I recently studied the rescued contents of my Applications folder, and I was reminded of the importance of naming software with care. Some titles are self evident, most require some inside info before you knoiw what the hell they do.

Say what you do, do what you say... This cliché contains sound advice when it comes to naming a product, especially at purchase time. For some reason, geeky developers often forget that the people they want to encourage to buy the software have not been living and breathing the product for months. Therefore the customer needs help differentiating one amongst thousands of other titles vying for their attention.

If you hear that Microsoft have a new version of Word, only a dummy would ask, What does Word do?

Has it always been so clear cut? If I had had my way, the original release, Word would have been called Worried - the result of a great word processor running on an OS called Windows, a combination which is either very good or very bad depending on the weather. Now, after so much money spent on marketing, it is safe to assure people are not worried by anything other than the price of Word. How bloody much?

Even if you know nothing about Macs, iCal must be a calendar? Yay! Address book is an address book. Entourage? Ah, that is Microsoft, and yes, it isn't too obvious what Entourage does just from the name - but throw in a few more million in marketing and branding and it becomes crystal clear!

For several reasons, it makes sense to have descriptive software titles from the offset, but why do most software titles seem to fall through the hole of naming logic?

Dodgy Mac software titles

Pando - Now let me think, that is a?... file-sending application! Psychics may have guessed that Pando shoots files all over the internet, but the rest of us non-cosmic folk would surely never associate the name with its function in a million years of guessing.

Chirp - now that could be a name for a chat app, right? Wrong. Bird song analyser? Not even close. Try, software to handle Group task & project management & communications Claro!

Floola - iPod manager Of course, how silly of me not to know that Floola is indispensable for organising your music and videos on your iPod. (I bet it doesn't stop you getting zapped by lightening or run over on a crossing.) Floola isn't the first word I expected to see in the web search result, but it is up there! Another bit of proof that marketing can sell anything.

Dress assistant - At last, a term that is close to what I expect. This one actually says what it does on the tin. But on reflection, why would I need a personal dress assistant?

Thanks to Versiontracker for the inspiration on intuitive applications with obtuse names. Got any good examples of puzzling names?