What do dumpsters, frisbees, and teleprompters have in common?

They're all products that are victims of their own success. They do what they do so well, becoming synonymous with a certain practice, that people forget their names are trademarked and use them interchangeably with their rivals. This brand leakage means that for a lot of people, any kind of tissue is "kleenex," and Canon makes great "xerox machines." I can recall 3M's plaintive advertising in the Columbia Journalism Review several years ago, politely reminding copy editors that "Post-It" needs to be capitalized.

Now the same thing is happening to BlackBerry. I got confused today after reading multiple articles and blog items with the same basic headline, "Obama Keeps His BlackBerry," followed by examinations of the device that the new president will reportedly use, a Sectera Edge. Which, you'll notice, is not a BlackBerry. It's manufactured by General Dynamics, not RIM, and it runs a version of Windows Mobile, not the BlackBerry OS.

RIM has reaped great p.r. during President Obama's public 'Berry battle -- between $25 and $50 million worth, according to some guesses. Some fraction of that will be lost if the takeaway message for consumers is that the president needs a smartphone, any smartphone, and not necessarily a BlackBerry.

There is some solace: at $3,350 a pop, the Sectera Edge probably isn't going to take away much market share.

By Dina Fine Maron

Trying to bring the Roman Catholic Church to the kids, the Vatican launched its own YouTube channel today, following the lead of other global figures such as Barack Obama and Queen Elizabeth II who have successfully employed the video sharing technology to get their message out on the cheap (actually, free of charge.) Pope Benedict XVI’s page highlights the Church’s effort to tap into their youth base with footage and audio of the Holy Father. The Pope explained in one of his first YouTube videos that launching the site was an effort to be available in “those spaces where numerous young people search for answers and meaning in their lives”

The Pope made a first foray into the youth digital sphere when he (or his office, anyway) texted thousands of young Catholics on their mobile phones during World Youth Day events in Sydney this past summer.

Bu the Church started making official YouTube appearances in 2007, when Cardinal Justin Rigali, the Archbishop of Philadelphia, made a video offering gospel reflections for Lent. There was so much traffic to his video that within a week his first video was rated #5  in one of YouTube’s subcategories. The success with that video inspired the Philadelphia Archdiocese to inaugurate its own channel which is now sporadically updated with video content.

Signaling change in how the Vatican thinks it can reach the public, the new interactive Vatican Channel will update daily with content from the Vatican’s television and radio channels. It offers news in four languages, and allows users to comment, share videos with friends, and even directly contact the Pope’s office (though there is no promise on what the response rate might be.). In March the Archbishop of Washington, D.C. plans to post his own YouTube video, inviting youth to come back to the Church for lent, and depending on the traffic, might opt to create its own channel as well.

Morbid news from TV land--the big network news operations have started working on their obits for Apple CEO Steve Jobs. They’re shooting interviews now so that they’ll have their stories ready to go, if or when the bad news hits. You can’t blame them for trying to be prepared. But it does say something about Apple’s credibility on this issue. The company insists Jobs is simply taking a six-month medical leave, and will be back in June. Then again, until last week, the company was insisting that that Jobs was fine, even when it was apparent that he was not.

Earlier this month Jobs published an open letter claiming he was suffering from a “hormone imbalance” that was “relatively simple and straightforward.” Nine days later, however, Jobs said his condition was more complex than he’d originally thought and he would be taking a leave of absence.

The matter reportedly has prompted the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate whether Apple misled investors about Jobs’s health. Apple’s stock has bounced up and down for months as different reports have surfaced about Jobs. Last June he appeared on stage looking frail and gaunt, which aroused fears that Jobs might have suffered a recurrence of pancreatic cancer, for which he underwent surgery in 2004.

In December, after a blog called Gizmodo reported Jobs’s health was “rapidly declining,” a reporter from CNBC claimed sources at Apple had told him Jobs was fine--and Apple shares jumped on the news. Who were those people at Apple claiming Jobs was fine? The SEC may want to know.