“Damn!” we wrote last month. “The Cool-er may die before we  learn how to pronounce its name.” We were never able to ascertain if it sounded like “Col-or“ (it had a black and white screen).  Or was it supposed to suggest that the device was cooler than, say, the Kindle. Or were we obliged to come to a full glottal stop, thus: Cool. Er. We will never know.

And now we learn from Tech Chronicles that Plastic Logic’s Que has been canceled. Sigh… We were never told how to pronounce that one, either.”Que Es Esto?” we asked when the top-secret-your-eyes-only-need-to-know name was finally released. “Esto Es Un Que!” But then someone told us it was not pronounced “kay” but rather “Cue”. Alas, today we are instructed not to bother to “queue” up to buy the Que because it will not see the light of day. Its manufacturer, Tech Blogger writes, “said it was scrapping the thin, business-focused reader because the delays and the fast-moving market have forced it to move on.”

It’s too bad, because the device’s slim flexibility made it perfect for reading newspapers and magazines. On the other hand Plastic Logic priced itself out of the market with a price tag way higher than its rivals.  It all goes to prove that you can indeed be too thin and too rich.

“This was a hard decision,” said Plastic Logic’s CEO “but is the best one for our company, our investors and our customers, We plan to take the necessary time needed to re-enter the market as we refocus, redesign and retool for our next generation ProReader product. We continue to perfect our core plastic electronic technology and manufacturing processes that are central to our product’s unique value proposition.”

Read the reasons in depth in Que ProReader is dead as Plastic Logic looks to launch new reader.

Richard Curtis

Damn! The Cool-er may die before we  learn how to pronounce its name. Martin Daniels on the Bookseller Association blog says the “Cooler reader looks to be another casualty of the squeeze that is inevitable in the ‘lookie likie’ E Ink reader market. They follow iRex in what may be a growing queue of dead technology failures.” Don’t forget Skiff, which dropped out of the e-device market a few weeks ago.

What’s going on?  The front-running e-readers – Kindle, Nook and Sony – all sit on large bodies of content, whereas many of the upstart gadgets have been counting on succeeding strictly on the merits of such competitive qualities as thinner, cheaper, lighter, brighter, more colorful etc. But they also have to beg, borrow or scrounge content. The only outsider holding its own is Apple’s iPad, and one good reason why is that it aggregated a lot of content soon after launching.

So – what went wrong with the Cool-er? Daniels says that it “entered the market in full color with a spectrum of cases, but forgot to make the screen color too. They also misjudged their launch with a stand and presentation more geared to a car show than a book show and their one trick pony was just a color case.”

And of course there was the dumb name. Daniels calls it the “Cooler” but it was introduced as the “Cool-er”.  “Aren’t consumers going to be confused by a b&w reader that sounds like “Col-or”?” we asked (See Another E-Book Reader with a Dumb Name)  “Or is it supposed to suggest the device is cool. Do you pronounce the word like the refrigerated water dispenser commonly found in business offices? Or do you come to a full glottal stop, thus: Cool. Er. No matter how you say it, it’s awkward, cacophonous and meaningless.”

Now it looks like we may never know. Same goes for the Plastic Logic device which, after tormenting us endlessly by withholding the name, finally announced the “Que”.  Is that pronounced “Cue?” “Kwee”? Or is it “Que” as in “Que pasa?”  However you say it, the Que’s release is seriously delayed and it too could be an also-ran in the e-reader sweepstakes. In fact Daniels says “We doubt we will see E Ink readers as we know them today in 2012…The only stay of execution will be a drop to $99 a unit.”

Richard Curtis

NOOK FROM BARNES & NOBLE, $259
SONY READER TOUCH PRS-600, $300, AND DAILY READER, $400
QUE, FROM PLASTIC LOGIC (NO PRICE: DEBUTS JANUARY 7)
IREX DR800SG, $399
COOL-ER, FROM INTEREAD, $249
DISNEY DIGITAL BOOKS, $8.95 A MONTH

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by The New York Times.

Do you know how to pronounce Scribd? Does it rhyme with “scribed”? Or “fibbed”? I’ve even heard it called “Scrib-dee”.

How about Que, Plastic Logic’s forthcoming e-book reader? Is it pronounced “Kay”? or “Cue”?

Next is the Flepia, Fujitsu’s e-book reader. Is it Fleh-pia or Flee-pia?

Or the UK e-book reader called the Cool-er. As we recently wondered (see Another E-Book Reader with a Dumb Name), is that pronounced “color” (the device screen is black and white by the way)? Or do you pronounce it like the refrigerated water dispenser commonly found in business offices, suggesting it’s cooler than the Kindle? Or maybe you come to a full glottal stop, thus: Cool. Er.

If I were a technology company investing millions of dollars to develop a device or service or product, it would make sense for me to ask a focus group to review it. And to make sure that focus group is stocked with people with dirty minds. Like Charles Curtis’s.

