So last week the New York Times Magazine published a piece called "Against Camel Case" which argues that intercapped product names like iPhone and TiVo are "medieval," because they harken back to a time in which people mostly read aloud, slowly sounding out each word as they tried to understand them. Proper word spacing, says the Times, "eventually made possible phenomena like irony, pornography and freedom of conscience."

That's sort of a crazy coincidence -- while we're not so sure word spacing and porn have anything to do with each other, we did just re-do our style guide when we launched our jazzy new redesign, and we actually thought long and hard about how to handle intercapped, all-capped, and otherwise non-standard product names. This is something we deal with a hundred times a day, and we simply weren't going to let Motorola tell us to write MILESTONE over and over again, completely contradicting our own sense of style and taste -- as the Times says, "Writers of the world, fight back!" Well, we can't say no to that, so we thought we'd share our four newly-minted rules for writing out non-standard product names:

1. Product and company names that are regular English words shall be treated like proper English nouns, complete with proper capitalization. Example: DROID becomes Droid and nook becomes Nook.
2. Product and company names that are not regular English words shall be capitalized first as proper nouns, and then as the company treats them. Example: RAZR stays RAZR, but chumby would become Chumby.
3. Intercapped product and company names should generally be treated as the company treats them, unless it's egregious and / or looks weird. Example: iPhone stays iPhone, BlackBerry stays BlackBerry and TiVo stays TiVo, but ASUSTeK becomes Asustek. This rule is subject to many exceptions based on usage and history, and also functions as the "this is stupid" loophole.
4. Acronyms should obviously be in all-caps.

We think these rules are flexible to handle most situations, although there are some edge cases and blatant Rule 3 violations out there. Still, it's a start -- unlike the Times, we're pretty sure "iPhone" and "MasterCard" are here to stay, but we feel like our rules are a small step towards making our site clearer and more readable. Either that, or we're just crazy in the head.

Editorial: The Engadget style guide reaches a MILESTONE originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A few months ago, Apple bought their own mapmaker, Placebase, which seemingly opened the possibility of non-Google-y maps. Now, they're looking for an iPhone maps engineer to "rethink how users use Maps and change the way people find things."

That job description actually fits kind of perfectly with what Placebase did well in its former life—customization and tons of ways to layer multiple kinds of data sets onto maps, with an API that makes it easy to layer on said data sets. Here's more of the listing:

The iPhone has revolutionized the mobile industry and has changed people's lives and we want to continue to do so. We want to take Maps to the next level, rethink how users use Maps and change the way people find things. We want to do this in a seamless, highly interactive and enjoyable way. We've only just started.

As an engineer on the Maps team, your responsibilities will range from implementing low-level client/server code to implementing high-level user interfaces. You'll be responsible for implementing new and innovative features, fixing problems and enhancing the performance of Maps. You will work closely with the other engineers on the Maps team, other iPhone and iPod touch teams as well our partners in other companies.

Of course, it's also just as possible—if not more so—that Apple's sticking with Google for map data, and simply looking to add new and unique powers to its Maps application, to differentiate it from Google Maps on other phones (which in Android's case includes, exclusively, the awesome Google Navigation). [Apple via MacRumors via The Reg]