Thursday, July 2, 2009

Creating a User Name - the origin of kicode

I just finished reading How to Create Cool User Names by Srikanth and I'd like to share the way I created my user name. But first the background; for those who know me, you already know I share a name with one of the most read authors in the world, Stephen King. Obviously, there are problems with trying to use my real name online as my digital identity would disappear beneath the thousands (millions?) of references to the author. So I decided I wanted to create something easy to remember as Srikanth suggests you do. My solution was to take the first two letters from my last name- "ki" from King, the first two from my son's name - "co" from Colin, and finally the first two from my daughter's name- "de" from Demetria. The result was kicode; I pronounce it "key code".

I discussed this over a skype call with @robwall back in June after he expressed curiousity about where the name came from. I am finding that the user name works with almost all sites that require a user name although someone beat me to it with g-mail! The nice thing with this solution is you can play around with the order of the names; in my case I used my last name, my first born, and then my second child. I could have had something different using the same plan in a different order; for example, it could have been dekico or decoki or codeki or cokied. Try it for yourself; you might find something that sounds cool,is easy for you to remember, and has not yet been taken.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I can see why you wouldn't want to use your real name. I like the way you incorporated your kids into your user name. Interesting that someone else already had that name for gmail. I moved some stuff in my classroom today & then updated my blog. Now, if it doesn't rain I'll attack the grass.