Just last week, the keyword ‘Cibai‘ has been a trending topic on Twitter for a few hours during Americans’ sleep period of the day. Some Americans or Europeans were wondering what’s so special about this word. Well, for those who don’t know the real meaning of the word ‘Cibai’, it’s actually means vagina in Hokkien (a Chinese dialect) and also a popular vulgarity used by Singaporeans and Malaysians to vent one’s displeasure towards others. But the humor comes in when the folks at Microsoft use it as a research project title! Sounds funny and odd right?
Dubbed as an abstract interpretation-based static analyzer for modular analysis and verification of Java classes, Cibai achieves a higher level of automation and precision while having comparable performances as compared to other similar tools. Created by Francesco Logozzo a researcher for the tech giant, he said that “This is an old project I made when I was at university. I do not maintain it anymore, and the name stands for “Class Invariants By Abstract Interpretation” (CIBAI) “. Cibai has been developed since 1 January 2007 and the joke about this software was only revealed close to two and half years later on May 19 2009 on Twitter.
Of course, this must have been started by either a Malaysian or Singaporean because they make up a large percentage of the ‘Hokkien’ community. I was wondering whether Francesco Logozzo actually knows the real meaning of the word or it was a random word that came to his mind while thinking of a ‘suitable’ project title.
Besides ‘Cibai’, another project by Microsoft made me burst out laughing too. The new Bing search engine which was unveiled on Thursday by Chief Executive Steve Ballmer has sparked off countless discussions between the Chinese, not because of the competition China’s number one search engine Baidu will be facing but the name ‘Bing’ instead. When translated to Chinese, the word ‘Bing’ can be associated to either the Chinese flatbread or illness/sickness.
From my observation, many people seem to be more concerned about the Chinese meaning of illness rather than flatbread. Illness is definitely something unfortunate and yet Microsoft still insist to name their search engine ‘Bing’. At least the name ‘Kumo’ which was used while in development sounds much better. Can’t the folks at Microsoft come up with nicer product and project names that will attract the attention of users. One great example and my favorite is Twitter. ‘Twitter’ is indeed a wonderful, unique and creative name as compared to ‘Bing’ which sounds odd and ‘low-class’ gives me a negative impression.
Even though Microsoft’s project names such as Cibai and Bing are weird and with no creatively, however I must agree that the platform or software are pretty impressive. According to Microsoft, the main aim of Bing is to help Internet users distill useful information on commerce-friendly topics such as shopping, travel, health and local business using a more elegant and intuitive approach to search. It has plans in mind to replace Windows Live Search and boost its search market share to keep up with fellow rivals Google and Yahoo.