Cellphones That Read Billboards
Read some amazing stuff in newspapers the past few days. Yesterday it was the NY Times, about cellphones in Japan that read billboards and provide links to websites for passing motorists. It is a new technology that uses square designs similar to barcodes that impart much more information...and open up incredibly clever ways to connect advertisers with customers.
You can wave your cell at a magazine ad and get the recipe on a website, or use the handset to pay for your bus fare. On Japan's All Nippon Airways, for example, a quarter of the salarymen passengers wave their phones instead of using paper tickets to board.
The ramifications are big...but there are problems. Mostly because only new cellphones are equipped with the special readers, and there are two kinds of phones here--the world standard GSM, and the market leader Verizon's CDMA platform. Only GSM can read the messages, and it seems like betamax versus VHS redux.
Then I read a story in the Wall Street Journal explained why E85 ethanol fuel, has had such a difficult time getting traction in the market. It's because oil companies make it very hard for the manufacturers of the fuel to distribute it in their stations. Rules like not allowing E85 to be sold under the same canopy as the regular gas, or Exxon Mobil's rule that they can't put up signs for E85, or many other restrictions just make it plain tough for the new fuel to spread in the market.
The oil companies are fine with buying ethanol to mix with 85% gas, but rules like not allowing customers to use their company charge cards to pay, and forcing E85 manufacturers to have their own pumps just throws up roadblocks.
And that's why it's only a tiny percent of total gas sales, despite the politicians speeches touting the 'ethanol future' are of the new E85, and there are only a relative handful of the new 'flexfuel cars' on the roads today.
You can wave your cell at a magazine ad and get the recipe on a website, or use the handset to pay for your bus fare. On Japan's All Nippon Airways, for example, a quarter of the salarymen passengers wave their phones instead of using paper tickets to board.
The ramifications are big...but there are problems. Mostly because only new cellphones are equipped with the special readers, and there are two kinds of phones here--the world standard GSM, and the market leader Verizon's CDMA platform. Only GSM can read the messages, and it seems like betamax versus VHS redux.
Then I read a story in the Wall Street Journal explained why E85 ethanol fuel, has had such a difficult time getting traction in the market. It's because oil companies make it very hard for the manufacturers of the fuel to distribute it in their stations. Rules like not allowing E85 to be sold under the same canopy as the regular gas, or Exxon Mobil's rule that they can't put up signs for E85, or many other restrictions just make it plain tough for the new fuel to spread in the market.
The oil companies are fine with buying ethanol to mix with 85% gas, but rules like not allowing customers to use their company charge cards to pay, and forcing E85 manufacturers to have their own pumps just throws up roadblocks.
And that's why it's only a tiny percent of total gas sales, despite the politicians speeches touting the 'ethanol future' are of the new E85, and there are only a relative handful of the new 'flexfuel cars' on the roads today.
posted by Max Hartshorne at 8:55 PM
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