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People and EW! launch a joint online video network
Time Inc. has announced that it's launching PEN, an online video network serving clips and shows from People and Entertainment Weekly. The service is free, supported by advertising and will broadcast more than 300 hours of original programming in the first 12 months of operation. The rest of the on-demand schedule will be filled by an "extensive library" of on-demand clips from Time Inc's library of shows. PEN arrives tomorrow, September 13th, and will also syndicate shows from other Time Inc. properties, including Time and Sports Illustrated.
Time's 'Life VR' will 'showcase the world through virtual reality'
NextVR just announced its virtual reality broadcasting tech will bring live concerts home in a partnership with Live Nation, and today it's announcing a team-up with Time Inc. Life Magazine has historically provided a peek into different areas of the world via photojournalism, and the new Life VR project will offer "immersive, next-level storytelling" from Time Inc. media properties like Time Magazine, People, Sports Illustrated and Entertainment Weekly. Word of the launch came at today's NewFronts event in NYC, and the two say it should result in three to five VR events each year, available in the NextVR app.
Save 'Sports Illustrated' articles anywhere you want, automatically
What was that? You wanted to get some recipes going for news-content automation in addition to push notifications to grab an umbrella for tomorrow? Well, lucky you because Time Inc. announced it's adding IFTTT (If This Then That) support for five of its publications: Entertainment Weekly, InStyle, People, Sports Illustrated, and of course Time. The outfit says it's using in-house tech to make it easier to automate stuff like sending all NFL articles to Pocket so you can read 'em on the subway, for example. Another is getting a weekly movie summary sent straight to your email from Entertainment Weekly. This update benefits both Android and iOS users alike and it's available right this minute. Now its just up to you to see if too many cooks can spoil these recipes.
Apple begins marketing the iPhone 5s in magazines
MacRumors tips us off to the fact that Apple has begun advertising the iPhone 5s in various magazines. Up until recently, there hasn't been much advertising in the way of the iPhone 5s. Indeed, most iPhone advertising over the past few weeks has focused on the iPhone 5c with a series of really great and delightful commercials. Apple has also been advertising the iPhone 5c heavily via billboards in large cities like Chicago, San Francisco and New York. As for the 5s, MacRumors notes that the following ad appears on the back of this week's edition of The New Yorker. The tagline reads: Your finger is the password. Touch ID was created not only to protect all the important and personal information on your phone, but to be so easy to use, you'll actually use it. Its state-of-the-art technology learns your unique fingerprint, so you can unlock your phone or even authorize purchases with just a simple touch. Touch ID. Only on iPhone 5s. It stands to reason that with the holiday shopping season slowly creeping up on us, Apple will soon begin to ramp up its iPhone 5s marketing. This is admittedly nothing more than speculation, but perhaps Apple has been slow to roll out iPhone 5s ads because supply continues to remain strained across the country. After all, if you take a look at the fine print in the advert above, you'll note that it says "Limited Availability" -- though perhaps that's in specific reference to the gold model. Similar ads have reportedly been spotted in other high-circulation magazines such as Entertainment Weekly and Sports Illustrated.
Entertainment Weekly print edition comes with a 'smartphone-like Android device'
If there's one advantage a print magazine still has over an online publication, it's the ability to offer all manner of crazy freebies glued to its pages. Maybelline samples, CDROMs packing the latest version of WinZip, or -- in tomorrow's edition of Entertainment Weekly -- something that actually looks pretty enticing. Flick it open to the right page and you'll spot an LCD display that magically displays video ads and live Tweets from the CW Network. Intrigued by how such a thing could function, Mashable did a teardown (literally) and discovered all the ingredients of a budget Android smartphone, including components which aren't strictly necessary for the task at hand: a 3G modem with T-Mo SIM (which seems to have some degree of voice connectivity), a full-sized battery, USB port and even a partially-built QWERTY keyboard. Suddenly, that $50 myTouch doesn't seem so cheap.
