Motorola XOOM

The Motorola XOOM is a terrible name. When I hear it, the last thing I think of is an Android tablet. It’s just another entry in the long parade of Android tablets.

Xoom will always be a free web hosting service I used to use back in the mid-90s. My first web site was hosted at members.xoom.com/peroty. This was until NBC bought them out and turned it into nbci.com and eventually killed off the hosting side of the business in 1999 and NBCi folded in mid-2001. The domain now redirects to NBC.com. Xoom as a web host still lives on in an Italian version at xoom.it. Xoom.com is now a money transfer site, which looks like a PayPal clone.

Thunderbolt

The HTC Thunderbolt is a 4G Android phone coming soon to Verizon. The phone has been delayed according to Best Buy and in the meantime, Apple has used the name Thunderbolt as their name for the new Intel LightPeek technology.

Unlike the XOOM that had about a decade between usages, the competing Thunderbolts seem like more of a coincidence than anything else. I find it interesting that the two Thunderbolts are being used and released so close together.