90 Seconds on The Verge

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near Tannhäuser Gate. LTE service activated in the presence of the Queen. I've seen two major companies let a jury of nine civilians decide the fate of their intellectual property and millions — if not billions — of dollars in damages. I've watched magazines rise and fall as sands in the hourglass fall.

This episode is dedicated to James Edward Franco. Born April 19th, 1978, the multihyphenate first came to prominence with the 1999 cult classic Freaks and Geeks. He has since been credited over 75 roles as an actor while simultaneously trying his hand at writing and directing. Expressing a strong interest in continuing education, Franco has at various times enrolled at UCLA, Columbia University, New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, Brooklyn College, North Carolina's Warren Wilson College, and Rhode Island School of Design. He recently re-teamed with Spider-Man director Sam Raimi for Oz: The Great and Powerful, which is due in theater next year. Needless to say, Franco has led an incredibly interesting and accomplished life. None of this, however, makes up for that awful Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 video.

Whereas yesterday's host-with-the-most was a bit on the tall side, today's superstar newscaster Adrianne Jeffries is by her own admission the bringing balance to the world. And it's been a crazy hectic night — unusual for a Friday, with so much news breaking just as the weekend is about to begin. That makes us really lucky to have Adrianne and her expertise on tap for today. Without further ado...

Little known fact about Josh Topolsky: he's really, really tall. Okay, that might not the best way of introducing an episode, but we thought the world at large would like to know that all tripods required extra platforms to film today's episode. And the camera operators, too. Very well known fact about Ross Miller: I'm clearly filling up random nonsense in these descriptions and this has been going on for some time now. The good news is, if you want actual news, knowledge, and entertainment, we have just the episode for you! Stories of the day: Instagram 3.0 bets on location with Photo Map, adds infinite scrolling Apple pitching a set-top box to cable operators, reports WSJ Judge Koh asks Apple's attorneys if they're 'smoking crack'

People of the world: this is not a GIF. But wait, don't leave! It's something more. It's something better. It's a long-form GIF with an audio component. One that's capable of high-quality visuals but loads more gradually, less choppy. A GIF you can jump around in. And it has a name that isn't hotly debated. Now, you may be worried about this Brave New World of "video" — that's what we call it, which is some foreign term for "GIF with enhancements." Thomas Houston has taught us so much.

Few people in this world know there is a dark, dark side to Ellis Hamburger. What began as any other pre-taping rehearsal soon took a bleak turn. As with any of the prep work we do, host and writer lock themselves in a sound proof room and go through the topics and script, tweak to match the host's needs and personality. Everything was going so cheery until one segment caught his eye. One topic. One newsbrief that he just could not believe would pass before him. Filled with what could only be described with pure, unadulterated rage and vitriol, Ellis flipped a table so hard that the legs pierced the ceiling, a position in which the unfortunate piece of furniture remains to this day. Needless to say, we cut the Story-That-Must-Not-Be-Named, but you can still hear all about Google and Frommer's, Sony's new "BOGO" initiative for the PS Vita, and the evolution of the Pebble smartwatch — all in 90 seconds flat. Stories of the day: Google buys Frommer's travel guides from John Wiley & Sons Sony announces Cross Buy: Buy a game on PS3, get Vita version for free Pebble smartwatch user interface demoed in preview video

Sea otters will hold hands while they sleep to avoid drifting apart from each other. While that assuredly says something to behavior patterns of these marine mammals, more importantly, it makes for a popular YouTube video. The only logical conclusion to draw from this, of course, is that we need to figure out how to get sea otters hosting 90 Seconds on The Verge. Give us time, but rest assured it'll happen. Stories of the day: 'Jaws' available on Blu-ray August 14th, with remastered audio and restored visuals Lenovo, Dell, and Samsung Windows RT tablets and laptops confirmed New iPhone coming into focus as dock connector, motherboard, and assembly photos emerge

Oh hey, it's the famous Dan Rubenstein from SB Nation making his first appearance as host on our humble little show! Couldn't be happier that he let us film him in a professional setting like that. Real trooper, that Dan. Turns out he knows everything there is about Google, the FTC, Facebook, and Nikon's lineup of professional DSLRs commonly used at fast-paced events. On with the show!

So, this happened. It's not something we're really able to comprehend or come to terms with yet, so let's just ignore the elephant in the room? Did we say elephant? Ignore us.

Fun fact: in an effort to stay three steps ahead of the curve, we filmed an episode of 90 Seconds on The Verge in 96 frames per second. Symptoms of watching the rough cut included nausea, headaches, temporary loss of vision and / or hearing, obsessive twitching, more nausea, and the urge to look upon reality as an illusion and the display itself a glimpse into a more real parallel dimension. Needless to say, it was powerful stuff. In the end, we cut the framerate to 24fps and used motion blur to fix some of the choppiness. We won't say which episode it was — if you can't figure it out yourself, it's probably for the best.

In the future, our thick-rimmed heads-up displays will blast push notifications and fine-tuned sponsored ads at 4K resolution with a pixel density of 3,000ppi — but alas, only a 60Hz refresh rate. Compromises and all. The biggest tech-related epidemic facing our children will be running into trees while trying to watch YouTube videos on their HUDs, but fortunately the act of bumping and falling adds about 100 to your Nike+ Fuel Score. So that's a win. Yay, future!

Guys, remember that time when we landed on Mars? That was pretty awesome, right? You stayed up until 3 AM watching it, right? Since you did, and subsequently slept through this balmy Monday, we've tracked down all the news (on this world and every other) and boiled it down to just 90 seconds. You slept through a big day, too: the war between Apple and Google took a new turn, Wikipedia went down and took all the world's knowledge with it, and Samsung showed off the new Galaxy Note 10.1 (again), which will finally be available for purchase this month. Oh, and remember how we WENT TO MARS?

Caution: today's episode of 90 Seconds on The Verge may very well be our most concentrated yet. The news-to-second ratio is very high today. So is the antagonism: Apple and Samsung, EA and Zynga, Microsoft and a mysterious-yet-important European partner. At least NASA is spreading the love — and of course by love we mean cash money. Let Adi Robertson break it down for you.

Page 176, paragraph two of the Internet's Guide to Offline Paul Miller (paperback version) explains that you can, in fact, give Paul a newsbit that was reported initially online provided it's less than 100 words per individual news item. According to the piece, "you cannot, however, answer any follow-up questions — should the initial text-based newsbrief not provide all the relevant information, Paul will have to just be confused. Don't forget to have fun."

This is the first episode of the new series about the construction of Polygon.com