
Microsoft Puts Free Portable WiFi In Forbes Magazine Print Issues - imwhimsical
http://designtaxi.com/news/357287/Microsoft-Puts-Free-Portable-WiFi-In-Forbes-Magazine-Print-Issues/
======
yread
I hate this. All the electronic waste, batteries and whatnot for a 15 day
trial. I hope such a thing wouldn't be allowed in EU with the stricter waste
laws

~~~
adventured
We better stop making many forms of new electronics then, to limit waste. Just
imagine how many millions of USB sticks have been thrown in the trash in just
the last year alone, as they become outdated by newer USB sticks that store
twice as much at half the cost while wasting just as many physical resources!

Do you really need a new iPhone? No you do not. The iPhone 4 will do perfectly
fine for now (according to some random bureaucrat), so the iPhone 5 should be
illegal to sell until further notice.

~~~
astrodust
This is a device that's designed to work for fifteen days and then instantly
become garbage despite being perfectly functional.

Do you really have trouble understanding that part?

I'm a proponent of the idea that companies that sell you products should have
to take them back at the end of their useful life. That is, Apple would take
back your unwanted phone and be responsible for recycling or disposing of it,
it would no longer be your problem. This would encourage companies to engineer
products with longer useful lifespans, or to facilitate refurbishing instead
of destruction.

~~~
cheald
_This would encourage companies to engineer products with longer useful
lifespans, or to facilitate refurbishing instead of destruction._

Or just bake the cost of disposal into the sales price of the item.

------
cs702
We all knew that as the cost and size of hardware decreases, in the future we
would have computing and connectivity everywhere. What I never expected is
that computing and connectivity would come hand-in-hand with _advertising
everywhere_.

Today it's a magazine ad with 15 days of sponsored WiFi. At the rate we're
going, it's only a matter of time before we have Free Happy Meals with
hallucinatory ad-sponsored connectivity delivered over the network straight to
the visual cortex.

\--

Edit: corrected "15 minutes" to "15 days," which is what I actually meant to
type. Thanks JimmaDaRustla!

~~~
jdechko
Have you seen the Happy Meal toys & some of the boxes lately? With all of the
various movie tie-ins and whatnot, it's only a matter of time before Happy
Meals are completely subsidized by the toys included.

~~~
namwen
I'm sure they already are. They've been tied in that way for years and years.

~~~
sageikosa
When my kids were younger, it became a Disney tie-in vehicle. My all time
favorite was one happy-meal toy line with each Disney character from an
animated movie standing on a rollable (wheeled) video-cassette case for the
movie.

------
mtgx
A few months ago there was a full Android phone in a magazine:

[http://www.geek.com/mobile/fully-functional-android-phone-
em...](http://www.geek.com/mobile/fully-functional-android-phone-embedded-in-
entertainment-weekly-1520099/)

------
BrentOzar
If you wanted to run a MITM attack against executives with high-value
accounts, this would be a heck of a way to do it.

~~~
jonknee
How would that work? Anything of value would be encrypted and out of your
purview.

~~~
olefoo
sslstrip attacks could be made to work, all sorts of things are possible if
you own the network. If you have your target picked out, and know the stack
he's using and what his home network policies are, you can flash an official
looking help page with instructions for disabling specific security features
"If you're having problems with your connection."

~~~
jonknee
Well sure, but that's a lot different than just controlling the network (which
someone else is always doing).

------
modeless
This is just a copy of the lame "cellphone in a magazine" stunt that happened
not too long ago. Read the article closely and you'll notice that it says _"a
number"_ of magazines have this, not all of them. The number is not disclosed,
but I'm betting it's very small. This says nothing about cheap ubiquitous
hardware, the future of magazine publishing, etc. It's just an expensive
publicity stunt.

~~~
cynwoody
I have a print subscription (needed to use up expiring airline miles), and my
copy does not contain the hotspot.

------
danso
I can't wait till the day that a magazine comes with a free portable 3D
printer to print and redistribute copies of the magazine. That'd be a nice
publicity stunt for the printer maker.

Edit: seriously though, I'd hate to be the unsuspecting subscriber who tries
to bring his Forbes issue onto an airplane

Edit: if I were Microsoft and I wanted the most bang for the publicity buck,
I'd sell these issues exclusively at airport newsstands

~~~
icki
wouldn't a 2d printer be more appropriate for redistribution of a magazine?

~~~
DigitalTurk
obviously you'd use the 3D printer to print the 2D printer that prints the
magazine

------
greenmountin
There's a glut of these devices on the market right now, someone must have
accidentally added a zero to the order (there was a similar rationale for the
Android phones included in EW a while back). Amazon used to have the Overdrive
Pro for $100-250, and it was new a couple years ago.

