Went down to the Nasdaq open tonight and saw Roger Federer play. I don’t find tennis all that engaging, so my mind wandered a bit during the match and I found myself stricken by the sheer volume of advertising that permeates the event. The players lobbed the ball over a Microsoft net as the overhead scoreboard peddled the official olive oil of the Nasdaq 100 (olive oil!). Roger was looking very athletic in a Nike shirt, Nike shorts, Nike shoes and eyebrows shaved in the form of the Nike check.

As testament to the sick world we live in, I found myself wondering why advertisers hadn’t monetized the most conspicuous part of the event: the grunts the players make when they swing their rackets. Instead of “unh!”, why isn’t Roger grunting “Nike!” or “Justdoit!”?

That’s our next SpreadFirefox project: pooling our money to buy Roger Federer “Firefox!” grunts for a year.

Update: Responding to complaints that “Firefox” is too many syllables for one grunt, Lauren Holst suggests that we sponsor both players, one to grunt “fire” and one to grunt “fox”. While I agree that it would be fun to see that kind of interplay (perhaps between Venus and Serena?), sponsoring two players might be too rich for our blood.

We chose “Firefox” because it connotes the agility and shrewdness of the product. So what does this other word, “Foxfire,” mean? Well, apparently it’s:

A phosphorescent glow...

So far so good.

...especially that produced by certain fungi...

Glowing fungus isn’t exactly the image we were going for.

...found on rotting wood.

Okay, so get Firefox and bask in the glow of rotting fungus.

Looks like Foxfire.org must have gotten plenty of inquiries, because they have a link back to mozilla.org in the bottom right. And the owner of Foxfire.com has graciously agreed to add a large link back to Firefox as soon as his site is back up. In the meantime, though, it looks as if the scammers have taken advantage of the situation: a Google search for Foxfire elicits two large ads above the results directing users to an alternate universe where Firefox costs $10/month.

Mother knows best, and long before most people had heard of Firefox, mine was already calling it “Foxfire”—and warned me others would do the same. Why does the name invite such confusion, and what steps can we take to prevent it?

Robert Scoble and Shel Israel interviewed me for their book about the importance of blogging to businesses, and parts one and two of the interview are now available. Chapter 3 concerns the role blogs have played in the proliferation of products like Firefox and ICQ. As with most other interviews, this one pushed me to explore new areas I hadn’t really thought about before, and hopefully I’ll have a chance to post more about them soon; I’ve been swamped lately.

Asa, our community advocate and one of the oldest and most prominent bloggers in the Firefox community, reminded me after the interview that I didn’t mention the most important point of all: Firefox was entirely propagated through blogs when it first came out. We would put the bits on the wire and then Asa would just put a note on his blog.