billboards
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Nokia's N9 coming to Kazakhstan on September 9th, gets its own billboard
Well, the list of places that won't be seeing Nokia's N9 seems to be growing larger everyday. And, while it won't bring comfort to the poor souls in the US, UK or Germany, we can confirm that the fine citizens of Kazakhstan should be getting a heaping helping of MeeGo come September. A tipster sent us a flyer from Texhodom advertising the Swedish Finnish company's foray into Linux-powered smartphones as landing on September 9th for 99,990 Kazakh tenges, or about $679. The same tipster made us even more jealous when he sent in some photos of a giant billboard taunting the imminent arrival of the handset at the same electronics retailer. So, if you really have your heart set on an N9, and want one before those pasty folks in Switzerland and Sweden, looks like it's time to book your ticket to Almaty. [Thanks, Aziz] %Gallery-130663%
Coca-Cola's green billboard consumes carbon dioxide like so much sugary soda
Sure, we've seen plenty of cool billboard features over the years, from facial recognition to interactive Pong games, but few have managed the dual feat of promoting a popular soft drink and making the world a slightly greener place. All of that fuzzy area you see surrounding the silhouette of the Coke bottle in the above 60 by 60 foot billboard is made up of a number of Fukien tea plants, each of which can soak up around 13 pounds of carbon dioxide per year, for a combined total of 46,800 pounds. The plants are housed in pots made from recycled Coke bottles and are watered via a drip irrigation system. The billboard is the product of a partnership between Coca-Cola Philippines and the World Wildlife Fund. No word on when it might be greening up more skylines around the world. Press release below.
City of Heroes reveals billboard contest winners
The devs at Paragon Studios recently threw open the doors of creativity for City of Heroes players in the form of the CoH Billboard Contest. Players were asked to come up with signage for a theoretical new business that would be opening somewhere in Paragon City or the Rogue Isles. The competition ran from December of 2010 through the end of last month, and NCsoft has finally announced the winners (many of whom walked away with substantial prize packages that include free game time, in-game items, and oh yeah, the pleasure of seeing their artwork plastered all over various billboards in the long-running superhero MMO). Hit up the official website for more details, including images of the winning entries.
RIM tries to patent billboards that adjust to roadside traffic
Looks like our pals at Research In Motion are taking the company name literally this week -- they've got a pair of patent applications target ads to automobiles and pedestrians on the street by dynamically changing their information density. By taking a page out of Google's book and measuring the relative position of GPS-equipped phones (or using traditional sensors should that fail), RIM wants to create digital billboards that automatically add details the slower traffic gets. In one example, a "Road House Restaurant" could display only the name and exit number of the joint in giant letters when traffic moves quickly, but pitch that delectable pecan pie more thoroughly when it's stop and go -- but RIM's thinking a bit further than that, suggesting that when vehicles are particularly slow, you could pull out your phone and get a coupon by photographing a projected QR code. The future, ladies and gentlemen.
Street artists beef up billboards with Doom graphics
[Flickr user Mr. Talion] You know what? Driving around is boring. Luckily, some Germans are taking steps to amp up the experience by incorporating Doom graphics into billboard ads, effectively upping their cool factor exponentially. Check out this Flickr set and tell us these billboards are anything but completely awesome. We dare you! Hopefully, this is the beginning of a trend that will cross the oceans of the world and spread throughout every major city, causing us to actually care about these outdoor advertising eyesores. In the spirit of international sharing, we've got a couple ideas of our own you can check out past the break. [Via Animal New York and Nerdcore; thanks, Ryan]
Ricoh erecting 47 x 126-foot solar and wind-powered billboard in Times Square
Ever walk through Times Square and wonder how much electricity all those flashy billboards are soaking up? No? Well, Ricoh has, and now they're doing something about it. Ricoh Company Ltd. of Tokyo is erecting a 47 x 126-foot billboard at Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street that will be completely powered by the sun and wind. Fueled by 45 solar panels and four wind turbines, the billboard won't even need a backup electric generator. On days that the sun and wind aren't enough to power it, it will simply go dark. In the end, the billboard is said to reduce carbon dioxide usage by 18 tons a year. The billboard will go live in December, or just in time for the sun to go dark.
