Life is an open book test

A lot of people think they have to have all the answers.

Not me. I'm happy to use any tool to my advantage, especially when it comes to naming.

For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of trying to name a new product or service, let me boil the experience down for you in one phrase: it's a bitch.

Basically, you have to come up with a memorable word or two that capture the essence of the product's function, brand promise, and personality. Oh, and make sure it's dotcomable (how's that for a word). Add to this challenge that the final selection process is totally subjective and you can spend hours, days, weeks and months and still not be satisfied.

That's why I was excited to stumble across this tool: WORDOID.com. It's not going to instantly help you find a great name, but it will generate some more options of made up words using any root you choose to put into the search field. More importantly, it tells you if the results are available as dot-com domain names. Pretty cool.

For example if I were to create a brand using my first name, harvey.com and harv.com are not available, but Wordoid let me know that such words as harvation, harveyors, harvelled, harvatist, and harveyed are. I'm not sure if any of these are great names, but at least it's a start.