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Two 'McDonald' stories July 2012 - September 2014

Spotify app to offer 30 mins of ad-free listening if you watch a 15-30 second video ad first

Ben Lovejoy Sep 8 2014 - 5:18 am PT

Spotify currently offers you a choice: pay ten bucks a month to listen without ads, or listen for free but have your music interrupted by audio ads. Those using the Android or iOS app will be offered a third option later this year: watch a 15-30 second video ad in return for 30 minutes of ad-free listening.

Known as Sponsored Sessions, the idea is that advertisers get the ability to run video ads for the first time, while the experience is made relatively painless for consumers by guaranteeing 30 minutes of uninterrupted listening afterwards.

Spotify began pitching the option to advertisers back in June, and Ad Age reports that a number of major advertisers have now signed-up.

Spotify will start testing the video ads in the fourth quarter with a limited number of brands and plans to extend them to all advertisers in the first quarter of 2015.

Coca-Cola, Ford, McDonald’s and Universal Pictures have signed on as the ads’ first global buyers. Kraft Foods, Target and Wells Fargo will be the U.S.-only launch advertisers.

The Spotify Music app is a free download from the Google play store.

Man assaulted over augmented reality glasses, as Google patents security features for Google Glass

Jordan Kahn Jul 17 2012 - 9:01 am PT

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Although we have not seen that much about how Google’s augmented reality glasses will actually work (apart from a few photos and video at the Google I/O skydiver demo), the company plans to get the $1,500 Explorer Edition into hands of I/O attendees who preordered the device by next year. Google appears to already be thinking about security features for Project Glass with a patent published by the United States Patent & Trademark Office (via Engadget) that details various ways of locking the device or sounding an alarm when detecting unnatural movements. It would also be capable of alerting authorities that the glasses have been stolen or unintentionally removed.

These features would have certainly been useful to University of Toronto professor Dr. Steve Mann (pictured above), who recently was physically assaulted for wearing his EyeTap Digital Eye Glass system. Mann described the experience of having his vision system, which he explained could only be removed with special tools, ripped off his head by a McDonalds employee:

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