Bluetooth Ads Beamed from Billboards 231
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."
Re:bluetooth spam to your phone.. (Score:5, Informative)
For goodness sake folks, just use the technology, it provides the tools for that.
Re:Great... (Score:5, Informative)
Funny how many comments got this wrong....
Re:Cool (Score:4, Informative)
Last I heard, there's no charge for bluetooth datatransfer. Bluetooth is like wifi, not like SMS.
Re:Cool (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Thank God. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Sci-Fi (Score:1, Informative)