5 step to achieve your own personal transformation

1. Complete the past to embrace the future

One of the biggest reasons why we find it difficult to move forward in life is because we haven’t properly dealt with the things that are holding us back. Are you holding onto past hurts, past anger or fear, or past incompletes? Releasing these anchors could be the final step you need to complete your past and embrace your future. I’ve known people who have forgiven their parents and doubled their productivity and ability to achieve their goals, almost overnight. I’ve known others who have finally sat down with an accountant and got their financial numbers in order – and doubled their income in a matter of months as a result. I even know someone who spent the weekend cleaning out his garage once – and scored a new dream client the following Monday!

2. Embrace change

When you resist that change, you risk being swept away by it. But when you choose to embrace change wholeheartedly as an inevitable part of life, looking for ways to use new changes to make your life richer, easier, and more fulfilling, your life will work much better. You will experience change as an opportunity for growth and new experiences, rather than a potential source of discomfort or fear.

Take some time this holiday seasons to consider your life and decide where you neet to grow.

• What’s changing in my life that I’m currently resisting?
• Why am I resisting that change?
• What am I afraid of with respect to this change?
• What am I afraid might happen to me?
• What’s the payoff for my keeping things the way they are?
• What’s the cost I’m paying for keeping things the way they are?
• What benefits might there be in this change?
• What’s the next step I could take to cooperate with this change?
• When will I take this step?

3. Transform your inner critic into an inner coach.

Research indicates that people talk to themselves about 50,000 times a day - and that 80% of that self talk is negative.

So if you have a voice inside you that says things like, “I shouldn’t have said that… they don’t like me… I’m never going to be able to pull this off… I’m a fraud… I’m so disorganized… I’ll never be good enough…” you are certainly not alone.

The problem with all this negative self-talk is that we actually BELIEVE it. Such thoughts affect our attitude, our motivation to act, our physiology, even our biochemistry.

4. Commit to developing four new success habits a year.

Your habits determine your outcomes. Successful people don’t just drift to the top. Getting there requires focused action, personal discipline, and lots of energy every day to make things happen.

So if you want to create higher levels of success, chances are you are going to need to drop some of your current habits – such as not following through on your commitments, staying up too late, watching too much television, making sarcastic comments, eating fast food too often, smoking, spending more than you earn – and replace them with more productive ones.

For example, if your goal is to get to the gym every morning, you might develop the habit of going to bed one hour earlier every night. If you want to be more productive at work, maybe you’ll get into the habit of identifying five main tasks you want to accomplish each day – then not leave the office until they’re complete. Or if you want to improve your relationship with your parents, maybe you’ll get into the habit of calling them at the same time every week just to chat.

5. Stay motivated with the masters.

Achieving personal transformation can be challenging work – and without daily motivation, it’s all too easy to backslide.

One great way to stay on track is to seek out external motivation to keep your thoughts and attitude oriented on success. In my experience, truly successful people commit to lifelong learning and are always reading, watching, or listening to books, videos, or audiotapes that inspire them to keep moving forward.

If you spend even fifteen minutes a day listening to motivational talks, learning a valuable new skill, or discovering the success secrets of the world’s most powerful entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, or other professional titans, it will inspire you to pursue your own incredible success.

Cursor

The cursor property in CSS controls what the mouse cursor will look like when it is located over the element in which this property is set. Obviously, it only is relevant in browsers/operating systems in which there is a mouse and cursor. They are used essentially for UX - as they convey the idea of certain functionality. So try not to break that affordance =).

Codepen live

Shapes of css

Square using css

#square { width: 100px; height: 100px; background: red; }

Rectengle

#rectengle { background: red; height: 100px; width: 200px; }

Circle

#circle { background: red; border-radius: 50%; height: 100px; width: 100px; }

Triangle up

#triangle_up { width: 0;height: 0;border-left: 50px solid transparent;border-right: 50px solid transparent;border-bottom: 100px solid red; }


More....

