Why yes, I do work in an augmented building

Don't you?

Tokyo is saturated with billboards and electronic outdoor advertising, but the N Building has taken the concept, married it to augmented reality and upped the bar for out-of-home display.

In essence, the entire facade of the building is a QR code. Users with a custom iPhone app will be able to scan the building's front and interact with the merchants, extract relevant data and generally know everything they need to know. Augmented reality and architecture, it's cool.

N Building from Alexander Reeder on Vimeo.

Playboy purchasers pull publishing

Playboy. They only want you for one thing. It ain't the nudie pictures. It ain't the comprehensive database of centerfold likes and dislikes. and it's definitely not all those fine, fine pieces of journalism by Hunter Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut and Norman Mailer, the authors whose writing was the only reason I ever bought the magazine...

It's the Bunny. The icon. The insouciant symbol of sin, sex and swingin' good times. It sells.

So, now the brand has waned, gone limp, if you will and has been superseded by the brand emblem. But we'll still be able to buy all number of really well made, quality products with a Playboy bunny logo and that is what's important.

That sir is one damn fine poster

So is your Ma'am. Damn fine. Guess I'll have to go make one myself now. I hope it's as well executed as yours.

Public space or ad space?

I must confess to being of two minds when it comes to the idea of public space being used for advertising. On one hand I know that the market forces all around us necessitate a certain degree of advertising beyond print and broadcast. But on the other hand, I don't want to see advertising every time I step outside and look around.

Sao Paulo, Brazil took a step towards reclaiming public space in 2007 with a very strong billboard ban, but somehow I don't see that happening here. Free market and constitutional challenges notwithstanding.

So where does the happy middle ground lie? People want to enjoy their surroundings, companies want to advertise. Yes, advertising exists to sell products and doesn't necessarily have a social responsibility, more of a commercial responsibility, but don't the people get a voice too?

Sometimes they do. We don't want ads, we want art.

Billboards Watch You Watching Them

In Japan, NTT Communications has tackled the age-old problem of working out who's paying attention to which sign-based advertising by making the sign watch back. The Japanese company will run an experiment where webcam-equipped digital signs record what's going on then process the data to see how much attention each ad draws from passers by.


Starting in January in a Tokyo railway station, NTT will trial the technology on thousands of passer-by commuters. The system uses two cameras hooked up to a PC: It runs analysis software that computes how many people are in front of the sign, then matches an "averaged" Japanese face to each person to determine whether they're looking at the sign, and for how long.

The data from the system will, if analyzed properly, be invaluable to advertisers in analyzing the attention-grabbing value of particular adverts. NTT's content distribution system for digital will use data to help it select ads for signs appropriately. And though it's a taste of the future--a future of personalized dynamic ad placements that makes me shudder when I think of it--this system isn't exactly Big Brother: it doesn't attempt to identify individuals.

Yet.