Subway riders around the world have begun to see a new form of advertising underground — in-tunnel “motion” ads:

Companies such as Canadian-based SideTrack, Manhattan-based SubMedia, and Los Angeles-based Aap! Global have installed miles of frame-stop succession ads (much like an unraveled 19th century zoetrope) in the United States and Europe:

In the US, San Francisco’s BART, Atlanta’s MARTA, Boston’s T, Washington DC’s METRO, and Philadelphia’s PATCO have tried out these ads. Of course, the biggest market for this new brand of advertising would be the largest subway system in the world, namely the New York City Subway.

Several companies are currently negotiating with the NYCTA to make these installations happen, but could you imagine the possible disruptions just three or four of these ad installations could cause to the system? Regular subway riders in NYC can attest to the very long lag time in updating the advertisements inside the trains; outside of them would be a whole different story.

But what New Yorker wouldn’t want to see a 15-second Target ad outside their train window while commuting to work, instead of broken light fixtures and dripping water:

If this subway “motion” advertising catches on, it could generate millions of dollars a year. But until then, we’ll have to go back to pretending to see patterns in the miles and miles of underground graffiti as the subway train drives by…

Improve your photography with classical art: “When Photoshop entered the CS series it included a new tool called ‘Match Color.’ This tools was made so that you could match a series of photos to one another. But there is another thing you can do with ‘Match Color’ that is much cooler: You can match the colors in your photos to those in famous paintings.” Check out the amazing results this method produces.

Cingular Wireless will be renamed AT&T in the coming months after being acquired by AT&T and the company will be spending millions to re-brand the wireless carrier.

As a Cingular customer, this seems like a strange move for a number of reasons:

1. Cingular Wireless spent millions of dollars on ads to brand itself with that orange jumping jack.
2. Cingular merged with AT&T Wireless a while back, but kept its name.
3. Cingular spent millions to brand itself after the merger as “Raising the Bar” they acquired from AT&T.

All that aside, its just plain odd that a company that already acquired AT&T Wireless would now be purchased by AT&T and then renamed AT&T.

Here’s Stephen Colbert from The Colbert Report to explain how all this happened:

Sony pulled a recent billboard ad campaign for their new white PlayStation Portable after many people disapproved of it’s perceived racial overtones.

The name of the campaign: “White is Coming.”

The controversial ads were only displayed on billboards in Holland, but criticism spread worldwide via blogs and Internet forums.

Sony Europe issued a statement of apology:

We… recognize that people have a wide variety of perceptions about such imagery and we wish to apologise to those who perceived the advert differently to that intended. In future, we will apply greater sensitivity in our selection of campaign imagery, and will take due account of the increasingly global reach of such local adverts, and their potential impact in other countries.

Its hard not to see how people wouldn’t find this campaign controversial.

As you may have noticed, I’ve gone and redesigned the site again.

I call this redesign, “CityCynical.”

That is to say that I am in the process of making everything look pretty. I may even upgrade to the latest Wordpress installation, too. And why not?

So tell me what you think of the new look (and new font!) in the comments…