::after / ::before

::after is a pseudo element which allows you to insert content onto a page from CSS (without it needing to be in the HTML). While the end result is not actually in the DOM, it appears on the page as if it is, and would essentially be like this:

div::after { content: "hi"; }

<!-- Rest of stuff inside the div -->
<div> hi </div>

Give your multiple background canvases

Transparent circle using css.

jsfiddle

Positive Thinking

No negative thought allowed.

• Reduces daily stress.
• You get a better health.
• A strong confidence.
• Live a longer life.
• Live a happier life
• You will have more friends.
• Better management of important decision.

How to apply positive thinking.

Use positive words when talking. If you constantly say “I can not” you could convince yourself that it’s true. Replace negative words with positive ones. Tell yourself that you do everything possible to have a happy relationship, tell yourself that you do everything possible to have a brilliant career, tell yourself that you do everything possible to keep you in shape.


Remove all the feelings that are not positive! Do not let negative thoughts and feelings conquer when you have a bad mood. Even if for a few hours a day, remove negativity and focus on the positive things in your life.


Use words that evoke strength and success. Fill your thoughts with words that make you feel strong, happy, having control over your life. Make an effort to focus on these words rather than the ones that suggest failure or incompetence.


Practice positive affirmations. One of the most common exercises for a positive thinking is positive affirmation. What does that mean? Start repeating a positive phrase like “I deserve to be happy” or “I deserve to be loved.” Believing that these statements are true and repeating them always will impose a more positive opinion about your life.

12 little css facts

1. The border-radius property can use "Slash" syntax. 
2. border-radius: 35px 25px 30px 20px / 35px 25px 15px 30px;
3. The font-weight property accepts relative keywords.
4. There is an outline-offset property.
5. There is an table-layout property.
6. The vertical-align property works differently on table cell vs. Other elements.
7. The ::first-letter pseudo-element is smarter than you think.
8. You can use invalid characters as delimiters in your HTML class lists.
9. Animation shorthand can break because of the animation's name.
10. You can select ranges of elements.
11. Pseudo-element can be applied ot some void elements.
12. Some attribute values are case insensitive in selectors.

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Corner shaping mixin using stacked gradients

<nav>

  <a href="#" class="btn corner-1">Corner Scoop</a>
  <a href="#" class="btn corner-2">Corner Bevel</a>
  <a href="#" class="btn corner-3">Corner Notch</a>
</nav>




@mixin corners($shape, $size, $color) {

  $n1: $size+px;
  $n2: ($size)*2+px;
  $n3: $size+1+px;
  $pn: 0%;
  @if ($size <= 10) { $pn: 6%; }
  @elseif ($size <= 15) { $pn: 5%; }
  @elseif ($size <= 20) { $pn: 4%; }
  @elseif ($size <= 40) { $pn: 3%; }
  @elseif ($size <= 50) { $pn: 2%; }
  @elseif ($size <= 60) { $pn: 1%; }
  $pd-scoop: 64%+$pn;
  
  @if ($shape == "bevel") {
    background: $color;
    background:
          linear-gradient(to right , $color 0, $color 100%) no-repeat top center,
          linear-gradient(to bottom, $color 0, $color 100%) no-repeat center left,
          linear-gradient(135deg,  transparent 49%, $color 50% ) no-repeat top left,
          linear-gradient(-135deg, transparent 47%, $color 48% ) no-repeat top right,
          linear-gradient(45deg,   transparent 47%, $color 48% ) no-repeat bottom left,
          linear-gradient(-45deg,  transparent 46%, $color 47% ) no-repeat bottom right;
    background-size: calc(100% - #{$n2}) 100%, 100% calc(100% - #{$n2}), $n3 $n3, $n3 $n3, $n3 $n3, $n3 $n3;
  }
  
  @if ($shape == "scoop") {
    $t-t: t t; // compiler bug hack
    $t-b: t b; // compiler bug hack
    background: $color;
    background:
          linear-gradient(to right , $color 0, $color 100%) no-repeat top center,
          linear-gradient(to bottom, $color 0, $color 100%) no-repeat center left,
          radial-gradient(a+$t-t+op left,     transparent 64%, $color $pd-scoop ) no-repeat top left,
          radial-gradient(a+$t-t+op right,    transparent 64%, $color $pd-scoop ) no-repeat top right,
          radial-gradient(a+$t-b+ottom left,  transparent 64%, $color $pd-scoop ) no-repeat bottom left,
          radial-gradient(a+$t-b+ottom right, transparent 64%, $color $pd-scoop ) no-repeat bottom right;
    background-size: calc(100% - #{$n2}) 100%, 100% calc(100% - #{$n2}), $n3 $n3, $n3 $n3, $n3 $n3, $n3 $n3;
  }
  
