Thursday, October 06, 2005
Roots of a name - from PiCasa to MiCasa to MyPalace
As I reflect on my growing cluster of blogs on pieces I want to add here and there, I have been realizing the need to say a little about how I can to adopt the name MyPalace for the Digital Engine that aleady morphed through many name changes.
Actually, I described in that post In one of my earlier blog posting - on my first - and so far oly posting on the Picasa, but it wouldn't hurt to repeat the essence of the story.
I had installed Picasa, and while I it did allow for some level of organization of the many images on my drive, I was becoming increasingly frustrated by the dificulty in navigating my images, in setting up any reasonable form of catalguiing of the images, and in particular difficulties finding images or sets of images and I came to the conculsion that there was a clear need for a well developed database to be integrated with Picasa.
I also had the image of Googlie - spinning for an eclipse =- the play on the cricket term googly that had emerged when I put together the beginnings of a database to organize Google search results for "information ecology - and came up with the name Googlie - a fusion of Google and information ecology (ie) - with the Picasa metamorphosis as a prime example of the "way the googlie bounces".
As I reflected on the name "Picasa" - evidently a shortening of "Picture casa" - picture house - I began to reflect that it might make sense to create a house that was not just for pictures, but for all one's Internet transactions - or at least all those related to the use of Google tools - immediately seeing the potential value of being able to integrate, in a user-friendly database format, al of one's Google-related transactions, so as to maintain a comprehensive history and catalog.
This also brought to mind the issue of a user's right to know his or her Internet history and records, and essentially, to be in a position to make use of the same sort of tools that corporations use to track our Internet travels, purchases, etc.
The creation of a digital engine with these capabilities could have a significant effect, imho in shifting the balance of power and awareness in an Internet age and in enabling much broader access to some of the powerful tools of analysis and observation for our own benefit, rather than just to leave them in the hands of corporations.
So it was that from a Googlie perpective on "Picasa" evolved the name My Palace - a name whose selection grew out of exploring the availability of the domains micasa.net, my-home.net, my-castle.net - none of which were available for registration.
Part of the attraction of the name for me was the sense that a palace conveys of great size, a home with many, many rooms - corresponding to the vast freedom and potential of domain architecture in an environment free from the constraints of the laws of conservation of mass and energy, free from the constraints of physical size.
Actually, I described in that post In one of my earlier blog posting - on my first - and so far oly posting on the Picasa, but it wouldn't hurt to repeat the essence of the story.
I had installed Picasa, and while I it did allow for some level of organization of the many images on my drive, I was becoming increasingly frustrated by the dificulty in navigating my images, in setting up any reasonable form of catalguiing of the images, and in particular difficulties finding images or sets of images and I came to the conculsion that there was a clear need for a well developed database to be integrated with Picasa.
I also had the image of Googlie - spinning for an eclipse =- the play on the cricket term googly that had emerged when I put together the beginnings of a database to organize Google search results for "information ecology - and came up with the name Googlie - a fusion of Google and information ecology (ie) - with the Picasa metamorphosis as a prime example of the "way the googlie bounces".
As I reflected on the name "Picasa" - evidently a shortening of "Picture casa" - picture house - I began to reflect that it might make sense to create a house that was not just for pictures, but for all one's Internet transactions - or at least all those related to the use of Google tools - immediately seeing the potential value of being able to integrate, in a user-friendly database format, al of one's Google-related transactions, so as to maintain a comprehensive history and catalog.
This also brought to mind the issue of a user's right to know his or her Internet history and records, and essentially, to be in a position to make use of the same sort of tools that corporations use to track our Internet travels, purchases, etc.
The creation of a digital engine with these capabilities could have a significant effect, imho in shifting the balance of power and awareness in an Internet age and in enabling much broader access to some of the powerful tools of analysis and observation for our own benefit, rather than just to leave them in the hands of corporations.
So it was that from a Googlie perpective on "Picasa" evolved the name My Palace - a name whose selection grew out of exploring the availability of the domains micasa.net, my-home.net, my-castle.net - none of which were available for registration.
Part of the attraction of the name for me was the sense that a palace conveys of great size, a home with many, many rooms - corresponding to the vast freedom and potential of domain architecture in an environment free from the constraints of the laws of conservation of mass and energy, free from the constraints of physical size.
