Get the Led Out or “How did Lead Become Lede?”

I’ve been wondering for some time why so many Blogs lead off with “The Lede”.  Steve Myers does a great job of giving one possible explanation in his post here: http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/146464/calling-the-beginning-of-a-story-a-lede-is-just-another-form-of-nostalgia/

Prior to the mid 1980’s much of printed media was still created by a man sitting at a Linotype machine typing letters and creating a single line of type out of hot led fired up in a pot in the back of the machine (I am sure that the Wizzard of Oz’s machine was an embellished Linotype). I was fortunate as a Cub Scout to use one of the last running ones in Orange County at the Yorba Linda Star on Main Street as part of a merit badge project. They were fascinating machines – something any boy would love to hang around – puffing and whirring and clanking. Never mind the led poisoning which did “lead” to premature neurological issues for many of the operators.

Steve’s conclusion is that the use of Lede actually started when the Linotype machine went out of style and it was started by nostaligic editors who believed that in the Linotype era “lede” was used to avoid confusion with lead (as in hot lead). He quotes Howard Owens: ” Considering that journalists didn’t begin using the jargonistic spelling until Linotype machines started to disappear from newsrooms in the 1970s and 1980s, Owens wrote on his blog, ” ‘Lede’ is an invention of linotype romanticists, not something used in newsrooms of the linotype era.”

I still like it, Even if it is an artificial bit of nostalgia.

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“America” vs “Hard Choices

“America Imagine a World Without Her” #1 on Amazon overall sales.
Hillary’s book #104. Ahead of “Hard Choices” at #100 “The Elements of Style” (Strunk and White) originally first published in 1918 which I am currently rereading and recommended for all millennials. And also ahead “Oh the Places You’ll Go) by Seuss from 1990 at #93.
A typical negative review of the Dinesh D’Souza book: “Same old nonsense for old white people (yes, I know the fella is brown but we all know his audience mostly is not) desperate to feel good about themselves and angry at everyone that doesn’t look, talk, feel, speak, or think like them.”
That’s me. Old and white with my guns and religion – I guess. Is that all there is?

Ghost of the Hardy Boys

Leslie McFarlane’s story of how it all came about oh so many years ago.http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/439472.Ghost_of_the_Hardy_Boys

BlackBerry First to Receive Coveted “Full Operational Capability” on U.S. Department of Defense Networks

BlackBerry First to Receive Coveted “Full Operational Capability” on U.S. Department of Defense Networks

This is pure good (while not unexpected) news for Blackberry and should be a warning for any CIO who settles for a “good enough” alternative. (photo courtesy of Crackberry)

WIRED’s CES Smartphone Thunderdome: The Final Results – Blackberry Z30 Blows Competition Out of Water

“Tim not only won many of the bonus challenges, he took home the extra Overall Win”. 257 points. iPhoneS next at 147. Windows and Android tailed off.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2014/01/thunderphone-challenge-results/#slideid-302#slide

1922 Kodak pre Kodachrome Film Test – Etherial, Bewitching, Mesmerizing OR – Instagram, Vine and …….

There is something inspiring in watching people gifted at craft work their magic efforlessly in a new medium. Here 5 silent film and stage actresses pose for the camera in 1922 at Paragon Studios in Fort Lee, NJ. for one of the first recorded color film tests in history. Fort Lee was a major film center on the East Coast at that time.

Kodak was testing this early Kodachrome Two-Color process that was an attempt to bring natural lifelike colors to the screen through the photochemical method in a subtractive color system. The colors seem to bathe them in warms and they flock to it like moths to a flame. As if they knew how to respond to the camera (they did.)

Their movements may seem dated today. Joan Neuberger at Salon writes that “their open expressions of feeling and the particular way they move their hands and tilt their heads, even more than the fashions of their clothes and makeup, immediately mark them as women of the interwar period.” It’s also important to remember that these woman at this time were all globally recognized and more famous than we can almost imagine today. And, they were at the top of their game.

Sabrina Negri, a film student from Italy, preserved the early Kodachrome color film from 1922 at the Cineco Haghefilm lab in Amsterdam in 2009. A Kodak employee later stumbled upon it at the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film and brought it back to Kodak in the US where it was digitized for the internet.

Today Eastman Kodak auctions off patents to salvage what is left of a once world leader in photography and film processing. And, in the process they left museums and a legacy innovation and products that once can’t say enough about. And the cause of their demise? The little thing we all hold in our hands. The smart phone which has essentially fully replaced the stand alone camera.

Goodbye Kodak. Hello Instagram, Reddit, Vine etc. and an endless series of pictures of people’s lunch, pets, and much much much worse. I’m not sure we’re better off.

The actresses as so far identified include:

The first, Hope Hamton, was known for bringing the flapper and siren look to the screen, had one husband and lived to 84 (1982) after a successful screen and then stage career.

Mary Eaton had a gifted Broadway stage career, was in a special Follies edition for three years, and a short Hollywood film career She married three times and died of alcoholism a age 47.

There is probably no better example of 1920’s success combined with excess and narcissism than Mae who has the most time at the end of the clip. She was a phenomenol success in the Ziegfield Follies, hit a peak with her appearance in the Merry Widow under Erik Von Stroheim in 1924. She had 4 husbands, including a phony count, was rarely seen without an Ermin Coat wrapped around her, and wound up destitute and finishing her years out at the Motion Picture House in the Hollywood Hills.

Others in the film have been said to be Mary Pickford and Jackie Coogan (the child star) but these aren’t confirmed.

Sitting Is the Smoking of Our Generation by Nilofer Merchant

My sports therapist at Performance Sports Chiropractic brought this up to me last week and I was horrified. The research shows that almost no amount of exercise can overcome extended sitting. We were not intended to sit!

” After 1 hour of sitting, the production of enzymes that burn fat declines by as much as 90%. Extended sitting slows the body’s metabolism affecting things like (good cholesterol) HDL levels in our bodies. Research shows that this lack of physical activity is directly tied to 6% of the impact for heart diseases, 7% for type 2 diabetes, and 10% for breast cancer, or colon cancer. ”

Read the article or watch his TED talk and stand up and move about more

The Blackberry Ad for BB10 That Could Have Been by PixelCarve

One really has to wonder, as Jeremy Duke so well points out in his OSBB post today, what Blackberry has been thinking with respect to its advertising policy.

This is an advertisement not sanctioned by Blackberry that PixelCarve prepared to show Blackberry what a SuperBowl Commercial could have been. This is what should have run.

It gives me shivers.

Yesterday was a bleak day on the financial side due to the last Quarters earning report (and for we Playbook users.). However, 300,000 units less of BB10 devices sold than hoped for and an $84M loss, while not desired, are certainly not the end of the world in the long run.

BB10 running on QNX is still the worlds newest and most advanced mobile operating system. Blackberry still performed a mini miracle by beating the clock and getting an entirely new, from scratch, OS to market on new hardware before the doors closed. And now they have time to continue to perfect an already unbelievable system.

But, how many people know about it? They won’t find out by visiting the carrier stores. They won’t be excited by the few ads Blackberry is running. So, here is my own personal form of marketing.

8 Reasons BlackBerry Owners Get It Done

Great infographic from Verizon Insider Blog today.

“BlackBerry smartphones are an essential tool for those who maximize every minute.”

I don’t hit all the boxes but come close 🙂

Click through the photo for the original post.

Social Media Explained

Jeff Gadway, Senior Manager, BlackBerry Product Marketing, posted this to the new BBM Channels this morning to fully explain the meaning and use of Social Networking. I love it.