Geekfoolery

What was once shocking and cutting edge inevitably becomes mainstream, even kitsch or quaintly nostalgic. Harleys. Tattoos. Rock and roll. And so it is with the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue.

I can clearly remember that cold New England February in the 1970s when Cheryl Tiegs arrived in mailboxes and newstands wearing a fishnet one-piece bathing suit. For those of just barely hitting the teenage years, the Swimsuit Issue was glorious loophole. Obviously harder stuff was around, but it was kept out of reach of underage hands, for the most part. Suddenly, there it was, in a family magazine that was not proscribed to us, and could be enjoyed with teenage impunity. It was practically scandalous, and surely as spring thaw followed winter, the Swimsuit issue would generate irate letters of disgust and cancelled subscriptions that the editors of Sports Illustrated would gleefully publish in subsequent issues of the magazine.

Well, Sports Illustrated has been at this for 43 years now, and given that there isn’t much that Sports Illustrated is showing that isn’t in a couple dozen other magazines every month, plus you have the Internet, and TV commercials and Victoria’s Secret catalogs, it’s a fair question to ask: How does Sports Illustrated stay ahead of the curve, so to speak, in 2007?

With gadgetry and technology, of course. First, SI.com has extensive swimsuit issue links. Some of the stuff they are selling, like wallpapers for your mobile phone, and links to iTunes Swimsuit videos, but some things are free, including a page of short video links with model profiles, and there are some free iTunes video downloads as well, including a preview of a new Jimmy Buffett video. Two other cool freebies from the mag are screensaver and calendar program. The MySI screensaver has a customizable live news headline update function and toolbar. The calenadar is simple, yet functional. There’s no reason you can’t use Outlook for you work crap and keep track of your personal life on this one. Windows only, though.

Another geeky feature in the magazine itself is a nifty pair of 3-D glasses to use on the Hawai’i segment of the magazine that is printed with the red/blue 3-D process that produces a passable sense of depth and only a slight headache. Also in the pages of the actual newstand issue of the magazine is a code you can use to get a free iTunes Music Store download.

One last thing to mention is a pre-loaded digital music player with what they are calling the SI Swimsuit Soundtrack Series. There are three choices, Miami, Brazil, and Memphis, and each player comes with 30 songs with each city’s style of music. The players are $20, and they’re closed systems. There’s no way to get music on or off the player except the “analog hole” which is the headphone jack. It’s not even entirely clear what you do when the batteries die. I would imagine the same people who have hacked the single-use digital cameras and video cameras could figure out how to open on of these things up.

So music and music videos, 3-D glasses, screensavers and calendars. It’s a nice effort on SI’s part, and kudos is warranted for trying to keep up. But I am not sure that it matches the effect of the classic Cheryl Tiegs fishnet back in middle school.

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