schlitt.info - php, photography and private stuff ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ :Author: Tobias Schlitt :Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2010 10:24:24 +0200 :Revision: 2 :Copyright: CC by-nc-sa ============================== Qafoo - The PHP quality ninjas ============================== :Keywords: qafoo, php, quality, ninjas, code, ci, services, open source, company, name, founding, nordmann, pichler, schlitt :Description: "Qafoo - The PHP quality ninjas" is the new, inovative and fresh company to provide services around the PHP quality life cycle. Get to know the origins of this cool name. :Abstract: As announced earlier__ in this blog, Manuel__, Kore__ and me are in the process of founding our own company. Now it's time to present the name we have thought out for this operation. We are Qafoo__ **- The PHP quality ninjas**. Isn't that cool? :) So, let me try to explain the origin of this name here. Feel invited to comment on our idea and to give us some inspiration. __ /opensource/blog/0725_goodbye_ez_systems_hello_world.html __ http://manuel-pichler.de/ __ http://kore-nordmann.de/ __ http://qafoo.com As announced earlier__ in this blog, Manuel__, Kore__ and me are in the process of founding our own company. Now it's time to present the name we have thought out for this operation. We are Qafoo__ **- The PHP quality ninjas**. Isn't that cool? :) So, let me try to explain the origin of this name here. Feel invited to comment on our idea and to give us some inspiration. __ /opensource/blog/0725_goodbye_ez_systems_hello_world.html __ http://manuel-pichler.de/ __ http://kore-nordmann.de/ __ http://qafoo.com .. note:: As last, we founded **Qafoo - passion for software quality**. Please refer to our company site, if you want to hire me, especially for services around `high quality PHP code`__. __ http://qafoo.com ------------ Requirements ------------ If you ever needed to devise a name for something, you know how hard this process can be. Several, often contrary, constraints need to be satisfied. All involved people need to like the name, but also external people, if you want to go public with it. So, here we go: The name should be short. Nobody likes long names. Especially since they are hard to remember. We wanted something catchy, zippy, cool. Old fashioned, extremely serious names simply do not match our attitude. The company we are founding will provide services around the PHP quality life cycle. So, a name that contains something with quality would be nice. But names with the term "quality" tend to become long. And again, nobody likes long names. Finally, the name should be unique. No one will find us, with a name that is not unique. A free .com domain and very few hits on Google are usually a good indicator for such a name, if you want to use it on the internet. So, we started thinking, discussing, banging our heads together and … ----------------- Making a decision ----------------- We had a really hard time, finding the name Qafoo__. Many cool ideas turned out to violate at least one of our constraints in the end. Many people helped by inspiring us. Well, the final inspiration for the choice of Qafoo resulted from a discussion with my good friend Sandro, who owns a very cool `open source marketing company`__. Thanks a lot for your help, Sandro! __ http://qafoo.com __ http://www.initmarketing.com/ So, what led us to **Qafoo**? First of all, it contains *QA*, which satisfied the constraint of being somehow related to *quality*. Next, it is really short, but the **.com** domain was still available. Don't even try, it is registered now. ;) Hits on Google were very few and mostly consisted of sites offering the domain for sale. **Qafoo** is hopefully easy to pronounce. We tried encoding the pronunciation into `IPA code`__, which should look like this: __ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet **/'kwɒfu:/** We are not that experienced with IPA, so please correct us, if we are wrong. For that case, I also recorded `Jenny saying Qafoo`__, so you can listen to it, if you're unsure how to talk about us. She has a much more pleasant voice than me. And I hate hearing my own voice recorded. __ http://files.schlitt.info/blog/jenny_qafoo.ogg **Qafoo** sounds somewhat like a shout of joy. Just imagine, there is a word that you can use for expressing your pleasure about fixing the latest CI build finally. Just shout *Qafooooooo*! ------------------- Some interpretation ------------------- The *foo* in **Qafoo** can be interpreted quite differently. You can think about your own interpretation of it and share it here, if you want. We had basically two things in mind: Everybody knows `foo and bar`__ from writing test cases and example code. It's a placeholder for many different things. Similarly, our company **Qafoo** will provide various services around high-quality PHP. __ http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3092.html On the other hand, *foo* is sometimes referred to as a mystical power in the geek world. If your *foo* is