  @if ($shape == "notch") {
    background: $color;
    background:
          linear-gradient(to right , $color 0, $color 100%) no-repeat top center,
          linear-gradient(to bottom, $color 0, $color 100%) no-repeat center left;
    background-size: calc(100% - #{$n2}) 100%, 100% calc(100% - #{$n2});
  }
  
}

.corner-1 {
  transition: all 0.3s;
  @include corners('scoop', 10, #770000);
  &:after {
    transition: all 0.3s;
    @include corners('scoop', 10, #330000);
  }
  &:hover {
    @include corners('scoop', 27, #990000);
    &:after { @include corners('scoop', 27, #330000); }
  }
}

.corner-2 {
  transition: all 0.3s;
  @include corners('bevel', 16, #007700);
  &:after {
    transition: all 0.3s;
    @include corners('bevel', 16, #003300);
  }
  &:hover {
    @include corners('bevel', 40, #009900);
    &:after { @include corners('bevel', 40, #003300); }
  }
}

.corner-3 {
  transition: all 0.3s;
  @include corners('notch', 5, #0055cc);
  &:after {
    transition: all 0.3s;
    @include corners('notch', 5, #002266);
  }
  &:hover {
    @include corners('notch', 15, #0077ee);
    &:after { @include corners('notch', 15, #002266); }
  }
}

.btn {
  display: inline-block;
  padding: 20px 30px 16px;
  font-size: 16px;
  text-transform: uppercase;
  letter-spacing: -0.05em;
  color: #fff;
  text-decoration: none;
  position: relative;
  &:after {
    content: '';
    position: absolute;
    width: 100%;
    height: 100%;
    top: 4px;
    left: 0;
    z-index: -1;
  }
}

nav {
  position: absolute;
  left: 0;
  top: 50%;
  margin-top: -40px;
  width: 100%;
  text-align: center;
}

More...

Selector level 4

:read-only and :read-write

These selectors are pretty straightforward. Any element that’s editable by the user is in the “read-write” state. Otherwise, the element is in the “read-only” state.

jsfiddle

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Why I Drink Coffee (Almost) Every Morning

With a busy work schedule, a longer than average commute and an active after-work life, I, like many of you, am consistently running on fumes. I wake up each morning before sunrise and before my feet even touch the ground, I’m already mentally compiling lists of all the things I need to tackle for the day just to keep up with my ever growing “to-dos”. Whether it’s a week day or a weekend, the pace doesn’t seem to slow. And to be fair, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I remained idle and I take pride in all of the things I’m able to accomplish by keeping myself always on the move.

While on the GO train the other morning though (that’s the commuter train I take into the city for work each day) I realized something I hadn’t thought about before. While sipping in my first mouthful of coffee for the day I realized that I drink coffee every morning religiously not because of the caffeine jolt it gives me (I’m unfortunately passed this point of caffeine having much effect on me physiologically), but because of what it represents in my day. My coffee time represents 30 minutes I give myself for undistracted, personal reflection. And I also realized that this 30 minutes is hand-down one of the things I look forward to each morning – one of my most cherished gifts if you will.

Now it may sound like if I only grant myself these 30 minutes for deep reflection that I may spend these 30 minutes toiling over complex work or personal problems that need resolve; and yes sometimes I do if that’s what is consuming my thoughts. But most days I guiltlessly just spend the 30 minutes thinking about things that inspire me, things I’ve read recently in an article but didn’t yet have a chance to form an opinion on, places I’d like to travel to someday, or my ultimate favorite, deeply concentrating on the people and the environment around me so as to try and notice all the sights, sounds and smells associated with where I am. It feels great to ground myself each morning in the “now”, and without concerted effort spending time thinking about things that come and go from my mind without forcing any particular thought over another.

