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."

Hmmm

[CmdrTaco (troll) (578383)]

Hope someone hacks it and starts bluecasting goatse in its place.

That's how we can kill this

[grahamsz (150076)]

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.

BlueTooth Hacking billboards!

[SirDrinksAlot (226001)]

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.

Re:BlueTooth Hacking billboards!

[jdray (645332)]

Okay, I'm going long for this one:

When billboards know your name...
Well, it is the UK, and when they give you something or say goodbye, they often say "Cheers." And that's where everyone knows your name, so it fits.

Okay, I'm leaving now.

Leaving so soon?

[lullabud (679893)]

After that one I thought you'd be here all week.

bluetooth spam to your phone..

[joeldg (518249)]

great..
now we will have bluetooth spam everywhere we go..

just what we need..

Re:bluetooth spam to your phone..

[freitasm (444970)]

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.

If they'd let me do the asking...

[theblueprint (749157)]

I'd be all for this, should the advertisers change it a little. If I could see a billboard, find the product interesting, then "ask" the billboard for more information, I'd probably use it.

Otherwise, it's like a pop-up on your phone, asking if you'd like to see a pop-up ad.

BlueTooth Ads?!?

[sled (10079)]

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.

Hmm, haven't seen these so far

[fussili (720463)]

However they have had interactive billboards on the Tube for some time.

They concerned the use of unlicensed faux-minicabs to lure women into situations where they are abducted and often sexually abused.

The billboards allowed you to align your phone's IR receiver with a flashing icon to receive information on how to better protect yourself if you happen to be a woman.

I daresay Bluetooth seems rather more invasive as a means of delivering content - particularly commercial advertising rather than citizen's advice.

That's a lot of acceptance, but not for long!

[RUFFyamahaRYDER (887557)]

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... =)

Idea for advertising

[Spy der Mann (805235)]

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*

Re:Idea for advertising

[utexaspunk (527541)]

the USPTO might just be dumb enough to give you a patent on that, too... :)

Got my hopes up when this happened to me

[herting (542478)]

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.

But...but...

[mccalli (323026)]

When billboards know your name that's when to really worry.

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

Dubbed blueSPAMMING, not blueCASTING

[OpenGLFan (56206)]

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.

Horrible advertising of the future..

[by Anonymous Coward]

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.

Over-marketing

[rbgemini (837601)]

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?

Re:hmm

[ch-chuck (9622)]

They could just beam the tickets out from the billboards. "If you are reading this message, you are under arrest".

Re:In the US

[yagu (721525)]

I find if you quadruple ROT13 encrypt your name you'll get a little bit more protection.

Re:Great...

[AEton (654737)]

These are billboards at railway stations.

Funny how many comments got this wrong....

Re:Great...

[darkonc (47285)]

They're only broadcasting to people directly in front of the ad. This implies that they are using a directed antenna. That should increase the effective available range. If they wanna get real nasty, they can use a group of antennae each covering one part of the target area. One can hope that they don't get that nasty, but we're talking ad people.

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.

Re:Cool

[merreborn (853723)]

So I wonder if these ads cost you money each time you drive past one of the billboards

Last I heard, there's no charge for bluetooth datatransfer. Bluetooth is like wifi, not like SMS.

Re:crazy

[Johnboi Waltune (462501)]

You'd have to be crazy to accept a "blue-ad" or "blue-vert" or whatever the hell these are.

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.

Re:Thank God.

[plover (150551)]

Bluetooth is way useful and almost magical for many applications. The ones I use include: totally hands-free car operation (my car's bluetooth module connects to my phone when I turn on the ignition, and mutes the car stereo and uses the stereo speakers for phone audio;) instant palmtop network access (no hunting for free wifi nodes;) exchanging business cards / appointments / contacts / pictures / ringtones with other people; installing games, etc. I have also been a very happy user of floAt's Mobile Agent's proximity feature: when I walk away from my desk, it locks itself. Bluetooth is so useful to me that I wouldn't even consider Verizon, who sell phones with crippled Bluetooth in order to charge their victims into MMSing pictures over their network for an extra charge.

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.