Archive for April, 1999

MAYBE THE MULTIMEDIA’S THE PROBLEM

April 9, 1999

“If you put multimedia, a leather skirt, and lipstick on a grandmother and take her to a nightclub, she’s still not going to get lucky.”

Be Inc. chariman Jean-Louis Gassee, on Microsoft’s plans to dress up the DOS-based Windows 98 for one more release, The New York Times, 9 April 1999

OUR DESIGN ELEMENTS, OUR SELVES

April 8, 1999

“Our campaign, which uses human form as a design element, draws attention to similarities of successful individuals and the Palm V.”

3Com spokesperson Liz Brooking, explaining how new ads for her company’s handheld devices that featured a naked model portraying a fictitious dancer really weren’t about objectifying women, The Wall Street Journal, 8 April 1999 (paid subscription required)

EVERYBODY FAKES IT, BUT NO ONE TELLS

April 7, 1999

“These stocks really defy analysis anyway, although we can all fake it for a while.”

Robert Dickey, managing director of technical research at Dain Rauscher Wessels, offering a really technical analysis of the Internet stock surge, CBS MarketWatch, 7 April 1999

THE URL WITH THE MOST CAKE

April 6, 1999

“We don’t think the word ‘magazine’ properly describes what we do any more.”

Salon editor-in-chief David Talbot, on how his online publication’s redesign into a network of Web sites had nothing to do with its very recent acquisition of the salon.com domain name, News.com, 5 April 1999

MICROSOFT RESEARCH: WE TRY HARDER

April 5, 1999

“If people don’t tell you you’re stupid periodically, you lose your incentive to try hard.”

Microsoft research chief Rick Rashid, revealing that the secret purpose of his $3 billion-a-year division is to boost Bill Gates’s self-esteem by hiring university professors for him to insult, The Washington Post, 5 April 1999