It feels kind of weird to reflect on reflecting, but if you’re like me with a go-go-go schedule, I think it’s important to a) take the time to give back to yourself personally and b) to notice when you do this so you can feel how great you feel and then consciously make a commitment to continue on with this habit no matter what curve balls get thrown your way. So with my new found wisdom I want to challenge every reader. I dare you to give in to yourself and take a step back from your hectic schedule every single day by doing some little thing that brings you happiness. It may not be a 30 minute coffee-assisted personal reflection period like I have chosen, it may instead be a walk with your dog or a shower with your music blaring so loud it blocks out your spouse. But make that habit and take the time every day to give back to yourself. And when you’re doing whatever it is that recharges your battery or fills your cup (sorry but I love corny puns), take a second to notice the gift you’ve just given yourself, that is before realizing you’re late yet again to drop off your kids for school.

How Far Can the Human Eye See?

The Earth's surface curves out of sight at a distance of 3.1 miles, or 5 kilometers. But our visual acuity extends far beyond the horizon. If Earth were flat, or if you were standing atop a mountain surveying a larger-than-usual patch of the planet, you could perceive bright lights hundreds of miles distant. On a dark night, you could even see a candle flame flickering up to 30 mi. (48 km) away.

How far the human eye can see depends on how many particles of light, or photons, a distant object emits. The farthest object visible with the naked eye is the Andromeda galaxy, located an astonishing 2.6 million light-years from Earth. The galaxy's 1 trillion stars collectively emit enough light for a few thousand photons to hit each square centimeter of Earth every second; on a dark night, that's plenty to excite our retinas.


Back in 1941, the vision scientist Selig Hecht and his colleagues at Columbia University made what is still considered a reliable measurement of the "absolute threshold" of vision —  the minimum number of photons that must strike our retinas in order to elicit an awareness of visual perception. The experiment probed the threshold under ideal conditions: study participants' eyes were given time to adapt to total darkness, the flash of light acting as a stimulus had a (blue-green) wavelength of 510 nanometers, to which our eyes are most sensitive, and this light was aimed at the periphery of the retina, which is richest in light-detecting rod cells.

Pseudo-classes

A CSS pseudo-class is a keyword added to selectors that specifies a special state of the element to be selected. For example :hover will apply a style when the user hovers over the element specified by the selector.

Pseudo-classes, together with pseudo-elements, let you apply a style to an element not only in relation to the content of the document tree, but also in relation to external factors like the history of the navigator (:visited, for example), the status of its content (like :checked on some form elements), or the position of the mouse (like :hover which lets you know if the mouse is over an element or not).

selector:pseudo-class {
  property: value;

} 

Pseudo-classes

:active
:checked
:default
:dir()
:disabled
:empty
:enabled
:first
:first-child
:first-of-type
:fullscreen
:focus
:hover
:indeterminate
:in-range
:invalid
:lang()
:last-child
:last-of-type
:left
:link
:not()
:nth-child()
:nth-last-child()
:nth-last-of-type()
:nth-of-type()
:only-child
:only-of-type
:optional
:out-of-range
:read-only
:read-write
:required
:right
:root
:scope
:target
:valid

:visited

Ten ways to build a brand for your small business

Branding is just as important for small businesses as it is for big names. Indeed, many corporate brands try to look more like small firms in order to appeal to consumers that prefer to support independent brands. Dan Einzg of agency Mystery explains how to develop your own brand identity

1.   Start by defining your brand.

Review the product or service your business offers, pinpoint the space in the market it occupies and research the emotive and rational needs and concerns of your customers. Your brand character should promote your business, connect with your customer base and differentiate you in the market.

2.   When building your brand, think of it as a person.

Every one of us is an individual whose character is made up of beliefs, values and purposes that define who we are and who we connect with. Our personality determines how we behave in different situations, how we dress and what we say. Of course for people it's intuitive and it's rare that you even consider what your own character is, but when you're building a brand it's vital to have that understanding.

3.   Consider what is driving your business.

What does it believe in, what is its purpose and who are its brand heroes. These things can help establish your emotive brand positioning and inform the identity and character for brand communications.

