EW Magazine Includes Cellphone for Live Tweeting Ad
You know that cell phones are dirt cheap when magazines include an advertisement with one built in. Such was the case with an issue of Entertainment Weekly published on October 5th. If you were one of a lucky 1,000 people, the back advertisement for the CW featured a small, live-updating display showing tweets mentioning the CW.
People were, of course, curious how they did this. Well, Mashable tore down the issue, and what they found was interesting. In order pull off the feat, EW built an entire cellphone running Android into each issue. It had a SIM card and everything 3G, and people even managed to send SMS messages from the device.
When Mashable talked to the CW, this is what they had to say about the stunt: “the ad is powered by a custom-built, smartphone-like Android device with an LED screen and 3G connectivity; it was manufactured in China.” But it does more than function a bit like a smartphone: it basically is a cellphone. It looks like they found a Chinese manufacturer willing to take old hardware stock and attach a cheap, low-power screen. The magazine has a cellphone shell under its cover, granted only half of one. There is a full QWERTY keyboard, a camera, a T-Mobile 3G card, and even a USB port which lets you recharge the thing. This is a cell phone.
Mashable has even managed to identify the device CW used: an $86.00 cell phone made by ABO.
It might be a little late to get your hands on one, though; only 1,000 copies of the digitally-enhanced issue were made, and I'm sure those quickly sold out to collectors. Still, though, it's nice to see what cheap technology allows these days.
| Template by