Ah, They grow up so fast! As you may by now have noticed, we’ve left the proverbial WordPress.com nest and moved over onto our own self-hosted environment. We’re excited about the move as it will allows us a greater degree of flexibility in developing the site and closer integration between the site and the Brainstormer.

Apologies to everyone who experienced difficulties accessing the site over the past several hours. Various links were broken during the move which caused some disruption to the Brainstormer. Normal services have now resumed.

URL forwarding from the WordPress.com should now be in effect though we recommend you still update your bookmarks accordingly as the old URL will eventually become inactive.

I thought this would also be a good opportunity to update our look and add a little more pizzazz to the place. Say hello to Gossip City by Design Disease. Shazam!

Last month we asked our readers to vote on a number of features they would like to see added to the Brainstormer application. Today we are pleased to announce the first of these additions, favourites, is now available to our users.

A quick how-to

To add a name to your favourites you simply click the little heart button that accompanies each one. You can jump back to your favourites list at any time and use it as a jumping off point for more brainstorming. Remember, you need to sign in to save your favourites for your next visit.

Other improvements

We’ve also added several other improvements including help messages and improved support for different screen resolutions.

The future

We’ve been busy laying the groundwork for lots more exciting features to come. Registered users will soon be able to submit new names to the database and create their own custom name-themes to keep for their own reference or share with the world.

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please use the below comment form to let us know about your ideas, and watch this space for further developments.

What does Adolf Hitler have in common with Twisty Poi? Answer: Both are examples of proposed baby names blocked by the New Zealand register of Births Deaths and Marriages, a family court judge revealed.

These names, were among a list of inappropriate monikers cited by the justice in ruling that a nine-year-old girl would be put into court guardianship so her name could be changed from Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii. (The Guardian 2008). The judge expressed “profound concern” at the “very poor judgement” of the child’s parents, saying that the name made a fool of the child and “sets her up with a social disability and handicap”.

Other names that have been overruled by the New Zealand registrar of Births Deaths and Marriages include: Stallion, Yeah Detroit, Fish and Chips (twins?), Keenan Got Lucy (or is it Lucky?), Sex Fruit, Fat Boy, Satan and 4Real.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a brilliant first week for the Baby Name Brainstorm. We launched only eight days ago, and already we’re beginning to see a nice stream of visitors through the blog and to the Brainstormer as well. Thanks in large part to Lola and Nancy who are our top referrers and commentors. Thanks for your support guys.

A big thanks also to everyone who voted in our recent poll to decide the focus of further development on the Brainstormer. Of the four candidate features that were up, it looks like favourites are the current priority so we will be focusing our efforts on that over the next couple of weeks and hopefully bringing out a new version of the tool before Christmas.

Now, If I’m reading our web stats correctly it seems that only a small fraction of the visitors to this blog actually end up finding and launching the Brainstormer. Obviously, this is a great shame, so I’ve tried to raise its profile of the tool further by adding an image preview to the sidebar and on the about page.

If this is your first visit, be sure to check it out.

We want YOU to help us decide the future of the Brainstormer!

Naming your children is a wonderful opportunity for self-exploration and creative expression. It’s also essential in defining your child’s sense of identity (Etilia Aden, Baby Name Stats).

Our vision

Baby Name Brainstorm is here to help stimulate your own creativity and provide interesting name suggestions without resort to eye-glazing, alphabetical lists.

Our advantage is three fold:

• speed (explore the name space without waiting for page reloads)
• engagement (our unique, animated graph makes name-storming all the more fun)
• visualisation (stimulates the right brain, unleashing your natural creativity)

Our early efforts have focused on word phonetics; but this is just the beginning. We’re building a powerful name-association engine to be not only fun, but insightful. You can help by telling us which of these you think you could get the most value out of.

Community Feature Building: Round 1

Please vote for which feature you would most like to see introduced into the brainstormer first.

• Favourites: bookmark your favourite names in the graph so you can list them and return to them quickly.
• Namesakes: see which notable people from history, literature and pop-culture have a particular name; follow associations among them.
• Themes: create your own designer name themes and share them with the world.
• Meanings: see the meaning and origin of names in the graph; find names which share similar meanings.

[polldaddy poll="1122702"]