Mediaboss Marketing

By Leanne Italie

It's about freakin' time.

The term "F-bomb" first surfaced in newspapers more than 20 years ago but only landed in the mainstream Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary yesterday, along with sexting, flexitarian, obesogenic, energy drink and life coach.

In all, the company picks about 100 additions for the 114-year-old dictionary's annual update, gathering evidence of usage over several years in everything from media to the labels of beer bottles and frozen food.

So who's responsible for lobbing F-bomb far and wide? Kory Stamper, an associate editor for Merriam-Webster, said she and her fellow word spies at the Massachusetts company traced the word back to 1988, in a Newsday story that had the now-dead Mets catcher Gary Carter talking about how he had given them up, along with other profanities.

But the word didn't really take off until the late '90s, after Bobby Knight went heavy on the F-bombs during a locker room tirade.

"We saw another huge spike after Dick Cheney dropped an F-bomb in the Senate in 2004," and again in 2010 when Vice President Joe Biden did the same thing in the same place, Stamper said.

"It's a word that is very visually evocative. It's not just the F-word. It's F-bomb. You know that it's going to cause a lot of consternation and possible damage," she said.

Many online dictionary and reference sites already list F-bomb and other entries Merriam-Webster is only now putting into print. A competitor, Oxford University Press, has F-bomb under consideration for a future update of its New Oxford American Dictionary but beat Merriam-Webster to print on a couple of other newcomers: mash-up, added to the Oxford book in 2005, and cloud computing, included in 2010.

No worries, Stamper said. The dictionary biz isn't a race.

More here:
My word: Merriam-Webster embraces the 'F-bomb'

August 13, 2012 10:25

MTV remake will also contain storylines "tweaked" from the original British TV series

The US version of The Inbetweeners will feature "made up" swear words, the show's executive producers have revealed.

MTV's remake of the hit E4 sitcom - which relocates the action from Rudge Park Comprehensive to a typical American high school - premieres in the US on August 20. Last month (July), a trailer for the remake appeared on YouTube, prompting an angry response from fans of the original British TV show.

Commenting on YouTube, one fan predicted that the US remake will miss the distinctive British vocabulary from the original, writing: "It just doesn't translate....twat...knob....clunge....div....shag....bollocks...all staple phrases of English humour, almost completely absent from the American vocabulary, which, let's face it, made the characters who they were! Total shite!"

However, in an interview with Collider, executive producers Aaron Kaplan and Brad Copeland have insisted that the remake retains the show's trademark rudeness. Kaplan explained: "Well, America likes to be offended as well. Like anything else, it's a challenge.That's one of the things that Brad and I and MTV loved about the original.In spite of how offensive it could be, it was incredibly sweet.We made up a lot of original words that we can get past standards."

Copeland also revealed that the remake will feature a mix of completely new scripts and storylines based on the original British TV series. He explained: "With [our] first season, out of 12 episodes, six borrow skewed versions of their plots. We have plots that we really enjoyed from the series, that we wanted to put in, but we had to tweak them a little bit just to fit in with the American sensibility."

However, if the remake gets renewed for future seasons, Copeland predicted that it will become less reliant on the original. He added: "I think the six episodes that we did on our own this season worked really, really well. It definitely gave us a launchpad to now transition into our own story, and to take these universal themes and characters from the original British version and make it our own, somewhat like The Office did."

The original British version of The Inbetweeners, starring Simon Bird, James Buckley, Blake Harrison and Joe Thomas, ran for three seasons as an E4 sitcom before spawning a spin-off film. In June, it was reported that the show's British creators are now producing an American teen film "inspired by" The Inbetweeners Movie.

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'The Inbetweeners' US remake to feature 'made up' swear words

Jesus Jones, a UK (plus Chicago) based outfit were influential in the early 1990s with such hit singles as 'Right Here, Right Now' and 'International Bright Young Thing'. As with many bands in the 1990s, things move on, and having lost a traditional record contract, with all the organisation and marketing behind it, they formed a small indie label to keep things 'ticking over'. To relaunch their music careers in the public eye, and to raise cash to plough back into their indie label organisation (future touring/marketing costs a lot money) they have released in 2011 an album of favourites, rarities and remixes called - The Collection.

It comes in a professionally designed 2 cd set, with colourful attractive labelling you would have expected from a major label, but not necessarily from an independent, and a massive 36 tracks - 18 per cd ! Their website Jesus Jones currently offers signed copies from the band members, but on a time limited basis. Excellent value for money.

CD1 - focuses on a mixture of fan favourites (+ remixes) and more obscure tracks (to prevent overlap with previous released cds)
CD2 - focuses on a mixture of previously unreleased demos and rarities

They have announced that they have started to record new material for a future album release. We wish them well in their 'rebooted' career.

12-08-2012 10:33 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney campaigned with his new running mate Sunday. Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan joined Romney in Mooresville, North Carolina. (Aug. 12)

Read the original here:
Romney Hits Road With VP Pick Ryan - Video

Social networking, in some form or another, has been around for as long as man. It's not hard to imagine cave dwellers who shared a common bond gathering together for a conversation about the day's events - even if grunting and elaborate charades was the only means of communication.

Perhaps the first person to identify and label a form of social networking was Auguste Comte back in 1853. He observed that one person in a certain social system were interconnected with others in the same system.

It was an observation way ahead of its time, and good old Auguste didn't even have a modem.

Wikipedia, the online mecca for information both accurate and questionable, defines a modern social network as: A social structure which, in general, facilitates communication between a group of individuals or organizations, that are related by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as: a special or common interest; shared values; visions, ideas, or perhaps ideals; financial exchange, friendship, kinship, dislike, conflict or trade.

Auguste was, indeed, way ahead of the curve. But since this column is more about technology, let's fast forward more than a few decades and all the way to the 1970s.

Other than just disco, which is the best invention man (or woman) ever created, folks started piecing together integrated circuits and a bunch of wires to make their own, early, personal computers.

Trying to find a way to communicate over standard telephone lines, a couple of kids in the Chicago area found a marriage between hardware and software for the first bulletin board system. The modem allowed data transfer from one point to another.

Hobbyists all over the world started to create their own BBS systems and users would dial into the centralized computer to share files, post messages and create new software.

As the young hobbyists grew older, they recognized a possible business opportunity. CompuServe and America Online came to the forefront in the 1980s, and file sharing, e-mail and data transfers became more and more popular. Groups of like-minded computer users would often create their own chat rooms inside the online communities.

As the Internet boom continued, the ideas took another leap forward. Instead of creating a chat room or social network inside AOL or CompuServe, the idea of using a dedicated Web site was born. Yahoo! and a host of other services hit the scene in the 1990s and Yahoo! Groups became a gathering place for many.

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techESC: What was old is new again