…a sinking ship with a pointless gizmo? There was a bunch of buzz this week about Wired Magazine working with Adobe to create an “entirely different way” to browse their magazine on the iPad. I followed a couple of the tweets around until I discovered what all the hoopla was about – a million-dollar PDF full of irritating fully-interactive advertisments.

Here’s Scott Dadich providing a scarily monotone description of what they put together. (All he’s missing is the earbud, and he could be chasing Neo through the Matrix.)

Despite Mr. Dadich’s compelling argument that they’re investing all of this effort because their “readers have a relationship with brands”, the ads are the LAST thing I want to pay to have enhanced. I’d pay more for a version that had no ads at all! Spare yourself the enormous cost of developing QTVR spinarounds and short films of cars I don’t want and just send me your content (which I can already get for free, off your website, with my adblocker turned on).

I’m not worried at all that this is going to catch on – there’s no business case here. A limited number of compatible readers, the enormous development cost, and an industry that’s already barely making ends meet will combine to ensure that this demo won’t see the light of day as a real publishing tool.