Charles Curtis believes there is money to be made helping corporations avoid selecting embarrassing names for their products. He would call his service “Double Entendre Consulting”. “The concept,” he explains, “is this: say you’re a startup with a company name, logo, slogan but you’re nervous that there’s something hidden in it that will make you a laughingstock. So you pay my company a fee and I, along with my fellow gross-minded colleagues, will review your selections and tell you if they’re clean or if they will become fodder for viral hilarity on the Internet.”

For example? “If Kids Exchange had hired us, we would have informed them that their URL, kidsexchange.net, spelled out something very different from what they intended. Same goes for an outfit called Who Represents? Their URL is Whorepresents.com.

“This idea came up in college when I used to frequent a fast food joint that prided itself on making great salads. Unfortunately, their slogan was, ‘The Original Salad Tossers’. If you don’t understand why that’s so hilarious, click here. When I went back there years later, the slogan on their napkins had changed, so perhaps someone had informed them that sickos such as myself were rolling on the floor every time we mentioned their slogan. And teabagging? The Republicans, should have consulted me before they began advocating that practice. Click here to learn why.”

Full disclosure Number 1: I sired this person. Full disclosure #2: if he does go into the double entendre business I intend to become a serious investor, because I think there’s a fortune to be made in exposing dumb names.

And that brings us to The Nook.

Charles does not mention what he would have said to Barnes & Noble had they consulted with him about The Nook, BN.Com’s newly minted and named e-book reader. But he might consider employing a blogger named Charissa, who wrote the following Open Letter to Barnes & Noble:

Dear Barnes & Noble,

What were you thinking?

Who on earth thought it would be a good idea to name you new E-Reader device the nook? I mean, really? Do you know anything about pop culture and slang from the last few decades? I would love to know what kind of focus groups you used to demo the name and marketing, or did you use focus groups at all? Because I don’t know who wouldn’t have told you this is a bad idea.

And did you even give a thought to what your booksellers are going to have to endure, answering questions about the nook(ie)? Not to mention all the jokes they’re going to be subject to. Trust me, there is an endless supply of nook jokes out there, from the innocent “nook, nook” jokes to more suggestive humor.

Not to mention the fact that within less than 24 hours of the nook’s announcement, some anonymous B&N employees have already begun re-writing Limp Bizkit’s “Nookie” in honor of the nook. Do you realize how obnoxious it is to have the words, “And you can take you Kindle and stick it up your…” stuck in your head all day long?

And it’s really bad that the device itself doesn’t even come out until the end of November and I’m already having trouble using the name in a sentence with a straight face. We still have more than a month of nook jokes to go.

I realize it’s too late to change the name now, but I really hope next time you’re a little more careful when selecting the name of something as monumental to the company as this device apparently is.

Sincerely,
A Concerned Citizen

PS – If you were to, say, give out free nooks to all your employees in an effort to encourage them to familiarize themselves with the device for customer questions, then I would be more than willing to forgive you for this minor naming indiscretion.

We wish the best of success to the makers of the Flepia, Que, Cool-er and Nook. They should be aware, though, that had they hired Double Entendre Consulting they might have avoided becoming, in the words of W. S. Gilbert, “a source of innocent merriment.”

Richard Curtis, President of E-Reads (which is pronounced “Ee-Reeds”, not “Eh-Reds”)

We can’t stand it. Today we learned the names of not one but two e-book readers that had been kept tightly under wraps. The first, revealed earlier today, was BN.Com’s Nook. But we were not prepared to win the bifecta. The announcement of the name of Plastic Logic’s forthcoming device, which we’ve been begging to learn, came today hard on the heels of the Nook. The name?

QUE.

The full formal name is QUETM proReader, the “tm” standing for “trademark”.

Gadgetell details the features of the long-heralded reader which will be launched on January 7 2010 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas:

Feature wise we can expect the QUE to have a an E Ink display that is both shatterproof and capacitive. Additionally that display will be the size of a regular sheet of paper, 8.5 x 11 inches with the complete unit coming in at less than a 1/3 inch thick.

Additionally, the QUE will also be Wi-Fi and 3G equipped with the 3G coming courtesy of the AT&T network. However it looks like it will not only be books that users will be downloading and reading as the press release also notes that the QUE will be able to offer “professional newspapers, books and periodicals” as well as read “PDF, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents”.

We assume it’s pronounced “Kay” and not “Cue” but we haven’t heard anybody actually utter it aloud. In any case we are hereby retiring “Teasle,” the provisional title we assigned to it after wearying of calling it “Plastic Logic’s unnamed e-book reading device.” However, given the ambiguity of the term Que, we have to wonder if “Teasle” isn’t actually the more memorable term.

Read all about it in Plastic Logic unveils and teases us with the QUE proReader ebook reader.

RC