BWAIN Dump Origins

I promised to share the story of BWAIN Dump’s name. I receive a weekly e-newsletter from a colleague called “Stuff on the Internet”. SOI lists interesting articles, tools, toys and curiosities from around the Web. One of his recent featured links was for a Google plug-in for Microsoft Word, which allows folks with sites on BlogSpot to write their articles with Word and post them directly to their sites. I downloaded and installed the software and decided to set up a blog. I’d wanted to anyway, though I wasn’t sure what I’d focus on, so I set up a blog called “It’s My Nickel” at BlogSpot.

Still wasn’t right…the name just didn’t work for me. I was sharing my concern that I couldn’t come up with a cool name with the lovely Mrs. V. She got the giggles and that look of maniacal glee that passes over her when she finds herself being too clever.

Now to background. Mrs. V. and I are both pretty decent computer users and there’s a scanning technology called TWAIN. Lots of folks have their take on what this acronym means, but Mike Doyle, my old boss at Logitech, told me that it stood for Technology Without An Interesting Name. Since Logitech was on the steering committee that helped to set standards for this technology, it’s the explanation I choose to believe.

There are also sites across the Internet called brain dumps. If you are engaged in the technology certification arena you know what they’re for. If you’re not, it’s enough to know that brain dumps are there.

Back to Mrs. V. She has some strange cross-connects in her noggin and when neurons starts firing, it can be tough to figure out where any given thought will actually land and what will have become of it on the journey. When I finally got her to breathe and speak to me she said “BWAIN Dump – Blog Without An Interesting Name – that’s what you need to call it”.

And so I did…