Apparently the Sci-Fi Channel is rebranding as the SyFy channel, a name that means nothing when you look at it and a move that is bizarrely inexplicable. I'm told that it's because they believe that they will be able to register this name whereas the generic nature of the previous name prevented this. I'm also told that for various reasons they have clearly received some not-very-good advice on the matter.

(I'm also told, though I can't verify it, that "syfy" is Polish slang for syphilis.)

The press release for the change has some interesting linguistic points about it. For example I can guess that "water cooler programming" means scheduling programmes that people discuss around the water cooler. I can guess it, but I don't know it for a fact.

Apparently they are also creating a new trademark to "travel easily with consumers across new media and non-linear digital platform". Your guess is as good as mine as to what a "non-linear digital platform" might be.

The new slogan is the linguistically unintelligible, "Imagine Greater". I can't find any way to parse this that makes sense.

They are also going to "open the brand aperture" and launch a "new brand evolution". Wonder what it all means.

Good grief.

I never found anything worth watching on the Sci-Fi Channel in the past*, and seriously doubt that there'll be anything in the future.

I have always Hated "Sci-Fi" as a description of the genre, anyway; it's SF.

Several other channels have rebranded recently, particularly the UKTV group. UKTV History became Yesterday, UKTV Gold became G.O.L.D, and UKTV G2 became, for some reason, Dave.

* Apart from some old episodes of Third Rock from the Sun.

Too humorous. According to the Polish Wikipedia, kiła is the Polish for syphilis. But if you search on syfy, you do get the Polish article on the Sci-Fi channel (link). I myself have always pronounced sci-fi as skiffy.

It seems to be a characteristic of the bosses of organisations to spend obscene sums of money in rebranding. And usually it is a complete waste of time and money (except to themselves since they doubtless get very well paid for it).

The world's best known organisations (Ford, McDonalds, Rolls-Royce, Coca Cola) have never changed their names or even their logos.

But who remembers Consignia - so unwisely changed from Royal Mail and so wisely changed back.

It's probably about trademark issues regarding the word "Sci-Fi".

It seems that Polish syfy is the plural of syf "dirt, filth, grime, (vulgar) syphilis"

pronounced /sɨfɨ/ I think? So it doesn't sound like /sajfaj/, but still.

syphilis

The plural of which is syphilides, although pronounced yaws.

John Scalzi's blog is pretty scathing about this.

Nice Blog. How do you find good Blogs? Just by word of mouth?

Not exactly. Via the blogosphere.

I subscribe to a lot of blogs and other RSS feeds using an RSS reader(I like FeedDemon). If I read a feed that links to an interesting blog I'll read the link; if the blog looks interesting overall I'll add that to my list of feeds.

In this case I spotted a mention in the Fritinancy blog.

What or who the hell is an RSS feeder?
For that matter, I still think of "booger clog" when I see the term, "blog." Exactly what does it mean?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: <Asa Lovejoy>,

RSS feeder

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It's an URL that is like an abstract for an article (of some sort) on the Web (link). A blog, short for web log is a kind of online diary (link). But somehow I think you knew that ...

One of the IT people at my workplace whom I very much respect has apparently taken to the Internet discussion boards to try to get that RSS feeder term changed. She thinks it's too techy sounding and that it keeps people from using RSS feeders on their sites.

Here's a screenshot of FeedDemon in action. Look familiar, Kalleh?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alanpalmer/3428986704/

It's all too clever for me...

quote:

Originally posted by zmježd:
...somehow I think you knew that ...

I recognize the words as being English, but I don't understand one bit of it. Ironic that it says, "disambiguation" at the top of the link you posted. Oh, well, thanks for trying to clarify this stuff to a luddite/troglodyte/partial aphasic.

I recognize the words as being English, but I don't understand one bit of it. [...] Oh, well, thanks for trying to clarify this stuff to a luddite/troglodyte/partial aphasic.

Blog? An English word. You are generous, Asa. Blogs started out as ...

[Weird. Got mangled in the editing. I will try to fix this tomorrow.]

[Addendum: Not worth bothering with recreating this post. Move along, nothing to see here.]

This message has been edited. Last edited by: zmježd,

...started out as?

arnie, I have no idea what that FeedDemon is, but it was cool seeing my Blog!