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Bluetooth Ads Beamed from Billboards
dylanduck writes "Billboards in the UK have been using Bluetooth to beam media clips at passing cellular phones. The system has been dubbed Bluecasting and 17,000 people accepted the ads. When billboards know your name that's when to really worry."
Hope someone hacks it and starts bluecasting goatse in its place.
I hope high gas prices are depriving your children, you fucking dumbass.
Watch out, when someone figures out how to hack your bluetooth automatically, grab all your personal information and talor its advertisements accordingly, thats when I'm going to be afraid.
They could just beam the tickets out from the billboards. "If you are reading this message, you are under arrest".
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Otherwise, it's like a pop-up on your phone, asking if you'd like to see a pop-up ad.
"from the bricks to the booth...I predict the future like Cleo the psychic..."
I've beeing seeing lots of ads for products that whiten teeth lately, but but who in their right mind would want...oh wait, nevermind.
Most people don't get too many bluetooth messages on their devices so when something like this happens they say "okay" to accept and see what the ad is all about. After a while people will get sick of it though, and fewer and fewer will accept them.
So this is good advertising.... for now... =)
You an still have Bluetooth [On], just don't set it to [Discoverable]. What's the big deal?
For goodness sake folks, just use the technology, it provides the tools for that.
These are billboards at railway stations.
Funny how many comments got this wrong....
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
Let's send the signal thru giant antennas and it will be encoded with electromagnetic waves, using Amplitude and Frequency Modulation. The devices are so simple they don't require digital technology.
With this, you can even choose with an analog dial, which emitters (let's call them "stations") to listen to the advertisers! Furthermore, why stop with advertising? Let's add content, like news or music, too!
Forget about podcasting, bluecasting. The future is "wavecasting"! It'll rock!
*Rushes to the patent office*
I was walking central London today when I got a message saying my mobile's bluetooth had an incoming message and asked if I wanted to accept it. Thinking I had finally found another toother, I quickly accepted thinking I was about to engage in depraved anonymous sex. Alas, 449 days of toothing in London and still no takers. Pretty soon I'm going to just assume bluetooth is a crap technology and just switch to raising the collars on my green polos.
http://www.mample.net
Oh, I don't know. Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came. You want to be where you can see our troubles are all the same. You want to be where everybody knows your name.
Cheers,
Ian
Nope, it hasn't been dubbed BlueCasting, except by marketing twits in Italian suits and advertising twerps in Emo glasses.
The real world calls it SPAM. If you have to get trendy, BlueSpamming. Or if you want to get really wild, based on IM SPAM = SPIM, you get BLUE SPAM = SPLUE.
We let them use Hacker for Cracker, and we let them take Digital Rights Management for Digital Restriction Mechanisms. We control the names, folks, not them. A dog does not lay bioreclaimable fertilizer on the path, it shits on the sidewalk. "BlueCasting" sounds like a neat 21st century hip thing. "Spam" is a nasty annoyance that Russians get beat to death for. Give it the correct name.
So tell me, why would I ever want to own a phone with Bluetooth if they're doing this? They still make non-bluetooth phones and wired headsets? Right?
(I pick up 75 wireless access points on my 12 mile commute through what I thought was the countryside - so I can't imagine what this "bluecasting" will be like once it takes off in cities).
I can almost see the next step being advertisers pressuring phone makers to require always-on phones with always-on bluetooth so that they can't be "denied" the chance to spam your phone. You won't be able to switch the phone off, will only ever be able to switch to "silent mode" for a couple of hours at a time (like for going to a movie theater), and it'll automatically accept absolutely anything sent to it (and it'll simply keep the last 128MB [or however much storage the device has] of messages received). Just walking through the mall your phone will pick up 40 different advertising messages before you get to the store you wanted to go to - and when out driving, billboards and other cars will all repeatedly spam you.
And worst of all, they'll advertise this as being a "feature" of the phone ("get always-on bluecast so you're not left out! all the cool kids have it.. and you want to be cool.. don't you?") - and people will still buy it.
Nah, just curious. The first time they do this, 17,000 people will accept the "blue-vert". Of those 17,000, the next time, only 7,000 people will accept. The third time, 700.
Eventually the new technology will penetrate the common consciousness and people will just start ignoring it, since it is, after all, thoroughly useless and annoying. The only thing it has going for it is its novelty. Once that's dried up, "blue-vertising" will go away and die.
"The advanced societies of the future will be driven by competing systems of psychopathology." -JG Ballard
Honestly.
Is it possible to go anywhere or do anything these days without being advertised at? Seems you just can't get away from it anymore.
In any case, if I'm standing on a train platform looking at a billboard, I can just read the damn billboard. What is the point of sending me a message to tell me about what's on the billboard?
You must be new hear. Hmm, how about slashdot bluecasting TFA to someone as soon as they click on the summary, thus forcing everyone to RTFA before they post stupid comments?
find an old pda and have it 'bluecast' porn.
Sit it next to a real coke bluecaster, and then half the time that people choose to "Accept connection from Coke?" they'll get the porn.
Bluetooth doesn't have a whole lot of authentication other than the name that the other node chooses.
It wont take many calls to a large companies complaint department about them dispatching porn before this whole dumb idea will go away.
Did you uninstall your browser because of advertisements? Did you stop riding the bus because they have posters inside advertising stuff? Did you give up all email because you got a spam? Did you throw your phone in disgust when AT&T sent you an SMS ad? Did you stop watching television because of commercials? (OK, bad example :-) No, you probably installed Adblock, or a filtering proxy like the proxomitron. You may have installed a spam filter on your email. You might have bought a TiVo or ReplayTV to avoid the commercials. And who knows, maybe you did give up public transit because of advertising.
Avoiding Bluespam is easier than any of the above. If you simply don't turn discovery "on" your machine won't answer their spamspitter. Period. And there really isn't a valid technical reason to turn discovery on and leave it on unless you're 'toothing' (looking for anonymous MOTAS.) As a matter of fact, Motorola doesn't even allow the option of leaving discovery on for more than 60 seconds, it's that unneeded. Saying "no Bluetooth because I might get an ad if I ever travel to London" is a completely over the top over-reaction.
As an aside, if you're looking for the best bluetooth functionality in a phone, go Sony-Ericsson. Motorola's bluetooth stack is very buggy and their functionality incomplete. I'm way unhappy with my new Razr.
John
After that one I thought you'd be here all week.
That reminds me: we're at the beginning of this 'new frontier'. Right now, they're getting about a 1 in 6 acceptance ratio -- Today, it's a novel idea. A few months, or years, down the road, they'll be seeing those numbers drop preciptiously. Then they'll start resorting to all sorts of tricks to get people to 'accept' their garbage, and we'll have to start writing software to filter out thes ads, then they'll come up with work-arounds, and then....
Starting to sound like the spam wars??? There's a reason.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.