Samsung Rains Paper Airplanes From Space

itwbennett writes "Note to Samsung: If you want to prove how reliable your SD memory cards are, don't hire 'the U.K.'s leading paper plane professional' to build you 100 special paper aircraft. And then definitely don't use a giant helium balloon to send them 122,503 feet into space. Because while some of the planes will fly as far as Sydney and Bangalore, chances are that all the press you'll get will be about the crazy stunt and no one will remember a thing about the SD cards."

Comments

Who cares? It was cool

[Spy Handler]

They dropped a bunch of SD-card-carrying paper airplanes over Germany from 122,000 feet. Some of those planes glided all the way to Australia and India!

Who cares if it was an effective media campaign or not? It's frigging cool.

Re:Who cares? It was cool

[Keys1337]

The claim that planes were found so far away seems like total BS. Assuming the planes could cross the globe (unlikely) then finding any of the 200 planes over such a vast area much of which is remote or ocean is highly doubtful.

Re:Who cares? It was cool

[Gavin Scott]

Agreed, the reports of sightings and recovery are almost certainly mostly (or all) hoaxes, and the people doing this seem to be in no hurry to confirm them.

All these people saying "who cares, it's cool!" should consider whether it's still cool if all the planes fell to the ground within 100 miles of the launch point and none have yet been found.

Yes, it WOULD be cool if planes made it to Sydney or Bangalore, but if people are just making this shit up then maybe not so much.

Dreaming of what might happen is fine, but you get no points for pretending it happened if it didn't, and you do people a disservice by doing so. There's plenty of stuff in the world that's cool these days, but hardly anyone notices because it's completely overshadowed by fantasy crap that people make up and pretend is real to the point that your average member of the public has no idea what's real any more., and few people have a basis for actually understanding how to appreciate the stuff that actually IS real and insanely cool.

You drop 100 paper planes from 23 miles up and more than 2% of them glide for thousands of miles (in different directions) and land in heavily populated areas where they are found by people (who actually report the find) only a couple days after they're launched?

Color me skeptical on this one, sorry.

G.

impact force?

[Ogive17]

There's a chance they could drop their SD cards without the paper airplane and they'd still work. They don't have much mass and I'm sure their terminal velocity isn't that high. Plus, do they contain many parts that could actually break?

Of course with my luck owning Samsung products, whatever I bought would stop working a week after the warranty expires (happened to my 56" DLP and 20" widescreen monitor).

Re:impact force?

[operator_error]

A CompactCard survived a bridge explosion with the photo: http://www.digitaltrends.com/photography/blast-destroys-camera-flash-card-survives/

Another card one survived the collapse of one of the Twin Towers, with photos from the photographer that perished: http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0111/biggart_intro.htm

wow

[geekoid]

this is an awesome stunt. There is a lot of things t talk about, lots of science. But no, here no /. we just poo-poo and nit pic interesting things to death.

Clearly the stunt was a fail because no one is talking about it~

Re:wow

[nelk]

...nit pic interesting things to death.

It's actually 'nitpick'

(See what I did there?) :)

Re:wow

[Progman3K]

irony bonus?

Re:wow

[geekoid]

I know. I spell it that way to weed you people out.

Reminds me of the WKRP turkey drop

[pjbgravely]

"It's a helicopter, and it's coming this way. It's flying something behind it, I can't quite make it out, it's a large banner and it says, uh - Happy... Thaaaaanksss... giving! ... From ... W ... K ... R... P!! No parachutes yet. Can't be skydivers... I can't tell just yet what they are, but - Oh my God, Johnny, they're turkeys!! Johnny, can you get this? Oh, they're plunging to the earth right in front of our eyes! One just went through the windshield of a parked car! Oh, the humanity! The turkeys are hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement! Not since the Hindenburg tragedy has there been anything like this!"

Interesting

[Dan East]

First of all, I think the snide tone of the ITWorld article is annoying. It's actually kind of cool, there is a point to it, and as far as "litter" goes, one or two happy meals from McDonalds would contain as much paper and electronics and plastics as all those planes combined. Funny how ITWorld didn't even report if the recovered cads actually worked or not (most obviously they did, or ITWorld would have made fun of Samsung otherwise).

What I find interesting is that the planes dispersed so drastically - the distance from Russia to Australia is extremely impressive. I would've expected jet streams and weather systems and the like to have tended to keep the planes together, but I guess up that high things are calm they are free to go their own way for a very long way.

Re:Interesting

[cinderellamanson]

This is Samsung's method for targeting slashdot.