TruMedia says its facial-recognition billboards will never record video, it won't share with cops
Those billboards with facial-recognition-based tracking systems we mentioned last week caused quite a bit of consternation amongst those of us who value our privacy (read: everyone), but it at least one of the firms involved is engaging the debate and promising that it won't share any data it record. In a letter to the New York Times and a much longer, more boring version of the same letter sent to us, TruMedia Technologies says that none of its tech will ever record or store any video, only analyze frames and increment various demographic counters. TruMedia also says that no individually-identifiable information is ever stored, and that it'll never share any video or images with any private or governmental body. There's also mention of a standards body working to address methodologies and metrics for the tech. All excellent promises, sure, but we're never going to be entirely comfortable with this stuff, even if we live in an age of ubiquitous CCTV monitoring. Full letter after the break.
Billboards with facial-recognition software trickling out
Putting cameras in billboards to measure how many people look at them isn't a new idea, but it's starting to get a little more creepily-high-tech, with several advertisers now using facial-recognition software to record things like age and gender. A company called Quividi has supplied camera-equipped ads to McDonald's in Singapore and Ikea in Europe, and it's now bringing the tech to the States, where it's been deployed in New York in ads for A&E's The Andromeda Strain mini-series and in Philadelphia in train station ads for the Philadelphia Soul. Another company called TruMedia Technologies has supplied similar tech to about 30 locations in the US, including malls in Chesterfield, Missouri, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and Monroeville, Pennsylvania. None of the systems currently record or store video, but no one's ruling that out as a possibility -- and even worse, there's talk of gathering racial data in an effort to even further target ads. Great, now we have yet another reason to break out the Nixon mask every time we leave the house.[Via Techdirt]
Adgadget: The Algorithm fails to find relevance
Ask.com's latest advertising campaign centered around the omniscient Algorithm is building buzz through billboards and TV, but is slow to be found in browser histories across the internet.Over freeways and between programming, Ask's advertising can be sighted in smug tag lines and over-joyous dance numbers. The campaign originally kicked off with a variety of billboards in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. With lines like "The Algorithm Constantly Finds Jesus", "The Algorithm Is Banned In China", "The Algorithm Is From New Jersey", "The Algorithm Killed Jeeves", and "The Unabomber Hates The Algorithm", we may have to ponder the moral implications of agreeing with the Unabomber for once.More recently, the Algorithm spread to television. Grinning in front of a gaggle of minimally-dressed girls, the first commercial to take stage showcased a man singing to the rooftops about finding "chicks with swords". The second spot proved equally as silly, as a woman got light-headed over search-engine-stalking Kato Kaelin. You know, the witness to that murder trial over a decade ago. Taking a quick quantum leap in the time machine, the "chicks with swords" and Kato Kaelin commercials somewhat mimic eBay's previous ads that featured similar dance numbers but were much more positively received.
Parisian billboards enabled for interactive advertising
In what may be the first step towards a possible "nightmare scenario" where you can't walk around an urban area without your phone being deluged with spam, a French advertising firm has installed small transmitters on billboards and posters around Paris that offer downloads or discounts to passersby. Luckily the Bluetooth-based system being deployed by JCDecaux is strictly opt-in, meaning only those mobile users who want the swag-on-the-go will be bothered, and they can further limit intrusions by choosing to just receive ads about topics that interest them. Ironically, this commercial endeavor evolved out of a project by France's National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control to provide assistance for the disabled, but the project was scrapped and JCDecaux purchased the exclusive license for the underlying technology. The same team that worked on the government research is also developing another innovative fusion of advertising and cellphone, in the form of billboards called UbiBoards that change their displays based on characteristics of the majority of the people in the vicinity by pulling demographic data from their handsets.[Via textually, picture courtesy of Kameleon]
Silent Hill billboard welcomes you to... Culver City
Sony Pictures' upcoming Silent Hill movie is hoping to break the long-running cycle of terrible movies adapted from video games. Curiously enough, their plan involves hiring a proven writer and director! Clever folks over there in Culver City. Their way of thinking is so unusual it's almost "Otherworldly," lending the above billboard -- located just outside Sony Studios in Culver City -- a certain credibility. Either that or they're referring to what might happen when Ken Kutaragi activates the PlayStation 3's fourth-dimensional SPU during their scheduled E3 keynote in Culver City this May.[Thanks, Mof]Read - Silent Hill billboard imageRead - IMDb's Silent Hill message board thread on the billboard (use BugMeNot)
