Say hello to Lodestar!
Just a quick post to tell the world that the Lab1 team have decided on a name! After months of agonizing discussion, hundreds (literally!) of suggestions from us and others, research into existing products, clever puns and overused clichés, we finally settled.
(If you need a quick background on what the project is about, check the blog post “EcoElectricity, the first project in Lab1″, as well as the other posts on this blog. Basically it’s about hooking a smart electricity meter wirelessly to a display gadget, a cloud database and a web app where you can keep track of your energy usage as well as interact and discuss with other users.)
The project is called Lodestar from now on. According to various dictionaries and encyclopaedias, a lodestar means a guiding star used for navigation. A more contemporary use is in the sense of a role model, an example to follow. This fits perfectly in line with the usage and reasoning behind our product: the light from the gadget display is sort of a guiding star for your electricity usage, and the same goes for the various forms of visualizations that you access via the web. In the social aspect of becoming more aware of usage patterns, both in yourself and others —individually and aggregated, you may find, or act as, a role model for using less energy.
Apart from the general meaning of the word, there’s also the “load”-pronounciation hidden in the word (as in “electricity load”), and within that, “Low” as in lower consumption. So yes, it may contain traces of pun, if you’re allergic to that. 
So, what do you think?
“Say hello to Lodestar!”