Content-Vending Machines

"Spotted in Japan: vending machines that sell software, ebooks, and games for Palms and Pocket PCs. You just pick the one you want, select your preferred memory card format (CompactFlash, SD, or Memory Stick), and out pops a card with your software loaded up on it."
--Engadget

Product Placement Affects Gameplay

"Adidas has struck a global deal with games developer Eidos to promote its Hyperride shoe.
A game based on the urban sport of free-running will debut on the handheld PlayStation Portable device across Europe in March. Called 'Freerunning', it will be extended to the PlayStation console in June. By using the Hyperride shoes, the players' performance is enhanced.

While Adidas has struck in-game placement deals before, this is the first time a product has affected a player's performance."
--Brand Republic

Previous posts:
In-game Ads: Backlash, Research
Round Up: In-Game Ads
Nielsen to Audit Game Ads
Use Of In-Game Ads Grows
Unexplored: Deus Ex Machinima
Advertising in Video Games: Problems
(Social) Advertising in Computer Games
Future: Product Placement

Wireless Cinema Delivery

"The weekend premiere of Rize was a big deal simply for its delivery method -- it was beamed to the theater from 800 miles away. It could change the way movies are distributed."
--Wired

Google Launches Video Search

video.google.com

"No fancy speech-to-text recognition, just the closed captioning provided by the television networks, and no direct links to videocontent either." -- Slashdot

Flashback: "Google Rules Out Video Search"
"Speaking at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Google co-founder Sergey Brin explained why the search engine does not intend to offer users a video search feature. Brin cited problems with standards and compatibility in the video software industry, as well as a lack of content, as reasons why he remains uninterested in developing an AltaVista-style video search."
--MediaJunk, March 16, 2004

Previous posts:
Searchable Video: Blinkx
Future: Searchable Video (Yahoo's video search)
Text Indexing of Video Footage
Future: Searchable Print Publications
Towards Clickable Print Publications

GM Billboard Puzzle Cracked

(click to zoom in)
My guess for the second line, which was not cracked: Because everyone has the right words.

"Under the [new GM's] campaign, which is about half completed, each day a billboard in a different part of the country divulges a word (or a punctuation mark) in a message. A billboard in Arlington, Texas, for example, says "you." One in New York City shows a period.

The billboards also promote a Web site on which GM explains that it created the campaign to spread "a message so important we need the whole country to tell it."

But some Web visitors quickly found that most of the "secret" message is included in the site's source code."

The first line says: "This is the last time you will ever have to feel alone on our nation's roadways."
--CNET

Concept: Tagtextual Advertising

Steve Rubel writes:
"Tags are free-form keywords people have used to describe their posts [...] and are a natural complement to search because they empower users to create structures that organize unstructured consumer-generated media.

As tagging takes off, the next step will be for all of these sites to monetize this content by launching contextual advertising programs, perhaps powered by Google Adsense. This will give the marketer new ways to reach engaged consumers by sponsoring tags across one or more sites that carry folksonomies. I call this "Tagtextual Advertising" and it's a coming."
-- MicroPersuasion

Update: Mobile Video

It seems the mobile video industry is evolving along these three lines:

1. Online video content is aggregated on the web, RSS-style and downloaded by consumers through PCs onto mobile devices.
2. Traditional TV content is PVRed and transferred onto a mobile video player for viewing on the go.
3. Video content is streamed directly to mobile devices - the current likely candidates are game consoles and cell phones - either through satellite or mobile networks.

So what, you'd ask. Mobile video means new channel(s) and new opportunities, and since the interaction patterns with this new medium will be different, it's a good time to start pondering.

