We'll get around to telecoms, CRM, VoIP and why this reporter doesn't have it on his computer yet, and why some guy named Slim was holding 13.7% of MCI stock, but we're still noodling around, playing and figuring out how this thing works (your reporter is not the most technically proficient business writer alive). Let's see if this works:

It was on this day in 1828 that Noah Webster published
his American Dictionary of the English Language. He was a man who'd
grown up in America at a time when Americans from different states could barely
understand each other, because they spoke with such different accents and even
different languages. Americans in Vermont spoke French, New Yorkers spoke Dutch,
and the settlers in Pennsylvania spoke German. All these different languages
were influencing American English, and there were no standards of spelling or
meaning.

Webster knew from European history that linguistic differences
could deeply divide a nation, so he decided that in order to pull the young
United States together, there needed to be a common language, and he would
devote his life to capturing that language.

He spent 20 years working on his dictionary, which contained
70,000 words, and he did all the research and the handwriting of the book by
himself. He is believed to be the last lexicographer to complete a dictionary
without any assistance.

Instead of using quotations from literature to show words in
context, he wrote his own sentences as examples. For the verb "to love" he
wrote, "The Christian loves his Bible." For the word "inestimable" he wrote,
"The privileges of American citizens, civil and religious, are inestimable." For
the word "indulgence," he wrote, "How many children are ruined by
indulgence!"

Webster's dictionary had the result he intended. His standardized
spelling and pronunciation guides helped ensure that Americans who speak English
speak more or less the same English. America has the fewest dialects of any
major country in history.