Slashdot Mirror
Graffiti Bridges Worlds for Cell User
babokd wrote with a follow up to a piece we ran about the phenomenon of Grafedia, graffiti with links to the internet. The idea has caught on, and 'a communion of the real world with the Internet' may become more and more common. From the article: "It's all around you -- and not just in the phone lines and cables running under the streets or in the airborne Wi-Fi streams....If you send a text message to an e-mail address scrawled in paint on a subway advertisement or on a sidewalk, for example, you could get some digital pop art on your phone in return. An adhesive arrow on a telephone pole could hold the key to the history of a nearby building."
Not that anyone ever saw real examples of it.
"For a Good Time, text 443544"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
$> look building
You see an email address scrawled on the bricks.
$>grafitti email address
You get some nice pop art in return.
$>look light pole
You see an adhesive arrow.
$>look adhesive arrow.
You find the key to neaby building!
$>use key on door
You unlock the door.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Smells like someone is trying to bring back viral marketing again. It was a stupid idea the first time.
Clickable Graffiti, or Not
When we first heard of Grafedia, we thought it was an amazing new technology: take a photo of a word with your camera phone and it turns into a clickable link. The truth is more mundane, although you wouldn't guess that from the hype. The word does indicate an e-mail account - e.g. word@grafedia.net - but the picture-taking is superfluous. All Grafedia really is is a mailserver whose e-mail accounts return files to anyone who e-mails. The "twist" is that the person who creates the account has to upload a file and then tattoo, spraypaint, or engrave the word out in the wild. It's more like an invitation to urban blight than an honest-to-goodness new medium. John Geraci, who dreamed this up, sees it as an extension of the Internet. He and at least one Grafedia fan Wired interviewed claim that they don't advocate vandalism. Meanwhile, we wait for software that can read words from photos and turn them into links.
"Even for Slashdot, that was a very obscure reference!" - Anonymous Coward
Scott, you are always looking for a way to bring back your famous text adventures. Do continue. I bet Zork was behind that door, right?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
It said "Graffiti Bridges". Is this another one of those Hollywood summer sequels?
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Graffititising!
how's this any different
than scrawling a phone number
on a bathroom stall?
In other news, Microsoft applies for a patent on graffiti.
I think it would be cool to use something similar to this as a virtual tour-guide.
"It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth."
(For those of you with Apple Newtons, it is where you enter your "hanbvvwritten 7ettXrs")
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
You pay for the redirection service, you're limited to finite message sizes, and the other person has to know that emailing the Grafedia address or texting the number on the coded yellow arrow will result in an auto-reply of some sort?
How is this better than just scrawling your web address underneath your graffiti?
Am I the only one feeling that only a minute amount of graffiti fits into the first category?
The campaign to counter all those idiot vandal grafitti advertisers should be titled:
"Say it. Don't spray it."
"My God...it's full of trolls!"
I see this as being abused by script kiddies so that your computer can have as good a time asking for Bubba as you can. And with the same "must've caught something bad" results, too. I see this as a merging of real-world and virtual blights on the landscapes of the 21st Century. What am I missing here?
It must be Windows. It needs half a gig of RAM and a hardware-accelerated graphics card just to run Solitaire.
but I don't want to text "goatse" and get any "pop art" while walking around downtown.
Graffiti is not art, it is vandalism. Anything that encourages it should be outlawed.
I know that their are possible legitimate uses, but vandalism centric services really should not exist.
Eye-spam is just as bad as other spam.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
5. Advertising.
The Matrix? No. I'm pretty sure the guy is talking about plastics.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
If you send a text message to an e-mail address scrawled in paint on a subway advertisement or on a sidewalk, for example, you could get some digital pop art on your phone in return.
And spam for the rest of your life.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Pay for a crappy service that invites people to vandalism and will probably only be used by corporate 'underground' marketing? No thanks.
Makes me wonder how some things get accepted to slashdot. Then I thought about it and it became crystal clear. If you want a story accepted onto slashdot, you have to buy hookers for the editors.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
C'mon, this is soooo last generation. I propose some new forms of "interactive art":
- Murderesqueism
- - murder victims left in public places with hyperlinks or other obscure clues left on the body.
- Popup Exhibitionism
- - beautiful women with URLS and other monikers tatooed over their abdomen, chest, and derriere, exposed at random times, with no provocation, to strangers.
- Licensism
- - the replacement of random car license plates with cleverly crafted URLS or AOL screen names.
Or, instead of trying to legitimatize vandalism, we can simply use RFID sticks for everything. IMHO, that would be cooler, because you'd have no idea of a sticker contained embedded data until you tried to scan it.This is not a followup and it hasn't caught on.
This is a textbook example of the kind of marketing I read about in an earlier article. I can't find it now, but the example used was the phrase "suits are in".
The idea is, you feed this kind of information to dozens of different news sources' fashion, entertainment, life, news departments. Three to five of them will run stories which will read basically the same:
Catchy lede paragraph
Information about the product
Quotes from the manufacturer
Quotes from an industry group
Anecdotes from users
Catchy summation
This is standard marketing practice and not much more. Once you know the format, you can spot many of these articles. However, I can't find the original source on the "suits are in" marketing expose - does anyone have it?
