Kara Swisher

Recent Posts by Kara Swisher

Nexus Is a Perfect Name for the Trekkies of Google! (The Video Proof!)

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Nexus?

Well, it does sound futurey and all, but it got BoomTown to wondering how Google’s geektastic engineers settled on the name for their not-so-secret new smartphone, which is called the Nexus One.

The code name for the project was Passion, and Google (GOOG) used a series of fattening pastry monikers for the various updates to its Android software, the operating system for the phones, such as Donut, Eclair and Flan.

So why Nexus?

By dictionary definition, the choice of the word “nexus” does seem entirely appropriate.

From the Latin for “binding,” it is defined simply as:

“A means of connection; tie; link; a connected series or group; the core or center, as of a matter or situation; Cell Biology: a specialized area of the cell membrane involved in intercellular communication and adhesion.”

More recently, Nexus Prime is one of the original 13 Transformers, according to the Transformers Wiki:

“Nexus Prime was created to guard Rarified Energon by Primus shortly after he assumed his planet form. At an unknown point in time, this Transformer was broken into five other robots: Skyfall, Landquake, Breakaway, Topspin, and Heatwave.

He is sometimes, unfortunately, known as Nexus Maximus.”

(Well, as long as it’s not some women-hating, gay-bashing phone like the Droid!)

Nexus Prime is also a city on Second Life, based on “popular futuristic cyberpunk themes,” says the Second Life Wikia. Apparently, it is now decimated.

Nix that, then!

Thus, BoomTown is voting for the explanation from “Star Trek: Generations,” the 1994 sequel whose plot centered on the mysterious Nexus.

In the movie, Captain James T. Kirk, while christening the Enterprise-B, gets sucked up into a mysterious energy ribbon and disappears.

About 70 years later, Captain Jean-Luc Picard tangles with a mad genius named Soran, who plans to kill badillions of folks in order to get into the Nexus, where apparently, all your deepest desires are fulfilled in a perfect and timeless world.

Picard also gets drawn in, and let’s just guess who he meets there in order to save the day?

It’s such a dreamy version of a mobile phone–a place where the Nexus One never never loses the signal as the AT&T (T) network always does for the Apple (AAPL) iPhone!

Given that my iPhone suffered 87 dropped calls last week alone in New York and San Francisco, I can stargaze, can’t I?

And while we are waiting for the Googlers to drag this wireless drama out for a while longer, until we get our mitts on the actual device, please enjoy the video of the trailer for “Generations”:

Latest Video

View all videos »

Search »

There’s a lot of attention and PR around Marissa, but their product lineup just kind of blows.

— Om Malik on Bloomberg TV, talking about Yahoo, the September issue of Vogue Magazine, and our overdependence on Google