So customized billboards for the blind.
Independence Day
21–30 of 71 posts
Re: Independence Day
#22"a reminder you're walking by a place with great Chinese takeout" is this just a way to target ads at people with a disability? if all I'm trying to do is get form point A to point B, the last think I want is "interesting facts about history" or targeted ads.
What if you're travelling? Or just exploring a tourist area.
Narrow demographic, but seems more useful in that case.
Re: Independence Day
#23Re: Independence Day
#24"a reminder you're walking by a place with great Chinese takeout" is this just a way to target ads at people with a disability? if all I'm trying to do is get form point A to point B, the last think I want is "interesting facts about history" or targeted ads.
It could be an incentive for shop owners to install such a beacon, thus increasing their frequency and improving the system. I doubt they would be ads, but rather just the name of the store and maybe some sort of rating reference or something.
Re: Independence Day
#25"a reminder you're walking by a place with great Chinese takeout" is this just a way to target ads at people with a disability? if all I'm trying to do is get form point A to point B, the last think I want is "interesting facts about history" or targeted ads.
I didn't even consider the possible nefariousness of it, but you have a point.
Although, you could also make the case that stores have signs (sometimes neon!) for sighted people, so this is just providing the closest equivalent experience to the blind. Yeah, it's not perfectly comparable, since sighted people can choose what they look at mostly, while none of us get to direct our hearing to only one source of sound.
Such a system would have to provide the user options as to what they want to hear, from the (-v) bare minimum safety warnings (curb, crosswalk, etc.) to (-vv) a more comprehensive description of the terrain and items around you, all the way up to (-vvv) a constant play-by-play chatter of everything it knows about your location, direction, and destination.
Re: Independence Day
#26It's disappointing to see the cynicism and negativity directed to this announcement. Yes, the presentation is a bit lacking: the website is difficult to read for many and the video seems to be a big ad. But the message is so hopeful. I'm not blind/visually challenged/whatever the correct terminology is, but this announcement/description/advertisement made me happy.
It made me happy not because this is another channel to bring advertisers and consumers together (as others have pointed out) but because it seems like a way to leverage technology to really give help and hope to others.
Is there a reason why Microsoft shouldn't put their branding forward and promote their own devices if they put up money for the research? Apple does this all the time. I hope we take joy in the possibilities of freedom that this technology could provide.
Re: Independence Day
#27Complaints about the website aside, this technology is great and is exactly the type of thing microsoft needs to be developing.
Re: Independence Day
#28The site is unreadable. Here is the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEzncMLLOxE
Thanks, I came to the comment section here looking for a txt version.
Re: Independence Day
#29Colour me cynical, but this seems like the perfect opportunity for Microsoft to take payment from corporations to adjust a blind person's route past said corporations' branches, thereby providing a sneaky targeted advertising campaign.
Hmm, you just thought of this, Microsoft didn't.
It says more about you than it does about Microsoft.
Re: Independence Day
#30This could be a prototype project where three or four routes in one or two cities will be enhanced with bluetooth, a dozen of test subjects will try it on a refular basis, a few articles in the news will appear praising this visionnary concept and two months later everybody forgets about it.
Or it could be a proof of concept of a much wider plan, and from the results we would see the start of a massive undertaking involving huge swaths of cities clearing budget to put a bluetooth beacon on every street corner, public transport infrastructure is massively updated to have up to date realtime data accessible from the mobile apps In a usable format, shop owner and public facilities join the movement to enhanced their places for discoverability.
If this was an IBM project partenaring a metropolitan city council, I would be expecting the later. It's a Microsoft story centering on the technological aspect of it, I guess it's the former.