90 Seconds on The Verge

Futurama, Season 03, Episode 12. "Insane in the Mainframe." Fry sits down at a table in the cafeteria of the HAL Institute for Criminally Insane Robots — uncomfortably between Abe Lincolnbot and a Pay 'n' Chew vending machine. At the head of the table, the Mad Hatterbot — with a 5/3 label on its hat that's clearly way more efficient than the Mad Hatter's "10/3 hat" from the original Alice in Wonderland. "Change places!" he screams over a cup of spilled oil and they do, all except Fry. The frustration and sense of hopelessness bubbling up — his fingernails going blunt digging into the plastic tray — before the Hatterbot repeats his decree and all machinery follows suit. That's kind of what happened today, with me controlling the cameras and The Verge producer Creighton DeSimone hosting. "Change places!" Happy Friday.

The top five Wii U North American launch windows titles, as ranked by hypothetical Scrabble Scores with no special tiles and numbers / punctuation valued at zero: Disney Epic Mickey 2: Power of Two (56), Batman: Arkham City - Armored Edition (52), Runner 2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien (50), Rise of the Guardians: The Video Game (48), Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth (45). The bottom five Wii U launch titles, same metric as above: 007 Legends (9), NBA 2K13 (10), Toki Tori 2 (12), WipeOut 3 (12), Wii Fit U (13).

From WVRG in New York, it's 90 Seconds on The Verge, distributed by Vox Media. I'm Ross Miller. Today on our program, we have the story of a certain large technology company who this week announced the latest updates to its handheld computer business. Act One, the iPhone Growth Spurt. In Act Two, the Less Connected, we'll focus on the iPod and how it's evolved over the hours today. Finally, Act Three, And Now For Something Completely Different, where we visit Sony and its completely unrelated announcement of new cameras. It's 90 Seconds on The Verge. I'm Ross Miller. And let's just get to it. Here's David Pierce.

Last week's gathering of The Verge staff from around the globe brought together many things. Ideas, friendships... diseases. Mostly the latter, in fact — think of it as a cross between Outbreak, Contagion, and "Genesis" from season seven of Star Trek: The Next Generation. And as we each continue to fight our own battles for the betterment of our respective upper respiratory tracts, the show, as they say, must go on.

What a crazy week, both for the industry at large and for The Verge on a personal level. Major turning points for numerous companies (Nokia, Amazon, Motorola). Major hints at the week's ahead (Apple, HTC). And for The Verge, a chance to fly in (almost) everyone on staff to laugh together, learn together, and of course, find new purpose in this silly "thing" we call life. It's the last night we'll all be together in one oiffce — tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to get out of the wide shot and go rest. Sorry all, just one more take. How many beautiful faces can we put in one shot? Here's your answer. Stories of the day: Exclusive photos: We put Nokia's controversial Lumia 920 PureView camera to the test Nokia aiming to launch the Lumia 920 on November 2nd for AT&T Apple working on Pandora-like music service, WSJ reports iPhone 5 will support some LTE networks globally, WSJ says LG's 84-inch 4K TV ships next month in the US for $19,999.99 Sony's 4K XBR-84X900 shipping in November for a massive $25,000

It is a typical summer day in New York City. One man stops in a midtown Manhattan crosswalk, staring down an endless avenue. All around him, human beings lope along the sidewalks, passing in and out of each other's interpersonal orbits. They flow down the outstretched canyon of concrete and steel, a constantly evolving protoplasm of collective consciousness — and yet, individuality. The whole scene springs forth and hits him, a spontaneous choreograph sitting precariously amid infinite and uncaring entropy. In this moment, he is happy — more awake than the world around him. "What a beautiful, terrifying, spectacular thing," he thinks. And yet, at the very moment he articulates this feeling in his mind, the magic vanishes. The scattered colors before him congeal into the familiar patterns of ergonomic contemporary life. He pulls out his smartphone, snaps an incredible high-resolution, optically-stabilized photo, and uploads it to Instagram. All is lost in translation.

We're at episode 51 of 90 Seconds on The Verge, and although we don't have 51 new smartphones to share with you — we do have five from today's events. Continuing our important guests trend for the week, we have Microsoft stalker Tom Warren fresh from London. He might be holed up in an unnamed location in New York, for fear of reprisals over his latest scoops, but we managed to smuggle him out in time to cover the day's news. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the English accent.

