Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 insaniak wrote:
Most countries have their own scattering of similar... Like English people 'Hoovering' instead of using a vacuum cleaner, or folk down here using an Esky instead of a cooler.

One of the more confusing ones for me was when I was in India, my uncle said he'd pick me up from the airport in his Jeep. So I was looking for a Jeep. He was sitting there for a while in a Suzuki SUV before getting out and asking what I was waiting for, because apparently "Jeep" is the generic term for an SUV over there (or maybe my uncle is just crazy, haha).

Most of the common western ones like Kleenex, Hoover, Sharpie, Texta, Biro, Blutac, I know even if they're from other countries, the Jeep = SUV caught me off guard though.

Around here, 'Jeep' used to be a bit of a catch all for small four wheel drives back in the day (way before SUVs were a thing) ... But funnily enough, slipped out of common usage as Jeep started to become a more commonly available brand.

'Whipper Snipper' is another big one here... Nobody outside of a store calls them 'line trimmers'

Google hates you 'Googling' anything. They're a bit late to that one, and lost it quite quickly.
iPads are tablets, based on the definition of a tablet. But then, Phablets arrived, and when did smart-phone just become a phone?

" Let me 'alta-vista' that for you ..." doesn't flow off the tongue, though.

 Skinnereal wrote:
Google hates you 'Googling' anything. They're a bit late to that one, and lost it quite quickly.

Do they? That seems weird. It's about as good a marketing gift as you could get.

You would think so... Except that once the term becomes embedded enough in the language to became an accepted alternative to the original generic term, the owner loses their control of it. In Google's case, that means a very real possibility that at some point other companies will be able to market their search engines as 'Google' searches, despite being nothing to do with Google, the company... And that's very, very bad marketing for Google.

Edit - even before it gets that extreme, people using your name, but thinking of generic product doesn't help you as the owner of that name, since it means they're not actualiy associating your product specifically with that name.

nfe wrote:

 Skinnereal wrote:
Google hates you 'Googling' anything. They're a bit late to that one, and lost it quite quickly.

Do they? That seems weird. It's about as good a marketing gift as you could get.

You'd think, yeah.
But:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3006486.stm (marvel at the BBC from 15 years ago)

Google's problem is one of the paradoxes of having a runaway successful brand. The bigger it gets, the more it becomes part of everyday English language and less a brand in its own right.

 insaniak wrote:
Around here, 'Jeep' used to be a bit of a catch all for small four wheel drives back in the day (way before SUVs were a thing) ... But funnily enough, slipped out of common usage as Jeep started to become a more commonly available '

Really? I’m in my early 30’s and grown up in Oz and can’t recall ever having heard Jeep being used to refer to generic 4x4’s.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
Around here, 'Jeep' used to be a bit of a catch all for small four wheel drives back in the day (way before SUVs were a thing) ... But funnily enough, slipped out of common usage as Jeep started to become a more commonly available '

Really? I’m in my early 30’s and grown up in Oz and can’t recall ever having heard Jeep being used to refer to generic 4x4’s.

Might be one of those regional things, like the old case/carton/slab for beer... or you might just be young enough to have missed it. It's also possible that I'm going senile and misremembering... although whether or not it was used in general parlance, there was definitely a period there where any military 4WD was an 'army jeep'

FWIW, when I was a youth growing up in the wilds of the West/North Yorkshire border 'jeep' was a catch-all term for what get called 4x4s or SUVs these days.

Ipad is simply pretentious-ese for tablet.

Same with IPhone for smartphone, and IPod for MP3 player.

I really like how the bbc got in there with the iPlayer

Two car makers got in with "iLoad" and "iCarry" as well.

Yes, Apple STILL tried to get them on the name. Trademarks are industry specific and only prevent things from the same industry using the same or similar name. Apple don't make cars (and if they did, you'd be replacing them yearly or they'd kill the car OS).

Like how James Cameron got away with "Unobtanium" in Avatar - even though THAT spelling is an existing trademark by Oakley (it's what they call the specialised rubber compound on their nose and ear pieces on their sunglasses ranges. They gain traction, the wetter they get.
Different industry, different product, no clash.

Kraft tried to get in on the 'iThing' as well, with a variant of Vegemite that for some reason has cheese mixed in it. They chose the name for it from public submissions, and for some inexplicable reason thought 'iSnack 2.0' was the way to go.

It was met with such a massive level of bile and ridicule that they recalled the product and renamed it.

Hmmm. I like Marmite on cheese, but I'm not sure about combining the two in one spread. My suggestion for the name would have been "bleugh".

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
Hmmm. I like Marmite on cheese, but I'm not sure about combining the two in one spread. My suggestion for the name would have been "bleugh".

Indeed... Cheese spread is a horrible concoction at the best of times. I can't really see how adding Vegemite to it would actually improve it any.

Marmite is good with cheese on toast it's true, but Lea and Perrins is better and mushroom ketchup is the best!

Vegemite, a product that is illegal to sell here in the US. Don't tell the grocery stores though, several of them still carry it, and enforcement rarely happens.

 Kroem wrote:
Marmite is good with cheese on toast it's true, but Lea and Perrins is better and mushroom ketchup is the best!

Bovril

 cuda1179 wrote:
Vegemite, a product that is illegal to sell here in the US. Don't tell the grocery stores though, several of them still carry it, and enforcement rarely happens.

That's because the 'ban' is just an urban legend...

 insaniak wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
Vegemite, a product that is illegal to sell here in the US. Don't tell the grocery stores though, several of them still carry it, and enforcement rarely happens.

That's because the 'ban' is just an urban legend...

Well.... Yes and no. Vegemite itself isn't banned. Only if it's been artificially boosted with Follate (or folic acid).

 Overread wrote:
Eh its more that sometimes a brand name becomes so widespread in use and so common that it 100% dominates a market..

Aye. Though this happening for I-pads is somewhat odd since there are quite a few competing products. Everybody began making tablets and the market was flooded rather quickly. Its not similar to something like Kleenex or Allen Wrenches having such a dominating presence in their product category that it would make a ton of sense for "I-pad" to become genericised.

The concept of this kind of tablet computer appeared in SF a long time ago.

Apple made a previous stab at a handheld computer with the Newton in the early 90s.

I recall the bursar at my school having a very early tablet and being really proud of it and that was in the 90s.

That might have been a Newton or a PalmPilot. I had a PalmPilot in the late 90s.You had to use a kind of shorthand to write text into it.

The difference is that modern hardware is so much more powerful and cheap, that you can now actually do a lot of good computing on a tablet device. Wireless connectivity also is a major boon, and lots of tedious technical functions have been automated.

My Palm Pilot had a 14,400 baud modem which clipped on and allowed me to plug into a phone line and send simple emails, bulletin board messages. You had to do a long string of Telnet commands to get online.