The Branded and Gilded Life
The Branded and Gilded Life
The Kodak moment of World War 2
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The Kodak moment of World War 2

The camera moves over dense green foliage from the air.

It's the kind of footage that sets the atmosphere for everything from travelogues to war even in films today.

In a beautifully narrated documentary, Todd Dominey talks about the problem that drew Kodak into the war.

In the early 40s when the US pilots flew over enemy terrain, they faced a strange problem.

They were unable to pick out enemy lines in the midst of green foliage because of a cheap hack. Camouflage.

It was so effective at hiding artillery and supply lines that the US military approached Kodak and asked if there was something they could do.

Kodak created Aerochrome - the film that gave all natural foliage a reddish hue by shooting it in infrared.

And the camouflage stood out because it did not contain chlorophyll.

All the pilots had to do was photograph terrain with Aerochrome and the enemy lines stood out in stark contrast.

Post war, Aerochrome went on to find expression in the album covers of rock bands and acid experiments of the sixties.

In graphic design, it's one of those instantly recognisable representations of flower power.

Not the soft and emotional moments of brand Kodak.


Blackberry reinvents itself

Remember the Blackberry?

Before the iPhone came up with the 'slab' they dominated the world of mobile telephones at enterprises globally.

There was a generation of business users addicted to the Blackberry and they even had a name. Crackberry.

If you've read 'Losing the Signal' you'll understand how a small Canadian company went from obscurity to dominance and then seemed to lose their way altogether when the iPhone appeared and wiped them out.

Turns out corporate obituaries are short lived.

Blackberry flirted with the idea of new phone models but it was a half-hearted attempt to return to relevance.

There was another market they were quietly working on.

Car manufacturers were integrating sensors into their vehicles - for navigation, engine performance, mileage, parking... You name it, there was data being generated

Blackberry figured that a system to integrate all that data and bring it to a common platform would be of interest to them for developing new applications.

That's exactly what they've built.

Seeing the progress Blackberry made, AWS from Amazon has joined hands with them

It's called IVY and built for an era when data from cars will flow into one giant network.

IoC (Internet of Cars) may well arrive before IoT (Internet of Things)


The walk-in movie theater

Defence cantonments were great places to grow up in.

Open spaces, trees to climb and coves to explore.

But the weekend movie was special.

Kids could stay up later than normal to watch.

The setup was temporary - a cloth screen flapping in the breeze, a rented projector, even the seating - stools, folding chairs and mats spread on the ground.

Families would arrive at the designated time in the open ground when it got dark.

Home cooked dinners were parceled out and shared - a giant pot luck between neighbours and friends

There were several breaks every time the assistant ran the projector through a reel of film, rewound it and then played the next one.

So things would easily stretch into late night.

The sound of the projector whirring was a constant overlay on the soundtrack.

In the breaks, the movie was discussed. Or even better, ladies would lower their voices as they exchanged the latest local gossip.

Kids with sharp ears could catch on easily. Sometimes, the subplots were as interesting as the movie on screen.

No one drove to the theater. It was all within walking distance of the housing blocks.

That's how 20th century social media worked.


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The Branded and Gilded Life
The Branded and Gilded Life
Marketing is a never-ending set of experiments to understand human behavior. It's still opaque even after billions are spent every year. Predicting human behavior is like the horizon - visible yet hard to reach