The October 5th edition of Entertainment Weekly has a built-in Twitter feed (really)
Youth-oriented TV drama factory The CW is hoping that Entertainment Weekly readers are interested in taking Twitter from smartphones and computers to the printed page -- er, at least a printed page with an LCD insert attached. The October 5th issue of EW features a miniature LCD display with the six most recent posts to its Twitter feed (@CW_Network), as well as a "short video showing stars of new CW shows," according to The New York Times. Yes, seriously -- an LCD screen with some form of internet connection embedded directly into copies of a physical magazine. "Emily Owens M.D." -- a new show on The CW -- is the first to receive direct promo treatment via the magazine's LCD display. It's unclear if all issues of the Oct. 5 edition will contain the embedded video screen (only 50,000 issues of a 2009 EW issue ran an embedded Pepsi video ad, for instance). CW executive VP Rick Haskins said the company's social media team overseeing the project will only filter out "profanity or other unacceptable language." As for negative tweets, however, those are fair game. Not that we'd encourage such things, but this setup sounds all too ripe for exploitation by the denizens of the internet. Do with the information as you will, unscrupulous readers.
Spotify launches Play Button in bid to become the web's default music player
The music streaming wars have been heating up a good deal, as of late, thanks in no small part Spotify's long-awaited US launch. Since then, Rhapsody bought its one-time chief competitor Napster, both Pandora and Rdio underwent major redesigns and Mog finally launched a Windows client. Naturally, all of this has proven good news for the consumer, as services have a features arms race of sorts, gunning for the top spot. None of the contenders are quite perfect, of course -- when Spotify launched, for example, we couldn't help but note the absence of a browser-based option of the sort employed by Rdio and Pandora. Today's announcement still leaves open that possibility, but it does mark a new web-focused strategy for the company -- on that could arguably have a much larger impact on Spotify's fortunes than a simple browser-based UI.Today marks the launch of the Spotify Play Button -- a name we assume the Swedish company settled on before Google announced the whole Android Market rebranding thing. The button is, essentially, a widget that allows site owners to embed songs and playlists directly from Spotify's massive catalog of songs. It's a simple idea, sure, but well executed, it could prove a major win in the service's attempt to stand out in the ever-more competitive world of music streaming. After all, embedding music on sites has long been a fairly haphazard deal -- unless you happen to have a deal with a proprietary player, it means snapping up something like a YouTube video, which often live in, at best, a legal gray area.
Time Inc. aims to please advertisers and your eyes, making all mags tablet-friendly by year's end
Do you love reading Time magazine on your tablet, but wish you had the same luxury with all of its related offerings? Oh boy, do we have fantastic news for you. As it stands, select Time Inc. publications are supported on the iPad, Android Marketplace, TouchPad, and Next Issue Media's store, but now the company has announced plans to make all 21 of its mags available on tablets by the year's end. Furthermore, support for the Nook Color will be added by the end of August with digital versions of Time, Sports Illustrated, People, and Fortune. Current subscribers to the print editions won't be left out either when it all rolls out, as they'll be able to opt-in for free upgrades with digital access. The decision is apparently tied to increasing "digital reach" for advertisers, but hey, ad-support isn't totally lame. Right? Full PR just past the break.
CBS's video ad for print not much better than its video ads for TV
Call us crazy, but this whole idea of embedding video in magazines (just like e-ink on the cover of Esquire) seems rather callous. Really, what better way is there to rub publishers' noses in the "death of print media" than by taking a perfectly good magazine and embedding a TV commercial? Apparently CBS doesn't see it that way, so they're taking Americhip's "multisensorizing" technology to an ad insert that will run in the September 18 issue of Entertainment Weekly. The ad, which will only be seen by subscribers in the New York and LA markets, plays about 40 minutes of video and, presumably, some crappy audio. We've tracked down a YouTube demo of the device (or similar), and although it does little to change our ornery opinion of the matter, we suppose that if it results in one more Ghost Whisperer fan it'll be worth it. Decide for yourself after the break.
