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Journalists Cover Microsoft, Using Macs

It’s not an easy time for Microsoft — with Steve Ballmer having to field questions about being “buffoons” and an “evil empire”  at the shareholder’s meeting (.doc) — so when they get together “the world’s most influential technology pundits and online writers” (nb: we weren’t invited) for Mobius to discuss super-secret mobile tech you’d think [...]

Guide To Black Friday Apple Bargains: Cheap MacBooks, iPods and Accessories Galore

Here’s a guide for finding the best bargains on Apple-related gear during the infamous Black Friday sales on November 27. We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of gear from leaked photos of sales flyers and descriptions of sales.
The bargains include a 2.26 GHz MacBook + $150 gift card at Best Buy for $999.99 ; a 32GB [...]

Review: Voices Is Today’s Best Thing Ever, Grab It Now While It’s Cheap

New on the App Store is Voices from the clever folk at Tap Tap Tap. You can guess what it does.

Open it up, pick a silly voice. Helium is pretty silly. A microphone appears and the app even clears your throat for you (try it, you’ll see what I mean). Now speak your brains, and [...]

Review: Sony Walkman S540 Series Video MP3 Player

Press releases, you will hardly be surprised to hear, are rarely very interesting. But one arrived in my inbox a couple of weeks ago that made me double-take.
“Sony’s S Series Walkman,” it chattered, “is a serious challenger to the iPod Nano.” Gosh, really? Perhaps the Cult had better have a look at one, then, despite [...]

iProduct Placement: Verizion Blacks Out Apple on “Gossip Girl”

Apple products are a natural for high falutin’ teen drama “Gossip Girl,” where just about everything the upper East Siders use has a recognizable brand name.

Gossip Girl, however, is sponsored by Verizon. To keep them happy, producers artfully block the Apple logos from getting into shots, but as a result Apple’s presence is almost more consipicous than it would be otherwise. The shot on the left reminds me of the trick directors use to hide pregnant actesses by placing plants and furniture to hit just mid-tummy.

A nice slide show non-Apple Apple product placement on Gossip Girl at Geek Sugar settles an ongoing argument I’ve been having with a friend over whether Dan’s laptop is a Mac or not…

Photos courtesy of The CW

About the author

nicole_martinelli

Nicole Martinelli was born in San Francisco and has lived in Milan and Florence, Italy. Cultish tendencies and love for DIY increased while living on the Old Continent, where tech came late and cost more in Big Mac index terms. She's written for Wired.com, The New York Times and Newsweek, and since 1999 on her site, Zoomata. If you're so inclined, friend her on Facebook or connect on Linked in.

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7 comments

    Also in the shot on the left you see the Apple logo hidden by… a bunch of apples! :-)

    Funny that the Apple logo in first image is hidden behind… Apples !

    Ok, I guess I’m a bit dense today — why would Verizon care about the brand of computers used in the show? They aren’t competitors …

    a bowl of apples to hide an apple laptop. nice job to the props people. way to flip it to the bosses.

    as for the other shot, a colored laptop case would have done a better job than that sticker since we all know where the Apple logo is on their laptops.

    and why does Verizon care anyway. they don’t make computers. and it’s not like the characters are all using iPhones. well not anymore, theory on that is that Verizon signed on after the pilot. a theory that is probably true.

    perhaps the issue is that Verizon paid to have their ’sponsorship’ and the Apple products are the result of the old school ‘give the studios stuff and see if they happen to use it’ method that came from the days when it was deemed faux pas to pay for placement (to the point that for a while it was actually forbidden in tv shows)

    Uhm…perhaps they don’t want to remind anyone that you can’t (normally) use an ->APPLE<- iPhone on Verizon? Can’t even buy one there… or maybe they have a lot of stock in E-Machine!!! 8-O

    These kinds of things are usually recognized and laughed at, anyway. Who cares? ;-)

    I’m noticing more shows hiding the logo than showing it lately. But each time I see it, the fact that it’s hidden makes it all the more conspicuous. Consider the episode of Mythbusters where they test viral internet videos — they use a piece of gaffa tape to mask it which doesn’t even fully cover the logo!

    [...] interesting Apple product placements on TV in the last week–appearing on Gossip Girl with blacked out logos (due to Verizon’s sponsorship) and NCIS (with a clearly labeled Macintosh Classic confusingly [...]

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