Top Tech Cliches

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Yesterday, I ranted about the tech sector's love of the overused prefix "e".

As some of you pointed out, why not? Companies, like Apple, are laughing all the way to the bank using the "i" prefix on their product lines (iPhone, iPod, iMac and now iPad).

For fun, I'd like to build on a list started by "SSS" in the comments section.

Here's SSS's:

- "e"
- "i"
- "Soft"
- "Mac"
- "PC"

Here's mine:

- "Micro"
- "Byte" (that one hits close to home!)
- "Tech"
- "Wired"
- "Data"
- "Meta"
- "Mobile"
- "Cyber"
- "Digital" or "d" for short
- Anything ending in "-fi"
- or "2.0"
- or "dot com, dot anything really"
- or starting with "smart"
- or "green"
- or "Tele"
- or "wiki"
- or "net"

Also, add to my list:

- using all lower case letters to look cool.
- using this _, instead of proper punctuation to look cool
- using @ to look cool
- using periods between syllables or words to look cool (like the rapper, Will.i.am)
- using kindegarten-esque primary colors for each letter in your logo to not look cool, but rather to look like Google (which would be cool, if you were even a fraction as big as Google).
- using thin, minimalist and undersizedt font styles to look futuristic and cool.
- using what appears to be a random sequence of upper and lower case letters in the name of a product or company logo to look like a password (and therefore cool).
- Using highly unreadable fonts that moosh together like a captcha in the name of a product or company logo (so not cool! please stop!).

Feel free to add to the list. I'm sure there's plenty that I have missed.

Renee Oricchio

Renee Oricchio is a technology writer and former supervising news producer for CNN Financial News. She has been covering the computer industry since 1987.