4.   Aim to build long-term relationships with your customers.

Don’t dress up your offering and raise expectations that result in broken promises, create trust with honest branding — be clear who your company is and be true to the values that drive it every day.

5.   Speak to your customers with a consistent tone of voice.

It will help reinforce the business’ character and clarify its offering so customers are aware exactly what to expect from the product or service.

6.   Don't repeat the same message in the same way over and over again. 

Alternatively, aim to make your key messages work together to build a coherent identity. 

7.   Don’t try to mimic the look of chains or big brands.

Try and carve out your own distinctive identity. There is a big consumer trend towards independent establishments, and several chains are in fact trying to mimic an independent feel to capture some of that market. Truly independent operators can leverage their status to attract customers who are looking for something more original and authentic, that aligns with how feel about themselves.

8.   Be innovative, bold and daring – stand for something you believe in.

Big brands are encumbered by large layers of bureaucracy, preventing them from being flexible and reacting to the ever-changing needs of their customers. Those layers of decision-makers can make it hard for them to be daring with their branding.

9.   Always consider your branding when communicating with customers.

Don't lose your pride or dilute your brand positioning with indiscriminate discounting. Try offering more, rather than slashing prices. Promotions are an opportunity to reinforce your brand mission.

10.  The old way of stamping your logo on everything won't cut it.

The future of branding is fluid and engaging — respect your customers' intelligence by not giving everything away up front. Generate some intrigue and allow them to unearth more about your brand for themselves. This is the way to foster ambassadors who revel in telling other people what they have discovered.

Google's New Interface: Just Tell It What To Do

Google used to tell you how to do something. Now, it’ll just do it for you.

In the last week, the company has added two small but important features to their famous search bar. You can type "find my phone" and Google will locate it on a map (and offer to call it); you can also type "send directions" and an interface will appear to beam directions to your phone.

No, neither of these functions is going to change the world overnight—especially as you’ll need an Android phone connected to your Google account for them to appear. But when you place them next to previously added mobile features—like being able to ID a song, set an alarm, or create a reminder using the search bar—and look at them in the context of the last 16 years of Google search, it feels a lot more like the evolution of search interface than a pair of random features.

For more...

Microsoft Invents A Better Way To Sense Hand Gestures

HANDPOSE PROMISES THE HOLY GRAIL OF MOTION DETECTION: FAST, ACCURATE HAND RECOGNITION.

Imagine strapping on a virtual reality headset, then using your hands to pick up a sword and swing it around your head. Imagine a hazard team able to defuse a complicated bomb from a mile away, just by controlling a robot's hand as effortlessly as your own. Imagine painting a picture on your computer just by waving a brush in front of your screen. Or, if you prefer, imagine using a computer like in Minority Report, whisking away pages and files just by grabbing them with your hands. 

Using the Handpose software, the first thing a user does is scan his or her hand by holding it up in front of the Kinect to create a 3-D model. In the lab, the process currently takes about a second, which is less than it takes an iPhone Touch ID sensor to accurately measure your fingerprint. Once the system has created a 3-D model of your hand, Handpose allows you to control it on the screen in real-time, at around 30 frames per second. From there, you can use the on-screen hand as if it was a doppelganger of your own.

more....

More Control over Text Decoration

Text can have multiple decorations

a {

  text-decoration: underline overline;

}

See the text-decoration entry in the Almanac. More specifically, this is adding multiple values to the text-decoration-line subproperty.

You can change the color of the decoration

The default for the color of the decoration lines is the same as the color of the text. But you can change that:

a {

  text-decoration-color: #f06d06;

}

Check out the text-decoration-color entry in the Almanac.

a {

  text-decoration-style: wavy;

}

Live

Left Half and Right Half Layout

Imagine a scenario where you need to split a layout in half. Content on the left and content on the right. Basically two equal height columns are needed inside of a container. Each side takes up exactly half of the container, creating a distinct break between one. Like many things in CSS, there are a number of ways to go about this and we're going to go over many of them right now!