The past two weeks were rich in news and comments on the subject, and below are some of the most interesting links:

"A successful mobile business idea comes from considerations of the mobile phone characteristics, not from an analysis of already available content. That's why "mobisodes" do make sense and full length movies don't; SMS proved to be the killer application while MMS are facing a slow adoption."
-- AdverBlog

"...A little teaser from Sony Computer Entertainment CEO and president Ken Kutaragi about how they might be adding a mobile phone function to the PSP in the near future."
-- Engadget

"MobaHo! -- a joint venture of 88 Japanese and Korean companies -- is gambling Big Money that Asians will want satellite TV and radio broadcasts beamed from the sky direct to their handheld receivers, cell phones and car-mounted tuners -- and maybe even iPods in the future."
--Wireless Watch

"Remember when we told you Nintendo would be adding video playback abilities via a $49 adapter for the DS? The company is now taking pre-orders for the device, called Play-Yan, and it is, in fact, selling for $49."
-- Engadget

"Sirius Satellite Radio will use Microsoft's Windows Media Video 9 software to help create and broadcast future video services, the companies said Wednesday." The mobile video service is scheduled for 2006 and will include children programming delivered to cars.
-- CNET

"According to DM Europe (via picturephoning), Norwegian TV viewers can now send in video clips from their mobile phones and have them shown on the national TV programme Svisj, an entertainment for youngsters."
-- Unmediated

"When I wrote my initial paper about videoblogging last summer I was looking for a number of technical solutions in order to make sharing and co-creation of video more feasible. A lot of people seem to be interested in videoblogging and a number of new services and ideas have emerged during the last six months."
-- Unmediated

Desktop video aggregator for OS X is released.


Previous posts:
Mobile Video: Phones
Video on PlayStation Portable
Head-Mounted Display, Finally?

Keywords: mobile video, mobile advertising, advertising technology, new media, advertising channel

Motorola's Ojo Personal Video Phone

Motorola showed off their Ojo Personal Video Phone at CES, to be available in spring. "The phone captures and sends MPEG4 video over the internet at 30 fps on an eye-level, portrait-oriented LCD display (7" diagonal). For use with your existing home phone number." Imagine telemarketing taken to a whole new level.
--Core77

Keywords: video telemarketing, video advertising, phone advertising

Corbis To License Marvel's Supermen

Does it take a real superman to promote your product? No problem. Corbis just signed a deal with Marvel to license more than 5000 world-famous superherous and sidekicks for editorial and commercial use in print and broadcast media. Here's the preview gallery.
--More at AdRants.

Related posts:
Comics in Advertising

Future: Google Phone Advertising

The week's biggest surprise that some (not I) saw coming: Google is entering the phone-over-IP market. It made it to the Times Online today, which explains the rationale: "Google telephone service could be made to link with the Google search engine, which already conducts half of all internet inquiries made around the world. A surfer looking for a clothes retailer could simply find the web site and click on the screen to speak to the shop."

There are a couple of ways this can work. You could search for a local Krespy Kreme donuts shop (or any other commercial or residential contact info), and Google PhoneBook would give you the address and the phone number that you could call up right away (especially if you are browsing the net with your PDA or cell phone). Or you could be searching for a local car dealership, notice a text ad with a phone number, and instead of going to the company's website, you click on a link to talk to a live rep. Google would be charging the advertiser on a new and more accurate, pay-per-call model.

How to Avoid Ad Avoiders

Simon Andrews at Big Picture just published a new white paper that offers soothing to the hearts troubled by the advent of the DVR and ad skipping. His advice:

• Create advertising people want to see.
  
• Make the start and tend of your ads attention grabbing - you might persuade someone to hit the pause/rewind button and watch your ad.
  
• Consider adding a constant logo or branding device to the ad - even at fast forwar people will recognise the brand.
  
• Think about how you could use interactive TV to make your advertising work harder.
  

Oh, and in case you are wondering whether people enjoy those spectacular overlay ads that splash across the browser window - they don't.

Concept: Media Cartridge Projector

The cartridge is a brainchild of a UCLA art student and theoretically allows the artist to project words onto any surface, with a diameter of about 20 to 30 feet. Once engaged on a surface, the owner may call the cartridge via cellular telephone and reprogram the projection as they see fit. See Gabe Dunne's site for blueprints and action shots.
--Near Near Future

Related posts:
Future: Personal Video Projectors
Advertising on Floors

Interactive Wall Display at Seoul Mall

We've seen our share of impressive digital signage, but this mall in west Seoul takes the idea to the new level. The wall is peppered with individual LEDs behind 4,340 frosted glass disks to diminish sun glare and diffuse light produced by LED fixtures behind each disk. The wall is capable of generating 16 million colors. Each LED is individually controlled and the disks act like pixels and can display text and color schemes changed via the Internet, up to 20 times per second.
--Metropolis Mag, Near Near Future, and Archinect.

