hah ok so yeah you got the xEM through xM1 correct…
the next thing to happen was the NExT… which was voted on by facebook group poll… even though it broke convention, i was ok with it because people voted on it and i also got comments about my product names being “lame” and “uninspired” … so i figured it was time to just roll with new / better names vs sticking to a rigid convention.
the xG3 came around… and our m31 and m36 were 1) named based on size - m31 was a 3mm x 1mm disc and m36 was going to be 3mm x 6mm cylinder, and 2) not “x-series” (not encased in injectable glass) i figured i should keep the xG3 within the “x-series” convention… so G gauss … and 3mm glass… so xG3.
When it comes to VivoKey, the entire approach for the brand is different. Dangerous Things is very much a brand modeled after my own knee-jerk reactions and impulse style decisions, whereas VivoKey requires a bit more thought and “stepping outside my comfort zone” to ensure it appeals to both DT customers but also people who would be turned off by DT. So, product names are more “creative” and “friendly”.
The UKI was a DT product development idea… the answer to a tough question I asked myself one day “What problem are we actually solving?” … digital identity is a problem worth working on… so UKI = You are the Key… but the name was very Manga sounding and clashed with other products online, and nobody … not one person… not even you above… nobody could repeat it to me. It was instantly forgettable and again, didn’t sit well with people… it needed to evolve, so UKI because VivoKey … vivo being life and “in vivo” being inside the living… and key, well key is obvious.
The problems started then however… quickly I realized there are problems getting secure elements to play well in this space and there would be multiple products released… and the customers who would be interested in this would likely expand well beyond the biohacker and hobbyist market, and finally … for VivoKey to fulfill it’s intention it would need to raise money… nobody like that was going to invest in “Dangerous Things” so VivoKey was launched as a separate company in 2018… but people had already started calling the concept “the vivokey implant”… so I had to create product names to try to differentiate the company from the products… Spark was our first product, followed by Spark 2 when it was clear Apple was not going to support ISO15693 properly, even in iOS 13.
The VivoKey Flex One was named because “flex” was being tossed around for all of our flex products, and I wanted to ensure it was differentiated. As you know it was going to be our secure element implant, but after the beta program revealed fundamental issues with the P60 chip hardware, it was abandoned as a product … the new chip coming down the pipe is able to be put into multiple form factors, but they will all be the same chip inside, so rather than calling each form factor something different, every product that uses that new P71 chip will be under the Apex chip family … the Apex Flex (flex implant), Apex Max (glass injectable), etc. etc. etc.
I’ve given NXP a lot of shit over the years over how the “Mifare” name has become so diluted that it’s basically meaningless at this point… but I kinda get exactly how that can happen… basically it’s what happens when engineer types are in charge of names.
)
) But the upside is, you never have to rack your brain to come up with a name that says something about what the product does: you just have to make sure it’s not misleading (as in, I wouldn’t name one of my inferiorly-specced products King) and it’s not insulting in any language.