A year and half ago The Register played with the idea of a Bluetooth-enabled Rendezvous iPod in their Apple's ‘BluePod’ – promiscuous exchanges with strangers article -- "we suggested, would be an iPod with built-in Bluetooth and Rendezvous" they wrote. And the letters poured in:

« "What am i listening to is the best viral marketing idea for a long time," reckons Reg friend Bill Thompson [ICA-Monday].

Juhani Tali from Estonia adds: "The best part about Bluetooth iPod is that perhaps you can leave a significant part of the marketing to RIAA. If you play the cards right."

Reader "sam.freak" (real name supplied) really nails the social aspect of a BluePod: "Just imagine thousands of people running around with personal radio stations in their pockets! Not only could you broadcast songs and the like, but other content as well -- from personal philosophy to revolutionary and subversive ideas..."

"...there might also be an option to disable caching of this content to satisfy the RIAA (though no doubt some smart hackers will find ways around that). Add some broadcast range increasing measures to that and elevate, and voila! instant revolution ;-)" »

Taaa-daaam -- enter the BluePod! From Bucharest! The Register again in yesterday's Promiscuous BluePod file swapping - coming to a PDA near you:

« A tiny European software company has done what the giants of the consumer electronics industry daren't do - and put a potential Napster in every pocket.

Simeda, based in Bucharest, has ported Rendezvous to the Pocket PC platform and bundled it with a web server. The software automatically discovers other devices on a WiFi network and allows people to stream or share music with just a couple of clicks. Simeda's CTO Razvan Dragomirescu tells us that the inspiration came from a series of speculative articles that ran here at The Register eighteen months ago in which we envisaged an Apple iPod enhanced with Bluetooth and Rendezvous, which is Apple's trademark for the ZeroConf LAN discovery protocol. We nicknamed this 'BluePod'. »

Cool!, now let's talk branding.

Is this good or bad when Romania appears on the map in such a context? Will the reader remember the positive association with young talented software developers and breakthrough creativity? Or the idea of "putting a potential Napster in every pocket" will backfire and consolidate the image of Romania as a IP no man's land (read: intellectual property-circumventing territory)?

This is not the kind of message that comes from India, for instance. Their brand name associations are -- when it comes to IT -- clean as a whistle. But in Romania's case all-positive messages would be definitely harder to sell from the beginning. Maybe -- i say maybe -- this is the cheapest way to turn thing around: subversive enough to published for free or even viral, but selling the desired brand association with young talented people and software development.