Bathroom Advertising Round-Up

The Top 10 Ways to Reach the Most Captive Audience:

1. By ad space in a bathroom reader.
2. Buy time on Wiz Radio.
3. Put up posters on stall walls (*yawn*).
4. Or, instead, put up LCD displays.
5. Or, even better, go with the Bathroom TV Mirror by Philips. Or the screens on hand dryers.
6. Brand the toilet paper.
7. Brand the urinal.
8. Put interactive ads on urinals. "The message takes the form of logos fixed to the metal panel of urinals. The logos are invisible and become visible when urine comes in contact with them. They disappear again when cold water flushes over them." Tried by Land Transport Safety Authority in New Zealand last year (pictured above, read more).
9. Install Wizmark, the interactive urinal communicator. "As a one-of-a-kind, fully functional interactive device, Wizmark can talk, sing, or flash a string of lights around a promotional message when greeting a "visitor".
10. Heard of advergaming? Upgrade the hardware to feature the interactive gaming system for urinals, developed right here, at MIT.

Keywords: restroom, washroom, bathroom advertising, ads, interactive.

Video, Data on Vinyl Disks

Look what I found while organizing my bookmarks:
"VinylVideo allows people to watch images created by specially pressed albums on household televisions. Viewers can fast-forward or rewind with a gentle flip of the turntable needle. They can skip tracks on the "picture disks" or scratch the record like a DJ, changing and mixing the image. They can also try listening to the picture disks, though that's a less pleasant experience akin to searching for the devil's message in the fuzz of a Beatles record spun backward. The invention is "totally useless of course," says Sengmüller, a Vienna-based artist who regularly commutes to New York. "There's no industrial value."
--The Village Voice, April 2000.

Did you know that 20 years ago they used to have multimedia applications on vinyl? "British record companies have released records - both 45s and LPs - with one side recorded with music and the other side recorded with a computer program. The flip side can be run on the specified computers (such as a Sinclair, Apple, or BBC Micro) to display graphics accompanying the music." -- Dead Media

Here's an idea. How about handing out your next advertising kit on a stylishly packaged vinyl instead of minidisks, flash memory or PDAs? Or at least on those cool Verbatim retro CD-Rs designed after the 45-rpm records.

Keywords: vinyl advertising, vinyl video, vinyl data, retro advertising, ads, vynil.

Dream Machine and Subliminal Ads?

I was about to overlook the whole story about the dream machine covered in today's NY Times and picked up by half of the blogosphere, but the last paragraph caught my attention:

"Days after my experience with Ms. Chapman I found myself craving the Dreamachine and the vivid imagery and sense of calm it had produced. I'm not sure I would part with $500 to bring one into my life. But having lived through the experience, it was hard not to think about Mr. Gysin's vision of an alternate-universe America in which every home would tune into internal landscapes instead of commercial programming."

A Russian sci-fi book Labyrinth of Reflections talks about a computer generated virtual reality Matrix-like trance induced by a sequence of lights blinking on the computer monitor. Could that be it? Can you control the imagery induced by the Dream Machine? Could that be the ultimate advertising machine?

Wireless Video Advertising in Subway

Daily Wireless wrote not so long ago:
"The Toronto Transit Commission plans to be the first public transit system in North America to bring television and digital advertising onto its underground platforms and into its subway trains. The subway narrowcast network is part of a transit-advertising deal between Toronto's transit commission and Viacom Outdoor.

The new form of advertising, partnering with Viacom Outdoor, is aimed at a captive audience of about 850,000 people, and will include customized messages based on the TTC rider's location. So it will not just promote a pizza franchise, for example, but also give walking directions to the nearest pizza store. Likewise, a cold day could mean ads for hot chocolate at the local coffee shop."

