Calckey/Firefish is based off of Misskey, a powerful microblogging server on ActivityPub with features such as emoji reactions, a customizable web UI, rich chatting.
Wow, what a wild ride, huh? From those first brainstorming sessions that sparked Calckey, to the epic journey that brings us here today, rebranding as Firefish - I’ve gotta say, I’m seriously blown away.
One year ago, Calckey was just my side project, after being a Misskey contributor for a while. But when y’all jumped on board, you made it so much more. You transformed it from my dream to our reality.
Firefish isn’t just a cool name. It’s everything we’ve been working towards. It’s late nights, strong coffee, wild ideas, laughs, and even the occasional tears. It’s our little space on the web where we’re constantly pushing for the next big thing, and always looking out for one another.
So here we are, at the start of something new. Firefish is more than just a rebrand - it’s a celebration. A celebration of you, me, and us. It’s a tribute to the amazing community we’ve built together. Firefish is all of YOU.
https://mas.else.social/@choyer/110746384528095273
Someone checked and there’s already an existing trademark for Firefish in software specifically, at least in Europe. Apparently they make HR solutions of some sort.
https://jobs.firefishsoftware.com/about-us/meet-the-team.aspx
Hopefully it doesn’t cause any issues
Wow, if they haven’t already cleared this with the existing company or lawyers, this is embarrassing.
Wouldn’t you do a quick search as an early step in any branding exercise?
It’s not just specific to Clackey, but I really hate when sites hijack the right-click menu, either to remove options, or to modify it for “theme”. I get that it looks pretty wrt to the site’s theme, but seriously, leave browser controls the fuck alone.
You can hold shift while right-clicking in Firefox to bypass any custom right-click code and always show the browser’s native context menu.
At least I think it’s shift. Might be alt.
Really don’t know how they thought of the name Firefish without thinking it would make people think of Firefox first. Like how did they brainstorm this name, it makes me wonder
This may be intentional. Wouldn’t be the first time.
Was Lavafish taken?
I adore Calckey/Firefish. It’s amazing software, but these are both pretty bad names. lol
I guess Firefish is better, because it sounds like software you’d want to use and not something you have to put up with to file a tax return, but also… why?
Yeah… They’re definitely 0-2 on naming…
Calckey is functionally 39584882x better than Mastodon but I’ve tried several servers now that are all pretty weak.
Calckey now Firefish seems really cool, but tbh I really can’t say I’m a fan of this rebrand. Calckey was distinct. Firefish sounds either like a Mozilla product, or a Firefox browser fork, or else bland office software. Definitely a downgrade imo.
CalKey would have cause a little less choking when trying to pronounce it…
Calckey sounds like it should be a spreadsheet name
Probably a good choice. Calckey sounds like an unmaintained spreadsheet software project. Firefish is better, if a little generic.
Yea … it seems to be the fundamental issue with the new name. “Fish” is just a way too generic and and boring or unappealing word, idea, food, smell, industry, practice etc.
The logo is awesome, but I’ll probably always cringe just a little everytime I say “fire-fish” … sorry to say. Honestly interested in whether I’ll every adapt to the name.
Otherwise, for those using or thinking of using mastodon but who’ve never seen firefish nee calckey … go check it out, you’ve never seen microblogging done quite like it
“Firefish isn’t just a cool name”
Yeah, it’s also a generic name that isn’t very good?
Firefox, but make it wet
(I don’t know if it’s a worse than “calckey” tbf)
Waterfox is already a thing
It also sounds too much like Firefox. But either way, it doesn’t sound like accounting software anymore which was my issue with calckey’s branding prior to now anyway lmao
But it’s by far the best fediverse platform I’ve used from a functionality standpoint and I’m quite fond of it so hopefully this puts more eyes on it
@pixel any recommendations for some cool Calckey instances to try?
I’m on Sakurajima.social because it was partered with the small anime-oriented masto instance I used previously so it felt like an easy swap and i could trust the moderation policy but my advice is, if you wanna use it like mastodon find a small instance where you can trust the mods and talk to them, and if you want to use it like its own platform (using channels, namely) find the biggest instance that’s catered towards the niche you’re most passionate about. Channels are a big feature sell of firefish for me so being on an anime-centric instance makes a lot of sense for me :)
Cheers. It’ll be fun to explore.
Agreed. I just wish they had native mobile apps. The PWA on iPhone is good, but not as snappy as a native app. The design otherwise is soooo nice.
A lot of issues with PWAs on iPhone are due to Apple limitations. Maybe one day Apple will improve their support for PWAs. The thing is that they have no incentive to make the experience as good as apps, since they can’t charge their Apple Tax (30%) for purchases in a PWA.
Calckey was a bloody awful name because it was hard to say and difficult to know how to say.
Firefish fixes that but is honestly quite generic.
Either way, I wish them the best.
Did they come up with the new name in some kind of software name generator? Sort of like the hip hop name generator that Donald Glover used to come up with Childish Gambino?
All these federated services suffer from similar well-publicized problems, but Calckey appears to offer one of the nicer user interface schemes so far. Though unrelated, maybe the rebrand can help build mindshare for Firefox.
I like that they’ve read the memo about fediverse projects being named after animals, but firefish doesn’t fit. They should have gone with Coelacanth or something like that… but easier to spell.
I’m trying to figure out what posts will be. Blubs? Fins?
EDIT: My partner said “bubbles.” She’s much smarter than I am it seems.
Not making fun; I think the name is fine… and the new features look promising too!
Bubbles is less bad than toots.
Why can’t it just be “posts?”
Where’s the fun in that?! Every service needs a silly and relatively useless term to designate its posts. Like… maybe Misskey could have… I dunno… uWus? (I kid, I kid.)
Calckey sounds like a calculator/math/graphing application and Firefish sounds like another generic fork of Firefox.
Fire… fish? Okaaaay…
I really like the new logo. I thought calckey was some type of speed typing thing lol