Using Background Gradient

.container {

  background: linear-gradient(

    to right, 

    #ff9e2c 0%, 

    #ff9e2c 50%, 

    #b6701e 50%, 

    #b6701e 100%

  );

}

http://jsfiddle.net/yrvvbva0/

Using Absolute Positioning

Another route might be to set up two containers inside of a parent container, position them absolutely, split them up in halves using percentages, then apply the backgrounds. The benefit here is that now we have two separate containers that can hold their own content.

http://jsfiddle.net/yrvvbva0/1/

Absolute positioning is sometimes a perfectl solution, and sometimes untenable. The parent container here will need to have a set height, and setting heights is often bad news for content (content changes!). Not to mention absolute positioned elements are out of the document flow. So it would be hard to get this to work while, say, pushing down other content below it.

Using (fake) Tables

Yeah, yeah, tables are so old school (not to mention fraught with accessibility issues and layout inflexibility). Well, using the display: table-cell;property can actually be a handy way to create this layout without writing table markup in HTML. In short, we turn our semantic parent container into a table, then the child containers into cells inside the table — all in CSS!

http://jsfiddle.net/yrvvbva0/3/

You could even change the display properties at breakpoints pretty easily here, making the sides stack on smaller screens. display: table; (and friends) is supported as far back as IE 8 and even old Android, so it's pretty safe!

Using Floats

We can use our good friend the float to arrange the containers beside each other. The benefit here is that it avoids absolute positioning (which as we noted, can be messy).

http://jsfiddle.net/yrvvbva0/4/

Using Inline-Block

If clearing elements after floats seems like a burden, then using display: inline-block is another option. The trick here is to make sure that the elements for the individual sides have no breaks or whitespace in between them in the HTML. Otherwise, that space will be rendered as a literal space and the second half will break and fall down.

http://jsfiddle.net/yrvvbva0/5/

Using Flexbox

http://jsfiddle.net/yrvvbva0/6/

em-based media queries use

It’s not a disadvantage. EM units at the media-query level are not affected by html-scale because they refer to the medium: i.e. device-scale (outside the html). You can set html font-size in EMs too, which is logically consistent. User-set device-scale just means you can’t assume a PX value for anything in your design unless you specifically size it in PX (and even then often not); and that best policy is to set html font-size in EM or %, which is relative to device-scale, and then set anything inside the html scope in REMs, which is relative to html-scale. This forms a relative-size chain: nothing breaks, user/device-scale can be anything, and HTML font-size can be anything, media queries always trigger where they should.

If we’re going to be proportional…

A core tenet of Responsive Web Design (RWD) is fluidity and proportion. Instead of using fixed-width layouts, we enlightened web devs and designers use percentages in our CSS. Font units aren’t pixels or points anymore, they’re percentages (typically for top-level baseline reset) or, more often, ems. And yet the vast majority of us still write width-based media queries in pixels, e.g.:

@media all and (min-width: 500px) {}

@media screen and (max-width: 800px) {}

It’s a natural thought process: for windows or screens of particular width ranges, we want to flow our content in a particular way. This naturally seems like a pixel dimension. But, once again, to bring out my big hammer, what about when we look at things from a content perspective?

Folks who design for traditional reading media—where the content really is king—don’t center design decisions around the absolute width of content-holding elements so much as around the optimal line lengths for the content they’re flowing. There are some tried-and-true numbers one can shoot for that make for the “right” number of letters (and thus words) per line for comfortable human reading.

Thus actual column width is a function of font size and ems-per-line.

Baseline expectations...

You may have seen the rule of thumb (useful, admittedly!) that makes the following general equation in terms of baseline font sizes in CSS:

100% = 1 em ~= 16px ~= 14pt

This means that, at your baseline, that is, before you’ve adjust font sizes in any child elements, the default font size in the browser is usually approximately 16px and usually approximately 14pt but always 100% and 1em.

If we start from a baseline of 16px, you may well wonder what the difference (beyond academic) is between a media query like:

@media all and (min-width: 400px)

and one like this, that uses ems multiplied against the 16px baseline approximation:

@media all and (min-width: 25em)

How to Name a Business

What's in a name? A lot, when it comes to small-business success. The right name can make your company the talk of the town. The wrong one can doom it to obscurity and failure. Ideally, your name should convey the expertise, value and uniqueness of the product or service you have developed.

