Gizmodo: ew

CBS and Pepsi, Bored With Plain Old Print Ads, Cram Video Into a Magazine

John Herrman — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:40:00 EDT

That's right, aging, future-minded denizens of the 50s, video magazines are here! Almost. Come fall, Entertainment Weekly will feature the world's first video-screen-in-a-page advertisement, to sell you some TV shows.

CBS and PepsiCo will take out a video-enabled ad, seen above in all its stamp-sized glory, which will pitch TV content to EW subscribers in New York and Los Angeles. The ads will probably be short, but the company that makes the video hardware, Americhip, says it can support up to 40 minutes of video.

Long-form video content in a magazine sounds pretty cool—think a full episode of a TV show in EW, or a mini-documentary in The Economist—but in advertising applications, it's firmly in "gimmick" territory. This blurry shot doesn't tell us much about how video quality is, or how bulky the insert will be. I'm going to make some wagers: Low, and very.

There's an undeniable, retro-futurist draw to the whole thing, but remember what happened last time a magazine shacked up with one of print's technological enemies? It was underwhelming, and a little sad. The emotions of the future, folks!

UPDATE: Advertising Age has some more substantive info on how this thing will actually work:

When Entertainment Weekly readers open the magazine to the ad pages, they will see a small screen flicker on and start to load a video. A brief segment featuring actors from "The Big Bang Theory" will explain how to use the player, while talking about features from Entertainment Weekly and the different video selections a reader can choose. By pressing one of five different buttons, readers can watch a video montage from [a bunch of different shows]

[CNET—~~Image by Caroline McCarthy/CNET~~ Updated with better photo from Ad Age]

Computer Science Majors Get Laid More Than Any Other Kind of Geek

matt buchanan — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:00:00 EDT

Or they lie a lot more than any other geek. This chart shows the percentage of virgins by major at Wellesley. I always knew there was a reason I liked art chicks. [Forwardon via Geekologie]

SeXbox 3600: 10 Times the Sexy Time of an Xbox 360

matt buchanan — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 08:35:43 EST

Oh my god. So, the SeXbox would be a lot less creepy if it was filled with a bunch of obviously sex stuffs—vibrators, condoms, whatever. But it's not. No, it's so much worse than that.

It's just a cosplay costume, some lotion and a roter—rohtah in the original script, but I still have no idea what it is, other than that it uses batteries—which raises so many unnerving little questions. Okay, it actually raises no questions whatsoever, but I was hoping to preserve some little piece of virginal doubt in my mind. Well, um just one: Just who is the costume for? [Akiba Blog via Kotaku]

Fantastic News: Germans Develop Sedative-Free Colonoscope...Err

Matt Buchanan — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 17:15:58 EDT

The invendoscope SC-40 is a colonoscope that uses an inverted sleeve technology which makes it "grow just below the deflection, when advancing, and to shrink, when retreating." Result? Less force on the colon wall making for "minimal" discomfort. Uh huh.

Toss in easy joystick manipulation (Halo 4: The Colon Wars) and a small bending diameter and you have a colonoscopy that's fun for all, or at least one that doesn't require a sedative. But my gut feeling (ha!) says that's probably not going to stop people for asking for them. – Matt Buchanan

Product Page [via Gadget Lab]