Arik Hesseldahl

Recent Posts by Arik Hesseldahl

Josh James Kills the Name of the Company He Just Bought (Video)

When we last heard from Josh James, the former CEO of Omniture, he’d left a senior post at Adobe and had just raised some money — a lot of money, actually — to finance a new company he’s cooking in the mountains of his home state of Utah.

The new start-up — still unnamed — will be built upon the foundation of a company he bought called Corda Technologies, but with a much bigger focus than Corda sought. So? Well, he’s been working on rolling out the firm’s new name.

Two weeks ago James announced a contest: Anyone who could guess the new name — based on a complex math problem — could win $10,000. Fun, right? It turned out that at least part of the solution — helpfully posted right in the comments section of this story — was a phone number in the 801 area code, which is in, you guessed it, Utah. Once that clue was posted, James said on his personal Web site that calls with guesses of the new name came in at a rate of hundreds an hour. You see, we here at AllThingsD get results, people.

Anyhow, an announcement of the name is due any day now, we hear reliably, and we’re guessing some lucky math major with the initials J.T. will get a check for 10 grand. But first? The company’s old name has to die. So what does its new CEO do? Kill the name. And film it for all the world to see. Get it? Enjoy the fun the video below.

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I’m a giant vat of creative juices.

— David Pogue on why he’s joining Yahoo