Advertising has a new gimmick. Kodak in Rochester, New York, wants to encourage people to take pictures of adverts in return for free photo prints. The idea is that Kodak sells more film, customers get a freebie, and the advertiser gets the exposure they crave. The company proposes running the slogan 鈥淪hoot me with Kodak film, and get a free extra set of prints鈥� on billboards or giant screens at sports events, famous landmarks and theme parks. The ads contain a digital pattern that is recognised by an optical sensor in the photo lab when you get the film developed. The lab then automatically prints the free copies (US 2005/0084259).
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There is a better way to teach children to play the piano in classrooms, says Yamaha of Japan. It proposes giving each pupil a keyboard fitted with a liquid-crystal display, and an LED embedded in each key. As the teacher plays a tune on the master keyboard, it generates a standard MIDI signal and transmits it by wireless link to all the keyboards in the room. The pupils鈥� screens then display the musical score, while the LEDs flash to show which keys to press (WO 2005/004030).
Computer gamers may yet wreak revenge on their silicon rivals. Microsoft says computer-controlled characters in multi-player gaming often look unnatural because they make too few mistakes compared with human players. So it is proposing a way to ensure they mess up more.
In the game Mario Andretti, for instance, the computer player鈥檚 car flies around a pre-programmed ideal route. Microsoft鈥檚 plan is to mark a simulator track with the ideal route and ask a human player to try to follow this line. Every time they accelerate, brake or deviate from the line will be recorded, forming a database of human errors. The computer will then make a selection of such mistakes when competing against you for the championship (WO 2005/006117).
