a-Fortune

Raise your hand if you own an iPod. Raise your hand if you've ever heard of one.

iTunes? What about e-mail? Do any of you use e-mail?

What I'd like to know is, what will be the next lowercase vowel to start popping up all over our lives for no reason?

It started simply enough, electronic mail became e-mail. It's shorter, it makes sense, it's catchy.

Then, maybe it got a little out of hand - "e-" became the go-to prefix for the internet age: e-mail, ebay, evite, e-trade, e-surance and so on.

And then Steve Jobs came along with his flashy new vowel and suite of software: iMac, iPod, iTunes, iLife, iPhone...

Google's now getting in on the picture with their personalized google homepage, iGoogle.

Is it getting a little ridiculous? Yes. So ridiculous, in fact, that I forsee a shift coming. The i's are out. Time for a new vowel to step up.

Get ready for u-Blog, or aCar, and oBaby, or even y-Knot. (why not? y's a vowel!)

The real question is, who do I see about trademarking those last four vowel-hypens?

The licensing will be worth billions.

-t