Esquire's October edition, featuring the e-ink cover we, ahem, covered in July, has hit the newsstands. Blogger Ryan Joseph found one in Borders, snapped it up and posted a video so those of us unlucky enough to miss out on the 100,000 print run can enjoy the annoying ad-platform of the future.

So how does it look? Actually, terrible. Instead of a full e-ink cover, we get a small rectangle with some blinking text. Inside, the magazine's sponsor, Ford, has similarly defaced a regular print-ad with a rectangle of mis-matched colors. The "moving" car picture we were expecting turns out to be nothing more than a blinking highlight which moves in three stages across the image.

Way to go, Esquire. If you want to fight off the inevitable death of the print magazine at the hands of the internet, don't do it by emulating the worst aspect of the web – Flash banner ads.

Esquire's E Ink Cover A 21st Century Flop [Wired - Epicenter]

Esquire October 2008 E-Ink Issue! [Dastardly Report via Engadget]