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Bobby Kotick didn't think Blizzard was worth $7 million in '96
Have you ever looked at something new on the auction house and thought "Who would pay a thousand gold for that," only to find that months later the item has skyrocketed in price and you missed a golden opportunity to pick it up on the cheap? Activision kingpin Bobby Kotick might make the same analogy. If he played video games, I mean. The Escapist clued us in to this little story: back in 1995, Kotick was eating lunch with some folks from Davidson & Associates, and they told him that they had just bought up-and-coming software developer Blizzard Entertainment for the tidy sum of seven million dollars -- a number that a baffled Kotick believed to be ridiculous. At the time, Blizzard's claim to fame was Warcraft: Orcs vs. Humans, and ... that's pretty much it, save for a few one-off games like Blackthorne and The Lost Vikings. Kotick called them nothing more than a "contract developer" and remarked that they weren't worth seven million bucks. Of course, later that year, Blizzard released Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, which catapulted them into gaming history forever. Thirteen years later, in 2008, Kotick (and Activision) paid seven billion dollars to acquire Blizzard. For those not into mathematics, that's one thousand times more than what Davidson & Associates paid. Well, he was right about one thing. They definitely weren't worth seven million bucks. He just didn't know how right he was at the time.
Bobby Universal Remote for the iPhone review
Anyone who has played with a capacitive touch screen has probably dreamed about using it as a universal remote, which is why we've been quick to try out just about every iPhone/iPod Touch remote software out there. The latest one to make its way into our setup is the Bobby Universal Remote from Cremote. The app runs $20 at the App Store and leverages one of our favorite pieces of home theater gear, the Global Cache´ GC100-6 -- which unfortunately sells for over $100. So basically Bobby is the software and the GC-100 is the IR emitter, but the real question is, how well does it work?