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
Graffiti in general. I don't understand it. Whats the appeal of wrecking the apperance of otherwise beautiful communities? Just to say you were there? Do you dipshits realize how UGLY spraypaint and pseudo-old-english looks sprawled across an overpass or on the side of the building? Its bullshit and it needs to stop.
You have been eaten by a grue.
Texting to an autoresponder - yeah, cool. Would you like spam with that?
Frankly, I was underwhelmed. The home-made air conditioner was kinda' interesting, but this just plain wasn't worth posting.
Man, now that the Mac has gone x86, slashdot has gotten boring...
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
OK OK it wasn't on /., but it was 3 months ago!
. html
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,66992,00
This is just another great way to add viruses to every part of your life! Yahooo! I can't wait!
Go to the w3.org and put Slashdot.org through the validator.
Ah, a new twist on a classic.
There's no place like ~/
...for example, you could get some digital pop art on your phone in return.
We used to call it viruses, spam, spyware, and adware. Digital Pop Art sounds much friendlier.
I have found there are just two ways to go.
It all comes down to livin' fast or dyin' slow. -REK, Jr.
...that would link to websites about the products!
:CuteCats!
Consumers could scan those bar codes with a handheld device of some kind and be taken effortlessly to the site!
Why, it would be like a... a... digital _convergence_ between the physical world and the Internet!
You could give the devices away to Wired subscribers and Radio Shack customers. You'd want them to appeal to the right demographics, so they shouldn't look too industrial or nerdish.
You could make them look like a cute little cat or something.
You call call them
What a fantastic idea! I wonder why nobody has ever thought of anything like this before.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
This is mostly garbage, seriously get a GIS ...the captcha idea is a good idea
for raves and the like!
I tip toe like rats on vouge runnways.
Seen in the subway:
http://www.p0rnviruslink.com/
The Graffiti on the Bridges of Madison County....
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
"Eye-spam"? Eeeeeew, that's NASTY!
That might have worked better if the bar code scanner could have been used without being attached to a computer...
Someone beat me to it and did it better too. I feel crushed.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
This is a step in the wrong direction.
This shit is retarded.
Write a new underweb and incorperate a Global Information System or somthing as underground as graf'in! P34c3 gru
I tip toe like rats on vouge runnways.
Unseen urban artist people will stencil bar codes on bridges and railroad cars. Then you'll walk along with your CueCat Mobile and scan the bar code, and your phone will load a fabulous [multimedia advertisement | ameteur pr0n video featuring his estranged ex-girlfriend | virus] authored by the stencil-wielding Pop Artist.
The future is now!
6. Audible Alarm (not shown)
-from a Cuisinart product owner's manual.
I want Graffiti! not graffiti.
I don't need to hear about messaging for spam, What I need is a cell phone that will do something useful when I write on it. That I can afford.
You even have a picture of a Palm up there.
Tease.
-Anonymous Phil
It wouldn't have to be grafitti either, you could put barcodes like it on buildings/historical/monuments/businesses/etc. Imagine the following scenarios:
- Restaurant: Clicking brings up their menu, prices, nutritional facts, takeout number, hours of operation.
- Magazine Article: Clicking on a code at the end of an article brings up a page with related links, i.e. further information on the topic, the author of the article or the people mentioned therein.
- Billboard Advertisement: Brings up company's website with further information about the product, a way to buy it, etc.
- Subway or other transit map: Clicking brings up pertinent schedules.
There are lots of possibilities.I assumed the first story was just lame astroturfing for a lame concept, but now I see it's real, because Slashdot editors wouldn't let such transparently pathetic marketing slip by twice.
The last time grafedia was mentioned I got curious as to how quickly a wikipedia article could come to shape. I started this article.
Obviously I should have thought a bit more, because no one knew anything and so the text written was little more than lifted from grafedia.net. But now I've got another chance to whore out my little article.
If you know anything about grafedia, how about contributing?
What if the entire Universe were a chrooted environment with everything symlinked from the host?
Scanning the circular barcode also opens doors and enables gravity...
www.tubgirl.com CLENSE YOUR SOUL
or http://goat.cx/ FREE THE GOATS!!
I can see it now...countless people suddenly have no eyeballs and a rancid smell coming out of the computer room.
The closest thing I've done to this is put a "captain's log" and email address cards in a bottle in the ocean. The idea was that a finder would update the log (when/where it was found), take an email card, and then throw it back out to sea. Upon using the email address, its course could be charted on a website.
:-(
:-)
But I never heard from it again...
I imagine you have to do these things in bulk to get results. Maybe someday I'll make a hundred of them
So if I graffiti my URL someplace prominent, will Google crawl it and increase my PageRank accordingly?
Semacode involves a square pattern of dots that you aim a camera phone at; special software in the phone reads the dot pattern and can connect you to a website or whatever. These dot pattern would be very hard to reproduce by hand.
But there is another system that uses odd circular maze-like graphics, that I imagine might be possible to hand draw if the image processing software were decent. I can't remember the name of this circular system, but the patterns reminded me of the sockets R2D2 was always plugging into.