We cannot stress enough how important it is to choose a good name when you've found it. Below is an updated list of great companies with bizarre names or domains. Consider this a cautionary tale.

2. Twubs.com: Twubs is the hash tag-based aggregator that helps event planners broadcast a live conference stream and organize event-related social media. Surprisingly this event assistant runs faster than he looks.

3. fTags.com: This site provides real time twitter streams on niche topics and aggregates them to one place. Unfortunately an ftag sounds a lot like a "tramp stamp", so if it were up to us we'd be aggregating your tweets to a tattoo elegantly etched above your buttocks.

4. BLEWS: We last mentioned Microsoft's BLEWS in an article on media bias deconstruction. The name is a portmanteau of blogosphere and news. For a brilliant project built on the principles of natural language processing, the name doesn't just blow in the present tense, it blew and continues to do so with grammatical errors.

5. Putacart.com: This site is best known as the shopping cart widget that goes anywhere. Something tells us Spanish language users might not want to go there without a condom.

If you've got more nominations for bizarre names, add them to the comments below.

Photo credits: Dennis Mojado,

Flickr Flipper: Looking for an image to go with your post? The Flickr Flipper app lets you browse through Flickr for photos. You can also search for photos from a specific user by typing username: followed by a Flickr user's username.

Digg RSS Reader: Did your post just hit front page? You'll know right away with the Digg RSS Reader. You can keep tabs on all the top stories, or filter them by choosing to view only the News, Videos, or Images. Clicking the links will open the Digg story in your web browser so you can vote for your favorites.

FotoBooth: Ustreamers will like FotoBooth, an AIR app that lets you use your computer's webcam to snap pictures of yourself, add filters or distort them, and then upload them to Flickr with just one click.

Websnapshot and WebKut: Let's call it two for the price of one: Websnapshot lets you quickly take snapshots of a web site by entering in the URL or dragging-and-dropping it from your browser to the app. You can specify whether you want a thumbnail, a browser-sized pic, or a full page snapshot. An auto-save feature lets you save the pictures to the location of your choosing. Webkut goes a step further - you can enter the URL or you can Google for it right within the AIR application, a nice time-saving feature.

Color Browser: Get inspired to re-design your blog! With the Color Browser app, you can create and organize your favorite color palettes. If you're a blog designer, this is a must-have app.

Joomedit: Are you using the open source content management system from Joomla? Then you need Joomedit, a desktop editor that lets you edit, upload, and publish to your Joomla CMS.

SHIFD: Doing research? The SHIFD desktop app lets you save notes, places, and links from the web into the SHIFD AIR application. This content is then available on any device with internet access - whether your desktop, laptop, or mobile phone.

Apprise: The Apprise application is a sample AIR app, which means you can download the source code too. Apprise is an online/offline RSS reader which features importing and exporting of feeds, search, and support for RSS and ATOM.

We would add Google Analytics to this list, but it was covered in our previous post (and besides, isn't everyone running it by now, anyway?). We would have also loved to include AirPress, but sadly, this desktop blogging AIR app has not been kept up-to-date.

An honorable mention goes out to Userplane Desktop, a brandable Adobe AIR app for bloggers in the big leagues. This white label solution can keep your users informed as to your site's news, keeping them engaged even when they're not on the web site itself.

The one thing that's made a big difference for Kareem, his supporters say, has been international attention. Now those supporters are calling for a two week campaign of snail-mail sent to the jail.

Resources

Kareem's primary support group is FreeKareem.org. (Very slow page load.) His crime was in large part denying the truth of Islam, but his supporters say they are primarily Muslims who defend his right to do so.

More in depth coverage of this and other cases can be found at The Committee to Protect Bloggers.

The "Flood the Jail with Mail" campaign is asking you to send a letter or a postcard to Kareem between April 7th and the 21st. You can click on the button below to add a reminder to your Google Calendar.

So far he's been receiving physical mail. Below are the addresses you can use to send that mail, both the English and the Arabic must be present, so fire up your printer and print this page.

