Tag: profile

Remembering the ‘Sis… Boom… Bah…’ of late-night

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Delightful archive article from 1978 on The Tonight Show, and a look at Johnny Carson’s reign on late-night US television. I wonder if we’ll look back at Fallon’s time with such detail and honesty? During the monologue on May 11, 1977, he finds, as sometimes happens, that certain words are emerging from his mouth in slightly garbled form. He wrinkles his brow in mock alarm, shrugs, and presses on to the next sentence: “Yetserday, U.S. Steel announced. . .” He pauses, realizing what he has said, turns quizzically to McMahon, and observes, “ ‘Yesterday’ is not a hard word to

The board game with economic theory, land development, and cute little buildings

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The New Yorker profiles Klaus Teuber, the man behind Settlers of Catan: Teuber himself is more sanguine. “I do not see that Catan will kill Monopoly,” he said. “But I hope that Catan will become a permanent classic game beside Monopoly.” In Catan, one player’s success can benefit others, and if you simply form a monopoly on one resource you’ll never win, since you have to have a combination of different elements to get anywhere on the island.

The story of Missile Command

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Microsoft once had a collection of Atari Classic games for Windows 3.1 (on 2 1.44″ floppy disks) and the help files had a short history of each game. Polygon’s article and interview with designer Dave Theurer reminded me of that help file, but with a lot more detail. Theurer and Adam got rid of all the unnecessary components — including a radar idea, which had an arm sweeping across the screen, only revealing a portion of it at a time — and started putting that manpower and time into polishing the other areas of the game. “To make it simple,

A little Marissa Mayer for the weekend?

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Some fascinating reading for the weekend from Business Insider, as Nicholas Carlson writes about Marissa Mayer. “The Friday before she came on, the parking lots would be empty till 10 a.m. and would be empty again after 4 p.m. That happened day after day after day for seven months in a row. Marissa comes, the next week, the parking lots are full at 8 a.m. and people are still there at 6:30. “The changes that she brought — making food free, focusing on quality, shutting some things down, being open and honest during the Friday FYI meetings — all brought

New Yorker profiles Sheryl Sanderg, Facebook, and gender politics in the Valley

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To put it another way, Facebook is trying to come up with an approach to organizing the Internet that’s entirely different from what Google has done. Google’s answer to “best Thursday sitcom” has long been determined by algorithms that analyze billions of Web pages—the so-called wisdom of crowds. Facebook will try to guide you through the preferences of your friends. Being a typical male, I’ll zero in on the explanation of the differences between Google/Facebook, but there’s a lot more in this article, especially on the oft-discussed male/female divide in Silicon Valley.

Fringe Podcast Featured in the latest issue of iProng Magazine

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It’s just under a week* until the first press event for the 2009 Edinburgh Fringe – which is when my ‘interview radar’ switches from passive to active and I start to track down the new stars and shows for this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Podcast. Throughout July I’ve been doing a bit more press and publicity for the show, and this month’s issue of iProng Magazine (the publication for iPhone, iPod, music, podcasting, and social media lovers) features myself in the Podcaster Spotlight section: What are you most looking forward to at the 2009 Festival? September the 1st! There is such