Cityspeak Turns Billboards Over To Text Messagers

From Art Threat:

Cityspeak is ephemeral graffiti, using private modes of communication to generate public displays of commentary about a particular location. It is an example p2P (private-to-public) communication which allows participants to use communication technologies we tend to think of as private--cell phones and Personal Digital Assistants--to create public displays.

Cityspeak's website also allows anyone to post a message to the billboard. [Link]

Hastily Planned Flash Mob Cancelled Unless You Can Think of Something Really Challenging We Could Do

UPDATE: There are several fridges and if there are under 20 users there already it is waaaaaay too easy. Thanks to all those who already wrote in asking to participate - we'll have to not do it again sometime! I was able to do the following by myself just now, with 15 others busily working there...

I do like the idea of an online mob of perfectly legitimate users coordinating their activities in a space like this. If you know of any good virtual location for such an activity that does not involve the use of avatars, let me know.

The above is not what I meant to have our little mob write, by the way - the tagging bug got the best of me, I guess. What I meant to write was...

Well, that isn't quite it either. But someone kept messing with my letters.

The Seventh Harry Potter Title

Fuse #8 reports on the availability of the title of the seventh Harry Potter book on J.K. Rowling's website. Title aside, I like the publisher's use of the site as a promotional vehicle. It takes several mysterious steps to get to the underwhelming title, and there are other goodies on the site as well. My favorite is the "Rubbish" section, accessible from the main desktop by clicking on the pencil sharpener; the trash can contains responses to critics of the Harry Potter books and debunkings of various myths surrouding the series or its author.

I'm guessing a lot of kids will be pretty jazzed at having the opportunity to find out the title through mysterious means, so I won't give it away here. But Fuse #8 can tell you the steps to take to find it.