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At least a decade ago, a major magazine had a disposable chip inside for... I don't remember why.

Does anyone remember this?




I remember receiving this video ad for a Chevy pickup truck in a print issue of Popular Mechanics circa 2015 [0]. When disassembled, it consisted of a screen, battery, speaker, and circuit board. What the article doesn't say is that the circuit board had a micro-USB port which when connected to a computer mounted the internal storage as a drive, with the four-or-so videos it played accessible. I actually managed to find an existing home video video with the correct format (I wasn't familiar with FFmpeg at the time) and when one of the internal videos was replaced with mine (with the same filename), it would play instead. I believe the micro-USB also charged the internal LiPo battery as well, as I don't recall being worried too much about battery life. I probably still have the thing somewhere! [0] https://www.tubefilter.com/2015/04/16/chevrolet-video-ads-in...


That's closer to what I remember, but I don't think the advertisement was about a Chevy Pickup.

Apparently the group that did this advertisement was: https://www.americhip.com/ourwork/?product=product-magazine-...

And they have a whole slew of magazine inserts that they've done. I'm convinced now that I saw one of these magazine inserts, but not the one on the Chevy. Thanks for helping me track it down! I'm really close...

EDIT: I found it!! https://www.americhip.com/ourwork/microsoft-wi-fi-hotspot.ht...

It was this advertisement, I remember the cover. Sorry I wasn't very specific earlier, but I didn't realize how many "throwaway computers inside of magazines" that there were. I guess I assumed this was a one-off event with Microsoft's 365 WiFi cloud (now that I remember the chip, lol).


Esquire October 2008 e-ink cover?


Someone hacked that too!

Hacking the Esquire e-ink cover

https://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2008-09/hacking-esquire-e...


A good guess but that's not what I was thinking of...

My example was all the above except the chip was centerfold in the middle of the magazine. Not on the cover...

I'm surprised this happened more than once however.




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