Next time you are on a train, falling asleep, leaning against the window and hear the voices inside your head telling you to buy Sky TV, don't panic. Its not aliens beaming the words into your brain. The words are real, and its the latest hotshot idea from the advertising community.
You may have heard of an audio technique called "bone conduction" where, instead of wearing headphones, you have a transducer pressed against your skin which transmits vibrations to the ear through the bones of the skull. It is used in some hearing aids, the underwater headsets of divers, in high noise environments such as driving a grand prix car or flying a military jet, and most recently in Google Glass where the arms of the spectacles pressing against the temple serve the sound to the ear. Its even been used in novelty items such as kid's toothbrushes which conducts a tune through the teeth to encourage kids to brush longer.
Now, Sky's advertising arm in Germany has had the bright idea of fitting these transducers to tube, train and bus windows so that as the weary traveller is overcome by sleep and leans against the train window, a voice audible only to them can chant out the latest advertising jingle. You can see what they are planning in this video which proudly calls it "a revolutionary new audio medium".
Does anyone at all outside the advertising industry welcome this? If someone hacks into your computer to push unwanted adverts at you via a screen saver, its a criminal offence, but If they push unwanted adverts inside your head, you have no protection.
About SKILLZONE News This article comes from the SKILLZONE email newsletter, published monthly since January 2008, and covering topics related to technology and the internet. All articles and artwork in the SKILLZONE newsletter are orignal content.