Gizmodo: targeting

NEC's Minority Report-Style Display Tailors Adverts For You (Verdict: Frankenads)

Kit Eaton — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 09:45:00 EDT

It may be tired to bring up Minority Report, but remember the scenes in the movie where our hero gets bothered by interactive targeted advertising wherever he goes? Thanks to dear ol' NEC, this nightmare of advert pestering may really be in our future: its new ad display panel watches its watchers with a camera, then tailors the adverts to the audience. The 50-inch plasma's camera and software doesn't quite go so far as identifying specific people, but it does guess at age and sex and then offers you the chance to grab data on the products wirelessly to a cellphone. It'll be demoed at Fuji Television's festival in Tokyo: go along and see how irritating (or not) the future of advertising may be, if you're interested. [Times of India via Dvice]

J-Tas Surveillance System Has GPS, Thermal Imaging, Hunts Predators

Kit Eaton — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 09:48:22 EST

From next year UK armed forces will be using a new "Surveillance System and Range Finder" which will allow soldiers to quickly spot and locate enemy positions up to 3 miles away, and call in the artillery using precisely-derived GPS coordinates. The new all-weather, day-and-night hand-held J-Tas devices are an improvement on older in-service versions which needed a tripod and lack thermal imaging. If you want to see what a view of enemy tanks through the sights might look like, check it out after the jump.

Designed to be lightweight, the J-Tas gadgets still pack in military-precision GPS, thermal imaging, and an eye-safe laser range-finder. The UK Ministry of Defense has just put 700 of them on order for a cool $60 million, and they'll be in service from 2009. [MOD]