We're halfway to our centennial. Episode 50 of 90 Seconds on The Verge. This isn't the only milestone we'll be celebrating soon, but it definitely warranted flying in a few very important guests for an all-star week! (That's right, absolutely no other reason they're all here in New York but to stand in front of our cameras and look pretty.) We couldn't help but start with our Elder Statesman (and current Amsterdam resident) Thomas Ricker. Okay. Let's make history.

It's Friday, and that means not a whole lot of news happened today. But don't worry, because a lot of news about next week happened. 90 whole seconds of news. And we're going to talk about it. To a camera. While video of things related to that news also plays. There will be some upbeat music. Then maybe we'll try and wrap things up with a joke, but we're not going to try too hard. Hell, we might not even try at all. Try not to stress out so much. This is 90 Second on The Verge.

It's that time of year again — can you smell it in the air? It's laptop season! The world is gathered in Berlin for the glorious release of one hundred and forty million new laptops (all numbers approximate). We've welcomed Paul from off the internet, and shared with him all of this week's new wares. And oh, what wares! In addition to the slew of laptops, today brought word that Google and Apple are engaged in some very high-level discussions about patents. We also got a look at what Bezos and co. have been up to when they're not watching episodes of Parks and Rec on Amazon Instant. All that and more, from your internet-free pal Paul Miller. And all in 90 seconds! He's so efficient, that Paul.

loor some thousands of miles away from my precious 90 Seconds on The Verge — a child less than 70 minutes old that I cannot look directly upon from here at IFA. Oh sure, I write to often — as I have been wont to do from the start, a letter that's always 90 seconds in length (or so my editor likes to let me pretend). And of course, the child has many daddies that are all there taking care of him. And even more so, having David Pierce as a surrogate daddy is all well and good... but I just miss the little guy so much. Maybe he'll fly in for a daytrip in Berlin. That'd be nice. He looks so good today without me there. I'm so proud. But oh, oh, the longing. Stories of the day: Reddit Donate launches for nonprofit crowdfunding: 'no gimmicks, no tricks, just buttons' Google wants to help you register to vote Suspected multi-million dollar Bitcoin pyramid scheme shuts down, investors revolt

Happy Monday, readers — we're glad to see you've made it through this emotional weekend. It's hard to believe, but the long judicial ordeal that was Apple v. Samsung is over. Fortunately for Samsung, the gadget maker has IFA 2012 and a new Windows 8 tablet to distract from the pain of what can only be characterized as a thorough loss. Meanwhile, citizens of the world celebrated the life of Neil Armstrong, the first human being to walk on the moon. That and more in today's 90 Seconds on The Verge.

This week was either the calm before the storm, or the eye of the hurricane, or that moment when you're just about to jump out of the plane and you're only about 46 percent sure you packed your parachute right. Next week brings IFA, followed by events from Nokia, Amazon, and Motorola. Then, rumor has it we'll be seeing a new iPhone. But that's not to say this week wasn't packed with news. Even on this summery Friday, Samsung vs. Apple took a new international turn, Amazon gave Prime members to watch this weekend, and Microsoft teased its tablet caveman-style. So take a minute and a half to soak it all in during this week's final 90 Seconds on The Verge.

Big news, folks: we've decided to change the Verge logo. Picture it with us: a square made of squares, each a different color. Next to it, our name, with the letters combined in weird ways that are going to make kerning fanboys crazy... sorry, what? Microsoft already did that? Oh. Well, at least we've got Nilay Patel to fill us in on everything that happened today, from logos to apps and everything in between. While the Samsung vs. Apple jury deliberates, here's today's tech world in a minute and a half — it's 90 Seconds on The Verge. Oh, and if Microsoft comes out with something called "90 Seconds on Microsoft," you be sure and let us know. Those guys steal all of our ideas.

Dan! Hey, Dan! Hey, new guy! How are you doing? Enjoying your first week? We're glad to hear... what's that? Hazing? No, we don't do hazing. That's uncouth. We're a civilized organization. But hey, since you're here, could you just stand on the 'x' for us. Yep, that's great. Actually, a little bit to the left. Perfect. Now stand up straight. Smile a little more, it makes you sound better. Happier. Act like you want to be here. (Hey Robbie, can we move that light a bit? There we go.) Okay, give us just one second... just focusing... okay, great! Alright, look at camera one and start with "Hey this is Dan..."