Recently[1], there have been promotions for 500MB/mo free data, if you buy the
hotspot for $50. One catch is they tack on $1/mo if you don't use it at all.
Apparently the hardware is horrible, with crazy overheating problems; best
usage practice is just to remove the battery and run from USB. You can get
them attached to all sorts of carriers, but this one is Sprint; I figured it
was worth a try.

[1] <http://www.freedompop.com> \-- beware affiliate links

~~~
j_s
Thanks for the heads up on freedompop's $.99/mo 'Active Status fee'

<https://www.freedompop.com/service_plan_terms.htm>

    
    
      > If you choose the free Broadband Service and use less than 5mb in any 
      > given month, we'll charge you a $.99 Active Status fee to keep your 
      > account active.

------
niels_olson
We got an email from our security manager late last week: the current issue of
Forbes is not allowed in any secure facilities!

------
mpclark
They seem to have neglected to mention how many copies got this treatment.
That would be interesting to know.

Next month: A free car with your print magazine*

*selected subscribers only

~~~
TwiztidK
As a Forbes subscriber, my issue did not come with free Wifi. Needless to say,
I'm bummed.

~~~
Evbn
More bummed than getting Forbes magazine in the mail every month? Wow.

------
craze3
This is perhaps one of the most awesome publicity stunts I've ever seen. I
wonder if this type of tactic is going to catch on. Can you imagine if each
copy of Wired shipped with 30 days of free wi-fi? Their subscriber count would
shoot through the roof!

~~~
meatsock
entertainment weekly shipped an issue with a full phone inside, a trend i've
been hoping for since the first time a blinking LED was included in a cover as
a promo.

<http://mashable.com/2012/10/02/ew-has-smartphone-inside/>

~~~
panacea
Sounds like a terrible waste of our finite resources, actually.

~~~
mikeash
I agree, but at least they made that issue slightly useful by including a
phone.

------
emgeee
Doesn't the magazine make a pretty poor enclosure for the electronics inside?
I feel like people generally consider magazines to be disposable and mistreat
them but it doesn't seem like a good idea to do that to what looks like a Li-
poly battery.

------
bestham
Very clever, but I hope there is a way to make use of the electronics after
the time when Microsoft wants to pay for the data have passed. Our ecosystem
cannot sustain this short product life-cycles.

~~~
D9u
I imagine that one would merely need to purchase a T-Mobile "Data Pass" to
maintain the WiFi connection.

------
renanbirck
This begs for a teardown for possible reuse after the 15-day trial.

------
mark-r
Is this the modern day equivalent of the AOL floppy?

------
D9u
I take issue with the definition of "15 days free internet." I happen to own
one of T-Mobile's "4G" mobile hotspots, and I pay $50 for a whopping 5 GB of
data. The "Data Pass" I purchase from Team Mo' Bull is good for 2 months... As
if anyone on today's internet could make 5 GB of data last 60 days!??? If I'm
not careful I can go through 5 GB data in 72 hours. Thus, if a consumer with
one of these magazine WiFi hotpots were to use, say 20 GB data in 15 days,
will overage charges apply?

------
LandoCalrissian
I wish I had a copy, I feel like the parts could be used for some fun hacking
projects.

------
tenpoundhammer
I think a better marketing gimmick would be to distribute these things to
villages in impoverished nations and then to show the villagers logging into
office 360. "If rice farmer mi ling from this is rural chinese village can use
360 out of the office, so can you!".

It would be great for the recipients as well, especially if lasted longer than
15 days.

~~~
bytefactory
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the current Microsoft stunt is using a T-Mobile
portable WiFi connection, so is only possible in the US. For any other
countries, unless they'd tied up with a local provider, this wouldn't really
be possible.

~~~
DanBC
T Mobile operates in the UK. They have a number of mobile devices, including
4G mobile wifi hotspots.

(<http://mobile-broadband.t-mobile.com/mobile-hotspot>)

~~~
marshray
I have T-Mobile in the US, but in practice I get a different T-Mobile prepaid
GSM SIM when I visit the UK.

I haven't actually looked at what the international costs are, just heard
enough horror stories that I take the US SIM completely out of my phone before
takeoff.

------
hmsimha
can we get a number of these airdropped into North Korea?

~~~
bhousel
T-Mobile's coverage there isn't very good.

------
bluedino
I could see these going into a vending machine.

------
sammorris12
Print is saved!

