Rock Out to the Asterisk Song

Tom Keating : VoIP & Gadgets Blog
Tom Keating
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Rock Out to the Asterisk Song

GM Voices, creator of professional voice prompts for companies has just released "The Asterisk Song" with patriotic Asterisk lyrics such as "It ain't no punctuation." For true Asterisk patriots, "asterisk" aka "*" can not be used in a sentence unless it has something to do with the open source Asterisk platform. Sure an "asterisk" is used to reference a footnote at the bottom of the page, but it's just a tiny "asterisk" in superscript form. There is only one "big" Asterisk and it looks like this:

Asterisk, the open source platform (as if I had to clarify) has changed the entire lexicon of how this word is used. It has taken over Shift-8 on the keyboard. Admit it, everytime you hit Shift-8 you think of Digium's Asterisk platform. Pure marketing genius! Well played Mark Spencer. Well played!

Or was it the crafty Linux penguin that came up with Asterisk? He's a sneaky one.
Tom Keating (Left) Mark Spencer (rmiddle), crafty Linux penguin (right).


I'm thinking about starting my own company and taking over a keyboard symbol by calling it something like 'Dollar Sign'. Nah, too tough of a nut to crack. People love their money. Maybe I could call my new company "Sharp" after the sharp (#) key? Damn, that's already taken. How bout "At" after the @ symbol? Too close to AT&T. I know! I could call it "Caret" (^)! Wait a second, that's also a vegetable. Well, there is that cool wavy 'tilda' (~) symbol, but that sounds too close to Atilla the Hun. I kind of like "Slash" (/), but in addition to already being taken by an Aerosmith Guns N' Roses guitarist it also denotes "cutting" something (slash the deficit, woman was slashed). Not good.

My favorite choice would probably be "Backslash" (\). It sounds kind of close to "backlash" and has a rebellious, anti-establishment tone to it. It's also beloved by IT geeks since it's use in Linux extensively, regular expressions, changing directories in Windows, and as an "escape character". It's also the mirror image of "slash" (/), reminding Star Trek geeks of Mirror, Mirror, one of the greatest episodes of all time.

We have a winner! When I start a tech company, I'm calling it Backslash. Enjoy using the backslash character while you can, because soon, I'm taking it over - and the world. Bwahaha!

In the meantime, check out the Asterisk Song:

via Rich Tehrani


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3 Comments

Ah - takes me right back to http://www.truphone.com/moo !

Hey Tom,

Slash was guitarist for Guns & Roses...not Aerosmith. C'monnnnn! But while you're at it, why not use the Ampercand (&) for your company name. It's right next to asterisk and implies "More to come...always more" which is perfect corporately. I want it...you can't use that! It's MINE!!

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