Much of what we do is dictated by where we go on the Internet. We go to Yelp for restaurant information, Fandango for movie listings and Angie’s List for washers and dryers. So what if all this information came to us as we were walking down the street?
Brooklyn-based creative agency BREAKFAST NY has harnessed the power of the web yet again with their latest project entitled “Points.” Dubbed as the world’s most intelligent street sign, Points looks, as one may expect, like a directional sign to look; three arms pointing towards different locations, each displaying text of a nearby destination. The way-finding device leverages content from Foursquare, Twitter, transportation APIs, RSS feeds and many other online sources, to create an interactive experience—more importantly, it can be expanded to work with almost any online data source and adapt to any location where it’s installed.
For example, Points were placed in different areas of New York. In the morning, it could point you to the nearest coffee shops, the closest subway station and tell you the weather. In the afternoon, the options would shift to lunch spots and, in the evening, happy hour specials.
Points have been three years in the making, according to Michael Lipton, co-founder and account director at BREAKFAST NY. “The baseline functionality is really the idea of pointing people to areas of interest,” said Lipton. “There’s room for interesting brand connections there.”
Points also have the ability to be controlled by the viewer.
If Points isn’t showing you exactly what you’re looking for, there is also a menu to select categories of nearby information. The sign uses 16,000 LED lights to illuminate during any time of the day and can be programmed to display custom data should you choose to provide information that’s only relevant during particular events.
Points doesn’t always have to show just local businesses or current baseball game scores either. You can also live tweet Points with your geolocation tagged, and the sign will rotate to point toward wherever it just received the tweet. It’s a social, interactive and overall neat way to engage and reinvent an item that’s stagnant and often overlooked.
Copyright Davison 2013
Sources:
http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/points-digital-road-sign-puts-a-literal-spin-on-local-explorations/