visual Engines/Energy)? You can’t complain about a glut of syllables here.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
DanS
|
|
Kickball Capital of the World
Jan 1970
time: 00:15
|
|
ef: those September 10 postings probably got caught up in the September 11 storm. I would like to see your 2050 numbers, but I think I've seen some of your 2025 numbers in the past and have a sense on where you stand.
The thing about these numbers that seems to be most variable is immigration. I would love to see the political will there for continued and perhaps even drastically increased immigration, but, as you know, some of that follows the changing political winds. In that respect, September 11 might have a much greater impact on the economy than we give it credit for, one way or another. We'll see how it shakes out. (As an aside, in the past, American society has shown the ability to assimilate up to 2-2.5% per annum immigrants).
My sense is that in the US pre-September 11, there was will across the political spectrum to at least maintain the current high rate of immigration, especially since the majority of immigrants are from Western, but second and third-world societies. It's a quite strong political argument here that we're a land of immigrants and that to deny others a chance to immigrate is somehow unfair. There is a lot of nuance attached, that would take a psychiatrist to figure out, I'm sure. In any event, I absolutely love our population age distribution--nearly flat for the foreseeable future.
I would have thought that Europe and Japan would see the benefits of immigration, but don't know about the political will. From what little I see from this side of the pond, there is almost no political will available in Europe and the face of immigration to the majoriy is riots and other "aggressive" behavior (this might be a misimpression--if so, tell me). In Japan, I see very little hope. In contrast, the general view in the States is that immigrants will work (or need to work) to the bone, and that seems to be widely respected as an excellent net plus to society and the economy.
Colon: what? I'm no Branson?  Bite your tongue! 
"Digital Silk" it is? What does "Digital Silk" translate into other languages? Does it work well?
Re Eva, I really like it. It reminds me of a girl I met in Prague in '98. She worked for Andersen Consulting, which was nearly working her to death. It was the dead of winter, she was probably pulling 16-hour days, and she looked really tired. She seemed to have a slavic-cum-communism jaded fatalism that was especially touching to me at the time.
Anyway, the pension I was going to stay in shut for the holidays, and we hooked up in a crystal shop, where she was doing last minute gift shopping and I was doing the dumb American "you know anyplace I can stay?" routine to the cashier. I ended up staying with Eva's mom.
Btw, she was really good looking.
Alas, www.eva.com is taken.
edit: digitalsilk.com is also taken. So too visualsilk.com.  videosilk.com is still available, though.
Last edited by DanS on 21-10-2001 at 02:33
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
DanS
|
|
Kickball Capital of the World
Jan 1970
time: 00:15
|
|
PCB = Printed Circuit Board.
"And last but not least, I like SDI Silk. Were you inspired by that other SDI?"
Thanks! No, SDI is a term of art. SDI stands for Serial Digital Interface and is a way to transport video (and sometimes audio) from one video device to another. It is mainly used by broadcast TV and video producers, but we're using it for home theater.
"What exactly are you doing in this project?"
I conceived the product in its current configuration, am coding the software support in DScaler, and am selling the card. My partner did most of the hardware engineering.
"I must admit I don't have the slightest clue how large the market for this kind of applications could be."
The software to support this type of board (DScaler) is free and open source and gets about 7,500 downloads a week--the growth in distribution has been geometric and started about a year ago. A similar piece of software gets a ton more downloads, and is still growing geometrically (Virtualdub). The total number of boards that have been sold with this chipset is around 10 million at (let's say) $75/board.
If you figure that this board costs $400 apiece compared to a normal board at $75 apiece, we might be able to get orders on .1% or .2% of those software downloads (i.e., several standard deviations from the mean on a normal distribution curve). Of course, this is just back of the envelope stuff and doesn't even remotely resemble a well put together marketing plan (a pricing curve isn't a normal distribution, after all).
Anyway, all I care to know at this point is that we're seeing sufficient interest. The price isn't proving to be an undue hurdle.
|
|
| |
All times are GMT. The time now is 05:15.
Apolyton Time is 00:15. |
top of page
|
| archivepost |
|
Forum Rules:
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
|
HTML code is ON
vB code is ON
Smilies are ON
[IMG] code is ON
|
|
|
|
|
|
20-10-2001 21:01
Attachment: 
|