strong, you managed to create something amazing. We want to help PHP people all over the world to raise their *foo*, especially in terms of PHP code quality. Leaves the ninjas at last. If you pronounce **Qafoo** often enough, you will notice its sound is similar to *Kung Fu*. While not really related, this easily leads to Ninjas. Ninjas are commonly known to be experienced in different styles of fighting, as we fight quality issues on many different levels. Ninjas are strong fighters and are well known for their art of survival, as we will help you to survive problems in code and train your developers to become as strong as Ninjas. Finally, everybody knows that `Ninjas are much better than Pirates`__. ;) __ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_versus_Ninjas I'm really amazed about the name **Qafoo**. So, what is your impression? Please feel invited to leave a comment here and tell us what you think about **Qafoo - The PHP quality ninjas**. .. Local Variables: mode: rst fill-column: 79 End: vim: et syn=rst tw=79 Trackbacks ========== - Qafoo got a logo on Thu, 27 May 2010 11:58:43 +0200 in schlitt.info - php, photography and private stuff It's been a while since I blogged about the company Kore, Manuel and me are currently founding: Qafoo. In the meantime we made a public contest for our logo. The contest ended on Monday and we today elected a winner. Here we go with the official logo for Qafoo - passion for software quality: Comments ======== - Arne at Wed, 05 May 2010 10:09:13 +0200 Qafooooooo! - Peter at Wed, 05 May 2010 10:19:00 +0200 Ich finde den Namen recht geekig. Ich weiß nicht, was eure Zielgruppe ist, aber eventuell können eure potentiellen Kunden damit nicht sooo viel anfangen. Ok, der Name ist kurz, es ist QA drin. Das verstehe ich alles und es leuchtet auch ein, aber foo ist ja doch schon eher Geek-Sprache. Ich finde kwuafuh auch nicht einfach auszusprechen. Das erinnert mich an Nissan Quashkai. Außerdem ist KaFu die Kurzform für Katzenfutter. Da wird man dann vom Ninja zur LOLCat. :) Aber sympathisch ist der Name allemal, also macht ruhig mal. - Peter C. at Wed, 05 May 2010 10:36:01 +0200 The name make made (until corrected) most sense pronounced as "ka-foo"; it feels like there needs to be a letter u after the q. That said, it's a great, short and very catchy name! If I ever have a face-to-face conversation with you guys, and you mention the name... please don't be upset if I "bless you". :-) - Robert at Wed, 05 May 2010 11:24:35 +0200 Das mit den Quality Ninjas verstehe ich, da habe ich gleich ein Michael-Dudikoff-Bild im Kopf;-) Aber was Peter (Kommentar #2) schon angesprochen hat - wenn du in fast 30 Zeilen den Namen erst erklären musst, dann spricht Quafoo offensichtlich nicht für sich selbst. Als Motto ("Quafoooo!!") könnte es passen. Warum nicht KoToMa/MaKoTo/ToMaKo (für ein leckeres, hochwertiges, frisches PHP-Sushi;) - zu asiatisch? - Andy at Wed, 05 May 2010 12:12:56 +0200 Ich bin mal offen und ehrlich: Der Name "Q(u)afoo" ist klasse, aber versuch nicht , ihn zu erklären! Damit entzauberst du ihn. Den Claim - von wegen "quality ninjas" - finde ich albern und schuljungenhaft. Das hört sich mehr nach Script kiddies an als nach PHP Profis. - Andy at Wed, 05 May 2010 12:39:53 +0200 Warum als Claim nicht einfah: "The PHP Quality Guys". - dodger at Wed, 05 May 2010 12:54:29 +0200 Komm Toby was hat euch denn da geritten? Also - falls ihr irgendwelche "normalen" Firmen als Kunden haben wollt dann muss der Name weg - das geht mal gar nicht. Startups etc. geht aber Mittelstand - sicher nicht. - BooBoo at Wed, 05 May 2010 13:07:59 +0200 Qacool would be better. - noone at Wed, 05 May 2010 13:54:21 +0200 just another pointless, meaningless, made-up word following a bad trend. sorry. - Martin at Wed, 05 May 2010 15:32:34 +0200 mit dem namen kann man immerhin nen coole pokemon tauschplattform aufbauen - Lance at Wed, 05 May 2010 16:37:20 +0200 I like the name - it's short, brandable and made of consonant + vowel syllables that are easy to parse. I don't think you'll end up pronouncing it with the kwa- sound. At least to an american english speaker it looks a lot more like ka-foo, following the Q sound in qat or qatar when the U is absent. I don't think that detracts from the name at all though. - Herman Radtke at Wed, 05 May 2010 20:56:06 +0200 I like the name. It sounds similar to Yahoo! and I make the same jingle in my head when saying Qafooooo and Yahoooo. - King Foo at Thu, 06 May 2010 07:53:05 +0200 Congrats, and a great name indeed :) Jonas King Foo - PHP web development. We build, deploy and maintain web applications - Hyh at Sun, 09 May 2010 08:54:40 +0200 Yeah, I agree. Qacool would be better. - sonotos at Mon, 10 May 2010 15:14:33 +0200 so und jetzt schreibst du 100 mal an die Tafel: "Ich soll betrunken keine Firmennamen erfinden..." ;-) - eattolivedietplan at Thu, 16 May 2013 12:50:43 +0200 The nutritional aspects of the Abs Diet Power plan are broken down into a simple acronym: A.B.S. D.I.E.T. 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