


Television Network Embeds Android Device In Magazine Ads 115
Revotron writes "Readers of Entertainment Weekly might be shocked to find their magazine is a good bit heavier than normal this week. US-based broadcaster CW placed an ad in Entertainment Weekly which uses a fully-functional 3G Android device, a T-Mobile SIM card, and a specialized app to display short video advertisements along with the CW Twitter feed. Writers at Mashable were willing to geek out with a Swiss Army knife and a video camera to give us all the gory details as they tore it down piece-by-piece to discover the inner workings of CW's new ad."
Where are they? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Where are they? (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly, anyone who's first hearing about this from Slashdot never had a chance!
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Where are they? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
Then you haven't looked everywhere.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, but only 1000 of the magazines contain the electronic ad, and unfortunately they seem to be hard to come by. I've looked everywhere and have yet to find one.
Really? You think the people in the shop/delivery truck didn't grab them...?
Re: (Score:2)
Link to the article and video (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the direct link to the actual article and video: http://mashable.com/2012/10/02/ew-has-smartphone-inside/#92851Some-Chinese [mashable.com]
Re:Link to the article and video (Score:5, Funny)
The mystery of Android's high market share but low browser share is finally solved.
Idiot commentators (Score:2, Insightful)
Interesting to see the tear down, but could they have found a more annoying couple of idiots for the commentary?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
It was pure comedy.
What exact is an "old school USB port"? Looked like a normal mini-USB port to me (ya?)
Senior tech analyst? (Score:5, Interesting)
I like how g4tv's "Senior tech analyst" cant tell lcd display from camera module.
The battery is refueling? WHAT? Watching that video is painful.
Re: (Score:1)
I know, i was cringing, they guy also seems like a bit of a prick.
The girl does seems more knowledgeable and alot better composed.
Re: (Score:2)
I know, i was cringing, they guy also seems like a bit of a prick. The girl does seems more knowledgeable and alot better composed.
Sadly that's how Tech reporting works. They feel the need to have a bald man in glasses presenting, as eye-candy for the geeks. Sex sells.
Re: (Score:1)
Are you serious? Half of her lines where repeating what he said.
Re: (Score:2)
But when she says it, it's sexy!
Actually, that sounds like a "that's what she said" joke in reverse.
Re:Senior tech analyst? (Score:4, Interesting)
Only thing I was interested in was, can you take the SIM out and will it work in another device?
Re: (Score:2)
Only thing I was interested in was, can you take the SIM out and will it work in another device?
And also what are the details of the account associated with it? How much data will you be able to download with it? On what date does the account end and the sim becomes useless?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Senior tech analyst? (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep in mind you're going into this, slouched back in your chair, with full knowledge that this thing is an Android phone.
They're delving into this for the first time expecting maybe a more sophisticated version of the Esquire eInk cover. [makezine.com] The last thing they expect is to find a repurposed phone with pretty much all the hardware intact. Plus they're recording it live. They're figuring out things on the spot and thinking out loud so it won't be a boringly quiet video. If you had the magazine ad in front of you and picking it apart, you too would be saying or thinking a series of "what/why the fsck is that piece there?"
Re: (Score:2)
good thing directv dropped this crap and pulled VS (Score:2)
good thing directv dropped this crap and pulled VS for some time about 2 years ago.
Comcast sucks and NBC will soon be pulled down to the same level of crap.
Only 1000 copies, so you probably won't get one (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, this is cool, but I can't go out to Barnes and Noble and pick up a copy of this week's magazine and expect to find some fun electronics inside.
More info from original source @ mashable [mashable.com]
Re: (Score:2)
According to the original mashable article (http://mashable.com/2012/10/02/twitter-entertainment-weekly-ad/) The 1000 copies were only distributed in New York and Los Angeles.
Re:See this PR-SCAM before! (Score:5, Insightful)
How exactly is this a scam?
What exactly will I lose if I fall for it? And what would falling for it entail?
I'm a little unclear on what the scam part is here.....
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I would argue that successful marketing, by definition, is a scam. It's about tricking you into thinking things you wouldn't ordinarily think, want things you wouldn't ordinarily want, and dislike things you wouldn't ordinarily dislike.
