This is a weird thing:

This is a weird thing: On the side of a phone booth outside my office building, there's an ad from a company called Streetbeam. (Warning: Wacky Flash animation at that site.) Apparently, this company believes that pedestrians on New York City sidewalks want to take the time to put aside their cell phones and point their Palms at phone booths as they walk by.

Now, besides the fact that no one would ever go out of their way to get more advertising, the thing that bothers me about this is that I work in the Empire Fucking State Building. Thus, I'm surrounded by slow-moving pedestrians all day. The last thing we need is for even the natives to be moving around slowly on the sidewalks.

But of course, the geek in me is intrigued. I haven't had my PDA with me while walking by this ad yet, but judging by their website, it looks like it requires a software download that is Palm OS only anyway, so I'm outta luck. Or more accurately, I'm in luck. Is this foolishness going on anywhere else?

stupid idea, ugly ad: streetbeam!

I'm Anil Dash, and I've been blogging here since 1999, writing about how culture is made. Contact me at anil@dashes.com, at +1 646 833 8659, or at anildash on Twitter or IM. Find out more »

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