Behind Your Business

"MONDEWHAAAAT?" The sarcasm was palpable in the one-word headline that appeared in The New York Post on the day after Kraft Foods revealed that it planned to name its new global snack business "Mondelez," an interpretation of a mash-up of the Latin words for "world" and "delicious." But that wasn't the only dig.

One blogger teased that she would've been "stifling giggles" if she'd been in meetings to determine the name. A Forbes contributor suggested a trick for remembering how to say it: "Just think Bush Administration Secretary of State. You know, Mon-de-leza Rice." Crain's Business Chicago tittered that it bears close resemblance to a vulgar Russian term for a sexual act.

Michael Mitchell, a Kraft spokesman, said executives took all the joking in stride, and he's quick to point out why the Crain's observation didn't alarm the company: "The name has to be mispronounced to get that unfortunate meaning."

The made-up moniker, pronounced "mon-dah-LEEZ," became a punch line after it was unveiled in March. On Wednesday, Kraft shareholders will decide whether to approve the name for the company's business that sells global snack brands such as Oreos, Fig Newton and Cadbury.

The four-month odyssey of how "Mondelez" was picked -- and how it was received -- illustrates the great pains companies take to come up with powerful names for their businesses, products and services. For them, it's akin to parents obsessing over a name for their newborn: it's a moniker that sticks for better or worse, so it better be good.

"You have to generate thousands of ideas, even if it's just for a cookie," said Nik Contis, the global director of naming at branding company Siegel+Gale.

That's just what Kraft did after it decided to split into two publicly-traded companies -- one for its North American grocery business that makes products like Oscar Mayer...

Coming a few days after Facebook's Wall Street debut to mixed reaction by investors, Microsoft's new social network had been widely seen as a possible rival to Mark Zuckerberg's juggernaut.

"Is this the next Facebook?" asked Fox News as the network, So.cl (pronounced Social), was opened to general users after a long beta-testing period.

A Bing Bulletin Board

But the fledgling network, geared toward students, as was Facebook initially when it was conceived in Zuckerberg's Harvard dorm room, seems to be more akin to a hybrid of search engine Bing and Pinterest, the upstart topic-based content-sharing network.

"Express Yourself," So.cl implores potential users on its homepage. "With So.cl you can share your search and express your ideas through beautiful collages of content." When a user enters search topics, a field is instantly populated with images related to the topic to be shared with the user's contacts. They can also connect through chat and video parties.

"Video parties let you search, and quickly assemble a list of movies to view together with friends," reads the site's FAQ. "You can view any existing party collection created by any other So.cl user, or create your own, and easily chat with other So.cl users."

All posts are visible to other users by default unless they are marked private.

"We expect students to continue using products such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other existing social networks, as well as Bing, Google and other search tools," Microsoft tells visitors on the FAQ page. "We hope to encourage students to reimagine how our everyday communication and learning tools can be improved, by researching, learning and sharing in their everyday lives."

For now, users can only sign in through their Facebook or Windows Live accounts. Facebook's phenomenal success has launched a slew of new sharing initiatives from the successful Twitter to the failed Google Buzz...

Start-up Sidecar has taken the wraps off a new smartphone app that enables users to share live video and other multimedia content with friends, family members and fellow workers even as they are talking on their phones.

Sidecar makes it possible for users to share photos instantly or deliver the entire contents of an album stored on their phones while chatting with the recipient. Interconnected Sidecar users also will be able to simultaneously view other content, such as an interactive street map.

With Sidecar the goal is to help handset users break out of today's voice-calling silo, said Sidecar CEO Rob Williams. Until now, people who wanted to do more than talk "had to toggle back and forth between voice calls and whatever else they wanted to share with the person they were calling," Williams said Tuesday.

There has been tremendous innovation in smartphones in every area except the basic phone call, Williams observed.

Sidecar tears down these barriers and lets people easily share live video, location, photos, and contacts while they talk," he said. "The result is a more fun, engaging, and expressive conversation."

Connecting Users Worldwide

Among other things, the new Sidecar app enables live videos to be shared with others even as they are being captured by the user's handset camcorder. The service is free whenever both the user and the recipients have Sidecar installed on their phones.

By instantly sharing maps, Sidecar makes it easy for commuters looking for rides to visually inform drivers just where to pick them up and drop them off. Sidecar is already geared up to serve the commuting needs of the communities of passengers and drivers around the world, said the company, which is based in San Francisco and Seattle.

The new Sidecar app also gives users the ability to swiftly pass along and integrate...

It's official. Google has closed on its $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility. But what does this mean for the merged company? There are still more questions than answers.

In a Tuesday morning blog post, Google CEO Larry Page opined about how the phones in our pockets have become supercomputers that are changing the way we live. He pointed out how it's now possible to do things we used to think were magic -- or only possible on Star Trek. Things like getting directions on the spot, watching a video on YouTube or taking a picture and sharing it instantly with friends all over the world.

"Motorola is a great American tech company that has driven the mobile revolution, with a track record of over 80 years of innovation, including the creation of the first cell phone," Page wrote. "We all remember Motorola's StarTAC, which at the time seemed tiny and showed the real potential of these devices. And as a company who made a big, early bet on Android, Motorola has become an incredibly valuable partner to Google."

Motorola Gets New CEO

Although Page didn't offer much insight on what Google will do with Motorola, he did announce that Sanjay Jha, who was responsible for building the company and placing that big bet on Android, has stepped down as CEO. Long-time Googler Dennis Woodside has taken the reins.

After extolling Woodside's virtues in the blog he turned his attention back to technology, indicating that Motorola would still make mobile phones, saying: "It's a well-known fact that people tend to overestimate the impact technology will have in the short term, but underestimate its significance in the longer term.

"Many users coming online today may never use a desktop machine, and the impact of that transition will be profound -- as will the ability to just...

Monday Mail Mayhem. That's how Anonymous is describing its latest hack. The "hacktivist" group broke in to a 1.7-GB archive of data it says "used to belong to the United States Bureau of Justice, until now."

"Within the booty you may find lots of shiny things such as internal e-mails, and the entire database dump," Anonymous said in a statement. "We Lulzed as they took the Web site down after being owned, clearly showing they were scared of what inevitably happened."

Why the Bureau of Statistics?

Anonymous apparently also uploaded a BitTorrent file of the stolen data to Pirate Bay. That's a potentially serious leak, considering that the Bureau of Justice Statistics' stated mission is to collect, analyze, publish, and disseminate information on crime, criminal offenders, victims of crime, and the operation of justice systems at all levels of government. The bureau describes the data as "critical to federal, state, and local policymakers in combating crime and ensuring that justice is both efficient and evenhanded."

With that in mind, why is Anonymous targeting the Bureau of Justice statistics? Anonymous answered that question with a mouthful of hacktivist-speak reminiscent of WikiLeaks.

"We do not stand for any government or parties, we stand for freedom of people, freedom of speech and freedom of information. We are releasing data to spread information, to allow the people to be heard, and to know the corruption in their government," according to the Anonymous statement. "We are releasing it to end the corruption that exists, and truly make those who are being oppressed free."

The U.S. Department of Justice confirmed the breach and published reports say the government is investigating the hacks. In a statement, a spokesman said the department is looking into the unauthorized access of a Web site server operated by the Bureau of Justice Statistics that contained data from...