Henry Cavill plays WoW -- Ryan Reynolds doesn't
I was reading my print copy of Entertainment Weekly today, which features their Summer Must List. They listed their Must Dashing Duke as Henry Cavill from The Tudors. Cavill says that World of Warcraft is on his Must List: "It's fairly addictive." In an interview with JustJared.com earlier this year, Cavill said that he also plays Eve Online. As a geekgirl, I say yay to more gamer hunks.In the same issue of EW, their cover boy, Ryan Reynolds discussed his Must List. It included Intervention and Jon & Kate Plus Eight. When asked about his Must Videogame, he said "I don't really play videogames. Is there a way to waste more f-ing time?"I'll field that question, Ryan. Yes, yes there is. Those reality shows that you have spent so much time watching? Yeah, excellent candidates for bigger wastes of time. I watch reality TV, too, but I think that interactive gaming is a much better expenditure of my leisure time. Of course, I'm a bit biased, but I think that if people compared their hours spent watching TV to the hours that gamers spend playing, the numbers would be similar.Now I have to decide: desecrate some flames? Or watch The Deadliest Catch? Regardless of my decision, it won't be watching Van Wilder, but that has nothing to do with Mr. Reynolds' view of gaming.
TiVo + Entertainment Weekly suggested recordings = ?
Look TiVo, it's not like we enjoy having you on deathwatch, so the next thing we want to hear about is HD Amazon Unbox rentals, or a do everything tru2way box or...something. Direct marketing via our set-top box and this latest announcement -- automatic recordings based on suggestions from Time Warner's (the parent company of this blog) Entertainment Weekly -- just aren't cutting it. Broadband-enabled TiVo users can subscribe to EW's "What to Watch" picks and download EW.com video clips to watch on their TV. As much as we enjoy telling ( and being told) what to watch, most of us have a good idea of what we'd like to see on TV already. As part of a strategy it claims as a way to differentiate itself from generic cable & satellite DVRs it's already regarded as being significantly better than, it's not very inspiring.
Stephen King speaks out against violent video game bill
The oft-proclaimed "Master of Horror" never was much of a gamer -- he'll be the first to admit that. That's probably for the best; it would be hard to consistently produce the pants-soiling stories he's known for if he spent his days wasting away in front of his computer, looking for a PUG for the Hellfire Citadel. However, that doesn't mean he'll sit idly by as the gaming industry gets remorselessly hassled by The Man.In a recent column for Entertainment Weekly, Stephen King decried HB 1423, a pending bill in the Massachusetts state legislature, which would outright ban the sale of "violent video games" to minors -- effectively circumventing the ESRB ratings system altogether. King, who knows a thing or two about violence, dissects the bill as eloquently as you'd expect, saying that politicians use pop culture as a "whipping boy," to illicit a passionate response from fans of the beleaguered medium, and to ignore "the elephants in the living room." Wait, you mean the popularity of violent video games isn't the biggest crisis facing the country? Get out of town!
Entertainment Weekly honors Joystiq in top 25 list
While we're physically unable to pat ourselves on the back (freak DDR accident, y'know), we thought there might be some interest in seeing your favorite game blog (read: that's us, guys) in dead tree format. We've been selected by the good people at Entertainment Weekly as one of their "25 favorite online entertainment sites!" Part of the gig required us sending in a handful of our favorite online entertainment sites. We chose: the superlative Game Politics, the entertaining and promising GameVideos.com, and the more entertaining than it ought to be Wikipedia. Other notable sites we chose that didn't make the cut included The Escapist, Gamasutra, Gamerankings, and YTMND; some of our choices, namely Wonderland and Penny Arcade, were already chosen by other sites (thankfully); and still others, like Clive Thompson's excellent CollisionDetection.net, we mistakenly left off our list entirely. (Disclosure: Entertainment Weekly is published by Time which is owned by Time Warner who were purchased by AOL to create AOL Time Warner; of course, AOL owns Weblogs, Inc. who in turn own Joystiq, so if you really wanted to be cynical you could follow that corporate trail to a gray, lonely place we call Nepotism. Us, we're going to keep trying to be the best gaming blog on the internet regardless!)
