It lives!

For a while Uniqueness of Baby Names was one of the top blog posts. It even got pinned on pinterest. But as fun as it was writing the post (and doing the math!), the information wasn’t interactive. I hoped it was a fun read, but that was it. I wanted the math to live on.

I’m pleased to announce I’ve turned the post into an interactive web app. Simply enter a name to see how popular it is for a given year. The name uniqueness analyzer will also tell you the odds of encountering another person with the same name. If you’re searching for a name, the name analyzer can also suggest names based on how unique you’d like it to be.

This is my first webapp launched since leaving Google and deciding to start my own start-up. While the main start-up idea is still baking, I thought I’d launch a few apps to both keep me coding. I’m both pleased and embarrassed by how long it took me write it. On the one hand, I left Google a little over two and a half months ago. That’s a really long time to launch anything! On the other, I have Alexis home during the days two days a week, and lost a full day dealing with the death of the washer and drier. From “I will do this” to “It launched!” was only two days.

I’ll be watching the Name Uniqueness Analyzer closely to see what kind of adoption it gets. The dream is to launch enough of these web apps to replace my grad school salary, freeing me up to work on my start-up without worrying (too much) about the finances.

Posted in Internet & Technology, Work Life | Tags: Baby Names, Website