{"id":668,"date":"2009-11-20T10:02:02","date_gmt":"2009-11-20T18:02:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/?p=668"},"modified":"2015-07-12T00:24:52","modified_gmt":"2015-07-12T07:24:52","slug":"print-is-dying-and-esquire-is-killing-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/print-is-dying-and-esquire-is-killing-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Print is Dying, and Esquire is Killing It"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/esquire.jpg\" alt=\"Esquire\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-673\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Last year, I was pretty put off by Esquire\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 75th anniversary, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153e-ink\u00e2\u20ac\u009d cover that they slapped on their October 2008 issue. It was obviously just an attempt at pretending that print media isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t dying, but simply, adapting. A very impractical attempt at that; The battery that powered the e-ink implement burnt out quicker than they had expected, and they must have been pretty expensive to produce, because exactly NOBODY actually <em>owns<\/em> a copy of the e-ink version of the cover. It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sent out to subscribers. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even see it on any newsstands when it was supposed to be on display. All I saw was a demo video of it on Esquire\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s website.<\/p>\n<p>This month, Esquire announced their upcoming \u00e2\u20ac\u0153augmented reality\u00e2\u20ac\u009d issue. On some of the pages, you will find garish, barcode-looking elements that, when shown to a webcam-enabled application (yeah, you have to actual download and install stand-alone software) available on the Esquire website, will display on your computer screen a kind of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153living\u00e2\u20ac\u009d overlay of that page, with full-motion video. If that sounds gimmicky, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s because it is. If it sounds glitchy, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s because it very much is. Check out the demo at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.esquire.com\/ar\">http:\/\/www.esquire.com\/ar<\/a>. Even the official demonstration video shows some serious latency that will frustrate you before you even get to try it out yourself.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Robert Downey Jr. on Esquire&#039;s Augmented Reality Cover: A Demo\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wp2z36kKn0s?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I actually still have faith in Esquire\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s original content. I am a subscriber. But what does it say to the casual reader when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been reduced to taking whichever emerging technology that is currently the most buzzworthy, then completely and totally misusing it in order to sell magazines? What more idiotic ideas do Esquire readers have to suffer through? The \u00e2\u20ac\u0153240hz Issue\u00e2\u20ac\u009d maybe? Or, the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Cloud Computing Issue,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d wherein a subscriber might be required to enter a new URL in their browser to read each print page? Those jokes are about as useless and cheeky as this \u00e2\u20ac\u0153augmented reality\u00e2\u20ac\u009d issue, and I am continually putting that name in quotes because I fail to see where exactly \u00e2\u20ac\u0153reality\u00e2\u20ac\u009d makes it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s debut? This is not \u00e2\u20ac\u0153augmented reality,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d this is Augmented Me-sitting-at-my-desk-showing-my-webcam-a-piece-of-paper-like-a-moron.<\/p>\n<p>Gimmicks like this are the print-equivelent to television sitcom \u00e2\u20ac\u0153stunt-casting\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Esquire\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s antics can be reduced down to simply one word: novel. And I use the word \u00e2\u20ac\u0153novel\u00e2\u20ac\u009d here as a negative. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Novel,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d like, completely superfluous and worthy of no preservation. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Novel,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as in the total opposite of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153important.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>(Originally published on <span class=\"removed_link\" title=\"http:\/\/postmodernyuppie.com\/post\/239357300\/rant-print-is-dying-and-esquire-is-killing-it\">The Post-Modern Yuppie<\/span>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last year, I was pretty put off by Esquire\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 75th anniversary, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153e-ink\u00e2\u20ac\u009d cover that they slapped on their October 2008 issue. It was obviously just an attempt at pretending that print media isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t dying, but simply, adapting. A very impractical attempt at that; The battery that powered the e-ink implement burnt out quicker than they [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}