iMe

So at your friendly neighborhood camping store (REI or Whole Earth Provision will do nicely), the slightly ironic, mildly vulgar backpacker culture has generated another piece of gear in the tradition of the "bite-me" hydration valves. The new entrant in skewed names for niche camping gear is the "IPood," a collapsible, lightweight, aluminum shovel for digging catholes (i.e., one-person latrines).

So, to cash in on this bonanza of sinking one's teeth into Apple's coattails (an image upon which one should not tarry), I want to copyright the term" iMe." This would be a useful domain name for a personal website. The logo certainly suggests itself readily enough: any photo of moi will do. Can it be the name for an electronic device, bound to fly off the shelves at BestBuy in 09? Sure, simplicity itself; all you need is a mirror with a little running screen below it, a la CNN, that can be programmed to tell you things about yourself. This device could help insecure teens, business execs experiencing "senior moments," people in recovery needing positive thinking therapy, and probably midlife trophy-hunters obsessed with their gorgeous boomer selves. As for applications in the geek sense, i.e., software, iMe would be a great name for an app that sends all your relevant info to someone else. So you could multiple-y configure it to have your resume on it, your match.com and eharmony access info, or your personal medical records needed in case of an emergency. There could even be an intentionally misleading section called "My Personal Data" that would trick identity thieves into downloading it, but it would really be a program that would feed *their* info to the police. Am I the Mark Haitian of innovative marketing ideas or what! I mean Cuban.

The Spanish version would be YoMe, and the German IchMich. The possibilities are endless.