Alexandria
Borg Al-Arab Prison
Room 1 Section 22
Prisoner Abdul Kareem Nabil Suleiman
The Arab Republic of Egypt

In too many other cases, the Western tech community has dropped the ball for people working online but living in different places. See, for example, the terrible treatment by YouTube of Egyptian video blogger Wael Abbas, whose police brutality watchdog videos were deleted from the site by the company.

We hope you'll set up a reminder and take a few minutes next month to send Kareem a postcard.

See below and refresh at will to keep up with the details announced in the call and the quick thoughts on it from our guests. Please add your own thoughts in comments, of course. Update: It was a quick call and is now over. In addition to our notes and commentary below, see our previous detailed coverage of the announcement. I thought the most important part of today's call was the discussion about splintering the OpenSocial standard.

The Call

Wade Chambers, VP of Platforms at Yahoo! opened the call. They will support and implement the community driven industry standards at OpenSocial, just like they support OpenID and other standards like it. Have been extremely impressed by the progress of OpenSocial, the number of containers and developers so far. A more social web will be significantly valuable for users. Not offering any specifics today but will contribute actively to development of specifications.

Progress

Joe Kraus of Google gives an overview of OpenSocial, two major containers have launched apps. Open Social reaches more than 200m users, High5 is launching next Tuesday. The open community needs a solid footing, using standard method - creating a nonprofit foundation. They are announcing intent today. It's goal is to provide a safe harbor for Intellectual Property, to ensure free use forever and prevent too much influence from any single party.

Yahoo and Google have agreed to a patent non-assertion covenant, all contributors will throw in after Foundation is live. Google will give OpenSocial trademark and website to Foundation.

Scott Kveton from OpenID Foundation: "I think this is great - they are doing all o fthe right things with the non-assertion covenant but its another foundation. Its more work for companies to join, etc. So now you have openid, opensocial, oauth is going to have to do something, microformats, etc - this gets pretty complicated IMHO."

Serious Apps Coming Soon, Says MySpace

Steve Pierman, SVP of products at MySpace. Says that specialization based on standards can lead to serious apps, not just "toys and widgets." They want OpenSocial to become the defacto standard for application development.

Questions:

NYT asks to what extent this is an effort to compensate for fears of Google dominance of OpenSocial?

Steve Gillmor says "The problem with Google leading this effort is that their other privacy conflicts create mistrust. Reverse engineering of social graph poisons the data Google collects and contributes to open pool."

Answer from presenters is that this is the next logical step for OpenSocial to take.

Erick Shonfeld of TechCrunch asks why these companies and what about revenue sharing. Joe Kraus says that the whole community is expected to participate but these three companies are engaging in intellectual property protection.

Steve Gillmor says "I wonder if Microsoft was asked to participate in this announcement."

Ars Technica (pronounced on the call, by the way, as A-R-S Technica) asks next question, it's 2/3 new media! Ars writer asks if the Foundation will do anything to protect intellectual property on OpenSocial. Google guy says the primary IP in question is the OpenSocial code, beyond that it's not in scope.

Eric Eldon from Venturebeat asks for numbers of users. Answer: the specification has been worked on a bunch. Orkut will go live with apps next week, too. 200 million users will be reached by all live apps. MySpace says their users are loving apps, so they'll push them wider soon. Wade from Yahoo! says standards will make everything safer.

I asked about splintering of OpenSocial and Microsoft. Answer: diversity of actions is important, no gratuitous differences. App developers say once they have their app running on one it's just hours of work to get it to run on the next platform. Cuts dev time from months to hours. They will standardize extensions as appropriate. Wade from Yahoo! says it's an open standard, everyone is free to join it and should - presumably that includes Microsoft. Gillmor says, "The response to Marshall's question left unanswered why Microsoft was not part of the foundation creation."

And the call is over. Quick call, questions from the NYT and 4 tech blogs!

Gillmor: "The Foundation will accelerate demands for Google to be responsive for privacy violations in their attempt to reverse engineer social network out of their existing user contracts with users. Yahoo will need to address whether this alliance is designed as a poison pill for Microsoft, and if so, why this is a legitimate use of "open" standards for that purpose."

Kveton: "Seems pretty simple. It's a 'good thing' - hopefully others will agree and join in."

Thanks everyone for joining us for the call. What do you think?