Re: (Score:2)
Big question - Should I buy EW this week? (Score:2)
Is it worthwhile buying for any reason other than "Oh look .. cool shit!"???
Re: (Score:2)
But no, not if they are already gone, and only found in NY and LA.
Most awesom (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Has apple ever made anything original.
Actually, the iPhone, while not strictly "original", was a MASSIVE step forward in the smartphone world. At the time, the next best thing was the Treo which came with one of two crappy operating systems, and had a low-rez, stylus based touchscreen. At the time, watching SJ's keynote announcing and demonstrating the iPhone was a gigantic "Holy Shit I Want One!" moment for people like me who were trying to make real use of the smartphones of the time and being constantly frustrated by their limitations. (I
Not that surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
If you custom-build a board, and cost-engineer it so that it just has the components you actually need, you are spending a whole bunch of money up-front (mostly, the salaries of the engineers who do the custom board design). This will pay off if you ship a large volume. This up-front cost is called "NRE", for "non-recurring engineering costs"; the final cost of your product is NRE divided by the number of units you ship, plus the actual cost of the unit (parts and assembly).
If you know you are shipping exactly 1000 magazines with this gimmick inside, a custom board makes no sense; the NRE would totally wipe out the per-board savings. The cheapest option would be a stack of pre-built boards that someone has lying around, maybe from a phone that was current technology two years ago. It wouldn't surprise me if the ROM contains an off-the-shelf build of Android, just with one additional app installed and set always to run at boot-up. They could have built a custom ROM image of Android, for example with the phone app removed, but why bother? (And clearly the phone app was not in fact removed, as the Mashable folks used it to place a call.)
steveha
what about the LIVE SIM card and not removeing (Score:2)
what about the LIVE SIM card and not removing the phone app removed and rest of the OS can put the CW on the hook for all kinds of phone fees and they better hope some does not say pick this up and goes out side of the usa and then CW is paying like $20 a meg for data.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, because if the OS is exposed, all sim cards are in rape me mode?
First of all, roaming is something you must enable on the sim card profile, this can be restricted by the pin2 code and/or on operator level.
Secondly, depending on technology on the operator side, it's fairly easy to restrict the card to x MB of data and disable mobile calls.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
I'm fairly confident is a A810 Wcdma 3G they are using.
It cost about $35 when buying a single unit. But you could get it for less than $25 if you buy at least 500.
I think we may see more of this...
DOH! (Score:2)
Crap, I got this issue and I tossed it. I didn't even know that was there! I do remember those ads pages, but not its video.
Are they spying on us?
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, of course they are.
But probably not with this device.
The guys in the video are really fucking stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know who this mashable guys are, but they are truly fucking stupid. It took them 10 minutes of staring at what was OBVIOUSLY a fucking smartphone mobo in order to realize that it was one. And they sounded surprised!. Hey, you said it was playing video and receiving tweets, so what the hell did they expect it to be, a vacuum cleaner? They also looked at what was clearly a phone camera, missing the lens and with the CCD exposed, and they where like "is that a CCD, I think it looks like a CCD. Dude, you've got something shaped like an smartphone motherboard, with a smartphone battery, a smartphone LCD, a SIM card, and a USB port, and you wonder about what it is? The funniest part is that the article introduces them as "The technical wizards at Mashable". WTF.
Re: (Score:1)
Only thing I can think is they are playing down to the lowest common denominator, in which case, dumb or smart, they are pretty good actors.
Re: (Score:2)
Obviously calling them technical wizards was in jest, but you had to go and take everything at face value. Are you related to buzz killington?
Re: (Score:3)
They spent most of those 10 minutes saying "It looks like a blackberry". So I don't think it's fair to say they didn't know it was a smartphone.
Re: (Score:3)
If you think you can do better, by all means open a tech website, have a better product to ap
Re: (Score:2)
Shouldn't you ask what I do for a living before assuming it doesn't involve tearing apart unknown devices?
I own a software development company, and a big part of my day is bringing in weird shit from china, tearing it apart, figuring out what it is, how it works, identifying where it came from, going up the chain until I get to the actual manufacturer, then negotiating a bulk price.