Some experts believe that the best names are abstract, a blank slate upon which to create an image. Others think that names should be informative so customers know immediately what your business is. Some believe that coined names (that come from made-up words) are more memorable than names that use real words. Others think they're forgettable.

Enlist Expert Help to Start

Coming up with a good business name can be a complicated process. You might consider consulting an expert, especially if you're in a field in which your company name may influence the success of your business. Naming firms have elaborate systems for creating new names and they know their way around the trademark laws. They can advise you against bad name choices and explain why others are good.

The downside is cost. A professional naming firm may charge as much as $80,000 to develop a name. That generally includes other identity work and graphic design as part of the package, according to Laurel Sutton, a principal with Catchword Brand Name Development. Naming services that charge as little as $50 do exist, but spending a reasonable amount of money early for quality expert advice can save you money in the long term.

What's in a Name?

Start by deciding what you want your name to communicate. It should reinforce the key elements of your business. Your work in developing a niche and a mission statement will help you pinpoint the elements you want to emphasize in your name.

The more your name communicates to consumers about your business, the less effort you must exert to explain it. According to naming experts, entrepreneurs should give priority to real words or combinations of words over fabricated words. People prefer words they can relate to and understand. That's why professional namers universally condemn strings of numbers or initials as a bad choice.

When choosing a business name, keep the following tips in mind:

Choose a name that appeals not only to you but also to the kind of customers you are trying to attract.

• Choose a comforting or familiar name that conjures up pleasant memories so customers respond to your business on an emotional level.
• Don't pick a name that is long or confusing.
• Stay away from cute puns that only you understand.
• Don't use the word “Inc.” after your name unless your company is actually incorporated.

Get Creative

Coined names can be more meaningful than existing words, says NameLab president Michael Barr. For example, "Acura" has no dictionary definition but the word suggests precision engineering, just as the company intended. NameLab's team created the name Acura from "Acu," a word segment that means "precise" in many languages. By working with meaningful word segments (what linguists call morphemes) like "Acu," Barr says the company produces new words that are both meaningful and unique.

Barr admits, however, that made-up words aren't the right solution for every situation. New words are complex and may create a perception that the product, service or company is complex, which may not be true. Plus, naming beginners might find this sort of coining beyond their capabilities.

An easier solution is to use new forms or spellings of existing words. For instance, NameLab created the name Compaq when a new computer company came to them touting its new portable computer. The team thought about the word "compact" and came up with Compaq, which they believed would be less generic and more noticeable.

Test Your Name

After you've narrowed the field to four or five names that are memorable and expressive, you are ready to do a trademark search. Not every business name needs to be trademarked, as long as your state government gives you the go-ahead and you aren't infringing on anyone else's trade name. But you should consider hiring a trademark attorney or at least a trademark search firm before to make sure your new name doesn't infringe on another business's trademark.

To illustrate the risk you run if you step on an existing trademark, consider this: You own a new manufacturing business that is about to ship its first orders when an obscure company in Ogunquit, Maine, considers the name of your business an infringement on their trademark. It engages you in a legal battle that bankrupts your business. This could have been avoided if sought out expert help. The extra money you spend now could save you countless hassles and expenses further down the road.

Final Analysis

If you're lucky, you'll end up with three to five names that pass all your tests. Now, how do you make your final decision?

Recall all your initial criteria. Which name best fits your objectives? Which name most accurately describes the company you have in mind?

Some entrepreneurs arrive at a final decision by going with their gut or by doing consumer research or testing with focus groups to see how the names are perceived. You can doodle an idea of what each name will look like on a sign or on business stationery. Read each name aloud, paying attention to the way it sounds if you foresee radio advertising or telemarketing in your future. Use any or all of these criteria.

Keep in mind that professional naming firms devote anywhere from six weeks to six months to the naming process. You probably won't have that much time, but plan to spend at least a few weeks on selecting a name.

Once your decision is made, start building your enthusiasm for the new name immediately. Your name is your first step toward building a strong company identity, one that should last as long as you're in business.