1. Put the engineers in charge of marketing for a day.

2. Have someone assess the marketing value of the mess and write an article.

3. Submit said article to slashdot.

4. ???

5. Profit!!

6. Laugh maniacally as you patent a business method for bypassing adblock via social engineering and interdisciplinary cross-training.

Don't be so grumpy!

[Syncerus]

Come on, admit it. The little kid inside you thought this was really cool. :D

If this doesn't bring a smile to your face, then you're not a real geek.

Re:SD cards survie trip in paper planes...Great...

[spun]

Okay... But sticking them in your ass and running down the street naked yelling "I'm a camera! I'm a camera!" is hardly normal use.

As God as my witness...

[khendron]

I thought SD cards could fly!

Unbelievable

[hcdejong]

Neither TFA nor the project website contain decent images of the actual paper airplanes. What design did they choose, and how did they find a design that would work this well?

Re:Unbelievable

[linuxgurugamer]

Actually, if you would read the entire blog, there is a good photograph of the final airplane design, except without the fancy printing.

For those who are link-challenged, here is a link to the blog entry:

http://projectspaceplanes.com/post/1222772296/weve-finally-decided-on-the-space-plane-design-to

and this is a link to a picture of the airplane itself:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_l9mhq6XVFB1qdcoh8o1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=0RYTHV9YYQ4W5Q3HQMG2&Expires=1297285744&Signature=Hvs3kCBFGFbuQYaDS2iMFyR%2BH7k%3D

A few disjointed thoughts

[93 Escort Wagon]

1) From a security standpoint... if I were an *sshat, I would quickly make some airplanes, stick some infected SD cards in them, and drop them outside of known geek's houses. I bet a guy who wouldn't dream of inserting some random USB key into his computer could be suckered if he thought he'd found one of those "space SD cards".

2) I'm ashamed to admit this, but after reading the article (btw I'm ashamed to admit that as well) in my mind I kept hearing the Amoeba Boys leader's voice saying "Littering!" (if you weren't a PowerPuff Girls fan, you'll have no idea).

3) The little boy inside me thinks this was REALLY cool. Paper planes from Europe landing all over the world!

Would have been cooler if...

[Stenchwarrior]

...Nikon or Canon did the same thing but with small cameras, and then recorded the flight path of each airplane. Slightly more expensive, but the cool factor is way higher.

I think it's cool.

[Gavin Scott]

While I am dubious of all the reported sightings/recovery of the planes (which seem rather fantastic), I think it's cool that Samsung did (or at least supported) this, and it will increase the chance I pay the extra buck next time I'm out choosing whether to pay $8 for a more generic, or $9 for a Samsung SD card :)

G.

Blatant Asshattery

[Revotron]

Samsung's awesome paper-plane-drop idea was nowhere near as environmentally disastrous as the amount of CO2 the author of TFA released while hyperventilating over this harmless stunt. ITWorld is now the world's number-one emitter of smug. (Credit for the idea of "smug" pollution goes to South Park season 10 episode 2)

No one will remember Samsung SD cards ...

[BitZtream]

Sure ... AFTER everyone stops talking about the crazy stunt ... people will probably stop talking about Samsung SD cards. And in a couple weeks people will stop talking about Super Bowl ads ... and its the most expensive advertising time in the world. But in both cases, a lot of people will have already bought the product before they attention fads away.

Thats how marketing works. Thats WHY marketing exists ... to get people information about your product and get people interested in it. No press is bad press when it comes to marketing. If people are looking at you for just about any reason, they aren't looking at your competition.

While the submitter may be too much of a poser geek to be interested in things like the paper airplane design and the course something would take to find its way to Sydney from Germany or any of the thousands of other neat things that can be learned from this event, I will certainly be spending some time looking into it and that means I'll most certainly see a whole bunch of Samsung SD cards and advertisements along the way.

The fact that you posted this story to slashdot more or less entirely invalidates your summary statement. We're talking about their SD cards right now. It worked.

Note to submitter: You probably should ever consider taking up a job in public relations or marketing.

Go ahead and do it

[handy_vandal]

"Don't hire ... definitely don't ... chances are that all the press you'll get will be about the crazy stunt and no one will remember a thing ..."

I detect jealousy.

Go ahead: do hire ... definitely do ... chances are that all the press you'll get will be about the crazy stunt ... which is fine. So go ahead and do it.

As God is my witness,

[Schemat1c]

I thought SD cards could fly.

/obscure

Why exactly did they start from Germany?

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

You'll need air traffic control clearance even far away from airports to start even smaller balloons.

I had no idea

[benmarvin]

Samsung makes SD cards?