I do this with DVR capture cards and external capture devices (our products are linux-based, so I end up tearing apart lots of
Re: (Score:2)
So why are smart phones so expensive. (Score:1)
If the innards are cheap enough that you can gut a phone and put it in a cheap magazine, how come cell phones cost so much? I call bullshit on $600.
Re: (Score:3)
Bottom of the barrel smartphones are not that expensive, closer to $200 maybe less than that. Still too much to include in regular copies of a magazine though.
This was NOT in most copies of the magazine, it was in a tiny fraction and seems pretty clearly to have been done as a publicity stunt.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
But you could get it for less than $25 if you order atleast 500, and i also think you could reduce that price when buying without the cover. If they did well in negotiating I'm guessing around $10-20/unit
Re: (Score:2)
Looking at this example of a bottom-of-the-barrel phone and saying "hey, how come fancy smartphones cost so much" is like looking at the cheapest of Chinese-made cars and saying "how come that BMW over there costs so much"
so who will get hit with roaming fees if this used (Score:2)
so who will get hit with roaming fees if this is used out side of the USA???
and can I call overseas with it's sim as well?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Because you've watched too much Arrested Development? (Great show, though. New season coming out early next year! Everyone watch it!)
Multitool geek (Score:2)
Writers at Mashable were willing to geek out with a Swiss Army knife and a video camera...
Since we're geeking out, let's get our tools right. it's a Leatherman Squirt.
Re: (Score:1)
I really wish you wouldn't get your tool out in public.....
Re: (Score:2)
Especially the one named "Leatherman Squirt".
Re: (Score:2)
PR Stupidity (Score:2)
I'd think they'd get a better, more wide-ranging PR boost if they just stuck $50 bills in their magazines instead. Everyone will try to be one of the lucky 1,000 people who gets one, and most will fail to do so.
Really, if you want a low-end Android device, you can get one for damn near nothing. How about an Alcatel Venture from Virgin Mobile for $50... No contract, buy as many as you want, ready to use Android device. Or how about a 7" Tablet for $50 [walmart.com] from everybody's favorite retailer?
OMG - It's a phone! (Score:1)
Cheapskate WB... (Score:2)
... only put 1000 of these on newsstands in NY and LA. Nothing in flyover country, nothing for subscribers.
I've been looking all over for one of these for tinkering -- should be possible to sideload an app at the very least, and it looks like a spare BB trackball might make navigation of menus possible (I think I have an old Crackberry floating around here somewhere).
If nothing else, this looks like a fun device to hack: break it, and you've lost a few bucks at worst, and the LiON battery alone is worth th
PRINT STRIKES BACK (Score:1)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stupid (Score:4, Interesting)
Android was designed as an advertising channel. Seems to be working as intended.
Re:Stupid (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Android is Linux...without all the good stuff.
But it's still linux, and that's plenty good enough 'round these parts, fella.
Re: (Score:2)
How in the planet of fuck did this get modded up?
Re:Stupid and wasteful (Score:1)
Pssst! Hey! (Score:3, Funny)
Zip up, your persecution complex is showing.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
If iOS was free and flexible enough for a project like this, you'd have a point. It would be "the shit". But it's not, it's locked-down proprietary garbage meant to keep Apple in control of every device that runs it.
Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)
I agree It's a shame Apple won't open up iOS so that we can fill up our landfills with magazine advertisements that are capable of phoning home.
But, hey, it's running Android! Fap fap fap!
Re: (Score:1)
If 1000 copies can fill landfills I'd be supprised.
More like this kept 1000 shit phones out of the landfills and in the hands of collectors.
Re: (Score:2)
[iOS is] locked-down proprietary garbage
On my Android phone I need to change some paramters in dhcp.conf. It is apparently owned by root.
To do so, I apparently need to identify a vulnerability in a binary which will lead to root privilege escalation.
What's locked-down now?
Why did you buy your phone from such a consumer-hostile company if you wanted to do such things? If you want Android, you have plenty to choose from, the complete continuum from locked down systems that brick or factory reset themselves after installing an unauthorized bootstrap all the way to ones where you just plug it in and do a few adb commands. That's part of the beauty: you have choice.
With Apple you have no choice, at least non-superficial choices. You can get the locked down iPhone 5 in black or th
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah yeah, btw, lovely purple picture you have there, is that an acid-filter?
Lol. Somebody is jealous of the purple pictures...