Advertising On Toilet Paper

"On the average, people go to the bathroom 6 times a day. Public restrooms are used very often. Why not place your business or product in front of thousands of people who use restrooms every day. This is a sure fire way to grab people's attention." Just Toilet Paper. 500 sheets per roll, $12 apiece.

On the one hand, there are certain brand equity issues. On the other hand, your message does get undivided attention and perhaps even second-hand readership.

Usability Meets TV Advertising

"Experience from overseas (notably the UK) and some activity here in the US suggests that as far as interactive advertising is concerned, creatives are going to have a whole new dimension to deal with. Issues of effectiveness and accountability have always been the source of tension between the creative and client side of the advertising equation, but when a 30-second spot has to not only effectively communicate a message or call to action, but also facilitate some sort of direct on-screen interaction, the evil specter of usability raises its (to some) ugly head."
--MIT Tech Review blog

Grafedia: Hyperlinked Buildings

"Grafedia is hyperlinked text, written by hand onto physical surfaces and linking to rich media content - images, video, sound files, and so forth. It can be written anywhere - on walls, in the streets, or in bathroom stalls. Grafedia can also be written in letters or postcards, on the body as tattoos, or anywhere you feel like putting it. Viewers "click" on these grafedia hyperlinks with their cell phones by sending a message addressed to the word + "@grafedia.net" to get the content behind the link."

How long will it take someone to do Grafedia ads? Reminds us of the Yellow Arrow project.

No Time To Watch DVRed Content

Washington Post writes:
"The little secret of digital video recorders is that while they allow you to amass a large collection of movies and TV shows quickly, you still have to find time to watch the material you recorded so effortlessly. For all their merits, these things can't add an extra two hours to each day to help you catch up on this backlog of video.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans spend hours a day bored out of their skulls in commercial airplanes, watching recycled TV content and stale movies and thumbing through in-flight magazines between naps."

The article goes on to discuss usability problems with the recently released TiVo ToGo. But it seems it makes another good point, right in the lead paragraph. It would make sense to record all these shows only if you could watch them in an alternative setting: in line, in a traffic jam, on a bus. We all need something like Zen Portable Media Player.

Schedule Shifts Offset DVRs

"Major networks are changing the way they schedule TV shows, adding an extra minute or two at the end of their programs so that TiVos and other PVRs miss important sections, and so they can charge extra for advertising."
--BoingBoing, USA Today (full article)

The Age of Egocasting

"...The creation and near-universal adoption of the remote control arguably marks the beginning of the era of the personalization of technology. The remote control shifted power to the individual, and the technologies that have embraced this principle in its wake—the Walkman, the Video Cassette Recorder, Digital Video Recorders such as TiVo, and portable music devices like the iPod—have created a world where the individual’s control over the content, style, and timing of what he consumes is nearly absolute.

Retailers and purveyors of entertainment increasingly know our buying history and the vagaries of our unique tastes. As consumers, we expect our television, our music, our movies, and our books “on demand.” We have created and embraced technologies that enable us to make a fetish of our preferences."
-- Christine Rosen, "The Age of Egocasting", The New Atlantis

Canopus To Sell USB TV Tuner

"Canopus Inc. announced Jan. 14 a new USB TV tuner card and software bundle that enables you to tune in TV on a PC. Bundled software enables a variety of video-editing tasks, including TV recording. The Canopus KTVX1000 goes on sale next month in Japan for just under $100."
--PersonalTechPipeline.com

The Future of TV

"Both the channel-centric reality of TV and its ephemeral nature are artifacts of the distribution bottleneck of cable broadcast. TV is still in the era of limited shelf space, while the lesson of the Long Tail is that more is always better. The growth of cable capacity over the past decade pales next to the growth in video creation over the same period and the size of the potential microaudiences for anything and everything. TiVo may have helped by at least taking the tyranny of time out of the equation, but we are nowhere near the iTunes model of being able to download everything ever made, anytime. "

--from "The Long Tail TV" by Chris Anderson. Read parts I, II, III, Wishlist, Conclusion of the article.

Idea on DVR Advertising

"When is the one time we all stare real hard at the TV and give 100pct of our attention? When we are fast forwarding using our TiVo/PVR units. TV never has a greater share of our attention because we all want to stop the fast forward right when the show starts back up. It would be real easy to write software to pull one of the 30 frames per second that are marked for the device, and hold that as a billboard ad for the product being sold until the commercial is over. The viewer won’t see it if they don’t fast forward, and if they do, they see the equivalent of a billboard for the product being sold. Viewers staring hard at your ad. That can’t be a bad thing."
--Mark Cuban

Opticality Offers 3-d Displays and Signage

"Spectators experience lifelike 3D images float deep within the screen and project up to several feet outside of it. Images are visible to the naked eye, and can be seen at 120-degree peripheries. Opticality displays are based on flat-panel LCD and plasma screens, and can be modified to each vertical's unique specifications. From cell phones to large-scale screens, Opticality Displays can be built in a full range of sizes and to a variety of specifications. We are focused on the following key advertising markets: In-Store, Out-of-Home (OOH), Events and Promotions, and Entertainment and Hospitality." The company offers content production tools.

--via BrandNoise

Previous posts:
Stereoscopic Advertising, Part II
Stereoscopic Advertising, Part I

Sims-Based Reality TV Show

"Electronic Arts, the world's biggest video game publisher, is considering an interactive TV show that would let viewers control the actions of the characters as in its popular game "The Sims."
"One idea could be that you're controlling a family, telling them when to go to the kitchen and when to go to the bedroom, and with this mechanism you have gamers all over the world 'playing the show'," said Jan Bolz, vice president of marketing and sales for EA Europe."
--Reuters

Related posts:
The "Video Mods" Show
Unexplored: Deus Ex Machinima

The Forehead Ad Blocker

Now on eBay:
"Tired of seeing advertising everywhere you go? From billboards to commercials, advertising has invaded our precious time with no end in sight. However, mankind has always had the option of ignoring these ads. Don't like a commercial? Change the channel! Don't like a print ad? Flip the page!

But there is a new type of advertising that is rapidly gaining ground: forehead advertising. These ads will be inescapable, especially if you have to visually interact with that soulless human posing as a walking billboard. That is, unless you have the Forehead Ad Blocker!"

Related post:
Human Bodies As Billboards

Dr. Seuss & Advertising in Cartoons

Dr. Seuss would've turned 100 last year. Some of his great advertising works for Flit, Ford, NBC and Standart Oil are stored in the archive of the Advertising Artwork of Dr. Seuss. Talk about product placement.

Related:
Comics in Advertising

Sirius To Offer Sattelite Video

"Sirius Satellite Radio said on Wednesday it plans to sell a video service beginning in the second half of 2006 and will use software from Microsoft for the service.

Sirius, which provides satellite radio services for a monthly fee, said it is planning two to three video channels with programming aimed at children. It said car makers are interested in installing the service given the interest in entertainment for passengers in the back seats of cars."
--Reuters

Potential Of Blogs As Advertising Medium

You have already seen the report quantifying the damage Craigslist is doing to the classified listing business of newspapers. Tony Gentile at the Media Center takes the idea further:

"[Think] about repurposing 'blog infrastructure' as a mechanism for creating and publishing classified listings.

Imagine Blogger or TypePad not in the hands of a blogger, PR flak or journalist... but in the hands of a recruiter, real estate agent or used car salesmen. Imagine a slightly customized UI that asks for a Job Title, Description and Location, instead of a blog post Title, Link and Body. Imagine an open database of these listings that you can search... and the ability to subscribe to a Feed containing continuously updated search results.

You don't have to imagine.

The database already exists (at least for recruitment classifieds) at Indeed.com and jobs.feedster.com... and the UI for publishing will follow soon. More listing categories will emerge in 2005.

The implications are profound."
--read on.

The End Of Analog Audio Reels

Another page of media evolution turned:
"Quantegy, the last manufacturer of professional reel-to-reel analog audio tape in the world has closed their plant in Opelika, AL. Emtec (the former BASF, which used to be AGFA) was the last European manufacturer and ceased manufacuring in 2002."
--Slashdot

Century Of Times Sq. Spectaculars

Times Square turned 100 and so did its landmark advertising, much of it done by Artkraft Strauss. "The company has created most of the neon seen in this historic spot since the turn of the century. Artkraft Strauss traces its origins to 1897, when horse-cars ran on Broadway and gaslights flickered from theater marquees.

From then until now and on into the future, Artkraft Strauss sets the standard in technological innovation. Among Artkraft Strauss "firsts": 3D advertising displays, mechanical animation, Times Square neon, traveling "news zippers," jumbo video, sidewalk bridge advertising, real-time LED information displays, large-scale interactive signs and multimedia displays and more" (see gallery).
--via Brand Noise

Related:
Digital Billboards: Overview
Digital Billboards: Magink
Digital Billboards: Defacing

Future: Personal Video Projectors

"Light Blue Optics has developed ground-breaking holographic technology, which will power a new generation of pocket-sized digital video projectors. The company is based in Cambridge, UK. There are a huge number of applications for this technology in fields including business, home entertainment, aerospace and advertising. At present, the focus is on tiny personal projectors for business and home use. The illustration shows an artist’s impression of a potential early product – a personal video projector, which you could download movies to and then play anywhere, using a wall as the screen. It is envisaged that devices based on this technology will be in the shops in the next two to four years."
--via PDA Live

Related posts:
Stereoscopic Advertising
Stereoscopic Advertising, Part II

Comics in Advertising

"These comic strips illustrate some of the different ways advertisers used comics to sell their products. Using a well known celebrity or creating a character that would become familiar to the audience were common strategies that are still used today. These examples reveal the success advertisers found when they incorporated comics in their ads. All Information found inAdvertising and Selling, August 15, 1935, page 30-32." (click the image above to enlarge).
--see more

... and more of the early advertising comics.

Mind Control: HyperSonic Sound

Update [Dec 10, 2007 -Hi, LJ people!]: There have been new developments since this post:

• Voices in Your Head Promote Ghost Stories
• Binaural advertising
• Mind Control: HyperSonic Sound
• Hypersonic Sound Laser For Sale on eBay
• Beam of Sound Promotes Murder Book

-- original post --



In 2003, Popular Science's "Best of What's New" Grand Award went to Woody Norris and his American Technology Corporation for HyperSonic Sound, a device that streams sound "in a precise, laser-like beam for up to 150 yards with almost no degradation in quality or volume."

Here's how the magazine described the experience:
"When I met Norris in September he pointed the 7-inch-square emitter at me from 30 feet away. Suddenly I heard the sound of birds chirping. The noise didn't seem to emanate from his device; I felt like it was generated inside my noggin. Yet a guy just 2 feet away from me couldn't hear it."

"The applications are numerous, if not apparent: Thousands of soda machines in Tokyo will soon bombard passersby with the enticing sound of a Coke being poured, and several U.S. supermarkets will promote products to shoppers as they walk down corresponding aisles."

The device costs around $600. I have a feeling that this is so powerful that eventually it's use will have to be restricted.

Here are a few articles back from 2003:
--"HyperSonic Sound as a Weapon" (originally by NY Times): Certain noises, projected at the right pitch, can incapacitate even a stone-deaf terrorist; the bones in your head are
brutalized by a tone's full effect whether you're clutching the sides of
your skull in agony or not.

--"[Norris] has sent out HSS units for testing at Wal-Mart and McDonald's. Sony has signed up to distribute the units in Europe. Gateway is considering including the technology in its line of televisions. And General Dynamics is installing them in the public address systems of U.S. Navy ships." (Forbes)

Known competitor:
"The Audio Spotlight sound system, developed and manufactured by Holosonics, is currently used around the world for museums, tradeshows, retail displays, exhibitions, and special effects, and will soon be available for consumer applications. Companies such as Motorola, Time-Warner, DaimlerChrysler, Kraft Foods, Sega, and American Greetings have chosen the Audio Spotlight, and Audio Spotlight systems have been installed in venues such as Boston's Museum of Science, the Matisse Museum, Sega's Joypolis, Bibliotheque National de France, Boston Center for the Arts, the European PGA tour, and the Chicago Cultural Center."


Keywords: advertising, point of sales, point of purchase, POP, interactive, sound

Set-top Box Blocks Ads

"The way we watch TV could be transformed under plans being developed by satellite company BSkyB for a service which would allow viewers to avoid adverts. It would enable viewers with a new set-top box to watch terrestrial television via Sky’s satellite platform and screen out adverts during their favourite shows."
--The Scotsman via AdRants

Why not, really? In Britain, they have a whole 24-hour Advert Channel that broadcasts nothing but commercials. And speaking of blocking, here's a little gizmo that blocks Fox News.

Keywords: advertising, commercials, skipping, skip, blocking, block

Strabucks' Cups Atop Boston Cabs

"Starbucks Coffee is not only popping up on every street corner, it's springing from the roofs of Boston's taxicabs as well.

A holiday advertising gimmick placed atop cabs in recent weeks has been fooling Hub motorists who continually mistake the ad for a Starbucks cup left on the roof.

"It's pretty ingenious," said Larry Meister, vice president of the Independent Taxi Owners Association. "People will pull up to cabs driving 55 miles per hour and start beeping and pointing to the roof."
--Boston Herald

Related:
Closed Spaces: Taxi

The "Video Mods" Show

"MTV2, a Viacom-owned music network, is home to one of the most innovative shows on TV, a self-described (by its host) “cross-breeding bastard” of a program that is a captivating experiment in branded entertainment. [...]

The show is “Video Mods,” and it centers on original music videos that feature animated characters from popular video games dancing, singing and acting in vignettes based on hit songs. "Video Mods” was introduced in September and airs on MTV2 on alternate Saturday nights (production complexities have limited the number of shows to date).[...]

The videos are compelling. One features characters from Electronic Arts’ Sims 2 game acting out a teen fantasy based on the Fountains of Wayne song “Stacey’s Mom.” Other videos mix singles from Evanescence, Black Eyed Peas and the Vines with characters from Leisure Suit Larry, Jade Empire and Outlaw Golf 2."
--AdAge (free registration)

Previous post:
Unexplored: Deus Ex Machinima

Vertical Display

"Our analysis of the data verifies that a strong cultural bias in favor of portrait orientation for periodicals does indeed exist regardless of whether the pages are printed on paper or displayed on screens.

This raises a critical question about the future digital form of periodicals and books: Will continued viewing of landscape-oriented pages on electronic displays radically alter the historic cultural bias with regard to the orientation of documents? Or will the historic cultural bias be strong enough to reassert itself through a new generation of portable electronic displays optimized for reading portrait-oriented pages?"
-- "Life After 2001: Redefining Print Media in the Cyber Age", Roger Fidler, Kent State Uni, 1998.

Pictured: pivoting Samsung 173B LCD Monitor, reviewed by SilentPCReview.com

Advertising Fan

Enjoy a refreshing breeze that stays firmly on brand message.

"The FanScreen works by persistence of vision. As the fan spins, the vane containing the 85 full colour LEDs displays text, graphics and animations." Marketed by Space Writer through local dealers along with such equally cool stuff as iBall, SpaceWriter, SignLine, and WallScreen.

Check out this 1994 CalTech student project called ROPOD, which stands for rotating polar display.

New Full Video Banner Ad Format

EyeWonder has recently begun offering a new ad format "which allows advertisers to deliver instant streaming video that completely fills the entire area of most of today's banner ad sizes."
--press release

The company is offering a variety of other formats, most notably the "in-between pages video", and in-game video ads currently available only on the Cartoon Network's site.

Keywords: advertising, internet, banner, video, rich media

Silent Sound Through Vibrations

"Saturday, by Chicago-based artist Sabrina Raaf, is a sound based artwork that participants experience through a glove. To hear the audio, participants have to press their fingertips to their forehead and they can hear the sound without the use of their ears. The glove is outfitted with "bone transducers" which translate sound into vibration patterns which resonate through bone. No sound at all is heard by anyone but the participant at any time."
--Near Near Future