Esquire puts a hole in Obama’s face
For $250,000, who wouldn’t? There could be some neat creative solutions made using this alongside the cover image in the future, like a Mad magazine-style trapdoor; though knowing Esquire US, there won’t be. A pull tab for BMW is to follow. “I think you can smell a gimmick a mile away,” says the VP of Discovery channel. I’m sniffing one from here

Papercamp highlights the future of tech and paper
Less gimmicky, more geeky. Originated by Dopplr’s Matt Jones; some of the ideas can be seen here. There’s a New York-flavoured edition coming up next month

Ads in PDFs scrapped by Adobe
Between them, Techcrunch and Nxtbook have it about right. However, I’m not convinced by the phrase “A true digital magazine is designed to be an elegant reading experience. While some are better than others, most all are more engaging than the PDF format” – PDF Mags begs to differ

Taschen’s London store gears up for a warehouse sale
Takes place on 23-25th January. Plenty of pulp mag books with slightly scuffed covers on offer on day one, fewer bargains by the weekend I’ll bet

Adbusting protests against Photoshop use
Fabulous in-joke fun

And the obligatory crisis roundup:

Jeans brand scraps magazine advertising
“Magazines will always be relevant. We are just trying something new this season.” And cheaper. Goes instead for marketing on its own website and instore

Arthur goes into hibernation
The community funding only postponed the end. The blog has been busy since, though. If you prefer a fictional version of this story…

…Bad Idea creates miniseries about print and the money pit
Occasionally amusing. “How about Kabuki theatre for the disabled?”

Funniest line of the magazine crisis so far
Though I’m not sure it’s true. But who cares?

Mygazines starts to reveal its monetising strategy
No news on if the lawyers tracked them down. Meanwhile on the legal side of the fence…

Publishers to give away 50 million digital magazines
Zinio are behind this; a rather smart way for them to get the lead over their rivals, but will it get many readers? Speaking of digital, did “iPhone magazine” PMc ever launch? It’s fashion week, but it isn’t in the iTunes app store as promised yet…

Yet another version of that Obama cover
How come almost all the parodies are funnier than the original?

Wired gives a play-by-play on how they edit an article
I’ve suffered at the hands of their editors before

ITV becomes digital newsagent
That’s the leading UK commercial TV broadcaster, for non-Britishers. They also own Friends Reunited, which is what nostalgic stalkers in England used to use before Facebook; this diginewsstand adds one more random bullet to their scattergun web offering

Yet another new luxury fashion supplement
Washington Post arrives late to the party, hunts around for any uneaten vol au vents

Taschen publishes entire reprint of Arts and Architecture
Now there’s a trend that could get interesting/expensive. They should open up the choice of their next reprint to the audience (I’d probably vote for Nest)

Life magazine resurfaces yet again, as a social photo archive website
If we’ve seen less than 3% of what they have, there are going to be some amazing unseen images in there. I just wish they’d donate them to the nation / Library of Congress on a similar non-commercial clause that NASA uses. Set the archive free!

Main distributor of foreign magazines in Japan goes bust
Via Jean Snow

Esquire e-cover hacked. To death
My review of the full anniversary issue coming soon