Ask HN: Can we avoid buzzwords like "cloud" or "grid"?
Here's a little more background: we've written an online Python-based programmable spreadsheet (in limited beta right now, details at http://projectdirigible.com/), and its killer feature (we think) is that spreadsheets are recalculated server-side with a certain amount of parallelism -- so that big recalculations can be split over multiple machines. This all happens on Amazon EC2, so neither we nor our users need to worry about hardware costs etc. In theory, at least, it should all scale transparently.
We're currently calling it "a spreadsheet-like tool for Python grid computing" which is (a) clumsy and (b) uses the word "grid", which is not just a buzzword, but worse, an out-of-date buzzword. People have also pointed out that "grid" captures the whole parallelism thing but not the "scale your calculations up without buying hardware yourself" aspect.
But we're really reluctant to start using the phrase "cloud computing", which we worry would send our target users -- fellow techies -- running.
Is there a better word for tools like this? Or are we going to have to bite the bullet and talk about clouds?