There's a big crane at the moment in Sydney CBD which has an illuminated panel at night with a huge advert (I'll take a photo next time I'm out).
It got me thinking that if cranes had a big scrolling array of lights along their cross beam, they'd be ideal for text based advertising, or for displaying personal messages.
Simply text the exorbitantly expensive cellphone number with your message and hey presto, a few seconds later, your message writ large.-- neilp, May 09 2005 Crane signage. http://images.googl...en%26lr%3D%26sa%3DN [2 fries shy of a happy meal, May 09 2005] So good, tis baked. Don't know about scrolling though.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, May 09 2005 Hmmm if you could message people, the crane would be way too busy accepting messages from the thousands of phones with sight of it - either the message you were supposed to see would only be there for a second or people would have to wait for forever to see the message in the first place. Advertising would work though. Construction projects could get funding from companies by getting payed to put ... say Pepsi's logo and slogan on the crane.-- CombatChuck, May 09 2005 [2fries], yup that's exactly the sort of advertising they've got at the moment (so the idea's not baked, I mention existing advertising in my idea!), I just think there's a market in making them dynamic. I don't agree with [Comb at] about the number of people that would do it, it's eactly like a jukebox, you'd take a bit of a gamble on how big the queue was (hell, it could even say somewhere at the end of each message).-- neilp, May 09 2005 Sorry, I misunderstood. When you said, //an illuminated panel at night with a huge advert //, I was thinking billboard.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, May 09 2005 "Hey dad, I'm lost..."-- po, May 10 2005 "where are you...?"-- goatfaceKilla, May 10 2005 "over here"-- po, May 10 2005 [Chuck] That depends entirely on the price.-- david_scothern, May 10 2005 "can you see a crane?"-- goatfaceKilla, May 10 2005 "the red one?"-- po, May 10 2005 "Help - I am the crane repairer and someone has nicked my ladder."-- Basepair, May 10 2005 random, halfbakery