“ Last week’s announcement reveals that a fundamental cleavage has in fact occurred: today’s Microsoft is, more than ever, two different companies. The line of demarcation, though, is not services and devices, but rather enterprise and consumer.”
“ Here’s a fun game. Mentally rewind 5 years and see how likely the following sentence would have been: Microsoft has decided to make Opera the default browser on its new, Linux-based Android handsets.”
Story behind football's innovative yellow first down line | SI.com
The large conference room full of ESPN executives was silent as Jerry Gepner and I finished presenting a simulation of a yellow, electronic first down line for football telecasts in May 1998. Finally, the silence was broken.
Steven Frank's arcade story
One day I was sitting in our apartment reading a video game magazine (nerd!), and in the back was a little section of classified ads. My eye was caught immediately by the words “Beat Space Ace and Dragon’s Lair!” For a few bucks, you could send away for this random guy’s strategy guide, which listed all the moves and when to make them.
Arcade and console video games were a big part of my life in high school, too. Steven perfectly captures the frustration of playing Dragon’s Lair, and tells a great story. Read the whole thing here.
Ads everywhere
"Our expectation is that users will be using our services and viewing our ads on an increasingly wide diversity of devices in the future.”
Leela: Didn’t you have ads in the 21st century?
Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games… and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree.