Advertising on Stamps

Ad Rag has an article on how Fox signed the US Postal Service to promote the studio's new "Robots: The Movie" movie on 3 billion of mail pieces by custom-built cancellation stamps.
Then I remembered last year's attempt at personalized stamps by PhotoStamps; the business got canned by the USPS after some inventive people began "printing up stamps with pictures of people including Ted Kaczynski, Jimmy Hoffa and Slobodan Milosevic."

You still can get your logo or picture on a stamp in a handful of countries, most conveniently in Canada at Picture Postage, and also in Australia, where the whole concept was originally invented.

More:
Product placement on stamps for Adidas?

Hasbro Launches Tooth Tunes Brush

Hasbro launched a musical toothbrush targeted at kids that transmits the '60s pop hit "Do You Believe in Magic?" through their jawbones directly to their inner ears. The song plays for two minutes, the amount of time dentists recommend people spend brushing their teeth.

Now if only someone could hook-up iPod to this thing. In any case, I wouldn't be surprised soon to see a toothbrush that hums a toothpaste commercial, too.
-- Agenda, MSNBC

Related post:
Silent Sound Through Vibrations

Closed Spaces: Trains

"The Rail Network and the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA), today unveiled the first television and radio network for rail passengers [first in the US, that is. Toronto announced a similar network a month ago -- AdLab]. The Rail Network is equipping the MARTA rail system with a digital television and radio network capable of providing television programming, with multiple channels of wireless audio, inside subway and commuter rail cars." -- press release

"Beginning this spring, all of MARTA’s rail cars will each be equipped with five 15-inch flat screen television screens. Content for the TV programming will be provided by WSB, Cox Television’s top-rated ABC affiliate in Atlanta, which will produce half-hour local news segments, updated four times daily.

Passengers can either watch the closed captioning programming on the TV screens or tune-in English or Spanish audio via a headset on any FM radio or cell phone with an FM headset. Passengers can also tune-in the MARTA information channel or one of three music channels from a content provider that will be announced in the upcoming weeks." -- MediaWeek

Previous posts:
Closed Spaces: Taxi
Closed Spaces: In-Flight Advertising
Bathroom Advertising Round-Up
Closed Spaces: Dentist's
Wireless Video Advertising in Subway

Keywords: advertising, trains, subway, commercials, transit, technology, future, lab

New Marketplace for Human Billboards

The latest online marketplace for hungry but extroverted college students with body space for sale and publicity-seeking merchants: BodyBillboardz.com. The site joins TatAd, LivingAdSpace and of course eBay.

But still nothing beats the walking bulletin board - this guy will let you literally pin your ad onto his body, just about any part of it.

Related posts:
Update: Human Bodies As Media
The Forehead Ad Blocker
Human Bodies As Billboards

Virtual Girlfriend as Advertising Agent

Freaky but ingenious. Artificial Life Inc, a software maker in Hong Kong, brings to life Vivienne Rose, a girlfriend character in a Simsesque (although not quite), voyeuristic (although not enough) massively multiplayer Tamagotchi-like game for 3G cell phones. She is a product of computerized voice synthesis, streaming video and text messages. She will be available for a monthly fee of $6, not including the airtime costs paid to cellphone operators or the price of virtual chocolates and flowers you choose to pamper her with.

She is able to converse on 35,000 topics. She loves to shop. Your brand could be there. Incidentally, Articial Life is also a maker of intelligent sales agents for websites.

--i4u, NYTimes

Previous posts:
Advertising Robots
In-game Ads: Backlash, Research

Should TiVo Become WebTiVo?

Looks like TiVo, if it manages to stay alive ( here's the TiVo Deathwatch) is on its way to probably become the next, and we hope, more successful version of WebTV (or should we say WebTiVo). Last week, a PayPal/eBay development group released an eBay client (pictured above) for HME (TiVo's open dev platform). Yesterday, my RSS reader got the news of an application that displays Flickr pictures on the device. Also yesterday, Slashdot got into a discussion on whether TiVo should let users "download, store, organize, and serve media from both cable and -- this is the important part -- the internet."

(Here's a handy WebTV emulator for those who've forgotten.)

Comcast Expands Ads-on-Demand Service

"Digital cable subscribers in the Baltimore area will soon be able to watch commercials when they want, as Comcast Corp. will launch the area's first advertising-on-demand service during the second quarter this year.

Marketing experts say the move heralds a new era in television advertising, which is feeling the squeeze from digital video recorders and even Comcast's own video-on-demand service, which allow consumers to bypass commercials."
--Baltimore Business Journal via AdRants


Related post:
Google Tests Advertising on Demand

Update: Human Bodies As Media

(photo by Vladimir Somov at photo-art.ru)

Some of the body parts currently available for branding on eBay: a hand, a pregnant belly, a big fat belly, feet, huge ears, a butt, a bald head, big tits, hair, teeth, and an entire media package consisting of chest, thigh, back, legs.

No wonder then that Glossy News revisited the topic of using human bodies as advertising media. Some of the stuff it covered is pretty recent and well-known, like the guy who sold his forehead to a certain company promoting its anti-snoring remedy. Yet much of the article is new (to me) and amazing (to me), especially the amounts of money involved. Selected snippets:

-- "Full-body advertising has arrived. Martha Zeuber of Cincinnati, Ohio, will be painted to resemble a Ford Mustang for the next six months, while Adrian Boppa, of San Diego, California, will be advertising the San Diego Zoo’s Panda Exhibit by being painted as a panda for the next two months, for a reported sum of $75,000."

-- "In a startling turn of events, the well known promiscuous skank Helen Bederman of Arizona State University has sold her clitoris as “targeted” advertising space."

-- " Stephanie Lerner of New York, New York, a noted underwear model, recently sold her ass for advertising space. “It’s taut, it’s round, it’s perfectly shaped to advertise our product,” said CEO Laurence Honey of Mom’s New England Apple Pie Co. “With an ass like that, how can you lose?”

Previous post:
The Forehead Ad Blocker
Human Bodies As Billboards

Fujitsu Launches U-Scan Shopping Cart

We have already written about the new wave of implementations of what is a pretty old idea - a shopping cart equipped with a touch-screen to show contextual ads and coupons, count groceries and ease the check-out pains. Now, Fujitsu together with Klever Marketing put out a press release saying that the two companies "introduce U-Scan shopper," a $1,200 futuristic smart cart that "features a wireless, cart-mounted computer that empowers shoppers with store information and scan-as-you-shop convenience as they move through a store."

Some of the things the cart does:
-Item scanning/self-checkout
-Personalized offers tied to retailer's loyalty program
-In-store advertising and promotions linked to cart's location in the store
-Item price-checker and locater
-Download shopping lists from retailer's Web site for in-store reference
-Remote in-store order placement, such as pharmacy and deli orders.

The display unit's browser-based application (see pic) runs on Microsoft Windows CE .NET.

More:
--An article in eWeek with more details on U-Scan.
--Microsoft's software for retail businesses

Previous post:
Evolution of Shopping Cart
Wal-Mart 5th Largest TV Network

Future: Virtual (Not Only) Keyboard

So, VKB demoed (and Textually and Info Week took notice) their ready-to-market virtual keyboard (starting at $199) that the company plans to have integrated in all major mobile appliances by mid-2006. Here's how it works:

"The technology uses a red laser to illuminate a virtual keyboard outline on virtually any surface. Despite its futuristic look, the laser is really just a visual guide to where to put your fingers. A separate IR illumination and sensor module invisibly tracks when and where your fingers touch the surface, translating that into keystrokes or other commands.The system does provide an audible click when a key is successfully 'pressed.'" (Info Week).

While the company sees possible applications in PDAs, medical environments and space-saving computers, the potential is overwhelmingly bigger. A new input technology, the virtual keyboard is most similar to touch-screens with its fluidity of the interface, but it's both mobile and much more scaleable and flexible. Just consider that the device doesn't have to project a keyboard; the image can be anything, from maps to text. You can use this device to draw, to write, to edit and to sign documents. You can integrate it with remote controls for some really interactive TV.

I can easily imagine a projected virtual Pong. This can easily be your next mobile ad, too.

Keywords: interactive advertising, virtual keyboard, interactive television, advertising technology, advertising.

Script Stops Google Ads

Unmediated mentions a script that you can install to tweak your web browsers into displaying none of those Google's AdSense text ads. First click fraud, then this.

Wal-Mart 5th Largest TV Network

NYTimes.com today writes about the rise of Wal-Mart TV (password):

"According to Wal-Mart and to an agency that handles its ad sales, the TV operation captures some 130 million viewers every four weeks, making it the fifth-largest television network in the United States after NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox.

While other retailers have experimented with in-store television, Wal-Mart's network, which is available in almost all its 2,600 locations, is the most extensive.

Late last year, the company hired Nielsen Media Research to evaluate its network (Nielsen does not regularly measure Wal-Mart TV viewers the way it does with the broadcast networks). The study found that shoppers watched Wal-Mart TV an average of seven minutes a store visit, 44 percent longer than in a similar study in 2002.

According to Wal-Mart's rate card, advertisers pay $137,000 to $292,000 to show a single commercial for a four-week period, depending on the length of the ad and the number of stores where it is shown."

In reality, the network is much bigger. The whole thing is run by a company called PRN, who claims to be "the creator of the world's largest in-store media network. We broadcast meaningful information to over 5,000 stores including Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Costco, Sears, SAM’S CLUB, Circuit City, Ralphs, ShopRite, and Pathmark. Each week, more than half of the U.S. population visits a store with the PRN Network. PRN delivers over 180 million gross impressions every month with average brand recall of up to 65%."

More:
-- "The average recall of a brand advertised on Wal-Mart television is 66%, compared with 24% for brands advertised on in-home television" - WSJ quoted on Brand Autopsy.

-- More on Nielsen's study on PRN (November '04)

(Don't) Forget Paris

Offtopic, but then it's a boring long weekend and everybody is talking about Paris Hilton's hack, so I thought I'd just hop on the monetizing bandwagon anyway.

So by now you've already heard how Paris Hilton's Sidekick II phone got hacked and all her notes, nudie pics and phone numbers of her celeb friends got posted all over the web. What do we have? Confusion. Nevermind that it was not the phone that got broken into but her T-mobile web page account, and that's where the goodies were downloaded from; the public will have the impression that someone somehow can tap into their Sidekicks and cell phones. (Far fetched? Check out Fox News that writes that it was her Blackberry that got hacked.)

Deutsche Telekom's (T-mobile parent's) stock is likely to go down on the news when NYSE reopens on Tuesday. I can't believe they still don't have a press release out to reassure public about safety of their service. If by chance you are from DT or any of its units, I am open for a summer PR internship.

Many people have said that the whole thing is a publicity stunt; if so, it's one of the most brilliant and elaborate ones ever. There are a few things that make the hack look less authentic. For example, the style of her notes is not consistent, and one of her notes is link to a porn site that sells the infamous "One Night in Paris" tape (as an aside, there seem to be at least 17 people named Paris Hilton).

Paris herself could benefit from some word of mouth to promote, say, her shows or her recent book, in which she, ironically, advises, "Never have only one cell phone when you can have many." As one newspaper wrote a day before the whole show erupted, Paris Hilton is a Genius.

And you gotta love those enterpreneural souls who started offering contextual t-shirts (pictured above) hours after the news broke and promptly AdWorded their site on Google.

Update (Feb 21 8pm EST): Apparently, T-mobile just issued a generic press release quoted by Engadget, but the text is not on their main PR page, or, say, PR News Wire. Makes you wonder why it took them two full days.

Flashback: Cereal Box Carboard Records

There was a time (1950-70s) when cereal boxes had music records on them. Like the rest of the box, the records were made of thin cardboard and you'd have to to cut them from the box. The online Museum of Flexi/Cardboard/Oddity Records where I found this piece says that Wheaties were first to manufacture this multimedia packaging. You can also listen to the sound of this record.

On a related note, check out a McDonald's jingle printed on a cardboard record and given out at restaurants in late 80s.

Related post:
Video, Data on Vinyl Disks

Advertising With Alphabet Soup

It's a slow day today with no real news and lots of boring work waiting to get done, so I have a perfect excuse to post random stuff that wouldn't get here otherwise.

Remember the magic bowl sold on eBay last month for $6,700? When someone poured soup into it, the bowl would spell different things to different people, and the seller claimed the bowl even had predicted the outcome of the 2004 elections. Someone should've reverse-engineered the bowl to see how it works, and maybe we would have a new "foodvertising" medium. Imagine sitting at a lunch and having your soup spelling contextually appropriate slogans back at you, like "Think outside the bun", or "Got milk?" or "Beanz meanz Heinz". How cool would that be?

Order Real Pizza From Virtual World

New service from Pizza Hut and Everquest: the hungry game addicts can order their pizzas from within the game, as they slay enemies and rescue princesses. Just type in a magic spell to summon slices of dragon pepperoni. Wonder what they'll call it: Everhut or Pizzaquest? Anyway, here's the official announcement and below is a quote:

"You're in luck - pizza is just a few key strokes away! While playing EverQuest II just type "/pizza" and a web browser will launch the online ordering section of pizzahut.com. Fill in your info and just kick back until fresh pizza is delivered straight to your door.

Millions have experienced the world's #1 massively multiplayer online franchise. Now behold the future..."

--via BoingBoing

Keywords: in-game advertising, product placement, game, ads, Pizza Hut

Convergence Unleashed: RCA Victrola

This RCA Lawton Turntable "features a real, working 3-speed turntable for spinning your old vinyl favorites, plus an AM/FM analog radio and full-function CD player. LCD backlit display, built-in stereo speakers. Made of solid wood and veneer, with a real metal horn and hand crank that really turns." All for $299.95 at Spilsbury.com. Next, I will want a mechanical Visionette TV with a DVD player and built-in TiVo.

Your Brand Is Toast

What is it with all these people and their long-repressed childhood desire to play with food? McDonald's advertises its Lincoln Fry, Gourmet Impressions sells a tool to carve out text on vegetables, and I've just posted on MIT people who use lasers to the same end.

Remember a story on a "holy toast" with Virgin Mary's face on it that sold for $28,000 on eBay? Well, now you can have Mickey toasts each morning with this wonderful appliance sold on Spilsbury.com. It plays the Mickey tune, too. And just in case you prefer waffles, here's the Mickey Waffler.

And if your religious, hm, tastes value Virgin Mary over Mickey Mouse, you should check out this Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese Sandwich Maker on eBay. The bidding is closed, but maybe the guy who sold it could make another one for you.

--The Mickey toaster spotted by Keith Alexander

Concept: Advertising with RFIDed Toys

Bandai, the company behind Power Rangers and Tamagotchi, created a new doll equipped with RFID that can speak 150 phrases and interacts with other RFID-enabled objects: syringes, play candies and medicine. I can easily imagine, say, a Happy Meal toy that fancies RFIDed mini-hamburgers and mutters "I'm lovin' it", or, better, "I'd hit it."
--via Near Near Future

Branding Food With Laser Cutter

A high-tech version of the Gourmet Impressions' food-branding cutter by former MIT Media Lab people, who write on their Food For Thought project page:

"Holidays are always a time to gather around the dining table with family and friends to share good food and stories about times gone by. Now family favorites--whether text or images--can actually appear on the fruit, nuts, and vegetables being served with the help of a laser sign cutter. Since the process takes only about five minutes per edible, the food messages can be extremely timely; I've even printed the day's closing stock prices on crackers, appropriate for Wall Street parties."

Engadget Reviews Verizon's V Cast

Engadget takes a close look at Verizon's V CAST wireless video-on-demand service. Their conclusion: "Because it takes advantage of a high-speed EV-DO connection, this is easily the best multimedia experiences we’ve seen on a cellphone to date, but the larger issue is whether the average person will be satisfied with what’s offered."

Theaters To Show Live Ad Performances

"One of the last taboos in theatre could soon be broken with the introduction of live advertisements on stage.

Scripted "commercials" will be piloted at the Apollo in Victoria next month. It successful they could change the face of theatre forever.

The cast of Saturday Night Fever will act out advertisements for products including McDonald's, Heinz and Kellogg's during breaks in the performance on 1 March."

--This Is London via Media Post

Shift.tv to Offer Online PVR

"German video streaming service company TV1 is launching at CeBit 2005 an online personal video recording service called shift.tv. The internet based personal video recorder service (iPVR) allows users to record TV programs via the web. The recorded videos can then be downloaded or streamed from shift.tv onto portable video players [pictured above: Creative Zen portable Media Center], PCs and other devices."
-- i4u

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

Warner to Offer Virtual Product Placement

TVWeek.com writes (and you need a free password to read the full article):

"Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution has re-entered the world of selling "virtual" product placement, through which everyday products are digitally inserted into syndicated sitcoms.

Warner's new virtual product placement effort, called digital branded integration, is targeting deals for the distributor's off-network sitcoms, including "Will & Grace," "Friends" and "The Drew Carey Show." Media agency executives said Warner Bros. already has inked two deals with consumer product advertisers for virtual product placement in syndicated sitcoms.

Marathon Ventures, a Midwest-based marketing and advertising company, is providing the virtual product placement technology for Warner Bros.

Virtual product placement became a buzzword in 1999 when Warner Bros.' syndication division struck a deal with New Jersey-based Princeton Video Image, which possessed the technology to digitally insert products into TV shows.

At that point, PVI had already used its technology in sports programming, digitally inserting product logos onto signs behind the batter's box during baseball games. PVI's technology has also been used in NFL football games to superimpose first-down markers onto the video picture of the football field.

But PVI didn't produce any business, and Warner Bros. ended its agreement with the company some years ago, according to a syndication executive. PVI filed for bankruptcy in May 2003.

Warner Bros., executives said, will be offering limited static product shots of a few seconds-for example, of a bottle of Perrier inserted on a table. Characters will have limited interaction with the virtual products, an executive said."

Future: The End of CD

WashingtonPost.com looks into the future and sees no place for CDs or any other similarly tanglible contant format, replaced instead by "no format at all". Quote: "Classic-rock fan George Petersen doesn't need another copy of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" or Cream's "Disraeli Gears." He has spent the past four decades buying and re-buying his favorite music in a succession of new formats: vinyl, 8-track, cassette, compact disc, Super Audio CD, DVD-Audio."

"The new format is no format," predicted Petersen, a 24-year industry veteran who also owns a record label, a recording studio and a music-publishing company. "What the consumer would buy is a data file, and you could create whatever you need. If you want to make an MP3, you make an MP3. If you want a DVD-Audio surround disc, you make that."

Sound Inserts in Print Ads

Among other things, Americhip produces chips to let advertisers integrate sound into just about any kind of printed matter: books, POP, magazine inserts, and even packaging. Pictured above is what they claim is the first ever magazine insert with sound for Twix that quips: "Twix. Two for me. None for you."

Related post:
Musical Greeting Cards (how they work, and more)

Keywords: sound, advertising, greeting cards, music, musical, ads, print

Military Seeks Scatterable Media

"U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) reports that so far this [2004] year 9.3 million leaflets have been dropped from low-flying aircraft into Afghanistan and 3.8 million into Iraq. Psychological warfare operations (PSYOPs) experts say leaflets, as well as broadcast programs and other multimedia efforts are especially effective inside those countries because the population has limited access to outside media. Just how effective the programs can be became clear in the first Gulf War when Iraqi soldiers, waving leaflets, (29 million were dropped during that conflict), surrendered to U.S. forces.

But the humble leaflet may be headed for a digital overhaul. USSOCOM spokesman Lieutenant Commander Steven Mavica explained that the command has issued a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for air droppable, scatterable electronic media to find the latest and greatest. Internet-capable devices, entertainment and game devices, greeting cards, and phone and text messaging technologies" are just a few of the suggested options for these so-called "psychological operations".

-- Special Operations Technology

History: Leaflet Bomb

"The T3 Leaflet bomb was converted from the American M-26 Hooded Flare for use by both British and American fighter and fighter/bomber aircraft. Its first operational use was in July 1944. In view of it's substantial nature it was felt unfavourable for distribution over friendly peoples except on the very few occasions when there was reasonable assurance that the empty containers would fall in open country. The cylinder was 50" long and 8" in diameter and could hold between 14,000 - 15,000 standard sized leaflets (8.5" x 5.25"). Bundles of leaflets were secured inside a wooden frame which was inserted into the bomb. A small explosive charge was used to eject this frame after the bombs release. "
--PsyWar.org

Vodafone Offers Its Vision of The Future

British mobile operator Vodafone launched a website where the company shares its vision of the near technological future. They see a lot of interesting stuff coming: personal video communicator with a foldable screen-bracelet being the most tame (its visual part pictured above). Virtual billboards are in the best traditions of Minority Report, presenting "targeted and personal offers based on the public profiles of the passers-by. The communicator is the host of the digital profile."

--thanks to BrandNoise

Keywords: advertising future, advertising technology

Commentary: The Future of TV

BusinessWeek.com is running a series of articles discussing the future of TV, mostly focusing on HDTV . Three major trends to keep an eye on, Business Week says, are:
1. The super-high-tech TV will become as easy to set up as a low-tech appliance.
2. Because the TVs will communicate over a home network, you'll be able to access digital content anywhere.
3. With this Internet connectivity, TV won't come from just one provider anymore.

Commentary: The Future of Podcasting

KToddStorch.com begins a series of columns on the future of podcasting. A quote on podcast-based advertising from a guest writer Michael Butler, a podcaster: "as this thing gets more mainstream, there are some who will get real advertisers and start to see some income from this."

Building Front as Computer Screen

"With Arcade you can play Tetris with your mobile phone - on a playground 3370 m2 in size.

Whoever stands in front of Bibliothèque nationale de France can connect himself with the building by dialing +33 (1) 44 24 73 50. The current show will be interrupted and the text "TETRIS" announces that the game can begin." Other games include Pong and Pacman.
--via Near Near Future

Player Protest Erupts in Game World

Abalieno has a report on an in-game player protest - already known Gnome Tea Party - that erupted last week in Blizzard's World of Warcraft to attract company's attention to problems with warrior class of characters. The company temporarily suspended protesters' access to the game, giving their crowd control a Tiananmen flavor.

Why is it important? Because if you plan to run in-game ads, you should also consider the possibility of neighborhood pickets against your corporate intrusion. The time for in-game PR has come. I know one public relations specialist who would be delighted to jump on the challenge.

Keywords: in-game advertising, public relations, virtual

Upload Picture To Interactive Billboard

American Express in Belgium launched an interactive billboard that displays pictures that just about anyone with a computer and some knowledge of French or Dutch can upload through the campaign website americanexpressblue.be. A live webcam brings the real-time snapshots (like the one above) of the billboard back to the site for you to show off.

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

3d Advertising: Heliodisplay

"Scientific breakthroughs have a way of sneaking up on us though _ and pouncing when we least expect it. That may describe the way you feel should you visit IO2’s web site and take a look at the videos showcasing their ``Heliodisplay.’’

Developed by Chad Dyner at IO2, the surprisingly compact Heliodisplay, which is about the size of an average PC case laid on its side is said to intake air, "alter"’ it, then expel it and use lasers to project the image onto the "still invisible’’ conditioned air" (The Korea Times).

The image is planar (2D), not volumetric (3D). Like any computer monitor, it can project simulated 3D. Sometimes such images will look like real 3D when viewed from more than a few feet away because there is no physical depth reference.

Commercial versions of the prototypes, with the following specifications, will be available for purchase in February at $18,000 for a machine that produces images 22' large:

• Full color, high resolution video (SVGA,XGA)
• 22" (55.8cm) visible image, diagonally measured
• Plug-and-Play with PC,
• Stereo audio
• Interactive virtual touch screen
• Improved image fidelity, brightness

Suggested applications? But of course, advertising.

Related posts:
Future: Volumetric 3D Display
Stereoscopic Advertising, Part I
Stereoscopic Advertising, Part II

Future: Advertising Aurora

"By shooting intense radio beams into the night sky, researchers created a modest neon light show visible from the ground.

It is not yet clear if the aurora must already be active before an artificial sky show can be induced, says Karl Ziemelis, chief physics editor at the journal. If no pre-existing aurora is required, Ziemelis said, "we are left with the tantalizing (some would say disconcerting) possibility that such radio-fuelled emissions could form the basis of a technology for urban lighting, celestial advertising, and more."
You bet.
--LiveScience

Siemens Invents Mobile Post-Its

"In the future, cell phone users will be able to leave messages anywhere in the form of what might be termed electronic post-its. They will be able to post virtual messages referring to a specific location wherever they are needed. Siemens researchers have now created the technical basis and the computer programs for this "digital graffiti service." (press release)

More details in pdf-ed press release and here:
"Digital messages can be attached to pictures of a local sight to provide information about the building. The radius in which the message can be received can be selected by the writer of the message. Buildings visible from far off - the Acropolis in Athen, for instance - can be given a larger radius of a few miles enabling tourists to read the graffito as well from a long way away."

Related posts:
Grafedia: Hyperlinked Buildings
YellowArrow DYI Ads

Closed Spaces: Dentist's

The average wait time in a dental reception area is 15 to 30 minutes, according to a survey of dentists conducted by Private Dental Network, who decided to sooth the patient's anxiety and launch an original live advertising-supported cable channel (also available in DVD format) called Private Dental Network.

"Current markets include Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Sacramento. The focus of expansion will be the remaining top 20 DMAs over the next six to 12 months. New York, Florida, Illinois and Texas are the next markets to be opened" (Media Life Magazine).

Other products from the PDN include: PDN CE-TV (pay-per-view continuing education courses) and PDN Operatory - "with individual computers in every room, each staff member has full control of the patient education content delivered to the patients."

Previous related posts:
Bathroom Advertising Round-Up
Closed Spaces: In-Flight Advertising
Closed Spaces: Taxi

Crazy Advertising Characters

A collector Dan Goodsell of the Imaginary World compiled a gallery of vintage advertising characters faturing a much younger Mr. Clean, Dr. Kool, Reddy Kilowat and Dutch Boy, among many crazy others.

The Strangerhood: Sims-based Sitcom

Remember the news a couple of weeks ago about EA considering a reality show based on their hit game The Sims? Well, it's almost too late, because they aready are facing prime-time competition from The Strangerhood, a Sims 2 sitcom from the guys who brought us Red vs. Blue. A piece of trivia - the Strangerhood is produced with "four Xboxes, Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Audition, and a Canopus video capture card all on a PC running Windows XP Professional." Noticed by cute history.

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

Google Tests Advertising on Demand

If you can't avoid ads, you should at least choose the ones you want to see. This seems to be the newest twist to Google's "do no evil" mantra as the company beta-tests an AdSense feature that allows site visitors to select the topic of displayed (con)text ads. You can play with it at Consumer Affairs site, or with the same ad frame taken out of page context. Noticed by Google Fan.

Live TV Hits Cell Phones

"Last week, Cingular Wireless LLC, the nation's largest mobile-phone company, launched its $9.99-a-month MobiTV service, which has 22 channels of television viewable on four models of color-screen, high-speed-Internet handsets.

Subscribers to Sprint and Cingular can watch live television from CNBC, MSNBC, ABC News, and the Learning Channel.

Cartoon Network is developing characters suited for short-form entertainment, Samples said, such as Periwinkle, an animated platypus that stars in two-minute episodes that can be on cell phones, the network's Web site and before the feature film at movie theaters.

Fox's "24: Conspiracy" is a scaled-down version of the popular TV show.

Market researcher Yankee Group estimates there are 280,000 subscribers to mobile TV in the United States, mostly through Sprint's service. The number could reach 1.3 million by year-end and 10.8 million by 2008, Yankee Group said."
--Washington Post (via Yahoo)

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

Super Tech for the Super Bowl

"In what is likely to provide one of the more memorable aspects of the Feb. 6 broadcast from Jacksonville, Fla., Fox is embedding tiny cameras in the grass at Alltel Stadium. If the Philadelphia Eagles and New England Patriots meet on the 3-yard line, viewers will be able to look up into the linemen’s faces before the snap.

And then there’s the CableCam, which will fly overhead, giving viewers what Court calls a “videogame-like” view of the action."

Many more details in Broadcasting & Cable, plus a discussion about whether the $80,000-a-second price tag on Super Bowl commercials is worth it.