My friend Amy Gahran has been running a very interesting competition on her Contentious site seeking a new name for RSS, which is typically defined as “Really Simple Syndication”. The problem is that the name doesn’t describe very well what RSS has become, but if you have a news aggregator like NetNewsWire or NewsGator you know the power behind the syndication model, the value of the RDF and XML buttons on weblogs…

So why not consider a new, more friendly, accessible and descriptive name for the RSS capability? Contentious has done just that, and the first round of results have produced over 200 suggestions, which is overwhelming to read through, though mildly amusing (my favorite wacky suggestion: “meatball”).

I’m a judge of the final set of entries and as a method of making the process more manageable, I’ve been asked to pick my favorite half-dozen or so, and here’s what I came up with:

1. BackChannel
2. DeskFeed
3. FeedLine
4. flashfeed
5. InStream
6. LiveFeed
7. ReadFeed
8. SiteFeed
9. Webstract

Being a rebel who has a hard time following directions, I also contributed a new possible name that I think would work well too: BlogPulse.

Whether you like any of mine, or perhaps are interested in the favorites of the other judges of the competition, Amy Gahran, Cathy Dold, Steve Outing or Randy Cassingham, I nonetheless encourage you to pop over to the site and vote for your favorite choice.