Microsoft's new operating system research project is mysteriously named "Midori".
But why?
Coining the codenames for consumer tech products can be a tricky business.
If your project was designing a new way of coupling articulated lorries or maximising efficiency in polymer production, you wouldn't have to Microsoft sees end of Windows era ...
Japan to soften sanctions on NKorea ...
Yahoo-Microsoft tie-up abandoned ...
Prague Spring international music festival gets underway ... worry too much about the working title.
But if you are Microsoft or Apple or one of the other consumer electronics giants, your most embryonic of projects can garner significant worldwide coverage.
And when it's being discussed in forums and blogs, a massive potential source of free advertising, even the codename must sit right with the product. Normally the names are unusual enough to stand out, without ever risking any negative connotations.
Thus it seems slightly strange that Microsoft has chosen the word "midori" for its latest research project. It's an effort to create an internet-based system for a world where people use more than one machine to access applications, and it's already being talked about.
Japanese word
Some people's first thought will be of Midori, the supersweet green Japanese cocktail liqueur. It's the key ingredient in the Green Alien, the Japanese Slipper, and the extraordinarily named Giraffe Snot (blue curacao, Midori, cranberry juice, passionfruit pulp).
Midori is also the Japanese word for green, so you might imagine the designers having an environmental moment. But in Japanese, midori does not have quite the same idiomatic sense as the way English-speakers use "green". There is a green day, midorinohi, on 29 April, Emperor Hirohito's birthday, but it celebrates "greenery" and the planting of trees more than wider environmental concerns.
Midori crops up in Japanese placenames, and it is a relatively common girl's name. Here's where it becomes connotation-laden. Midori is a Japanese violinist, but another Midori is a "prominent human sexuality writer" and a third Midori is a porn actress. There is a Midori Snyder who writes fantasy novels, and a Midori Matsuo who is an aspirant underwear designer.
And most bizarrely, the codename midori has already apparently been used in the technology field with a version of Linux and a WebKit browser.
It's all a big departure for a company that usually just sticks with placenames.
"Many of the Microsoft ones are named after mountains," says Dan Grabham, computing editor of techradar.com. Chip firm Intel also goes for American placenames, he notes.
"If they choose a placename it is quite easy to remember, if it was just a number that might get confused. I haven't come across where Midori is from. I would have guessed it was the Japanese connection."
Microsoft has had a particular fascination for the ski resort of Whistler Blackcomb where it held "design retreats".
The project codenamed Whistler became Windows XP, Longhorn, named after a bar in Whistler, became Windows Vista, and the next generation of Windows was codenamed Blackcomb, although that changed to Vienna and more recently to Windows 7.
Other Whistler-related codenames include Bobcat, Freestyle, Harmony, Cougar, Symphony, Emerald, and Springboard, variously the names, of ski lifts, ski runs and "alpine bowls".
The codenames can give a hint of the ethos of the people behind the product.
Each version of the Ubuntu Linux system carries, as well as a number, a name. So far they have included Breezy Badger, Feisty Fawn and Gutsy Gibbon.
But exactly what Midori is really saying remains unclear.
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(BBC)
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