Hey [name removed], I think this is a great idea, and I'm not just saying that. Most ideas that come across my desk are "interesting," and by interesting I mean a waste of time. The big question here is whether this is a sustaining innovation (a little bit better than something else out there) or a disruptive innovation (completely new with huge potential). Trying to compete on the basis of sustaining innovation generally works only for huge companies. However, disruptive innovation is particularly ill-suited for big companies, which is why small companies can sometimes take out huge companies. Trying to get the leg up on a huge company with a sustaining innovation is a recipe for failure because all they have to do is add the sustaining innovation to their own product, and suddenly your advantage disappears. If [company name removed] caught wind of this and thought it was a good idea that dovetails with their business objectives, who would win in a competitive scenario?

Moving on to naming, there are a few rules of thumb:

1. Short
2. Simple
3. Easy to spell
4. Lack of like-sounding letters/sounds (m and n, d and b, s and f, etc.)

Any of these can be overcome if you think about a three-legged stool of branding principles; time, money, and the inherent characteristics of the brand (the name, logo design, etc.). If the inherent characteristics of the brand are flawed--for example, a hard to spell name--enough time and money can overcome that. Enough money can make up for not enough time, and a lot of time can make up for not enough money. But you don't want to spend more time and money than you have to, so you might as well start out with a good name and nail those inherent characteristics that will give the brand its best chance for success.

I don't think I need to explain what short means, but let's talk about simple. When I say simple I mean really simple. Ebay is simple. PayPal is simple. Coca-Cola might seem simple but it's not. 100 years and billions of dollars have made it into a successful brand, despite its challenging inherent characteristics as a brand name.

There are two ways to make a name easy to spell. One is to use familiar words, and the other is to make sure it is easy to sound out correctly. The name you passed by me is not entirely easy to sound out, but it is made up of two words that are familiar to people in general, so I think that could work.

#4 kind of hooks on to #3, in that you want to make it easy for one person to understand the name when another person says it. And you've got to take into consideration how people are going to slur words. [name removed] is going to end up sounding like "[slurred name removed]" so the question there is whether people will still understand that somebody is saying "[the real name]" and not "[the slurred name]." Slurring or distortion of a name isn't necessarily bad as long as people understand what it is in spite of the distortion. The worst-case scenario would be if you had part of your name that had an "m" but you couldn't tell if it was an "m" or an "n," and then when someone tried to spell it out that would just compound the problem. If, when people say your name to someone else, they have to say "n as in nancy" then you've got a problem. Trust me, every time I tell somebody to check out our website I have to say "MWI...that's M as in Mary, W, I." Otherwise people generally think I'm saying NWI.

On a final note, don't be too goofy. The letter Z should be used only with great care by a qualified expert. Any word with a Z in it is rarely a good name, and no, I don't think Zune is a good product name, but hey, Microsoft has the money to overcome the negative characteristic. Xs are also often a bad idea. So if you're thinking of any names that have Z or X in them, don't even bother passing them by me because I'm going to tell you to choose something else.

Regarding branding and logo design, something to consider is that many successful brands don't have a logo or symbol at all, opting only to brand the name itself. Consider that the human brain has to process everything it sees, and that it's easier to process less things than more things, generally speaking. A symbol and a word (or a logomark and a logotype in branding parlance) are two things. Also consider that with rare exceptions you have to use the logotype as part of the brand, but having a logomark is optional. Some branding experts say that it is better to only use a logotype as a brand because it becomes a strong, more memorable brand, due to it being the only thing the brain has to process, and that a logomark acts as a distraction. Some examples of successful logotype-only brands include eBay, Yahoo, Google, Coca Cola, Gap, Banana Republic, Wal-Mart, and PayPal. Of course there are scores of successful brands that do rely heavily on a mark and which are successful (remember the three-legged branding stool of design, time, and money--lack of any one leg can usually be compensated for by the other two).

A common branding mistake is to make a logo/brand too complicated. This usually stems from a desire to tell a story with the logo and get as much value out of it as possible. However, this is not what a logo is for. If you look at the vast majority of successful brands, you have absolutely no idea what the company does based on the logo alone. The logo becomes the primary symbol of the brand over time because of everything else that supports the brand such as advertising, marketing, and PR. Successful brands are usually very simple and clean. They are immediately identifiable--easy to read on a billboard, business card, or pen.

Anyway, those are my initial thoughts. Oh, and the final logo better not have a swoosh in it (see http://www.thestreet.com/tech/internet/986150.html).